Hello, I am in fact still alive.  Surprised?  So am I-- I've stayed up between 11:30-3:30 every night for the past week, between "hell week" rehearsals lasting till 11:45 and duh, three-day weekends in which I'm obviously going to stay up because that's the only way to get my me time.  OK, I love the show, it's just the school part that sücks.
  It just occurred to me that today is my half-birthday.  It kind of freaks me out because as a kid I always thought of 19 as "old"/mature/self-sufficient-adult/last-year-of-being-a-teenager.   
  Last week I attended the Mesa Temple's famed Easter Pageant twice, once with some people from the cast and once with Dallin's family.  It was so exciting to meet his older sister who had just gotten off of her mission.  I knew I liked her the second she saw me and jumped to give a hug.

    While Danielle was on her mission, the boys installed subs in the truck.  So of course we had to show her the sick base with the hit music she's missed out on.  We drove out to the abandoned freeway overpass and started rocking out, innocently enough with just little old me, Dallin, RM Danielle, their step-brother Cooper, their cousin, and Danielle's mission companion who was going to be flying home the next day.  Other cars came and went, including one car which we called "idiots who're going to pop their tires" when they backed into the even-more-secluded area in the rocks.  That's why we thought nothing of it when another vehicle parked right behind us, the headlights blinding as we thought was the intention of some obnoxious group of kids.  For a second I kept dancing, hanging off the side of the truck and trying to ignore them.  But the moment our eyes adjusted and we could see the shape of the car, Cooper and I realized this was not just some annoying teenagers.
    I ran around to the side of the truck and shook Dallin.  "Turn it off!" I shouted over the music.  "There's a cop!"   I'll admit I was pretty worried, since I wasn't from this part of town like they were and had no idea if we had trespassed private property or broken some other law.  And it was six months since I'd had the excuse of being a juvenile.
   Immediately the officer took Dallin by the arm and forced him, Cooper and I into a line.  Then he saw the other three inside the truck.  "Who else is in there?!  Get out, NOW!"  He forced us into a sit on the dirt and towered over us.  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!  ARE YOU ON DRUGS?!"
   "No, we just got here, sir!"
    And then he shone the flashlight right in my face.  "WHY WERE YOU RUNNING?!" he yelled.
   I'm sure I melted into the very definition of dear-in-headlights.  Little 5'1" blonde-haired goodie-two-shoed  me getting yelled at by a cop? Little Katie Lady who will obey any parental rules to avoid getting in trouble,  who doesn't drink drink soda much less alcohol and wouldn't know the difference between dope/coke/meth, getting in trouble by law enforcement?!  "I wasn't running!"
    "YES YOU WERE!  WHY WERE YOU RUNNING!"
    "She wasn't running, sir!  We only just got here!"  Was he perhaps mistaking us for one of the other groups we saw earlier?
    He shook his head angrily.  I winced under the interrogation light as this time he made motions around the truck.  "WHY DID YOU RUN OVER TO HIM?!"
    Finally, some sense. "I was trying to tell him to turn off the music and come over!"
    "But why were you RUNNING?!"
    Danielle piped in.  "She was just scared sir."  And how about the fact that Cooper and I were the only ones to notice that there was a POLICEMAN getting out of his car and that policemen don't usually appreciate people lolligagging?!
   "Geez, that's how you makes a cop's blood-pressure shoot up!" Let's not mention all of our blood pressure.  "What are you people doing here?"
   Danielle spoke calmly.  "I've just gotten back from a very long trip, and my brothers wanted to show me the new stereo.  We decided it would be best to come out here where it's secluded rather than wake up our neighbors."
  He nodded, seemingly believing her story.  "I appreciate it."  Then he shook it off.  "ARE YOU ON DOPE?!"
  "No, sir!"
  "You are welcome to search the truck," Danielle answered patiently.
  And so he did.  While we were still sitting in the dirt, the cop looked through every purse and under every seat.  Finally he came back around to us. Now, realizing that we were totally innocent, the 20-or-30-something cop switched into this cool-kid-from-the-hood voice as he explained himself.
   "You are such a good cop, staying out late to make sure there isn't trouble in our city."  Danielle said.  "I just came back from a mission in Colorado, so I understand how frustrating drugs are."
    Boy did this launch him off into a string of stories.  Meanwhile we remained squirming on the ground.
    It took a while, but finally, "Nah guys, get up!"
    When the officer left, we hopped in the car and just took off back home basically freaking out.  Dallin seemed slightly disappointed that he didn't get tell people he'd been handcuffed, since the brash copped sure acted like he was going to shackle him when he pinned his arm.  The six of us collapsed on the couch and relayed the story to their parents.  A few minutes afterwards their stepbrother Parley walked through the door, and his mom asked where he went for his date.
  "We just went to the overpass."
  "You are such a liar.  We were just there!"
  Nope.  Turns out that the whole time we were being interrogated, he and his date were the people we had called "idiots who're gonna pop their tires."  They hadn't even seen a thing.