it is all matter

"There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter."

Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8

What a cool set of verses! All I know is, there is some rad chemistry going on there, and when I die, I'm going to ask God all about it.

kitchen table! chairs! a couch! books!

The moving truck came earlier than we were expecting! And they knocked off $100!

(bad quality photo taken with photobooth. this is harder to do than i had expected.)

More photos to come once we get everything unpacked and reassembled. 

Happy Saturday!

this is when we realized we needed to get lives

thanks hulu.

a new shredder and some frames for our diplomas!

I do not understand desserts that look like savory dishes- cupcakes decorated to be spaghetti and meatballs or corn on the cob, or cakes that look like hamburgers-this is not appetizing to me at all. 

Also, some of the desserts on pinterest that are like an insane mashup of six different desserts are not appealing either. Example: chocolate chip cookie crust, oreo layer, brownie mix on top. Come on. That is borderline disgusting sugar overload (and I love sugar, just look at how many of my posts are about macaron cookies). 

This is just to say, I spend waaaay too much time on pinterest. 

But we did have a fun excursion to New Jersey today to visit Bed, Bath, and Beyond. And we also got Italian ice and people/dog watched at Rittenhouse Square, so it was a more interesting day than most.

And. Our stuff may be arriving on Friday. Yay Friday! Yay stuff! 

I still don't like you Allied!

supermassive black hole

This week my mom flew out from Utah and stayed with us for a few days. It was awesome! We love having moms visit us!!! We participated in a variety of activities including:

walking/melting around University City, seeing pretty Penn/Hogwarts campus
cheesesteaks with cheese whiz at Jim's Steaks
more guac at El Vez
Rodin Museum!
Franklin Institute!
Independence Hall, Congress Hall, Liberty Bell
leaving pennies on Ben Franklin's grave (he founded our school!)
Home Depot for patio furniture and materials to make a 2x4 garden planter
Captain America!
discovering a pizza place down the street that wasn't half bad
watching a lot of "Raising Hope" on hulu*
getting a parking ticket and just barely avoiding getting towed!

It has been incredibly hot the past week. Temperatures have been over a hundred, and with the humidity the heat index has been around 115 degrees. A hundred and fifteen!!! Thus, we tried to do things in the morning before it got too hot and all we wanted to do was crash on the [one] bed in our house.

I can't even describe how nice it was to have my mom here. She reminded me that I can do this whole move to a big city and get a chemistry PhD, and I believe her.

me and my mom and Ben Franklin on Penn campus

*If you have not seen "Raising Hope", you really should. We were laughing so hard we were crying during the first episode.

who only takes checks and money orders?! this is the 21st century, there's an app for debit card transactions!

I am really loving living here, and Aaron and I have done a lot of fun things, but the traffic/driving in general is just not fun. And after a particularly horrendous afternoon at the DMV (we had to find a place to get a money order, the money order wasn't for the right amount, a fight broke out in the parking lot and everyone started freaking out, we left without Pennsylvania drivers licenses), I have to vent.

There is a Target 1 mile away from our house. Guess how long it takes us to get there? Back in Utah, it'd be 3 minutes. Here, it takes us TWENTY. Basically, the lights aren't timed at all, so you stop at every single light at every single block. Because there isn't any street parking available, if people want to stop at a little shop or make a delivery, they just park their car with their flashers on in the right lane. This makes things even worse because everyone driving in the right lane all of a sudden has to get over to get around the dang car parked in the middle of the road! How is this legal, people?!

This is more odd than it is irritating, but because parking is so limited people park in the middle of the street, like in the median lane where people normally turn left. It was really weird seeing that for the first time. I expected to see drivers in all of these supposedly left turning cars, but nope, they were parked and driver-free.

Another thing that's sort of funny is that on really, really narrow streets all of the parked cars will have the rearview mirror on the street side pushed all the way in toward the car body so that cars that drive past don't smack it off. The cars that have the mirrors still sticking out have scratch marks and nicks all over.

That's all for now, folks. My mom is flying in tomorrow night, and we are going to go to the Rodin Museum! I am recreating my French experience here in Philadelphia, people. I can't help it.

i do not know how to say macaron in america. mac-ar-oan? or mac-ar-oon?

And then we went and bought uh-maz-ing macaron cookies from the SugarPhilly truck and a MacBook Pro at the bookstore, and things were suddenly a-ok.

When you come visit me, we will go all the way out to University City for those cookies. Just warning you.

we got ourselves allied with the wrong moving company. heh, heh.

I feel very materialistic right now, but you know what, I want my stuff back. All the things we put in the moving truck, all of our furniture, the rest of my clothes (dress shoes! where did you go?), our kitchen gadgets, office supplies/printer, my books,* our tv, even our welcome mats! I want them all to fill our very empty and echo-y house.
And we were supposed to get them at the very latest by next week, July 25th. Instead, we will not be getting anything until August 2nd at the earliest! HELLO. The entire reason we packed up and left Provo and our families and friends so early in the summer was so our stuff could get here and we could unpack everything and get everything set up before Aaron starts med school. Now we're going to have like 3 days to do that in the best case scenario.

We want some compensation here, Allied. And you do not seem concerned at all that the actual arrival date of our things is at least OVER A WEEK later than the date we originally got. We are concerned, and we are freaking ticked.

The end.

*I've been reading Sense and Sensibility out of the beautiful 7 novel by Jane Austen collection my parents gave me for Christmas. I love me some Pride and Prejudice, but I can't get into this book at all. I am neither entertained nor intellectually stimulated by it. And I want our five boxes of books to get here so I can read about something else besides so and so's social engagements and frolics in the English countryside. Jane Austen lovers-defend?


OOohh, I'm feeling choleric today.

ground control to major tom

We are alive and well and have thoroughly enjoyed our [almost] first week in Philadelphia!

It was a little crazy and overwhelming driving into the city on Monday afternoon, especially going down sketchy Washington Ave for the first time. Luckily, Aaron's mom flew in to close on our house, and she helped us settle in. She was a lifesaver in taking the edge off the initial shell shock of moving 2,100 miles across the country. I seriously don't know what we would've done without her. Probably sat on the bare (and very dirty) floor of the house and cried.

While she was here we got a bed for the guest room (our moving truck won't be here with all of our furniture until next week at the earliest), cleaned all the floors and bathrooms on our hands and freaking knees, stocked up on food, ate at the most amazing Mexican/fine dining restaurant called El Vez and had the best guacamole, got gelato at Capogiro (which I have been missing greatly since Maestro's closed back home), and went to Target like 8 times. We took care of business! (and ate great food.)

After Aaron's mom left, we went and saw U2 at the stadium where the Eagles play. It was packed! It was an awesome concert! It was almost as entertaining to watch all the older ladies rocking out (probably slightly drunk) in the audience as it was to watch Bono (who, at 51 is wayy cooler than I will ever be at 22). Unfortunately, the memory card in my camera got corrupted somehow, and I lost all my photos from the concert! All my pictures of the claw (really expensive and time consuming to set up stage)!!! All the pictures I made Aaron take of the two of us!!! All my pictures of cool Bono!!! Alas, maybe I'll figure out how to get them back sometime.

Aaron and I also went and saw Harry Potter the second day it was out. We got there 30 minutes early because we were nervous it might be sold out, but we were like the 5th and 6th people in the theatre. We're not in the land of Potter Enthusiasm anymore...Today we walked all over the place downtown, going to the bank, buying bus tokens, touring Independence Hall, and visiting Reading Terminal Market. It was most enjoyable! (and good exercise after sitting in a car 10 hours a day for four days straight)

Tomorrow we look forward to attending our branch for the first time and having dinner with my friend Jen from ballroom who lives in the city with her husband! And on Monday, we shall explore University City and their macaron cookie truck!!!!!!!! Blessed day!!!!

i love my rand mcnally atlas. thank you grandpa!

We are nearly done with our East Coast exodus, our never ending tour of I-80. Here's a brief recap of the trip so far:

 

Day 1: Utah-Wyoming-Nebraska

I have almost nothing to say about this day, except, why would anyone hold a basketball camp in Kearney, NE and take up all the hotel rooms in the middle of nowhere city?

Day 2: Nebraska-Iowa-Illinois-Indiana

We ate pizza at Giordano's, a little south of Chicago in Orland Park. Delish. That thing is filled with cheese! Probably about 2,000 calories a slice, but so worth it. Also, I saw lightning bugs for the first time in 14 years (since we moved from Indiana), and they are just as cool as I remember them as an 8 year old.

Day 3: Indiana-Ohio-PENNSYLVANIA!!!

Being only around 11 hours from our final destination, we decided to do some sightseeing. We stopped in Kirtland, OH and visited church history sites. We toured the Kirtland Temple and the Newel K. Whitney store. We would've seen a few more buildings (sawmill, ashery, historic houses, etc.) but our tour ran a little long, and we were getting starving, not having eaten since pizza the night before. So we drove onward to PA! Our GPS took us in sort of a roundabout, through residential areas way to get back to I-80 so we got to see some Amish country! Horses and buggies! Little kids in bonnets! It was awesome, and well worth the detour.

And we are currently in western Pennsylvania, having eaten at a terrible Applebee's down the street from our hotel. (ever since we started watching Masterchef-does anyone else love that show? because I watched every episode on hulu last week-I sort of feel a need to critique meals as if I were Gordon Ramsey.)

We look forward to a 4 hour drive to Philly tomorrow morning, and reuniting with Aaron's mom who's flying in! Woo!!

for purple mountain majesties

So, not Independence Day related per se, but guys, how awesome is the Gettysburg Address? I'm planning on making Aaron drive out to Gettysburg with me when we get to Pennsylvania so we can stand on that hallowed ground:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

(emphasis added)

As American citizens, we have such a huge obligation to those who've sacrificed their lives for this country. It is up to us to make sure they didn't die in vain.

Happy 4th of July everyone. God bless America.

(mild annoyance: sometimes blogger's html gets really messed up by trying to format in the compose tab, and it drives me crazy!!!!! thank goodness for neopets for teaching me basic html so my post has a consistent font and size...)

so long, so long

We leave town in five days. I suddenly find myself scrambling to cram in more time with friends and family- movies with sisters-in-law, earring making night with friends, lunch with Grandpa, trip up the canyon with family, BBQ party, it is not enough.

The truth is, I have never moved more than 15 miles away from my family, except for the two months I spent in Europe last summer. I am a sheltered, naive Utah girl. And now I find myself driving 2000 miles away to do the scariest thing I've ever done in my life (attempt to get a PhD), without my mom, without my sister, without my friends. I can feel myself mentally digging in my heels, getting a little desperate to stay a little while longer, feel comfortable and safe a little longer, but on Friday, time is up. Life is moving on, and we are moving to Philly.