All Hail the Blind Date Queen

Confession: I cannot remember how many blind dates I have been on because I have been set up so many times. Does this shock you? Somehow, all my friends think I deserve to be with the perfect guy, and they always seem to know the perfect guy for me. I can almost see myself as the quirky, loud friend in the chick flick movie that every female viewer identifies with. That goofy girl that the leading lady sets up with her geeky coworker. That girl who makes everyone else laugh, but who’s still waiting for that one guy who can make her laugh. That’s me. The blind date queen.

If you must know, it all started my junior year of high school. My best friend had an older cousin, and she tried to set me up with him. We talked through email, but when I met him, it was clear that it wasn’t going to work. Then the tradition continued as a senior when my student teacher in my French class had a friend who had a brother who wanted to go out with me, but who didn’t say more than three sentences at a time. And the saga continued all throughout college. I went out with older guys, younger guys, musical guys, athletic guys, geeky guys, handsome guys—but did any of them take? Nope. Even on my mission, while my heart was “locked away,” I had people trying to get it back out of the box! At least four companions, one zone leader, and even my mission president tried to line me up with some “great guy” that they knew for after the mission. I’ll admit, I did date one of those “great guys” for about eight months. And he was a great guy. But we didn’t have that much in common—a typical side effect of the blind-date relationship. So the question remains, “Why do they seem to work for other girls, but never for us?”

You’ve all been there. First you get so excited at the prospect of meeting a new guy. “Could he be the one?” The “twitterpation phase” has set in. Then you meet him and the “reality-check phase” hits. Either the guy is so incredibly attractive that you just spend the evening making weird noises like “Buh, buh, buhmmmm . . .” instead of coherent sentences while you stare at his grandeur. Or they are so completely not your type that you literally start to contemplate not eating half of your burger just on the off chance it might make you skinny enough to fit through the back window of the ladies’ room. Can anyone commiserate with this!?

In the past two months alone, I can count at least seven people who have mentioned that they would like to set me up with someone they know. Seven! Isn’t there one great guy out there who wants to set me up with himself? We’re talking about at least twenty guys who have met me through a blind date. Twenty guys! And what do I have to show for it? Just this blog and a really heavy date box.

P.S. My sister was cool enough to send me this link for dating tall guys . . . just a helpful tool for any other tall girls out there. What do you guys think? Should I try it?
http://www.datetallmen.com/

Opera—My Happy Pill

I'll start this post as if we're in the middle of a conversation and as if we're the dearest and oldest friends—which, for lots of you, is actually the case. You know how I go from one topic to the next, one conversation to the next. Sometimes I think my attention span is no better than my brother Dave’s.

So I have decided that opera is my happy drug. It’s what I would listen to during my hours and hours of writing that I did this past semester. It's what got me through so many nights at the library until midnight. I would blast it in my headphones in the library, and I would be able to write in English without being distracted, because quite frankly, I don’t understand 99% of the Italian in the music. I pretend to know a bit, but I just memorize the words and pronounce them real well. That’s all. No cognition involved.

I love all the greats: Luciano Pavarotti, Anna Netrebko, Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Rollando Villazon, Renée Flemming, and Elina Garanca. Don’t worry if you have no idea who those people are. Only the really opera-crazy people do. Here's one of my all-time favorites:

I love listening to and singing opera so much that I have continued to take voice lessons for the past ten plus years. Lots of people ask me why I don’t study opera as a career. They ask me what I’m going to do with my voice. And honestly, I don’t have a ten year plan for it. Heavenly Father gave me this voice and the resources to cultivate it, and so I know I have a responsibility to share it as a blessing for others. But if I were to enter the performing world professionally, in three years I would be unhappy, beat out, and burnt out altogether. The cut-throat competition is not for me, and don’t get me started on how much my knees shake when I sing in public or in auditions.

In short, I sing for my own enjoyment and not to squeeze every penny I can out of my voice. Music is one part of the pie of my life, just not the part that will make me money. I know that it’s a hard profession to break into, and that’s why I plan to stay on top of it. Not break into it and win every competition, but dabble in it when I can. When I put too much pressure to beat other singers, or when I feel that pressure heaped on me, I become so nervous I could pass out. So I’ll continue to sing the best I can whenever I can—yes, this includes singing the hymns at church, the national anthem at baseball games, and pop songs on the radio. I know I sound like a square, but once you’ve been classically trained, you don’t just go back to stinky technique—no matter where you are. It’s ingrained in your brain.

So I’ll keep on singing and pretend that no one can hear me. Because really, I always sing my best when nobody is listening. 

The City Girl Within

Well, I took the plunge. I finally started a blog, and it was a long time coming. Since I work with and pore over words all day long, I thought it only appropriate that I use my words to my advantage and launch them all into cyberspace.

As I brainstormed for a title that would accurately embody my whole self and personality (as if that's even possible), I thought about how my perfectionism always kept me from starting a blog before, because I knew I would just edit it and proof it until I wouldn't even want to write anymore. So I decided to call myself a lazy perfectionist. And it was a good name too, because it took me five minutes after labeling this blog to realize that I had misspelled "perfectionist." If that doesn't scream laziness, I don't know what does.

But I'm a perfectionist with words in magazines and books, which brings me to the subject of this post. I just started two internships at some magazines in Salt Lake City (a big move from down south and the BYU bubble). I work for Utah Bride & Groom, Utah Style & Design (owned by the same company), and at LDS Living, which is in the Deseret Book Corporate offices. So this blog, in its early stages, will be dedicated to the insane/funny/freaky experiences that I'm having and I'm sure I will continue to have this summer.

I love everything about the city (so far). But I already knew that I would love being a city girl again, since I lived mostly in big cities during my mission to Madagascar and the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. I love that the skyline is filled with buildings—steel, brick, stone, you name it. The night lights bring me back to ocean and city views of my mission (gosh what I wouldn’t give for an ocean view right now). I like that there’s always something new to discover, and I love that feeling of mapping out places I know and then making mental maps. I love becoming knowledgeable about the neighborhoods and finding shortcuts or streets that seem to pop out of nowhere. Nothing beats the diversity of a city. Its nuances, its noises, its rhythm. This city is a life-form that has multiple personalities. Good thing I’ve got sides to my own personality that seem to fit in the different places I discover: Temple Square, the West side, City Creek, Trolley Square.

So here I am, life. Ready to take on the next challenge/chapter you’ve got to give me. I’ve worked my butt off to get here. Stinky streets? Pick pockets? Drunks? Elbowers on Trax?

Bring it on.