Social Media Studiousness

That I am a social media geek should come as no surprise - after all, I spearheaded our company's exploration into that space while at Maples, and I'm an avid (okay, addicted) Twitter and Facebook user.

Well, my superawesome employer has its employees set annual goals for bettering ourselves through education, training, etc. In other words, it's not project-related but rather has everything to do with becoming a more valuable team member by learning and growth. Pretty awesome.

Today I launched into one of my goals, which is to complete a training at either Lynda.com or via our parent company's eLearning library each quarter. Well... it's quite interesting to sit through a four-hour tutorial on how to use something I've been using pretty much every day for a few years.

So far I've only gone through the intro stuff, so... nothing new yet. But if I learn anything awesome, I'll pass it along, I promise.

Meanwhile - survey time! What's your favorite social media outlet? Vote in the poll on the blog!

In other news, lots of fun stuff to recap, from Singin' in the Rain to tulips galore to Seattle. Can you believe it's almost May already?! This year has just flown by!!! It's been pretty packed, too. Our Internet's been wonky at home, hence my being so danged behind on posting (because, really, I'm not hugely a fan of posting from the office... even if that's, ummmm, what I'm doing at the moment). Hopefully I can hop on this weekend for some serious updates.

Okay, back to Twitter Tutorial-Land...

Guest blogging: The Enchanted Spoon

Twelve years ago, I was in Women's Glee in high school, and our accompanist was a wonderfully talented gal named Michelle. I barely knew her way back then, but fast forward to last year - we got back in touch via Facebook and blogging, discovered we lived 15 minutes apart, she joined the cast of The Sound of Music, and VOILA - turns out we're total kindred spirits!!! Seriously. How we weren't BFFs in high school, I'll never know. Now she's a close friend and one of my favorite people around - only for me to move away a few months later. Thank goodness for the Interwebs, right?

Anyways, Mishy is a phenomenal cook who runs a fabulous foodie blog, The Enchanted Spoon (become a Facebook fan here). While on my cooking kick of late, I've been shooting fun recipes over to her, and lo and behold, I made her blog with the most amazing carrot cupcake recipe ever! Check it out here. It's my first time guest-blogging (well, more or less). I feel all official and awesome and stuff. :)

The Emerald City

One of my favorite, favorite cities in the world is the Emerald City.

No, not this one...



... but this one:

Oh, Seattle. I love you so. Tonight I get to venture to my much-beloved city to visit my older brother - you know, the genius one who's a programmer for Microsoft? Yup. Pretty much awesome.

Looking forward to a weekend filled with family bonding and some Seattle awesomeness. One of my brother's hobbies is sailing, so that's on the agenda, along with a trip to the Seattle Art Museum (in all my trips, I've never been! Ridiculous, no?). And, of course Pike Place Market. How can any trip to Seattle be complete without stopping there?

And if I have my way... some shopping at H&M is in order. Holy crepe, I miss that place!!!

Would you? Could you? With a goat?

Okay, I promise not to blog about this Apolo Ohno character again (well, not much, at least) - but, seriously, how adorable is this?! My fav Dr. Seuss book ever.

I'd eat green eggs and ham any day. Well, so long as the green is food coloring or a mixed-in vegetable. Moldy eggs, not so much.

Soda Spray

On a quick run to the gas station for my afternoon Diet Pepsi just now, I encountered a not-too-bright kid who opted to refill an empty soda bottle at the soda fountain. His attempt managed to shower my entire right side with Coca Cola spray, leaving plenty of tan spots on my white Banana Republic button-down shirt.

On the one hand: definitely not what I needed on an already-frustrating day (I'm still on the mend from a cold, which results in me dragging - sooooo not fun!).

On the other hand: if that's all I have to complain about this afternoon, my life is going pretty well, and I'm feeling fairly grateful.

But for public awareness, if you choose to fill a bottle at a soda fountain, for the love, don't press the bottle all the way up to the top of the spigot!!! Fill from the STREAM!!! Sheesh.

Ohhhh, Ohno...

Let me tell you a little story about a girl and her Olympic dreams.

The time: February 2002
The place: Provo, Utah

Once upon a time, Christa, a hopelessly boy-crazy BYU sophomore, develops a ridiculous celebrity crush on Apolo Ohno, the first-time Olympian and crowd-beloved speed-skating star of the Salt Lake City Olympics. After all, what's not to love? The soul patch, the confident-but-not-cocky attitude, the success - and he's her age! At 19, the biggest feat Christa has accomplished is scoring her college dream job of American Heritage TAing and heading a dorm as an RA for a summer. Cool accomplishments, sure, but nothing compared to Olympic glory. She devours coverage of his Olympic feats in nearby Salt Lake City and, the starry-eyed girl she is, sets her computer wallpaper to a picture of Apolo with his gold medal.

But, alas, that's about as far as that goes, for obvious reasons. Out of sight, out of mind - she goes along with her busy college career, and her Olympic crush fades out about as quickly as it set in.

************************

Two Years Later... Christa is now the proud owner of a lovely iBook and decides to donate her trusty ol' desktop PC that has been gathering dust for a couple of years to some computerless friends. Booting up the computer to retrieve old files, she's greeted by the lovely image of Apolo Ohno, repeated as a tile across the screen. She grins. And giggles.

*********************

The time: April 2010

The place: Lehi, Utah

Our heroine, Christa, has gone off and conquered the world. Okay, well, maybe not the whole world - but she's definitely had her share of adventures: a national radio show internship in Seattle, bachelor's degree, two successful rounds of working her ultimate career goal as a journalist for The Orange County Register (yes, perhaps she should have made loftier goals, but oh well), two less successful stints at public relations agencies, five glorious, fun-filled years in Orange County, lapping up the Southern California lifestyle - and then, in an unexpected (yet sort-of anticipated) twist of events, she ends up in Lehi, Utah, working for a software company that's a stone's throw from her alma mater. While it isn't necessarily the cosmopolitan future she imagined, it fits like a glove, and she feels like she's finally hit her stride and found her place in the world. Even if that place is Utah.

Meanwhile, Apolo has gone on to cement his spot in Olympic history. After winning additional gold, silver and bronze medals at the 2006 Torino Games and the 2010 Vancouver Games, Apolo goes down in history as the most-decorated winter Olympian with eight medals, surpassing the medal count of such greats as Betsy Blair. Oh, and he manages to squeeze in a round of Dancing with the Stars, winning the coveted disco ball trophy with his partner, Julianne Hough. Busy as ever, Apolo jet-sets across America, doing speaking engagements, encouraging children to make healthy lifestyle choices, and promoting 8 Zone, his own brand of nutritional supplements.

Active in the social media sphere, @ChristaJeanne follows @ApoloOhno on Twitter for nostalgia's sake. She half-heartedly follows the buzz about her former crush's Vancouver Olympic feats but is so swamped, she barely watches the games (although she does manage to catch a snippet of him in short track speedskating).

Then, out of the blue, Christa has a dream - one of those intensely vivid dreams that seems sooooo real and is so great, you fight waking up to linger in the loveliness of that dreamscape - in which she falls in love with and marries, of all people, Apolo Ohno. Random. After all, she's barely given him a passing thought in eight years. Besides that, they're figure skating partners in the dream, and that's absurd because a) while able to hold her own on the ice, Christa has more than her fair share of the family klutz gene and can do little more than skate in circles, and b) Christa would never land on the radar of a world-class athlete like Apolo Ohno. Ever. Ridiculous.

Two days later, Christa stumbles upon a story online that spotlights Apolo Ohno's home - and he lives in South Jordan, a Utah town not 20 minutes from her home in Lehi. (Apparently this isn't news to a lot of people - after all, loads of winter Olympians live and train in Utah - but it's news to her!) And, as if that wasn't enough, one of Christa's dear friends happens to have a mutual friend with the living legend.

She's single, he's single.

Coincidence? I think not.

Hey, Google Reader-ites...

If you keep up on your blog reading through Google Reader, be sure to stop by the blog in person to chime in on the redesign, thanks to the lovely Heather. I'm going for a more vintage, sophisticated look than what was there before. (And for your Google Reader ease, I've slapped a pic in here).

What do you think?

(Anybody else hear the I Love Lucy theme every time they look at the blog? Or is that just me?)

In other news, life is amazing - but amazingly busy, too!!! Definitely looking forward to a few days of R&R up at the cabin in between Monday and Thursday performances of Singin' in the Rain. It's our closing weekend, which is soooo bittersweet. I've LOVED doing the show and getting to know some delightful and ubertalented folks, but I'll also be plenty happy to have some free time once again. Doing a play while working full time is a little too intense for my tastes. How people do all that plus have families, I'll never know!

About that whole engagement thing...

APRIL FOOLS!!!

Not bad, eh? Don't worry, guys - if I'm dating someone seriously, BELIEVE ME, you'll know.

After all, flying pigs will be ice skating in Hell around the same time, so it'll be fairly evident. Consider it an additional Sign of the Times. ;)

Day 6: Friday - The Crucifixion

Well, friends, before I blog this, I should put this post in context quickly. My amazing friend Rebecca gathered a group of her blogger friends, myself included, to discussed what happened on the corresponding day in the Savior's last week on earth. I planned to do an intro post to each of these and then direct you to the blogs for reading's sake, but alas, between work, the play and life in general, I've been too swamped to give this amazing project its proper play on my blog.

If you'd like to see how this should've been accomplished, check out Rebecca's blog at http://bartandbecca.blogspot.com/ - in the right-hand side rail, there's actually a box with the links to each post. Meanwhile, I'll try to do justice here to my assigned topic: Day 6 - Friday.

Today is Good Friday. I've often wondered why the commemoration of Christ's crucifixion - a day of mockery, suffering and tormet to the one perfect being who's ever walked this earth - would be deemed "good." Of course, the answer to that lies in the amazing blessings that came only through the culmination of Christ's mission to this earth, and part of that was for Him to leave mortality in order to purchase our immortality and eternal life.

The price of Christ's suffering began in Gethsemane during His infinite Atonement - an offering that redeemed all mankind, regardless of whether they accept Him or not, through going through all of our sorrows, sicknesses and sins. Rebecca blogged beautifully about the Atonement here.

A year ago this weekend, in last April's General Conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave a beautiful talk titled "None Were With Him" from which I'm going to pull heavily - he covers what I'd planned to address, only much, much better.

After praying in the garden, Christ was seized by soldiers per Judas's betrayal. One thing I've always loved about this vignette is Christ's unending compassion for others. Here He is, likely drained from the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual anguish of Gethsemane, facing death by these soldiers, and yet what is His first impulse? To heal. To give this man his ear back, whole and complete. To later, on the cross, plead for the souls of His tormentors. Christ never focused on Himself, His needs. That kind of infinite thoughtfulness and love would change the world if we could emulate it.

But I digress.

Just as Christ endured all of our heartaches to fully support and succor us, He also had to complete the act of the Atonement on the cross alone in order to make it so that none of us ever have to be alone. As Elder Holland wrote,

Thus, of divine necessity, the supporting circle around Jesus gets smaller and smaller and smaller, giving significance to Matthew’s words: “All the disciples [left] him, and fled.” (Matthew 26:56) Peter stayed near enough to be recognized and confronted. John stood at the foot of the cross with Jesus’s mother. Especially and always the blessed women in the Savior’s life stayed as close to Him as they could. But essentially His lonely journey back to His Father continued without comfort or companionship.

After Christ is seized, He is taken to ecclesiastical and political leaders for judgment. Again, I pull from Elder Holland:

Soon enough He was arraigned before the Israelite leaders of the day—first Annas, the former high priest, then Caiaphas, the current high priest. In their rush to judgment these men and their councils declared their verdict quickly and angrily. “What further need have we of witnesses?” they cried. “He is [worthy] of death.” (Matthew 26:65–66)

With that He was brought before the gentile rulers in the land. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, interrogated Him once, and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, did so twice, the second time declaring to the crowd, “I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man.” (Luke 23:14) Then, in an act as unconscionable as it was illogical, Pilate “scourged Jesus, [and] delivered him to be crucified.” (Matthew 27:26) Pilate’s freshly washed hands could not have been more stained or more unclean.

Such ecclesiastical and political rejection became more personal when the citizenry in the street turned against Jesus as well. It is one of the ironies of history that sitting with Jesus in prison was a real blasphemer, a murderer and revolutionary known as Barabbas, a name or title in Aramaic meaning “son of the father.” Free to release one prisoner in the spirit of the Passover tradition, Pilate asked the people, “Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you?” They said, “Barabbas.”(Matthew 27:21) So one godless “son of the father” was set free while a truly divine Son of His Heavenly Father moved on to crucifixion.

It is at this point that Christ is scourged, mocked and taken to Golgotha to die. Blogging about something so incredibly sacred is difficult. I can't fathom how completely and totally alone the Savior felt - and yet, He pushed past His mortality and completed His immortal mission for our benefit. Not His. It's truly humbling, thinking about it in that regard. There is nothing Christ stood to gain by completing His mission of salvation, really. Our thanks, of course, but really, why would He go through all of this pain and torment? For us, because He loved each of us that much. It's a love I don't think I'll ever fully understand.

Again, I turn to Elder Holland's beautiful explanation of what happened next:

Now I speak very carefully, even reverently, of what may have been the most difficult moment in all of this solitary journey to Atonement. I speak of those final moments for which Jesus must have been prepared intellectually and physically but which He may not have fully anticipated emotionally and spiritually—that concluding descent into the paralyzing despair of divine withdrawal when He cries in ultimate loneliness, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

The loss of mortal support He had anticipated, but apparently He had not comprehended this. Had He not said to His disciples, “Behold, the hour … is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me” and “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”? (John 16:32; 8:29)

With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required, indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.

But Jesus held on. He pressed on. The goodness in Him allowed faith to triumph even in a state of complete anguish. The trust He lived by told Him in spite of His feelings that divine compassion is never absent, that God is always faithful, that He never flees nor fails us. When the uttermost farthing had then been paid, when Christ’s determination to be faithful was as obvious as it was utterly invincible, finally and mercifully, it was “finished.” (See John 19:30) Against all odds and with none to help or uphold Him, Jesus of Nazareth, the living Son of the living God, restored physical life where death had held sway and brought joyful, spiritual redemption out of sin, hellish darkness, and despair. With faith in the God He knew was there, He could say in triumph, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

With this, Christ's spirit left His body, and the earth physically reacted to the loss of the Light of the World, with three hours of physical darkness, not to mention earthquakes and other calamities. After soldiers pierced His side - instead of breaking legs, which was customary in crucifixions, thereby leaving Christ's corpse unbroken and unblemished - His body was laid in the tomb, something about which Tabitha will blog tomorrow, I believe.

Something I find interesting in these scenes following Christ's death is how the veil in the temple rips in half - symbolic of how, in death, Christ has also ripped the veil that separated life and death. Instead of death being an end, it is merely a move into the next phase of our eternal journeys - a journey which, thanks to Christ's gift, includes a reuniting of body and spirit in immortal glory and immortality for all, including the opportunity to live with God and Christ eternally for those willing to abide in His covenant.

In closing, I testify that Jesus Christ does live, and He did endure all things for the benefit of mankind, to give us the amazing opportunity for eternal progression. That agency and growth is something I cherish dearly. This I say in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

ENGAGED!!!

Big news, friends: as of this evening, I'm engaged!!!

Remember how I'm in Singin' in the Rain? Well, a month or two into rehearsals, I met this amazing guy, Peter. We have a ton in common - both writers, both love theater, both sing. TONS in common. We started talking... and talking turned into Facebook flirting and texting... and daily rehearsals turned into late nights at Denny's...

And, well, it's been a whirlwind ever since.

Tuesday and Wednesday were the first two days we've been apart in WEEKS, and just like that, it clicked - I can't live without this guy!!! He's amazing. AMAZING. Apparently he feels the same way, because before tonight's performance, during the big cast meeting, he dropped to one knee and popped the question.

No date has been set yet - smart man that he is, he's off to law school in the fall, so we're trying to plan based on his start date. I'll keep you in the loop as we figure all that out. Not sure how that's going to work with my job, depending on where he decides to go - but he's worth it. :)

Oh man, I'm so exhausted - it's been a big night. I'd better run to bed.

Couldn't be happier!!!