Random...

So...I never posted anything from my trip home in August. So I will just post some random pictures from the event now. I know, I know retrospective posting...

Brynna

Nick--crazy hair

Brett & Alissa

Brett--Zoolander

Keyan

Tracen pudding

Tracen pudding

Christmas Time!

So...it's been since September since I've blogged. Definitely a record! Woohoo! Anyway, my life has been insanely busy--hence the lack of blogging! Things have been crazy with school, work, and boy drama...haha (nothing good, don't worry)! But let's see, I have no idea where to start. The semester is almost over, I just have one more final to take, and I am so glad to be done! It has definitely been my most difficult/worst semester ever! But oh well, grades aren't everything, and who cares I am almost done, and then I'll be going home for Christmas! Work has been crazy too. Things have been busy, and it's been tough to work 24 hours and go to school full time, but maybe I'm just a wimp...either way...it's been tough.
Well, enough about that. In other news, my roommates this semester have been great! We've all been having a good time together. In fact we decided to have a roommate Christmas before everyone left for home. So last night/ this morning we ate crackers, summer sausage, and cheese, drank eggnog, and opened presents by the glow of the Christmas tree! It was super fun, and made me even more excited to go home. Speaking of home, I'm a little bummed because I have to work on Christmas Eve, and therefore don't get to go home until that night. But I should totally be grateful because at least I get to go home. I know other people at work who were not so lucky!
Oh yeah, I cut my hair again. Basically I just trimmed it. I get bored with it pretty quick...so yeah. Hmm...I don't have much else to say...so I guess I will wrap it up. Hopefully I will post again soon, but it probably won't be from Missouri because my parent's internet is horrible. But here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas--be safe and happy--and remember the reason for the season!

Tag, You're It!

THE RULES:

1. link the person who tagged you

2. post the rules

3. tell 6 unspectacular quirks of yours

4. tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them

1. Katie Hansen Walker

2. See above

3. Quirks:

• I find most condiments absolutely disgusting; ketchup, mayonnaise, miracle whip, sweet relish, BBQ sauce, fry sauce, most salad dressings, etc. I do, however, love mustard!

• I hang up my clothes on hangers according to how much I like the article of clothing. I hang my favorite items on the hangers I like the best, and vice-versa. I will even re-hang clothes if I notice they're not on the “correct” hangers.

• I've recently been breaking this habit, but whenever I park my car I have to put it into reverse and re-park it, even if it's perfectly in the lines the first time.

• I absolutely detest wearing pantyhose. I can't stand the feeling, especially when the seams in the toes are crooked; consequently I avoid wearing them.

• The first thing I do when I wake up; in the morning, from a nap, whatever, is pop my back. It sounds like I'm firing a semi-automatic weapon.

• Mice and rats are my absolute biggest fear. I'd rather be faced with a snake, a tarantula, a bear, perhaps even an ax-murderer. I seriously hate them, and become hysterical when in contact with them. In fact, somebody once tossed their domesticated rat on my lap, and I about soiled my trousers. It's a miracle that rat lived beyond my visit.

4. I tag: Kristin, Lanae, Rebecca, Aimee, Alissa, Ashley.

As If I Don't Already Have OCD

A recent article by the Wall Street Journal investigated the compulsions of people who do what I do everyday, fold clothes. Sadly, I had enough of these crazy compulsions for perfection and order before I began folding clothes for eight hours every day. I think the funniest thing about this article is that only a month or two into my job I actually caught myself folding clothes at the Gap, but even after I realized what I was doing I couldn't stop until I had folded the entire stack of disorderedly clothing!

Excuse Me, Do You Work Here?
No, I Just Need to Fold Clothes

Thousands of Neat Freaks Picked Up The Habit as Clerks at the Gap

By JENNIFER SARANOW
July 9, 2008; Page A1

On those rare occasions her husband, Brad, folds the laundry, Joanne Ross-MacLeod can't keep herself from refolding it. She recently undid a pair of leggings he had bunched up into a small square. She folded one leg onto the other, brought the bottom up past the knees, then the knees up to the waist, in the manner she had learned 20 years ago folding jeans at the Gap.

The 39-year-old fabric-product developer didn't tell her husband. But he's used to it. Folding is a subject on which the Kenosha, Wisc., couple agree to disagree. "I need therapy," Mrs. Ross-MacLeod says.

She isn't the only one. The ranks of obsessive folders have swelled in recent years as a generation of Americans has done stints as clothing-store clerks. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, annual nonsupervisory employment in clothing and clothing-accessory stores grew to nearly 1.3 million workers in 2007, up nearly 20% from 1990. Gap Inc. says it has trained "hundreds of thousands" of Gap store employees in the art of folding since the late 1980s.

Along the way, legions of retail grads have spent countless hours neatly folding T-shirts and jeans and stacking them on tables and shelves. Now, their peculiar idea of perfection is straining marriages and leading to bizarre behavior ranging from buying clothes based on an item's foldability to straightening up sloppy displays while shopping.

Thirty-six-year-old Sadaf Trimarchi stopped doing laundry for her husband two years ago, she says, after he complained that she had folded his undershirts so tightly and stacked them so neatly in his drawer that he couldn't tell which were V-necks and which were crew necks.

"He had no idea what he was talking about," says Mrs. Trimarchi, of Leonia, N.J., who learned the basics of her folding technique at Gap during the 1989 holiday season. Her husband, Jeff Trimarchi, 34, says she caught him refolding and he explained his frustration as nicely as

possible. "I imagine she took offense," he says.

'Programmed'

Like military veterans who just naturally fold sheets with hospital corners when they make beds, today's retail refugees say they can't help themselves. "It's been programmed into me," says Marcos Chin, a 33-year-old free-lance illustrator in New York, who folds his jeans the same way he did in the 1990s when he gave folding seminars for clerks at Gap.

QUESTIONS FOR MARKA HANSEN

Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America, discusses how the clothing retailer is marketing its brand and how it's returning to its roots.

Phil Walmsley, 24, of Vancouver, still uses the plastic folding board he stealthily slipped into his

backpack on his last day of work at Club Monaco five years ago. "I like the idea of having a perfectly folded closet," says the graphic designer. "It's kind of like my own little retail store."

Michael Jenike, chairman of the scientific advisory board for the Obsessive Compulsive

Foundation in Boston, says he has treated people who have folding compulsions but doesn't recall whether any of them had ever worked at clothing stores. He says compulsive folding becomes a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder only if someone is spending excessive amounts of time doing it, doesn't want to do it but feels compelled to and the behavior is causing distress. Otherwise, it's just a harmless habit.

The folding craze at Gap began in the 1980s when Millard Drexler, who as a boy had sorted

towels at his uncle's towel-delivery service, took the helm as president of the Gap Stores division. At the time, most store clerks hung clothes on racks because hanging merchandise was far easier to maintain. But Mr. Drexler and his team put tables in Gap stores and had employees decorate them with piles of folded shirts and sweaters. The goal was to better emphasize certain items and color choices and make it easier for customers to sort through clothes. Shoppers found the displays inviting -- but displays needed constant attention from clerks.

Other chains trying to mimic Gap's success soon adopted the look, and clerks everywhere were spending hours folding. "Over the past 10 or more years, the trend has definitely been to more folding," says RoxAnna Sway, editor-in-chief of DDI magazine, which focuses on retail design and

display.

Romey Louangvilay stopped working at Abercrombie & Fitch three years ago but it was only last October that he was finally able to go shopping without automatically spending 10 or 15 minutes

refolding messy T-shirt piles in stores. The 22-year-old assistant account executive for a public-relations firm in New York forced himself to kick the habit after growing tired of having to awkwardly explain himself to other customers asking him for help. "I still kind of have the urge to do it," he says.

Mr. Louangvilay's friends notice his folding tendencies, too, and sometimes jokingly mess up his neat, color-coded piles. "Everyone makes fun of Romey for his folding habits because it's so weird," says Mandella Dwayne Lambert, a 23-year-old mutual-fund accountant in Brooklyn,

N.Y. "Everything in his drawers looks like a store layout."

Over the past decade, former retail workers have invented a slew of folding-aid products with names like FlipFold and Mobilefold, many of which are bought by former clothing clerks. Jeff

LaPace, president of Customer Minded Associates Inc., maker of the nearly $300 Mobilefold, a portable folding table meant primarily for retailers, says the company has received so many orders from people who used to work at stores like Gap that it's rolling out a less-expensive

consumer version later this year.

Some clothing-store alums are letting folding dictate their clothing choices as well. Tychelle Mc Laurin, 35, hasn't bought a sweater or a shirt with wide bell- or cape-like sleeves since she worked at J. Crew in 2004. That's because the compliance officer in Jersey City, N.J., can't easily and neatly fold the sleeves using a "trifold" she perfected after working at J. Crew. "I don't think those styles look attractive folded," she says. "They are difficult to fold -- like folding a batman cape."

Wrinkle-Free

For traveling, Lauren Smith, 24, avoids duffel bags and sticks with hard, rectangular suitcases. They better hold and maintain the uniform, rectangular piles Ms. Smith stacks her clothes into when packing, using the folding technique she learned working at Gap when she was in high school. The packed clothes "look like they would be sitting on display," says Ms. Smith, an interior-design saleswoman in Atlanta. She says her packing technique keeps clothes

wrinkle-free.

It isn't clear whether the next generation of retailers will produce so many compulsive folders.

Today, more stores, including Gap, are receiving their merchandise already folded. Other chains like lululemon athletica and Hollister Co. are encouraging employees to make merchandise look

messy or wrinkled. Within the past year, mainstream retailers, including Banana Republic's new Monogram concept store and even Gap itself, have begun hanging more merchandise, whether to emulate a sparsely merchandised high-end boutique in the case of the former or to emphasize unique styles and details in the case of the latter.

"In women's, we are hanging more because there is more fashion there and more detail that gets enhanced with hanging," says Felicity McGahan, vice president of store visuals and experience at the Gap brand. Finding the balance between hanging and folding, she says, "is something that we've actually put a lot of time into in the last 12 months."

No Good Stories...

Ehh....so I don't really have any good stories right now. I did have an interesting experience getting a scalp treatment at Bon Losse the other day, but I'll tell you about that later.

Hmm...so I've been working a lot. Oh yeah, never shop at Costco the day before a major holiday like Independence Day! Yeah...that was probably the worst day of my life. No, just kidding, but seriously.

Oh yeah...I had a vial of my blood taken the other day. First of all, I have super junky veins, they're terrible and they've always been that way. So...the lady stuck my right arm, and no blood came out. Apparently my right arm doesn't do a very good job of bleeding. Anyway, so then she poked my left arm, and I bled, and everything was fine. I had two lovely pieces of gauze, and that super sticky tape that tears flesh when it is removed on my arms, but no big deal. But the next morning when I woke up, my left arm is insanely bruised. It's a pretty fantastically ugly bruise, that actually looks like it's getting bigger...should I be worried? Yeah...probably not. Anyway...that's about all I've got at the moment...hopefully I'll post more before next month!

Weird Times at Costco....

So I worked yesterday. Yeah, I know, what else is new? Anyway, a series of bizarre, or at least uncommon things occurred. First, I got to work, clocked in, and was walking back to the lovely clothing area, and a fellow employee told me that he had a dream about us folding clothes together. Not sure if he was joking or serious, but either way, kind of strange.

Then after I had been folding for 5-10 minutes a five year old little boy, named Jackson came crying over to me because he had lost his grandpa. So we walked around the store for a few minutes and finally found him. It's weird when kids get lost in Costco because they're generally terrified and crying, etc., etc. and their parents generally don't even realize their kid is missing. It's pretty sad. In fact, one day this eight year old girl was lost, and was so upset, and when we found her parents, they were going through the check-out line, and didn't seem the least bit worried. It actually irritates me quite a bit. Anyway, back to yesterday.

Next, I was sent up front to help out because they are always short-handed. Which is another annoyance of mine, but I'll save that for another day. Anyway, I was up there helping load someone's cart and I smashed my finger between two ginormous cans of peaches. Don't worry, I didn't scream profanities, in fact, I didn't say anything at all, but it hurt. After a little while up front I was "sent" back to clothes.

So a little while later I was answering some clothing questions for this old couple, and the old man gave me a piece of candy. Kind of creepy. First off, I'm not even supposed to accept "gifts" or "tips," but what was I supposed to do? And no, I didn't eat it. Sickos.

A few hours later, this little boy who was probably a year and a half old came trotting towards me saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" At first I just shrugged it off, thinking I was probably wearing something his mom had that day. But then his dad said, "Yeah...she does look like mommy, but I'm doubting it's her." Okay, that's not awkward at all!

TAGGED

1. What I was doing 10 years ago.
   · Let’s see…I would have been 9 turning ten, so that would have been the summer following my 3rd grade year. I'm sure I was just beboppin' around and getting ready for my brother Nathan and my sister-in law Tegan's wedding.
   

2. Five things on my to-do list.

· Shopping

· Laundry

· Find something to make for lunch

· Send health information release

· Write a letter to my friend Jimmy

3. If I were a billionaire I would…

· Start my own business

· Invest my money in high-yielding CDs or mutual funds

· Begin saving college funds for my future kids

4. Bad habits

· Impatience

· OCDness

· Grumpiness when tired

· Sleeping a lot

5. Five places I've lived.

· Aurora, MO

· Park City, UT

· Chino Valley, AZ

· Stark City, MO

· Provo, UT

6. Six Jobs I've had.

· Cleaning up the Safeway Center

· Cleaning house for Orba Pearce

· Selling produce at our stand

· Typing pages of a nursing home manual

· BYU Creamery on Ninth

· Costco