Leavin' on a Jet Plane

...well...I'm leaving soon enough, anyway. Spring term certainly does go by fast. I have 6 more days of actual classes, 2 days of finals, and a total of 12 days until I go home. I feel like I just started a month and a half ago. Wait... I did. Insanity.

As different as it is keeping up with classes that move twice as quickly, it's awesome how soon these classes will be over. Especially technical communication. I'll say three words about that class: I hate papers. And guess what? Two weeks from now, I will never have to take another English class again. Ever. Sure, I'll have the occasional paper to write in a few of my major classes, but it's different. I'm excited, anyway.

And speaking of excited, I am so excited to go home. See some friends, be with my family again... it's gonna be just awesome. And did I mention how excited I am to go home? :)

A few weeks ago, Mom was kind enough to buy me a new outfit "for Easter," even though it was well after Easter when I got it. But I promised I would post pictures of it, so here they are. Aren't I cute?

A full view of the outfit.

And a closer shot.

Little Things

A lot of the fun in life is just finding those little things that make us happy. Here's one of mine.

Whenever I'm walking somewhere and someone's coming from the opposite direction, I usually firmly designate myself to one side or the other of the sidewalk (or hallway, etc.). When I do, even from a distance, it causes the other person to automatically drift to the other side, whether subconsciously or not. When I take my position early on, the other person will go to the other side. This is one of those little joys in life, for me - knowing that I have that little bit of momentary power over another person. (Especially when they're about twice my size, 'cause heaven knows I'd lose a real fight to them.) :)

Women's Conference

A couple weeks ago, Mom came to Provo for BYU Women's Conference. It was awesome! Her flight was supposed to arrive on Wednesday (the 29th) at about 1:30, but due to a string of events, some of which weren't even related to each other, she didn't get here until about 6:30. And almost the entire time, she was sitting on a plane. Not even in the airport. I felt bad for her - the only things she really could do to take up time were read, go to the bathroom, and talk to me on the phone. Which was fun, but it did end up using a lot of battery power from my phone. :)

So I picked her up Wednesday evening, and we stopped by Jeffrey and Debbie's apartment to see them and Knightley, which was great. Eventually, Mom and I left, and grabbed some food at Taco Bell before going back to my apartment. Luckily I have that extra bed in my room, since no one else is sharing it with me, so Mom got to stay with me!

On Thursday, I didn't go to any of my classes (any meaning Calculus), and instead went to Women's Conference with Mom all day. The opening session was amazing! They had some entertaining stuff. But the best part of it was at the end of that session, when they had all of the women standing up and singing together... it was incredible. I started crying right away. It was a great emotional and spiritual experience.

The workshops that we attended were about replacing fear with faith, making the most of an empty nest, and not neglecting your gifts. The second one, while the least relevant to me of the ones that we went to, was co-taught by Nana Raine (Mom's mom). And it was really good. Even I was able to take something from it, though the general idea of the lesson doesn't really apply to me yet. Nana did a great job.

That night, Mom and I went grocery shopping. Which was awesome - it was like Mom wanted to buy me the whole store. Practically everything we saw, she offered. There are sometimes benefits to being a poor, starving college student. Then we went to Jeffrey and Debbie's again for dinner, which was great. The next day, I went to classes, while Mom attended the rest of Women's Conference. Afterwards, we did some quick shopping in the BYU Bookstore, and went to Jeffrey and Debbie's place again. We all had pizza for dinner. ^_^

On Saturday and Sunday, we stayed with Aunt Carisa. It was fun. I love staying there. We got to chat with some relatives, stay in a really nice house, and have a good time. Mom and I left late Sunday morning, came back to my apartment for a while to pick up a couple things she forgot, and left for the airport. It was hard to see her go, but I'm so glad she came. I want to go to Women's Conference with her every year. It's awesome.

Knightley and his great Nana Raine.


Mom and Tawni, while Carisa weasels her way into the picture.

Knightley and Mom, or his Nana Jake. So cute. :)

Starting Over... Again

Well, finals for Winter semester ended last Wednesday. Sarah and I stayed in our apartment until we had to move out, which turned out to be Saturday at about noon. We ended up waiting until Friday night to pack everything. Times like those make me wonder... how do I have that much stuff? And how did it all get here?? Needless to say, with that and not packing very quickly, we were up all night. Literally. After we packed everything, we still had to do our final cleaning checks before we moved out. And by then I was exhausted, and not very enthusiastic about cleaning.

It turned out that our manager was not very strict on our cleaning checks (though they said they would be), thankfully. Then we finally got everything moved from our apartment into our cars. Of course, it started raining that morning. Right when we're moving out... perfect timing.

From there I went to Jeffrey and Debbie's place. They graciously let me stay with them for a couple days, as I couldn't move in to my new apartment until Monday. It was a lot of fun. Trevin came over on Saturday night, and we had pizza and played Scattergories (which I came in close second both times we played, might I add). On Sunday I went to church with all of them. Four babies were blessed in their ward that day! Insane. I ended up helping Trevin in nursery for the second and third hours, which was a lot of fun, though I'm not sure how badly they needed my help. Apparently there were not as many kids there as usual. But it was fun.

On Monday I moved into my new apartment. It's built for six girls in one apartment (three bedrooms, two in a room), but there are only four other girls, plus myself. The others were all here in the winter, I think, so I ended up getting a room to myself. Which is nice. And the apartment is definitely bigger; I guess it kinda has to be, to accommodate for six girls. It's not bad.

School for Spring term started today. I only have Calculus on Tuesdays, for two hours. And today it was really easy stuff, so not a bad day of school. Tomorrow I have Technical Communication... we'll see what that class has in store.

Of Pizza and Plastic - The Sequel

So, a few weeks back, I bought some English muffins, cheese, and pepperoni to make mini pizzas. Which are just delicious.

I put a couple mini pizzas together, and stuck them in the microwave. I leave the microwave to do its business, and hang out on my computer until they are done. When I hear the beep, I go out to get my mini pizzas... and there is smoke everywhere. Apparently I had microwaved it a lot longer than I thought I did. (Note: the smoke alarm didn't ever go off. Maybe last time it went off we had unplugged it or something.)

So I made my way to the microwave, opened the door, and more smoke came out. It was bad. Charlene came out of her room as well, and came to see what happened. She got up on a chair to see in the mircorwave, and started laughing immediately. Once she got the microwave plate out, I saw that the mini pizzas were 100% charcoal black. We opened the front door and some windows, and took the plate outside. Charlene and I went to work on cleaning up the mess I had made. I started scrubbing the burn reside out of the microwave, and Charlene was outside throwing away the rock-hard mini pizzas. When she lifted up the plate, the pizzas stayed on, as well as the parts of the plate that were underneatht them. Those parts were completely melted. It was hilarious.

We successfully cleaned everything, but the smell of smoke lingered. I hoped it would fade in time, especially when we'd leave the door and windows open, but it still pretty much always smelled like smoke. After a few days, I bought an air freshener/odor remover because I felt bad. I think it helped, but now when you use the microwave, sometimes it still smells vaguely like smoke. It was quite the experience. And very funny.

This is what it looked like after Charlene lifted off the plate.

Laugher Is The Best Medicine

My Doctrine and Covenants class today was awesome. Just not for the reasons that it normally should be.

So Trevin and I have D&C together, which is always so much fun. Today he had a pen that had a piece of plastic missing where the two halves of the pen connect together. So once while he was holding it, the pen just fell apart in his hands. Randomly. Which I thought was just hilarious.

A bit later, we were told to put something in our notes, so Trevin starts writing, and the pressure that he put on the pen made it come apart completely again - and not just fall apart, like it did when he was just holding it, pieces of it shot off to the side. (Luckily we were sitting at the end of the row next to the wall.) We both laughed really hard. I just about died laughing, and the hard part was trying to keep it quiet, especially because we were in a religion class.

Then we started playing around with the pen a bit, and making the parts of it shoot off again. After I had a go, I picked up the spring the landed beneath Trevin's seat. I was squeezing the spring in between two of my fingers a few times, when suddenly I accidentally made it shoot out from my fingers, and it hit me right in the eye. It wasn't painful, just startling. And we both proceeded to just about lose control of our laughing again.

I had tears coming out of my eyes more than once from laughing so hard. I know, we were so irreverent. But it was awesome. :)

Did You See The Sky Today?

Talk about blue!

This week has been really nice. Even though BYU doesn't have a Spring Break, and seemingly every other school I know of does. But you know... I'll get over it. At least our semester finishes sooner, in the long run.

The weather has been fantastic the past few days! Two weeks ago, it was really nice outside, then the following week it was really cold... and this week it's really nice again! Though I hear that next week it's supposed to snow. Apparently we're just going back and forth. But for now, it's been so nice and warm... not hot, but very pleasant. I love it.

Last night, instead of our normal 2-hour conducting class from about 7pm-9pm, each student had a five minute lesson with the teacher. We basically had this piece that we had to be prepared to conduct for him while he played the piano, and while we were being recorded (so that we could take the video home and watch it, and write a critique about our conducting). We had to do something similar for part of our midterm a couple weeks ago, and that was terrifying. I shook the whole time. But when I had to conduct for him last night, for some reason it wasn't nearly as frightening (though still kinda scary). It really does help, also. He helps me find out what my weak points are, so that I can improve. Seriously, I have a lot of respect for people who really know how to conduct. It doesn't sound hard, but there is so much to it. I've also realized that there are very few out there who do know. Like in church; frequently the chorister will "know" how to conduct - or rather, they know what the beat pattern is or what the back of the hymn book tells them - but educated conducting is quite a bit more complicated. It's a skill that I think will be nice to know. (If I ever get really comfortable with it. :)

I also had another Country Dancing test on Wednesday, which I think went alright. It wasn't terrible. The thing I love about that class is that it's just what it sounds like - when we're dancing, we always get to listen to country music. It's great.

This week has been an overall pretty good one. :)