Something Witty About New Years

Big Events for me in 2010:

• I didn't live in my parents house for 88% of the year (yeah I did the math.)
• I was converted to babies
• I lived in Provo for a summer (I feel like every Mormon who is college-aged has to do this.)
• I got in my first car accident
• I became sure of my major. (ECON!!)
• I learned what it's like to live with someone you are not related to and really enjoy it. (PODO!)
• I drove more miles than I ever have before.  And most of them alone.  

Hopefully, 2011 will bring:

• A version of me that actually exercises
• A job that actually relates to my career interests (once I figure those out)
• Me preparing to go on a mission?
• Steady Finances (goal: spend as little as possible except on gifts for others)
• Happiness.  and Sadness.  and New Experiences.  and Growth. Barrels of it.  

Sooo...

This year is brand sparkling new.  Don't return it the same way.  

Previously on Gigi's Blog....

Gigi returned to blogging after a long break, and began to list things that had made her happy.  Stay tuned to see what more she can add to the list.

Lately, or not so lately as the case may be, I have enjoyed:

• The Thanksgiving Decorations that were up in my house.  Including this leaf that is taped to the fridge.  Although it has since been removed due to a competition between my brother and our creatively named cat, Mr. Catface.  

• This probably politically incorrect display is near and dear to my heart.  

• The fun my little brothers had with a label maker

Every reference to this phrase makes me giggle.  And then want to dance.

Wouldn't believe where I found this guy....

Gigi's Blog will be back after a quick word from our sponsor*:

.........Aaaaaaaaand we're back.  

• Avoiding studying for finals next week through use of this blog. 
• Pretending like it's not cold even when it's in the 40's.  I'm such a SoCal girl that I don't know what to wear if it's not sunny.  This is what I was like when I went to New York In February of 2009:

I basically laugh in the face of danger.  

• This: The real reason I became an econ major is that we get to talk about skinning cats all the time.  Which will probably make all the cat-lovers who read this blog cringe.  But you know what they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat!

*This blog has no official affiliation with Stanford University.  Stanford does in no way sponsor this blog, although you could say that they sponsor me as a person, so by the transitive property of sponsorship, Stanford kind of sponsors this blog.  

Sometimes Inspiration Hits

And you just can't stop it.

Like when you're done with finals and your brain is like AHHHHfdaghi8ehsf!!!!!!1

The cheesiness never ends

I realize that I'm risking harm by an angry mob by not continuing the list of things I like, but my little brother has yet to send me some pictures of those very things. So if you get the chance, berate Lucas for me.

So in the interim, enjoy this guy.  He came with the wallet thing that I currently use, and I want to use him every time I go to pay for something.

I'm sorry, do you take ... credit card?

ThanksGiving Me a Break!

Hey everyone!  Look at me! I haven't blogged in forever and I'm finally doing it now!

Ok I'll cut to the chase.  Things that have made me happy lately include:

• Christmas music!  Lots and lots of it.  I sang a long to it as I made th 6 hour (which I sort of cut down to 5.5 hours) drive from home to Stanny-anny-anford.  
• Tricking people into believing I have REALLY short hair with this deceptive pic:

I did get it cut, but never in my life would I go that short.  (I might be jinxing myself here.)

• These suckers:

Which are about to be all over my dorm room.  It's my idea of Christmas decorations.  Just wait till I go home and take pictures of the decorations that my Mom puts up.  Oh and i'm being green (using pre-used paper.)

• Right now my school's football team is nationally ranked higher than our academic program ... And we're Stanford!  Which means we can back up things like this:

Let's get a better look at that fountain:

Yes, it's dyed red (ish pink) for Big Game week.  

And many many more.  Count this as a

          To Be Continued.....

(ominous enough for ya?)

Wonderful Weekend

List of cool schtuff I did this weekend:

• Millie Vanilli (Formerly Auntie Millie in Chile) came to visit me at Stanford on Saturday.  It was a fun, short visit. I have pictures to prove it: 

Camille and I in front of Stanford's Memorial Church.  

•  While here, Camille and I went thrift store shopping at Goodwill.  We both had some good finds!
• I went to a women's soccer game with two of my lovelies.  Here's me, Kristin, and Kelsey before the game:

• I enjoyed the delicious food creations of Kristin. We're talking Cafe Rio style food and Olé Brownies.  Here's the part where I would post a link to her food blog if she had one (hint, hint, Kristin).  We also made plans to make a restaurant together.  She's do the food side and I'd do the business side.  
• In celebration of Ketaki's birthday, we watched Toy Story 3 together.  It was my first time, and yes, I cried.  

This is us at Halloween last uear.

• So even though by now I'm a day late. HAPPY BIRTHDAY KETS!!!!!  Here's to many more Disney movies watched together.  I love you and can't believe you're 19 (as if I've known you since you were little)!  Thanks for being my friend!!!

Random: I tried this and am amazed in a weird/cool way.  

Whirlwind

Sorry for the lack of posts (as if you guys are hanging on my every word), but seriously this week has been crazy.

Adri and her two cuties came down to Upland on Sunday, and she had been trying to talk me into coming down too.  And then I was sitting in church on Sunday thinking, "You know, I probably could go home this week."  And then about 5 hours later I got in my car with a suitcase and started driving home.  It only took about 6 hours and 15 minutes to get from Stanford to Upland, so I got there at about 3 in the morning.  

I have no regrets about my impulsive trip to California, although I'm having to play a real quick game of catch-up while fighting the flu.  Yeah, that's just about as fun as it sounds.  

More details on the trip to come.  Sorry for the brevity and lack of photos, wit, or anything else that's cool.  

Three Ways to Make A Friend

The other day I heard about three ways to make a friend.  

1. Give someone a compliment.
2. Tell someone a secret.
3. Tell someone something embarrassing.

I'm going to try and be better friends with you guys:

• Embarrassing: I am really squeamish.  I got a bloody nose in the shower the other day, and I didn't realize it until I actually tasted the blood.  It easily added 15 minutes to my total shower time.  Also, google image searching squeamish was just about the worst idea of my life, but I did find this comic:

• Secret: I have like an anti-temper.  So when things happen to me that should make me angry, instead I get "upset" and mostly just uncomfortable.  I don't like to let people see that they have affected me so I let things mull later on.  Which is a terrible habit.  

• Embarrassing: I'm kind of baby-obsessed.  Which is really really funny because all through high school I was the girl who didn't want to hold the baby and who couldn't get into babysitting or hanging out with little kids.  I got voted most likely to have 8 kids in high school and it was really ironic.  Mostly I was just a well-known Mormon girl and, well, you know the stereotype.  But now I want tons of babies.  But maybe when I have one of my own, I'll want to slow down a little.  

• Compliment:  I love when people think I'm interesting.  I love when people think that what I feel matters, and when it's clear that they spent a couple minutes of their day thinking about me.  I don't have too many people who think about my feelings if I'm not there to remind them that I have them.  So thank you, thank you, thank you for reading this post and for thinking about me for a couple minutes of your day.  

Racking my Brain

Here is a picture of my brain:

Doesn't it look huge?  Haha.  Yes, I had an MRI and this is an actual picture of my actual brain (as opposed to my fake brain).  If any doctors happen to see a tumor in there, would you like to let me know?  Or not, I'm happy to live in ignorant bliss (and I don't have health insurance anyways).

Oh and by the way, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME.  Just wanted to kill any rumors before they start.

I participated in a psych study at my school last week and not only did I get $126 for four hours of my time (only 1.5 of those were spent in the MRI machine), but I got some really cool pictures of my brain.  And in case your wondering, yes I did over-analyze them.  (Does the fact that the right size is bigger mean I'm more of an impulsive than a logical person?)

While I was in the machine, they showed me pictures of different things to try and see how my brain showed my emotional reactions.  The things that probably got the most out of me were the tip of a gun pointed at my face, pictures of anything with blood, and of course, pictures of cute babies.  (Although none of the pictures came close to this:

)

And thus, this Stanford student got $126 closer to being out of debt.  Yipppeeeeee!

Oh and by the way, I kind of got lazy this week and did a very similar post here

The Halloween Costumes in my life

I was thinking about how I'm basically have to do a post on Halloween (I almost titled this Obligatory Halloween Post), and I decided to highlight some of the creative/cute/funny things my loved ones did for their costumes.

I will start with the cutest, mis sobrinitos.  Here are the cutest little monsters you ever did see:

Adri did a great job.  I think I will be oggling this picture for the entire next year.  But tell the babies to stop growing!  Or at least to slow down a bit.



My little brothers always do a good job of making home-made costumes that are funny and a little bit off-color.  Hopefully you will appreciate this one too:

Sooooo weird.  




Speaking of home-made costumes, here is one of my absolute BEST friends in a lovely homemade costume:

Yes, that is my dear Kristin dressed as a pomegranate.  Only a FREAK dresses up as a round fruit for Halloween.  I love that freak.

And speaking of Kristin, today she is 20 YEARS OLD!!!!!!!  Her childhood is officially over.  Although don't take that to mean she's an adult, either.  I love you K-Trone.  I hope you have a wonderful day and know that my world (and the entire world in general)  would be a sad, sad place without you in it.  Someday when you're married to a cowboy, I will come visit you and eat your delicious food and we can reminisce over these wonderful starving college student days.

Old Friend

You know that friend you always want to hang out with, but you hardly ever see each other, and you wish you got to spend more time with them?  And you used to be SOOO close and now you hang out with them, and it's like no time passed at all?

Today I got to hang out with one of those friends.  Her name is Ketaki and she seriously, seriously awesome.  Last year she lived about 8 feet away from me and now she lives like 400 yards away from me.  Which may seem like it shouldn't be a big deal, but now we have busy lives and we have to SCHEDULE our time together.  It's terrible.  I miss seeing her all the time (even when I didn't want to :).

We watched a movie so that she could analyze ways in which the movie sucked for her film production class.
Here is our reaction to Vantage Point:

It was confusing and it lacked forward movement in the plot.  (Don't I sound like a real movie critic?)

Also, this is how excited we were to actually get to hang out with each other:

Ketaki looks like Tobey Maguire in Spiderman 3 when he's being a "bad boy" and puts his hair in  his face.  She would also like me to include that Spiderman 3 is a terrible movie and she wants those 3 hours of her life back.

I love that we get to be spazzes together every time we hang out.  And that I get to really talk to her about her life and my life and tell her how much I miss her crazy and calming influence in my life.

Thanks for a good time Kets!

Target Fun

Whilst in preparation for possibly the most awesome sleepover ever, Kelsey and I went to Target in order to buy munchies and a few other things we needed.  We kept getting side tracked by cool things (like a candle to make our room smell like Christmas!), but by far my favorite part of the trip (besides maybe the In-N-Out consumed (I LOVE having a car this year.)) was these nutcrackers that we saw.

I am not ashamed to admit that we definitely made a photo shoot of it.  Again, please try to ignore the terrible quality of my cell phone camera.

Kelsey was trying to be a stern school teacher, but she broke last minute

This is my pirate face.  It's actually kind of disturbing now that I'm seeing it properly.  

This turkey is actually kinds cute.  But Kelsey looks kind of scared of it.  

Don't worry, be happy :)

Notice how PC they were to have both g.i. joe and jane.  

As well as hula dancers from multiple races and both genders.  

So I have to ask, what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen at target?  Or really any store for that matter.  But thrift stores don't count.  

Family

Today, I found out that my whole family will be together for Christmas.  I'm SOOOOO excited.  Our family is soo funny together.  Well, we're kind of just weird, but we have a good time.  This is the basic Gamboa family interaction: (Inspired by some funny Art by Adri.)

Stage Fright

I thought this picture was really funny.  But anyways....

Today I had to give a presentation in my Spanish class and it didn't go so well.  In hindsight, I probably didn't have enough information, although I did practice it a few times and found that it took the whole ten minutes.  My problem is that I don't have a stage presence.  I always feel like people are bored when I'm talking.  Like no matter what I say they aren't going to want to pay attention.  So then I start talking faster and faster so that they don't have to listen to me for very long, but then I blow through everything I wanted to say in half the time that I wanted to say it in.

I actually don't get that nervous when things are scripted or if it's musical.  My senior year of high school I played Queen Elizabeth in this giant choir production.  I had to sing a few solos and I had to recite lines for about a quarter of the whole production.  I looked like this:

I was not even that nervous for it.  Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but I don't know.  That was definitely the biggest public performance I've ever done (or probably ever will do), and I wasn't bad.

My sister Camille is one of those people who feels completely comfortable talking in front of large groups of people, even if it's just spur of the moment.  At least that's what she makes it seem like.

She always seems so comfortable, and people really listen to her when she talks.

So what's the secret guys?  How do I keep people interested?  How do I command their attention?

And now it's time for a breakdown.  Not really, I just wanted to throw that in there.

Get Busy

You guys, I feel like I am always sooo busy.  It's probably just because I'm more busy than I have been in the last about four or five months, but still, I feel kind of crazy.  I always manage to fill my day with lots of junk.  I've been trying really hard to become more involved this year, and so now besides being a full student...

• I am the choir director at church.  I am actually pretty bad at doing this and I feel like I don't know when to wave my arms and that I'm always making a fool of myself.  I'm still getting used to this one and I hope hope hope that it gets better or that I get better at it.  
• I am a staff writer for the unofficial blog at my school: TUSB.Stanford.edu.  This is tricky for me because I don't consider myself a writer or a photographer.  The only skill I have is the ability to capture attention for a few paragraphs, which doesn't mean I have very meaningful things to say.  The group is really chill though, and I only have to write once a week and go to meetings.  But it also means that I have to go to events or think of things I can blog about my school, even when I'm feeling busy.
• I started tutoring once a week at a nearby elementary school.  The cool thing is that I get to tutor in music.  It's a community service thing, and I think it is super cool.  I've only done prep for it so far, but I'm really looking forward to doing that.  
• I've been spending a lot of time job-hunting for something on-campus.  Nothing's worked out so far.  But the worst part is that job hunting isn't even at time consuming as actually having a job.
• I am the very newly appointed Friday Forum Co-Chair for the Latter-Day Saint Student Association.  This one actually just means I send out emails every week and conduct our Friday Speaker-Series sometimes.  

This post is so wordy and without pictures, so here are some cool pictures:

A very cute nephew.

Because elephants are so so cool.

And last but not least, the gorgeous birthday girl.  Love you Adri!

I call him Frankenshoe!

Talk about dirt poor college student.  Because I wouldn't go to the 

store and pay four bucks for a new pair, I gave him stitches :)

I'm Famous!

Guys, did you know that I am famous because I'm a professional blogger?  OK, seeing as I have 3 followers (WOOT!), this could not possibly be true.  But, my school has an unofficial blog, and I joined the staff and had my first blog post on Saturday.  Check it out: http://tusb.stanford.edu/author/gigismile/.  I'm super excited about it.  I wish blogging experience were a marketable skill.  I think with enough spin on it, it definitely could be.  I made the goal of posting on here at least 3 times a week and posting on The Unofficial Stanford Blog at least once a week.

Did you watch the USC-Stanford game on Saturday?  WE WON!!!!  And afterwards I rushed the field with all of my friends.  I know you're only supposed to rush the field when you're not expecting to win and it is extra special, but we had fun.  It was something like this:

Here's a picture of me and Kelsey during the middle of the game.  We are VERY EXCITED!  It was a nail-biter for sure.

I also have a confession.  I suffer from Stage Crush Syndrome.  Meaning that I can find a guy not physically attractive at all but then when I see him performing I have to remind myself not to drool.  Causes of this syndrome include

1.) Andrew Luck (because Quarterbacks are not supposed to have tackles like this:



and

2.) Adam Levine

This picture is from a professional who sat way closer than we did.  From where we sat it was more like this:

And that's with some pretty intense zoom action.

He has a voice that makes me melt.  It's like no one else's in the world.  Sorry, I'm too busy swooning to even finish this post.  :)