Tissue Regeneration--who would have thought?!

this was on oprah last week tuesday. it is amazing. were building organs and tissues and arteries in a lab with your own cells..its crazy. (ignore the post-it commercial.)

this raises serious bioethics questions. and a lot more laws. but its also miraculous..how is that possible? and the things it could do for medecine...the possibilities are amazing! with a little part frightening..people abuse these kinds of things too much. we shall see though, wont we?

elder mattson: coming to you this june 3rd!!

"Becca!
That is sweet. We are going to have a ton of fun up at Byu. Are you going to live on campus? I enjoyed it when I was a freshmen. So you love AP bio and chem. I love bio also. I was thinking of majoring in that, but I don't know what I would do for a job. I still have no idea. Dont tell mom. ..As you already know and like to make fun of me for. {:}?> (sorry i don't know how to make those smiley face things that mean you are joking) Things are sweet over here. I guess you already know some from the other emails. I don't really have any stories that I can think of right now unless you want to hear about me bribing the immigration officers so that I wouldn't get kicked out of Malaysia again. But that isn't very interesting. Don't tell mom." from Eric to me. ahaha. I MISS HIM SO MUCH!!! "Hey brecca,
Sounds like you had fun over in Washington. I just thought I should inform you that they are cutting down the rainforest over here. YOu should probably do something about it. I have already stopped sharing a message about Jesus and switched to sharing a message about environmental responsibility. I know I have made the correct decision. I still have not happened onto finding a monkey, but I will probably baptize it if I do. Because men evolved from monkeys so if we believe in the Bible also the obvious truth is that Adam and Eve were Monkeys. WHich makes sense because orangutan comes from the malay name for the monkey orang hutan. Orang means person, and Hutan means jungle. So logically if i baptize two monkeys or two people at once it will be double fun. But on the other hand you will never know if you don't try. So try to stay calm and be sure to try and stop smoking or else I will tell mom. And if you ever have a question, just don't do anything I wouldn't do.
Love,Elder the mattson"

"me & migan"

this one is just fabulous. does that guy smile like that, or are they laughing? hahahaha

"Becca,

Schools already starting soon, eh? Sounds like fun. Youre going to be in a music recording class? thats pretty cool. My advice for the summer reading is not to do it, but thats just my professional opinion. I know a lot of people that cant' read anyway and they are just fine. But if you do learn to read that is okay too.

Love elderr mattson"

some of the emails were a while ago. haha. that one was last summer! crazy.

typical eric. this is when i miss him most! "Sounds like you had a bunch of fun over there. Ive never been to San Francisco, but sometime in my life I'd like to march in the gay parade. Maybe when I get back. Well, be sure to keep me informed of any other adventures you have." these are all excerpts from his emails to me. not the family emails. ;) aahhahhaa. why the gay parade? i have no idea. is there a gay parade? still no idea. raaaandom. hahaha

yeah thats a grub in his mouth...i think its dipped in soy sauce if thats any consolation?? haha ewww he's all sweaty & gross. butcha can't blame the poor boy...its probably 100 degrees and 100% humidity. blehhh, plus riding bikes??

"Do you still like your work at the vet? How much are they paying you? I haven't eaten too many strange things. But I did eat maggots. Well I guess they are more of grubs. They were fat white worm things that are about and inch and a half long. But they were fried with some soy sauce and stuff so it was pretty good. I also ate fish head curry, eyes and everything, but that isn't so wierd I guess. I really like that one. I have eaten a lot of wierd things that I wouldn't even be able to start to describe, because I have absolutely no idea what they are. Generally if they put it in front of me, I just eat it. Sorry no monkey stories haven't seen many monkies here in Kuching. But I'll let you know if I see anything cool."

"P.S. I ate a sea snail in my spaghetti. and it was pretty sick. But other than that I am still healthy. I am going to go jungle exploring today because it is pday I will try to send some pictures. Well I don't have much more time to email but make sure to have a good time on summer vacation, and just so you know, they eat dogs here sometimes, and I am going to try and get a dog steak and send it to you so you can eat it for breakfast.

Love eldermattson"

"I went to a nature reserve last week, and we saw some orangutan. They were just swinging through the trees and stuff and the ranger people fed them some bananas and stuff. One of them was only like 4 feet away from me, and there was no cage or anything. I also ate a bunch of more nasty stuff, but I don't even know how to describe it. But it was worse than the grub."

i'm so jealous of that nature reserve. like...you dont even know. but i'll make him take me when we go back in august. (!!!!!!!!)

tragic story: "That monkey in the picture was a baby probiscus monkey, the kind with the really long nose that droops down. One of the branch members in kuching was keeping it because his friends shot the mom and ate it, which is very illegal because it is a protected species in Malaysia. But it died too eventually. It was very young and they didn't know how to take care of it."

So i miss him a lot. and i can't wait for him to come home june 3rd! we got his plane ticket already. he's really coming home! and then were going back to malaysia for him to show me all his cool things there. and then were going to BYU together. YAY! i really can't wait to see him...man TWO YEARS!?! holy cow. i wonder how different i am? i mean he's going to be somewhat different for sure..but what about me? two years ago...i was kind of a mean little brat. hopefully i've changed. i wonder if my looks have changed much?! maybe i'll go look at pictures..but then again i'd rather not. HE'S COMING HOME!!!!! <3<3

i'm outraged/scared/spiritual/delighted

the blogger updates thingy didnt show my posts! it didnt even pop up for me to see..and i'm following my own blog! it makes me a little bit angry...

but to get to the real point.

what the wind?! i feel like my house is going to blow away like poor dorothy's did. (apparently i could never live somewhere were there really were hurricanes and twisters and all their other names) if this is scaring me, what would i do in THOSE areas when the wind blew a little too hard?? major freak out. not good. oh and our poor banana tree! which looks like it is going to fall over any second anyway, its holding on for dear life!! and its got some good looking bananas growing in there.

and, i guess it was the wind, but our power went out TWICE in church today. once during sunday school, where curse it! there was enough light to continue the lesson (not that i dont like sunday school. i dont like teachers that tell me i dont have testimonies and that i dont really want to be at church.) and then once during sacrament, for quite awhile. what made it especially great was the hymn we started singing when the lights went out. it was hymn 192, He Died! The Great Redeemer Died. (sacrament hymn)
TANGENT: the church website?? its fabulous. whenever i go onto the music section it makes me so happy! whenever you roll over a selection it sounds a note, and when you roll over the next its the next note..and then you hear The Spirit Of God playing at you as you roll over these options!!! its fantastic. you should try it.
but anyway
we were singing the sacrament hymn, 192, and it says in the first verse "a solemn darkness veils the sky" & the power had JUST gone out...it was funny, in a way...well in the way that my mom and i both laughed and then shushed ourselves. but then, right as the lights came back ON, we sang (verse three) "But lo! What sudden joys were heard!/The Lord, though dead, revived again." mom & i just kinda guffawed at that one. how cool is that?!

but on other news. my old phone?!?!! CAME BACK TO LIFE!! it is baaaackkk!! with a few crazy quirks but i'm SOOO okay with that. I LOVE MY PHONE!! it came back from its little swim with the sharks in shark lagoon...and i'm terribly happy about it. :D :D :D :D :D :D

&
thats all folks!!
;)
ps. was that too many emotions for one blog?? bahahaha. if it was get over it. if not, good for you. :D

Sometimes, i LOVE my family

today we went to my brother's band concert at the Kennedy really nice music center...well my parents had dropped him off at 615 because that was when he had to be there. then they sat in the car, and read until 645 when they could go stand in the line. (i was driving in my own car, and came in at the end of this saga to hear the story later)
so my mom watches this guy carefully park his car..almost ridiculously. as in, he would get out and look at his parking job then get back in and move about a foot. he had tried to back in at first, but that apparently wasnt working out for him so he did it all over again. THEN he sat in his car too-and threw a bunch of trash out the window while my mother watched, getting all the more outraged as he just kept chucking it out of his car. into the parking lot. who needs trashcans right? well, after this saga was over, my mother, incensed, told my father to go get that trash. (because thats what women do when we are incensed. order husbands to fix it. works like a charm ;) so my dad of course went to go get it...but he had his own opinion as to where it should be put. he stuffed all that trash that was thrown out the window of this car back onto its windshield under the wipers.

i love them, i love them, i love them. :):)

ps. REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE baby!!!

time for a change.

i do not like them in a box
i do not like them with a fox
i do not like them here OR there
i do not like them ANYWHERE!

my feelings exactly, mister.

but dont get me wrong. i'm totally excited for all the change thats going on around me..and are a part of me. i mean. i'm going to BYU! i'm growing up. i'm moving out. i'm living on my own. i let someone in. i have a job. i have a bank account. i'm planning out my life. i'm choosing a major, a career! i'm deciding what i'm going to do with my future..mother, wife, house owner, dog owner...

can anyone say FRIGHTENING??

i'm not a fan of a future i dont know.
but i guess anyone could have seen this coming for me. i dont even like to try new foods..i get one thing at one restaurant and continue to get it every time i go there. i'm not a big tryer. actually my excuse is that it was so good the first time, that when i go back i have to get it. because i rarely go back anyway, lets just make that clear...restaurants and the mattson family do not really mix. at all. if we go, my brother has bad manners and my mother points at him and says "see?? this is your fault" to my father for not taking us out to dinner often enough. but alas, he's a cheapo. actually i'm grateful, really i am, because he spends that money on fabulous vacations instead of food..i'd take the fabulous vacations any day. but lets just get one things straight: fabulous vacations can be GREAT if we are fed decent food while there. otherwise, we get cranky and angry and since we are all in close proximity to one another, super cranky. (we learned this the hard way. FLORIDA. amazing vacation. scuba diving every day, boat dives, beautiful drives, thunderstorms every night..fabulous. but my dad still doesnt believe in buying good food..or ENOUGH. need i say more?)
how did i get there??

ps. i have never been able to spell restaurant. (i spell checked) why is it spelled like that?? no one says it like that. can't it be changed to restraunt?? thats how i spell it. who wants to change the dictionary with me?? if i have to change, the dictionary can too.

r-r-r-r-raaaandomm

these are random short stories & philosophies that should have been blogged a long time ago.
or are recent. you dont need to know. just enjoy. :)

1. Tips For Stargazing:
--the brightest stars are always planets. name them, then change your mind two minutes later.
--to find the north star, you make a straight line with the edge two stars of the little dipper. but only if you draw the line the right way, then you get the north star. and theres no way to tell which way is the right way, just do it. & if you see a bright star, thats it. if not, you LOSE.
--only half of the sky is necessary to see
--turning your head at odd angles is definitely a necessity for seeing constellations.
--dont compete to get off the bus first. :)

2. One Day In Preschool
everyone hated me. the kids wanted nothing to do with me. paul called me fat. isaiah pretended he didnt remember my name and he thought it was funny. he also said i wasnt his friend when we had been buddies just the day before. someone hit me, i can't remember who it was at this point, but they did. riley, who had been hanging on me the day before, was now hanging on someone else, and not even noticing me. not ONE kid would talk to me, let me play with them..it was the worst day in preschool i have ever had. and i still can't figure it out, to this day. everyone loves me again, what was with that day? must have been twilight zone-ish.

3. Snorting
so okay, i snort when i laugh sometimes. get over it. it just happens. but..this time it was different. it was ward conference, my ward. karina & i were sitting next to each other. ps:bad idea. if they wanted quiet anyway. well bishop thompson was giving the spiel he give everytime that i have now heard five times (i think, i'm not really counting) and i was saying it to karina before he said it and i thought i was all cool. well i was, but that is a different story. and he says something about beating up the principal of the school, because that was something that Joseph F Smith did when he was a boy..and he tried to connect it to our day, saying what if you beat up the principal of the school? what would happen? and karina says under her breath, "that would be....satisfying." and i bust up in a laugh that BEGINS with a snort, and we were in the CHAPEL, int he first four rows of pews and bishop thompson was down in the front speaking to us like prez wynder always would, disregarding the microphone (none of them need it, they boom). and i snorted. everyone looked, of course, and you could hear the "did she just snort"s going around. it was ridiculous. and slightly hilarious.

4. Flies are Russian Spies
and are really really annoying. actually they werent flies they were some weird insect that swarm inside my house by the four's..meaning there were four of them. anyway. they were super annoying. and i was trying to do my homework (or was i?) and they kept stupidly hitting the lights over and over again. it was driving me crazy. i dont know if it was so much the sound of them hitting the lights as the stupidity of bugs in general, that they would repeatedly throw themselves into a light source, that irked me. but it did. a lot. so i went on a mission. a mission to kill. & i did. i got those russian spies & killed them while singing the james bond theme song to myself. i'm sure my parents thought i was crazy..i was crouching around the kitchen singing that with a "sound & sense" book and a ruler in my hands, randomly swinging at nothing (but really those bugs) when it was silent in the house. (an unusual occasion in itself.) i entertain myself sometimes.

5. Dancing At Midnight
karina, for some odd reason, was over at almost midnight, on my computer..& i was catching up on the DVR shows i had missed. well after that i had this weird kind of energy, so i made karina dance with me. it was ridiculous. and i mean the dancing. it was something i probably will never do outside of that night. honestly, it could have been the definition of crazy.. then sometimes we would break down laughing and fall on the floor. at one point karina flung her arms so hard her wrist snapped and it hurt her..then she danced carefully with her arms and told herself to do this while she was dancing.. "careful with the arms, karina" that was too much for me. i couldnt get off the floor for a full five minutes & my abs hurt so bad. how do we get so crazy? then we made a few more videos..that i would show you but it takes too long to load onto here so you'd have to come over to my house. ohhhh goodness. ahhahaha

6. Following People In Grocery Stores
lauren & i, man we were funny. this is how it went : we were at Stater Bros, getting stuff i forget what, but we were in the fresh vegetable section, the sprinklers turned on, scared the crap out of me, and i screamed. the guy next to us just busted up laughing.. thats not awkward at all. well okay it was funny, and lauren could hardly stand up for laughing, and she did that thing where she leans over to one side and lifts her foot up & laughs silently. it was funny. THEN we started seeing this guy all over the store, kinda like he was following us..then we started following him on purpose. to see if he would notice. it was so much fun. another secret spy mission. we just kept appearing in the same isles, and i do think he looked at us funnily a couple of times. but it was the greatest. then he would move on and we would tip over laughing again. i think we forgot most of what we came for and had to go back later. or not. i can't even remember. :)

7. I Think I Already Posted
about the overflowing toilet at jeff's house. ahahhaha

8. Wanna know how to collect urine from a killer whale?
i know. and i'm super excited that i know. so i'm going to enlighten all of you. they pee on command!! they come up on the slick "shore" part, and lay on their side then pee on command! they're kind of amazing. i went to seaworld with ap bio. and it was fascinating. they did animal husbandry and training shows for us. & i absolutely loved walking aroud seaworld at my leisure by myself. i read all of the pamphlets and the signs and learned a LOT about sharks, and manatees, and how they help the animals in the wild, and how they save sea lions and manatees and all sorts of animals.. it was FABULOUS. and i want to train sea lions to dance with me like they do. but seriously...i really wanna train a sea lion. they are so funny! they'd make me laugh everyday. not that i dont already, but i just want to train a sea lion. :)

thats all i got for now.
haha

road rage rebecca

i felt like some alliteration was needed there.
but seriously, i pose the question:
WHY does driving make me so angry???
and honestly i can't help it. yesterday was the worst: driving home from work, exhausted, in pain, hungry, and still had a butt load of work left to do: and going down bolsa chica SHOULD be done at a minimum of 65. the guy that cut me off decided that he would like to go below the speed limit, 45, and so did the two cars next to him in either lane. i was stuck. and i was yelling. why do people think its okay to cut people off and then slow down in front of them??? and who allows old people to drive anymore? that should be against the law. as much as i love them old people...TAKE THE BUS. get a taxi. something, anything. dont go twenty five on ALL streets.

but maybe..coming home from work is NOT the best mood for me. and maybe i just really needed to yell at something...or maybe they just really deserved it. the thing is, i never get angry like that anywhere else. its ONLY in my car. why? i'm not usually an angry yelling person. i get angry and i shut up and go sit silently in my room, listen to music. not even music could save me in the car. i even had JACK FM going (my favorite). and it wasnt doing a darned thing.

so, from now on, whoever else wants to drive, please do so. unless you're karina. then i'm driving. i hate your car. no offense.

ps. this in no way means i hate driving. i hate OTHER people on the road. i love driving. i love that freedom. its a good thing...usually.
pps. mom i really hope you didnt read this. if you did...forget the whoooole thing. it never happened.

i'm such a blog retard!

i usually post more frequently than this.
& i dont have an excuse for not posting. haha. just a blog retard. thats all i can come up with.
anyway.
i think i'm just going to list off some fun things i want to do. (yeah karina, i'm stealing your idea. GET OVER IT.)
~spend a day in a spa
~paintball
~find a job at a horse stable
~wake up before sunrise on a saturday and go to signal hill to watch it
~have a picnic
~tandem bike ride
~dog park/dog beach
~scuba dive on catalina
~avalon on catalina
~visit the teachers in jr high & elementary that influenced me
~make something for all the teachers that influenced me(k-12)
~museums
~san diego zoo! or even all the little zoos around here
~pitch a tent in a backyard, order chinese take-out, and tell ghost stories
~go to a drive in movie
~have a real movie marathon-hard core. either indiana jones or disney classics or eureka
~set off some illegal fireworks..then run like the devil
~be successful at flying a kite
~go kite surfing
~visit my favorite nature center ever!!! (eldorado)
~kayak in naples
~try a paddle boat
~find a place to see the stars in socal
~go camping in the sanberdandino mtns
~find a nice hike somewhere out here ( IN THE WOODS)
~go to the airport (small one) and watch the planes take off and land on the hood of a car
~go see a play
~go to a catholic mass, cuz i'm curious ;)
~go to a shooting range
~ride a hot air balloon!!
~go to mexico for no good reason
~cliff jumping
~have a bonfire
~build a fort
~fly a remote control airplane
~visit a local rest home, maybe play a game of bingo
~find a karaoke place
~go on a hayride
~go to color me mine
~go GEOCASHING!!
~spend the entire day at barnes and nobles
~ride in a horse drawn carriage
~thrift store hopping
~go sailing
~go to a botanical garden
~learn how to ballroom dance
~ride in a helicopter
~blow some glass
~sing on a street corner
~volunteer at a food distribution place. what do you call those?
~fencing
~make a boat and use it in my swimming pool
~go horse back riding on the beach
~ride a unicycle
~make music with glasses of water like on miss congeniality
~catch a fly, put it in a jar in the fridge, tie a string to it, and have a fly on a leash
~play bottle cap hockey on my island. using a bottle cap as the puck and pens as sticks
~write on a wall with washable markers/crayons
~find the perfect tree to climb
~do some pottery
~throw a tomato into a fan
~watch the stars on someone's roof
~stomp in a bucket of grapes then make someone drink it
~explode a marshmallow in a microwave
~go to a rock concert
~go get my fortune told
~take the bus somewhere, anywhere
~learn to shoot a real bow and arrow
~go beach camping
~see a magic show live
~go to a planetarium
~be in the audience of the price is right
~go windsurfing
~whipped cream/flour fight
~ride a segway
~go to a haunted place at night
~ride a gondola!
~go to the house of blues
~go to a comedy club
~a 10 season friends marathon with Eva baby!! ;)
~ETC
i think this is enough for now. haha. its really long. just some random activities i'd like to do in my lifetime. by no means is this all i'd like to do, just a few. :)
okay now people...lets do some of these things, okay??