The S Morley Blog

Life in Pittsburgh

2012-01-23T20:10:00.000-08:00

We successfully arrived here in Pittsburgh and found a suitable apartment. We like it. At first there were some issues, though. The kitchen was filthy (sticky and dirty counters, left over crumbs and food in the cabinets and drawers, etc.), but we started cleaning it up, and eventually two cleaning guys came over and finished cleaning the rest of it for us. The full bathroom (we have 1.5 bathrooms!) smelled vaguely like smoke when we moved in (it did not smell that way when we looked at the apartment), walking on the carpet barefoot made your feet slowly turn black, the full bathroom door didn't close all the way, there was no toilet paper dispenser in the half bathroom, and the towel rack was placed awkwardly such that towels covered the toilet paper dispenser in our full bathroom. We had to clean the inside of the refrigerator, and we didn't have blinds in our front room for the first week and a half. It was frustrating to have to clean this apartment after cleaning our Wymount apartment so thoroughly. How come we had to clean the apartment we left, only to clean the one we came to as well? I guess that's the real world, sometimes. :) Now we like it, though. After enough vacuuming of the carpet, it now doesn't make your feet black, the kitchen is clean, the fridge is clean, and after leaving the fan on in the bathroom long enough it no longer smells like smoke. They came and gave us blinds, put in some needed screens, fixed the bathroom door so it actually closes (still some trouble, but not nearly as much), replaced our ceiling fan in the front room, added a toilet paper dispenser in the half bathroom, and moved the towel rack in the full bathroom so it doesn't cover the toilet paper dispenser. It now feels nice and homey. We didn't have a kitchen table at first, and the only chairs we had were our one computer chair and our couch. So, after searching on Craig's list and going to some big garage sales, we got a kitchen table for $20, a dresser for our bedroom for $20, two free dressers, a free nightstand, four free chairs (all wooden but with completely different covers--they almost match by not matching), and a stand-up lamp for the front room. I will post pictures of our apartment as soon as everything is clean enough for me to feel good about taking pictures and posting them. It should be soon. :)

Here's our impression of Pittsburgh so far:

- People smoke everywhere. It drives me crazy.
- Driving is insane. The roads twist and turn and are usually narrow. There are potholes and general unevenness everywhere, and it's impossible to find your way anywhere without a GPS (at least when we first moved here). Lanes randomly become right turn only, left turn only, straight only, etc. so you really have to pay attention while driving.
- Most everywhere in the city just generally feels run down. Not many places look clean and safe. Even the "good" neighborhoods like Shadyside and Morningside look run down and cramped. If it gives you any idea, Pittsburgh is Gotham City--really. It's where they shot Batman Begins, Dark Knight, and Dark Knight Rises. When we first moved here there was a car dealership that had a temporary sign up that said "Mini of Gotham City" instead of "Mini of Pittsburgh." Pretty cool, actually. We wish we got a picture of it before they took it down.
- The drivers are incredibly nice. Of course people want to run red lights sometimes... but they will let you in, wait for a car to make their turn before going straight, not honk and wait while a bus takes its time to turn, will back up at an intersection if they feel they have jut out too far, etc... It's a welcome change from Utah. :)
- More kids at church. This is a nice stepping stone ward into a "real" family ward. Wymount was full of small toddlers and babies, but here it is more toddlers and young primary children with 2 young women and 2 young men. Steve and I actually just got called as 2nd counselors in the young men and young women presidency. It's a lot of fun so far. I've taught a couple of times (there is usually only one young women there at church, but it's still nice), and Steve taught for the first time last Sunday and really enjoyed it.
-This really is a huge sports town. Everyone loves the Steelers. Even old grandmothers you wouldn't think would care about a football have Steelers purses. Also, all of the sports teams have the same color scheme: black and yellow. Another reason this is a sports town, I think.
-Groceries are more expensive than we're used to. The cheapest gallon of milk is about $3.85 usually. No more three for five deals like they had in Provo all the time. :\
-Because we're in the city there are stop signs and stop lights every half block or so. Because of this it takes at least 10 or 15 minutes to get anywhere. Even though we're only 2 miles from CMU, it on average takes about 10 minutes to get there, or about 15 with traffic. We also get terrible gas mileage from all the city driving.

...and probably more. Though that's all I can think of right now. It's certainly an experience out here so far. It's completely different from any other place I've lived. We have made some good friends at church, though. There's a group of 10 of us (5 couples) that came from Provo that like to get together for movie nights (all of which have been at our place so far since we have a fairly big front room and a projector) and game nights (which we switch locations for).

Oh, and I have officially graduated from BYU with a degree in Music Education. The diploma came in the mail. I'm now trying to get Pennsylvania certification so I can hopefully get a job substituting in the district I student taught in--Woodland Hills school district. I already know the music teachers, and they already have my information and everything. I don't think it'll be a problem getting hired (so I think), but right now the problem is getting Pennsylvania certification. I have everything I need except for one form which BYU should be sending me soon. So, right now I suppose I'm a housewife. I stay home while Steve goes to school. Last Thursday was my first taste of it, and I didn't really like it. It was so easy to get distracted and not finish what I hoped. I determined I really like the structure of a school schedule. It makes it easy to do what I need to at a specific time. So I determined that I needed to plan out my days beforehand--give myself a schedule to follow. Today was my first attempt at following a schedule, and it actually went really well! I planned things in hour increments and was able to work for an hour on my dad's website, on my website, about 3 or 4 hours on a song my dad wants me to arrange, do the dishes, take out the trash, wash the bathroom mirrors, and still have time in the evening to have dinner, watch "Into the Woods" on netflix, and other various things. I felt very good about myself! It was kind of fun to stick to a schedule I made for myself. I have definitely trained myself to learn how to drop whatever I'm working on and move on to the next thing. That pretty much sums up school. I like it. I will try to continue this planning pattern whenever I have a day to myself at home. :)

I will also try to blog more often. We need a journal type thing to document our life. Maybe a couple people would enjoy reading about our life as well.

Last Full Month in Provo

2011-07-10T11:23:00.000-07:00

Steve and I keep thinking how weird it is that this is our last full month in Provo! We both have lived in Provo for the past 4 years. As a freshman, or even as a sophomore, I couldn't wait to graduate and leave the Provo bubble. Now that it's been my home for so long, I'm getting really nostalgic. The other day I had a little free time before getting a Tuberculin skin test, and I just rode my bike all around campus thinking about all the classes I took in certain buildings and reminiscing. I even rode to Helaman Halls and rode around Taylor Hall--where Ashley and I lived freshman year. It's so weird. But, it's a good weird, right? Moving on in life is a good thing.

For summer term I am just working one job as a CS 142 TA, though I have 30 hours a week for it. I thought I would also work as a 235 TA, but the week before summer term I was informed that I actually wouldn't be. That was fun. But, I still get to work more per week than Spring term, so it's alright. This is now the third teacher I've TA'ed 142 for, and it's so interesting seeing the differences in the structure of each class and how the students react. I keep thinking if I were a high school computer science teaching how I would structure my class. It would obviously have to be different than college, though, and move much slower. Though if they were AP Computer Science classes... that wouldn't be too bad of a job. Sure, I've been trained to be a Music teacher, but I've had so much hands on experience as a Computer Science teacher. Just thoughts. Who knows what will actually happen? :)

For anyone who was worried, I officially have a placement in Pittsburgh for student teaching now! I'll be at a high school about 10 minutes away from Carnegie Mellon. I have no idea what exactly I'll be doing apart from working with the band director there. I'm a bit nervous for it, but it'll be a great experience. I'll have a supervisor out in Pittsburgh I'll keep in contact with as well as a supervisor here at BYU. I'll attend the BYU seminars via Skype and I'll probably also go to a seminar type class in Pittsburgh as well, though it's not required. It'll be interesting. Though, at least it's worked out so I can still finish my degree while still sticking with Steve. :)

No, we don't have housing yet in Pittsburgh, but just yesterday I found a lot of good prospects at reasonable prices, so I think we'll have a place setup soon. The ward in Pittsburgh we'll likely be a part of is being very nice in giving us housing suggestions and will look at places for us since we can't afford to go out to Pittsburgh again. It sounds like we'll enjoy the ward there.

This summer has been so much fun! I went to Florida with my mom where we went to Sea World and Universal Studios, which included the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

My mom took more pictures than I did. I'll get those from her and put the good ones on facebook and/or google+. It was a bit unreal to be there. Our husbands missed us, but it was fun mother-daughter time. We each got wands from Ollivander's as well!

I think because I have this wand I've been dreaming more about Harry Potter. I've dreamt more than once that I'm dueling using this wand yelling all sorts of spells. I can never seem to remember anything more than "stupify," "expelliarmus," and "protego" in my dreams, though. I guess I need to go to Hogwarts. :P

We went to a family reunion in Idaho last weekend celebrating Steve's grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. It was a lot of fun. There were so many great activities planned, and I got to know my in-laws that much better. I think I have most of their names down now. Part of the festivities included mentos and diet coke...

Good times. :)

Summer!

2011-05-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Steve has officially graduated from BYU. The diploma is in the mail--or will be soon. Steve's parents came out and stayed with us to support Steve, his sister Sarah and her fiance graduating from BYU. It's so strange to think that Steve is now graduated! I'm almost done, too. I just have my student teaching this Fall (which will be in Pittsburgh... which is still in the process of being setup), but they didn't let me walk this early. So, I'll be walking in August. That's also weird to think about. I really don't have anymore classes at BYU. I'm still technically a student, but this next Fall I won't even be in Provo! I won't even be in Utah! So, it feels like I've graduated too. Anyway, we have some pictures from graduation. Perhaps I'll put them up later. :)

This summer is the strangest summer so far! Neither Steve nor I are taking classes (obviously) but we're both working. Steve has an internship at Digi International working 40 hours a week from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday through Friday--like a real job! I'm working as a TA for two classes: CS 142 (Introduction to Computer Science) and CS 235 (Data Structures and Algorithms). Though, neither of them really gave me too many hours, so I'm only working 25 hours a week. It's the strangest feeling ever. I have so much more free time than I've had in a very long time. Even when I'm at work a lot of the time I don't have anything to do because students aren't coming in asking for help very often, at least for 142. So, basically I actually have had time to do things that have been on my to do list for a long time. All of my family's business websites that I've been putting off are finally being finished! Let's count them: spiderwebman.net, superstarlights.com, vickiescreation.com, and priceless-design.com. That's four! And then there's my personal website I've been needing to update for a while, but that will likely be more work than all of the other websites put together. So I'm saving it for last. :)

So, with all this free time we can actually do things! Steve and I actually have evenings off to ourselves where we don't have school or homework looming over our heads. It's a fantastic feeling. Really. Though, it's very strange at the same time. Steve and I have been talking for a while about getting back in shape. We both feel like we could probably be healthier. So, we actually went to Gold's Gym (there's one right down the street from us) and got memberships last Saturday. We actually did it! On top of that, we actually started going on Monday. We have gone every day this week so far: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and we plan on going tonight again. It feels great to be getting more exercise, but we are SO sore! I can barely move today. I'm not sure how it will go tonight. We'll probably try to go easy on ourselves a bit. So, if we keep it up (which we certainly intend to!) we should be in much better shape by the end of the summer. When we go to Pittsburgh we'll try to find something else that we can do every week to keep up active as well.

So, life is going pretty well so far. Our time at BYU is quickly coming to a close, and the real world looms ever closer!

Radical Parenting and Feminism

2011-04-14T00:21:00.000-07:00

It was recommended to me by my cousin that I watch this video

What are your thoughts on this? I disagree quite a bit with almost all of the arguments given by the presenters in this video. This panel seems to desire all humans to be completely androgynous and deny God. I am biased against feminism, I will readily admit to that, but the grounds on which the feminist who starts the video introduces her argument with seemed to be false to me. I can't stand the blatant Satanistic attacks like these on the home and family and traditional family values. Yes I agree that men should learn to want to spend more time with their families. Yes, men and women should be able to take a leave of absence when a child is born. Saying, however, that old fashioned things or thought processes have no mind in the "modern" world are in my opinion very regressive. Look around, does it look like the world is headed in a positive direction because of these so called "social reforms" like gay marriage, excessive government spending on programs that encourage parents to have little part in raising their children, copious litigation for no reason, allowance of pornographic materials and quickly slipping standards on TV and in film and literature at all times of the day? GARHHHH! This video rubbed me very strongly in the wrong way and made me prickle with disgust that any sensible person can have these views. Face it world, men and women will always be different and require unique concessions or accommodations no matter what the laws may say. Men will never be able to have children naturally, women will never be able to fertilize eggs. Men will on average be taller and stronger than women, women will have greater sex appeal and be more emotional and better at raising children than men (they do bear them after all).

Questions: What is the so called "Gender Revolution?" Are we still stuck in the 70's and 80's? (Article)
Why is anyone even considering radicalism in anything? The general populous of the world has no desire for radicalism (Communism or Nazi-ism anyone?)

On a similar topic, I was reading in the Wall Street Journal online and came across this article by a female journalist (article) about the fact that the supposed wage gap that feminists still uneducatedly argue about actually doesn't exist. Also it argues that men and women are fundamentally different in their habits, choices and preferences of work and in the work place. In short I agree very much with this article and liked it.

PLEASE watch this and let me know what you think about the ideas and views presented. If you agree or disagree, please say so. Please also say why you choose to agree or disagree with parts, sections, speakers or everything.

Recovering from Pi Day

2011-03-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Pi day was a huge success! We made about 29 pies, and about the same number of people came over for a joint FHE to help consume all these pies! It was so delicious. We were able to give away a lot of the pie, which is good. Last year we ended up with so much leftover that some of the pies went bad because we couldn't eat them fast enough. It's always sad to have to throw away pie. :( Though this year--we won't throw away anything! Right now, all we have left is about 2 pieces of chocolate cream pie leftover, and that will likely be gone by this evening. I'm going to miss being able to have a piece of chocolate cream pie every night... but it will probably be good for me to not be eating so much sugar. :P

As the end of the semester approaches (3 weeks from yesterday is the last day of classes--yikes!), Steve's projects and such are building up, and it feels like my semester is getting easier. It started out pretty intense, but now that my block class is over, and lots of big projects and such are over with, life isn't too stressful! It's such a strange sensation. I'm still excited for the semester to be over so I can go home without the burden of homework, but this time last semester I had so much to do.

We are also excited for the BYU basketball game tonight. Who isn't? Here's hoping we get to the Elite 8! How crazy would that be??

Recipes

2011-03-10T12:26:00.000-08:00

Pi(e) day approaches. So, I've decided to consolidate the many papers or pie and other recipes that i have floating around containing my tried and true recipes. To do this, I have created another blog where each posting is a recipe. Check it out. Tell me what you think. Make suggestions for your favourite recipes. Try out some of my recipes. Thanks, -Steve

Last Semester at BYU

2011-03-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

Here we are in March almost done with our last semester at BYU. Well, second to last for me. I have student teaching in the Fall, but I won't physically be here at BYU. On one hand, I can't wait for the semester to end so stresses and pressures to be relieved, but on the other hand... it'll be over! My life rhythm will be changed. I'm already missing oboe studio A LOT. What will it be like when I don't get up and go to HFAC and Talmage every day? Believe me, we're excited to leave the BYU bubble since one shouldn't stay here forever, but it's a comfortable bubble now. The black box of the future is quite intimidating at the moment. So many questions right now as to where we'll be in the Fall, where Steve will be going to grad school, for how long, where and what I'll be student teaching, what kind of apartment we'll have, what our regular income will be... so many questions. We've lived in this apartment at Wymount for all our marriage, and it's quite nice. We have an extra bedroom for movies/games. We have enough room in the front room for game nights and pie making extravaganzas, we have a gas stove and nice place for storage, a little porch, a playground in our quad, a wonderful ward, etc. So many things to like.

So, that's what's been on my mind lately. At the moment, Steve has only officially applied to one grad school: Carnegie Melon in Pittsburgh. We should hear back from them... this week-ish. They said "the beginning of March." It's certainly the beginning of March. So, we're just playing the waiting game, and we're getting a little antsy. We have some backup schools, but their deadlines are much later, so we're waiting until we hear from Carnegie Melon to move on to them. It would be so perfect if it worked out. Here's hoping!

Last Saturday we went skiing! Yes, two weeks ago we went to Hawaii, and last Saturday we were skiing in the snow in Utah! It's quite an exciting life we lead. :) This was only my second time skiing, and I was quite nervous at first. I got frustrated at first at my inability to control my speed, but by the end of the night I was doing much better and having a lot of fun! We're going to try to do it again before Winter ends. We figure we need to take advantage of the skiing opportunities here in Utah while we're here.

We will try to update more here. Honestly. :)

Kauai, Hawaii

2011-02-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

This last week, from February 15-21 we visited my brother and his family in Lihue, HI on the island of Kauai. It was awesome! Sunburns, SCUBA diving, wake boarding, swimming, sleeping in, ignoring homework and everything that resembled responsibility and spending time with family. What more could you want for a Valentines Day/Presidents Day get away.

You might be asking "Steve, you skipped a week of school and work to go and relax in a tropical paradise. How could you afford to do such a thing?" The answer is, we couldn't. However, grandmothers become very desirous to share their first grandchildren with the whole family at the first chance they get. In other words, Midori had a baby at the beginning of December, 2010, so, my mother planned a trip to Hawaii that would occur after Midori's mom had a chance to visit her first grandchild. Then, my mom decided that if she was going to HI, she'd just have to stay for while and enjoy it (she got so excited, she had plans for every day and knew the layout of the island before she ever set foot on it). Then she decided that it just didn't feel right to go and spend a couple weeks in paradise without bringing the rest of the family along. Therefore, she (easily) convinced my dad and David to use David's winter break from school to take an extended vacation. Then, after some discussion with my dad and some fortuitously priced plane tickets, she convinced us to join them in a week of their vacation by paying for 90% of the plane tickets for each of us (Me and Sarah, Sarah, Rachael and Grandma and Grandpa Alder) as well as the hotel, car and food costs on the trip. So, how could we afford to go? How could we afford not to with an almost completely paid for trip to HI. Believe you me, it was a tough decision - miss a week of class and go to HI or miss an inexpensive trip to HI and stick around for a week of classes. No brainer in my book (though I did have to switch to another section of a class that I am taking because of exam conflicts and a stubborn professor, but that was for the better as well).

We stayed in the very reasonably priced Kauai Palms Hotel which is about 5 minutes from the airport (it would be closer but the average speed limit on the island is 25 mph).

...(I'll finish this when I have pictures)...

Fans of Portal

2010-10-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

Portal is one of the most awesome games I've ever received for free (on Steam). Apparently many, many other people agree with me (though they likely paid for the game) as is evidenced by all of the different renditions of the ending credits song, "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton. For instance someone recreated the song in Mario Paint Composer. Another person programmed his OLD 1970s 8080 computer to play the song - I didn't know people still had those. And in a stroke of modern cultural genius an elementary school level music teacher taught the song to The Gifford Children's Choir of Racine, WI and they performed it awesomely (though I bet a number of them and their parents had no idea of the songs origins, nor understood the meaning of the lyrics).

I am really excited for the next installment of the awesome puzzle game, Portal 2, to be released. All the wonders that are in store for us when it does in "February of 2011"... Though it very well could be delayed again - but that's just fine since they'll be making even more awesome!

[Yes, I know there are a lot of links here. I'm trying to emphasize how much this song is awesome and also how much Portal is awesome, through this song.]

Gymnastics

2010-09-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

Sarah, Rachael and I are all taking a gymnastics class this semester and it is amazing. It is invigorating, a great work out, and a lot of fun. I highly recommend it to everyone. I would like to quote an article that was assigned reading for our class to try to convince you all to take gymnastics:"

Adult Gymnastics - Why We All Should Do It

The benefit of gymnastics has been shown time and time again. I have been coaching the sport for over 10 years, in addition to being a collegiate competitive gymnast. I strongly believe in the benefits of doing this sport for all ages, but this article will focus on adult gymnastics.

Most people over 25 believe that they are too old to start gymnastics. Many people believe that 15 is too old to start gymnastics. This is a ridiculous notion. 15 or 25 might be too late to start gymnastics if the intent is to become an Olympic competitor, but it is never too late to gain the benefits from practicing this sport. Gymnastics will improve performance in any other sport, as well as improving overall fitness and functional strength to a level that most people never attain.

Doctors are finally coming to realize and publicly acknowledge the long term benefits to resistance training. Studies have shown that resistance training improves joint health, maintains muscular development and improves cardiovascular fitness. This is true for all ages. Gymnastics is all about resistance training. The conditioning involved in a progressive gymnastics program focuses on functional strength. Elite gymnast’s strength to weight ratios are second to none. This is what enables elite gymnasts to perform skills that appear to be humanly impossible. While some of these moves might be out of reach for most people, with a focused gymnastics conditioning program most adults will be stronger than they have ever been. Not only will this conditioning enable anyone to perform moves that will make most 17 year olds gape in amazement, but it will also help prevent injuries.

Stretching and flexibility is an area that is sadly lacking from most fitness programs. The 2 to 3 minutes spent stretching before a class is simply not enough. Being flexible allows for greater joint mobility, improves circulation and helps to prevent joint injury. There is a strong focus on flexibility in gymnastics. Most gymnastics skills are greatly benefited by flexibility and others are simply impossible without the proper flexibility. Gymnastics stretching is also taught by people who really understand how to improve flexibility quickly and safely. Gymnasts are among the most flexible athletes in the world. As people age their flexibility tends to decrease. This is generally due to a lack of stretching and physical activity rather than simply a result of aging. If flexibility is trained throughout ones life a high degree of flexibility can be maintained.

A few points that must be considered when starting gymnastics as an adult, First is that it is difficult. Adults have few if any advantages over a five year old child starting this sport, and many disadvantages. Adults will start out with basic skills, and must be patient in learning new skills. One of the biggest hindrances I've seen in coaching adult gymnastics is that many adults are embarrassed watching 9 year old kids that are significantly better than them at the sport. The kids fully understand, because they went through it as well. There is nothing to be hesitant about. Everyone in that gym has been through the basics. Second is an awareness of safe progressions. Adults do have a higher risk of injury than children in the sport. This is due to larger body size. A 180 lb adult will hit the floor with a lot more force than a 60 lb child. Even though the adult has more muscle mass to buffer the impact the possibility for injury is increased. Secondly adults recover slower than children. Proper progressions and a focus on safety is critical. One of my prodigies in my adult class is a fellow who started gymnastics at the young age of 46. He has now been doing gymnastics for 3 years, and has transformed. He is in the best shape of his life, and can perform skills that were not even conceivable 2 years ago. A point to the benefits of his doing gymnastics. About 5 months ago he received a 2 point separation in his shoulder skiing. The doctors tell him that had his shoulder not been as strong as it is the injury would have been far worse. Not only was the injury itself minimized, but his recovery has been tremendous. With gymnastics training focused around the injury he is back to full capacity, and improving again.

I've saved the best, and most important factor in starting adult gymnastics for last. It is fun. Learning how to tumble, flip, swing, and come as close to self powered flight as is possible is a blast. Gymnastics is anything but boring. There is always another step to learn. It is possible to learn something new every single class or workout that is attended.

If you are an adult and think you are "too old" to start. Think again. Find a local gymnastics center and ask if they have an adult program. If they do, join it. If they don't, ask them to start one. Find some friends to join with you.

By Roger Harrell"

Wet Phones

2010-08-11T12:40:00.000-07:00

Soaking my phone and losing the use of it is one of my greatest fears. Thus I usually am very careful about how and where I use it. So, when my sister got her phone all wet the other day I started looking for solutions the worldwide-wet-phone problem. The best suggestions that I found (and the ones that my sister found worked in her case) were from this video on about.com. Though it is unlikely that I'll be any less apprehensive about how and where I use my phone in the future, I now have the comfort of knowing that there are possible solutions to the wet phone problem that don't start at $150.

Summer Term

2010-07-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

Summer term is trucking along fantastically. I'm no longer getting ridiculously sore from Weight Training and feel like I'm getting a little stronger. That's comforting. :) American Heritage just kind of exists. I'm not putting as much effort as I could into the class... I'm thinking because of that I'll get some sort of B. I could get an A if I actually did the reading. It's just hard to motivate myself because I'm getting along just fine without reading and there's so much reading for all of my classes. That's all the homework is in my classes: reading. I enjoy the reading for my Error Detection class a lot. The reading for New Testament is really enjoyable when I'm in the mood for it, and I actually seem to enjoy the reading for American Heritage at times as well. Though, it's in third place. For New Testament I have to report how much of the reading I did, so I do it. Most of it. (The amount of reading is somewhat ridiculous.) American Heritage... it just means I miss one more question in the weekly quizzes. I'm actually surprised by how much I remember from History in high school and middle school. I actually learned in those classes?? Insanity.

In other exciting news, it's getting a little hot. Well, actually it's only bothering me because our apartment doesn't have air conditioning, which is still kind of shocking to me. Going through summer without air conditioning? That would be a death wish back in Texas. Here in Utah it just means that it's uncomfortably warm in the apartment. We just leave the windows open at night to cool things down and it's usually okay. Though, since most of my time is spent inside the Talmage building working or in class, I don't notice the weather. Just when I ride my bike to and from school and walking between classes and such.

If you'd like a follow-up for the Lois and Clark watching, we did in fact finish season 1 and discovered that Warner Brothers has full episodes up on their website for all 4 seasons. So we can watch it online legally! Crazy stuff. Right now we're at the end of season 3. We'll probably be done with the series by the end of summer term. :P

In actual exciting news, Steve and I are planning a trip to Ohio in August as a sort of delayed honeymoon. We'll be going to Cedar Point and the accompanying water park, a baseball game, and touring around Kirtland. I'm really looking forward to it. We had flight vouchers for $300 each from last year, so the plane tickets were free! Nice. I keep thinking about how nice it is right now with just the two of us. Whenever we have kids we won't be able to take trips like this... so we'll try to enjoy it while it lasts. :) Not to mention having the money for this type of thing. If anyone has other suggestions of things we can do in Ohio, we're open for suggestions!

Lois and Clark

2010-06-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Summer term just started last Monday, and Steve and I are both taking classes. I'm taking American Heritage (finally), second half of New Testament (Acts to Revelations), Error Detection (detecting errors in individual parts in band--really great class!), and Beginning Weight Training. My arms are pretty sore from Weight Training right now, though my legs really aren't sore. I guess riding my bike to and from school everyday has put my legs in some sort of shape. American Heritage doesn't seem too bad so far. It's actually pretty interesting. If I can just keep up with the readings, I think I'll be just fine.

What is really nice about Summer term so far is that my classes start at 9 and 10 AM instead of 8 AM. That means that we can actually get up at about the same time everyday instead of me getting up and saying goodbye to an asleep Steve before I leave in the morning. Steve also is generally getting home earlier because he's not taking a CS class and is now a TA for CS 345 as his job which is a normal work schedule, unlike his job as a Research Assistant which allowed him to work whenever he wanted. He's still doing research but is doing it as a 500-level CS class. It worked out pretty nicely, actually.

All of that means that this past week we've been able to actually spend our evenings together at home. Yes--we actually eat breakfast and dinner together! To connect it with the title of the blog--we've also been watching Lois and Clark together this past week. Last Christmas Steve gave me a bunch of Superman-related DVDs, including the first season of Lois and Clark. Unfortunately, TV shows are so easy to just keep watching... and watching... and watching. And then suddenly it's past midnight. So, we haven't exactly been going to bed early this week. But, we're really enjoying the show. I can't help but relate it to Smallville. The problem will be when we're done with season 1. We'll need to find someplace online to watch them or buy them or something. We'll look forward to that. Speaking of which, perhaps I should actually catch up on Smallville season 9 that I've basically completely missed. Apparently they are going to start a season 10 of Smallville this September. SEASON TEN! That's absolutely insane. I'll have to see what they did in season 9.

So, that's us right now. Summer term and Lois and Clark. It's great times. :)

Super Mario Bros (NES)

2010-06-15T19:53:00.000-07:00

In the last couple years flash games have made our lives so much more fun. They've also helped us waste a lot of time. So, finally one of the best games ever, has now been ported to flash as "Super Mario Crossover" thanks to Exploding Rabbit. The incredible awesomeness of this port is that not only do you have Mario to play with but you also have Link, Samus, Bill, Simon and Mega Man. Also, you can save and load your progress through the original Super Mario levels. Additionally, you get the sound effects and the theme music to the games from which the character you are using originated from. The best thing is that it is FREE! I have never had so much fun (nor made it so far) playing Super Mario Brothers for NES.

Check it out. The only regrets you might have will come from playing it too much.

NOTE: In the video that are posted of the game play on Exploding Rabbit's site, he swears a lot. If you find that offensive, do not watch the videos where he is shown side by side with his screen.

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Other fun stuff involving Mario:

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Super Mario NES Sheet Music:
http://www.mariopiano.com/mario-sheet-music-overworld-main-theme.html

Recital Videos

2010-06-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

If you weren't able to see my recital, Steve was nice enough to take a video for me! So, we edited it and uploaded it in pieces on youtube for others to see. I also have copies of the audio recording that has better sound quality that we'll send out soon enough for those who want it. We are also going to make some DVDs that will have these videos but in much higher quality.

Enjoy! :)

Intro

Telemann in c minor for two oboes, harpsichord, and basso continuo

Schreck Sonata Op. 13 (1st movement)

Schreck Sonata Op. 13 (2nd movement)

Schreck Sonata Op. 13 (3rd movement)

(intermission)

Poulenc Sonata for oboe and piano (1st movement)

Poulenc Sonata for oboe and piano (2nd movement)

Poulenc Sonata for oboe and piano (3rd movement)

Suppression (the piece I wrote)

Fantasie Pastorale by Bozza

New-ish Blog

2010-06-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've decided that Steve and I can have a joint blog like most other married couples have, so I'll post some updates there:

http://morleys2.blogspot.com

Good times!

Recital Time!

2010-05-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

I think Steve and I are going to be using this as our blog for updates and such. Which means I'll probably be doing most of the updates since Steve isn't really into blogging that much.

Here we are on Sunday relaxing a bit from a busy Spring term. It's nice to have some moments to relax. This week I have my recital which means this will be a fairly stressful week. As soon as it's over though I'll feel so good to have accomplished something I've wanted to do for a while. What's also cool about this recital is that I'm performing a piece that I wrote: "Suppression". It's kind of a depressing sounding piece as the title suggests. I basically felt like I had to keep in all my emotions. I felt like I had nobody I could tell them to (which wasn't true at all), but I just didn't want to give anyone the burden of my frustrations. So, instead of getting it out on them, I wrote a song about it. It has many moments when my suppression wasn't quite working and I have "outbursts" of emotion. It's kind of a cool piece. I'm not sure what some people will think, but I like it. Also, for the record, I wrote this piece the semester before Steve and I started dating. Ever since then I haven't felt like I needed to hold back nearly as much. Steve's pretty good about getting that stuff out of me even when I'm reluctant. :) So, if you're free Friday at 7:30 PM you should come hear me in the Madsen Recital Hall in the HFAC!

So two days ago (May 28th) was our 9 month anniversary. Wow! Nine months! And still no kids yet. :P It's been a lot of fun so far. We've got a nice apartment in Wymount with 2 bedrooms and lots of other things we didn't think we'd have at this point in our lives. Such as a projector. Yes. We don't have a TV, but Steve found a projector at a garage sale last year for about $100 and actually bought it. So, our second bedroom functions as the movie room with a couch and white shower curtain as the projector screen. We also have 374 movies. Yikes! It was somewhat of an addiction when we were engaged to go and get used movies online or at FYE... and the collection just kept growing and growing.

We have officially decided that we'll be staying in this apartment for the next year since we don't like moving and think this is a nice place to live. It is a little more expensive than off-campus, but it's really close to lots of good things such as school, the temple, the student health center, the stadium, the creamery, and some other places. We've got things all setup nicely and the idea of moving just doesn't sound too much fun if it's not entirely necessary.

So... I think that'll do for an update right now. I'll try to get back into the swing of updating fairly regularly.

Snow Storm in May

2010-05-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

We awoke this morning to snow and slush. Which covered the green trees and broke their branches. It was an exciting morning (especially for Sarah, she biked to school in it). Luckily most of the damage appeared to have been done to the trees. Many of the walkways were blocked but no cars that I could see were damaged.

Ethics

2010-03-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

"Setting any and all political correctness aside, 'a man's word is his bond.'" This should be the norm among all people. A person should have integrity and comport them-self with complete honesty. This can be difficult but it is worth it. For when a person is honest and does what they say they will and keeps their promises, no matter how difficult, that person can be trusted with anything. This applies at all levels, from prisoners to jailers, from illegal immigrants to natural born citizens, from stay-at-home moms to the President of the country, from man to God. No one is exempt from the need for personal honesty and integrity. Without it we are doomed but with it we will prevail over everything.

Hurray For Google!

2010-03-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

"Hurray for Google for standing up against the censorship engine of China. As we all know by now, Google recently got in a fight with the Chinese government about their self censorship laws. Google believes that all information should be a click of a button away and censoring content should be left to the users discretion. I am a fan of this. China’s government however does not see it this way, they are tyrannical and scared. They want all of the benefits of capitalism without giving up their communistic control over every aspect of everything. They are scared that if people knew the truth, they would rebel and the government would lose all power and would have to stop acting like Big Brother. So, for Google to come out and say that they will not support such hypocritical desires. They will not support tyranny, is an incredible step for a corporation to make. One would expect that from a country’s government, but usually when profit is on the line, corporations put up with anything to make an extra buck. Not Google. Google, the force that powers our searches and runs the foundation of our internet based communication and enjoyments, is acting like a country of its own and standing up against censorship. That is awesome. That is a company with morals. That is being responsible. That is a company that I would work for. I applaud you Google. Well done. Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to see what you do next." - Steven Morley

2 Forces

2010-03-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

The forces for both good and evil fight constantly for domination. This especially true on the Internet. The Internet is filled with great things that edify, uplift, inform or delight its visitors. The Internet is also packed with derisive, insulting, pornographic, hateful, and disgusting content. The need to strictly adhere to our morals and only patronize those things online that we would patronize in the real world grows more important daily. If we do not do this, the evil side of the Internet will start to overcome the good. Hate and evil will be the pervading forces in our homes and our children won't learn about the better way. Let us therefore support the good on the Internet and help it to overcome the evil.

Pi(e) Day - An Irrational Holiday - Pictures

2010-03-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

Here are all the pies that we made:

4 Apple, 2 Raspberry, 2 Banana Cream, 3 Cherry, Lemon, 3 Peach, 2 strawberry, Cherry Cheesecake, Swiss apple, 2 Chicken Pot Pies (1.5 were consumed for dinner), Strawberry Cheesecake, Pecan, Walnut, 2 Chocolate Pudding, 2 Blueberry, 2 Very Berry, Shepherd's Pie (consumed for dinner) and an Apple Crisp.

Pi(e) Day - An Irrational Holiday

2010-03-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

On March 13, (because we decided to celebrate my brother's birthday on the 14th) we celebrated Pi Day at my house in grand fashion. We baked 32 pies. Are we crazy? No, we're just nerds (my wife can recite 320+ digits of Pi). So, since my wife loves the number Pi and I love to bake pies it made sense to celebrate this wonderfully irrational and nerdy holiday. To do this we started planning well in advance. First, we made a list of all of our favorite pies as well as a few that we wanted to experiment with. Second, we went to the grocery store and hit up sales to get the most pie making supplies possible. Last, we invited a bunch of our nerdy friends over and gave them assignments to bring the rest of the needed supplies. What followed was wonderful, our friends arrived around 4 pm on Saturday and we worked until the glorious collection of pies were complete. We pulled the last one from the oven at midnight, Sunday morning (or in other words our pies were ready just in time for Pi day). It was marvelous, to spend time with friends in such a fun and delicious way. Happy Pi day to all.

The World Is Flat - UPS

2010-03-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

The people at UPS deserve a lot of respect. They toil all day doing millions of things that we don't even fathom. According to Friedman's The World Is Flat, they are not only involved in the business of delivering packages worldwide but they also operate warehouses and repair centers for companies, finance corporate ventures and provide or streamline supply-chain systems for businesses of all sizes. This is amazing. These guys are not only skilled drivers who delivery efficiency and professionalism is unmatched, but they also are skilled technicians, pilots, engineers, salespeople, bankers and advocates.

With companies like UPS in the world, it's not surprising that the world's markets are open to everyone, everywhere. As a result of UPS's ventures in the world, we can now print shipping labels from our home computers and don't have to go to some store and pay extra processing fees. From UPS we get the package tracking system that tells us if our present for a friend is going to arrive by his birthday or if we should also buy a card for our friend. From UPS we have gained an increased sense that we can rely on our delivery systems and trust that they will do what they say they will and that they will be on time. Thanks to UPS and the way they have helped to bring the world together, the world is a better place and businesses all over function more efficiently and cost effectively.

Star Trek

2010-03-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

The society presented in Star Trek: The Next Generation is a an example of an Utopian society that we should seek to emulate. Throughout the episodes of Star Trek relevant societal and moral issues are regularly brought to the public eye on the screen. In one episode, the brilliant ship's engineer, Geordi La Forge, is once again tasked with saving the Enterprise through a daring feat of engineering involving improving the ships engines in a way never thought possible. To accomplish this he enters the holodeck and recreates not only the ships main engineering section but also the likeness of a female engineer who helped design the ship's engines and who recently had published some new and impressive theories about how to improve them. Geordi, with his created friend's help, creates a solution to the problem at hand and saves the day once again. This is great, right? Well, yes, and no, because there is a follow-up to this story in a subsequent episode. In the subsequent episode, the engineer who "helped" Geordi save the day previously visits the ship in person and discovers Geordi's holodeck program. In a moment of misunderstanding between her and Geordi she comes to feel not only mortified but the use of her likeness in this fashion but also feels used and violated by it. What follows is an excellent discussion that is in essence a promotion of fair use doctrines, respect of privacy, seeking to understand each other's point of view before jumping to rash conclusions and most importantly a seeking of understanding and forgiveness. This type of thing that should be played out much more often than it is in real life. Companies, instead of seeking damages for minor wrong-doings of youths, such as downloading music or uploading movies to YouTube, should first seek to discuss the infraction of their copyrights with the foolish youngster. People, instead of taking offense and immediately yelling or getting physical about minor offenses such as being budged in the checkout line should take a step back and evaluate the situation and seek a civil discussion. We should all try to respect others and their reputations, wishes and individuality just as we want them to do for us. If we do this, we can reach that respectful, idealistic and Utopian state that is portrayed in Star Trek and then we can focus on having and enjoying such exciting adventures as the cast of the show do.

Social Media and the Military

2010-03-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

The Pentagon recently lifted bans on using social networking sites for on duty soldiers and other military personnel so that they can keep in contact with their families and friends easier. This is a great thing for all those who have loved ones in the military. I hope that as a result of this decision, our troops will be the recipients of even greater respect and support from all of us back home in the States. With this change in policy, we will be better able to encourage those overseas and have them instantly read our praises and well-wishing on Facebook, MySpace and elsewhere. We will be able to hear from our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who are in the thick of things through Twitter and know that they are alright. Yes, there are still some restrictions. However the peace of mind, the increased comforting of worried hearts, and the boost in morale on all sides that this will bring will be great. Thank you Pentagon. Thank you military men and women of the USA!

Home

2010-02-22T20:43:00.000-08:00

My home is my sanctuary. My home is the place where the day's cares and the long hours studying and at work fade from memory. It is a place of worship and meditation. It is a place where the commandments of the Lord are kept and His Spirit is felt. It is a place where some of the most private thoughts and conversations occur. My home is a castle. It is a haven. It is a stronghold against the influences of the outside world. It is a place of safety, security and trust. It is a place that does not take well to being violated. My home is a place of friendship. It always has room for guests. It is a place that is hard to leave and still be hungry. It is a place of eating and sleeping. It is a place of play. It is filled with joy, laughter, dancing and music. My home is a place of learning and experience. It is a place where everything is possible. It is a place of reading and imagination. It is a place that embraces the future and technology yet reveres traditions and the past. My home is a place for feeling. It is a place where tears can be shed. It is a place of apologies and forgiveness. It is a place of beauty and peace. It is a place for reflection. It is full of love. My home is where my wonderful wife is.

Personal Responsibility

2010-02-17T15:50:00.000-08:00

One of the true marks of a man is his ability and willingness to take responsibility and act, even when he doesn't want to. A great problem in today’s society is the lack of this characteristic in our men. We are growing lazier, we are pinning our responsibilities on others and we are complacent about matters that we should not be.

Dr. Clifford Stoll is a great example of one who took on a responsibility he didn't want and did great and effective things because he did. Here is a man that, when faced with what looked like a small problem but turned out to be a huge one, carried out his responsibilities dutifully for the 2 years that it took to wrap up the entire thing. He could have thrown in the towel when he wasn't receiving support from anyone. He could have quit and let things go like everyone wanted him too. Instead, he steadily worked on his undesired problem for its entire duration and as a result he was instrumental in putting behind bars malicious hackers in a foreign country that were selling our government's secrets to the KGB. That is the kind of man that is worth emulating.

The great travesty is that such men as Dr. Stoll aren't being emulated as a whole any more. Instead, the news is filled with stories of people feeling entitled to something that someone else has worked hard for. The courts are filled with person x suing person y over some trivial affair. People don't fulfill their responsibility to be neighborly and helpful in their communities. Instead of helping with the band boosters like a concerned parent, they sue them because their kid rolled their ankle at practice. We hear every day about some new government program that the leftists are promoting that will raise our children for us so that we can go out and selfishly have "fun." We hear of parents splitting up because of minor tiffs, or even worse because of the man's infidelity, leaving the kids emotionally scarred and unable to trust. Men now-a-days refuse to help his fellow man, as is his duty, because he "doesn't want to get involved or interfere" or he "is just minding his own business."

Come on men! Rise to the occasion. Be men. Take responsibility for raising good, smart, well-mannered children. Be there for them as a dad should. Work for what you want or need with honest labor and ingenuity. Help your neighbor. Don't take him to court because he mows his lawn earlier than you would like on a Saturday morning. Instead, be responsible and talk to him about it. Compromise. Take the task that is not what it seems and stick with it. It will be rewarding in the end, not only for its completion but also for the satisfaction of having done something worth doing. Preside over your families in righteousness and teach your children to avoid the evil in the world today. Don't blame your short comings nor your failings as a dad on others. Be a man. Be responsible.

The Temple

2010-02-03T21:37:00.000-08:00

I love going to the temple when I have family names to do. Don't get me wrong, I love to go regardless of whether or not I have family names. There is, however, something much more satisfying about doing baptisms and the other temple ordinances for people that you know are related to you. It's like helping a stranger with their car. I feel good after rendering my services to someone that I know needs the help, but usually that is the last time I will ever see or talk to the person. However, when I know the stranger to be a relative of mine, the service rendered is much more satisfying because I know that I will most likely have some interaction with that person again in the future. I know that some day I will be privileged to meet these men whom I have served in the temple. I will be able to talk to them and learn about their lives. I will be able to see that my service made a difference. I love going to the temple when I have family names to do.

Selfishness

2010-01-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

Having been a missionary in South Korea, there are a few things that greatly pain me in the recent news. The first is the hatred of the North towards the South. The second is the peril that the Northern dictator, "Crazy Kim," puts the entire peninsula in every day with his careless, selfish, power-hungry whims. Last are the moronic "missionaries" from nations foreign to North Korea that illegally sneak into the country to spread the "Gospel." They are not only fulfilling their own selfish agendas and knowingly breaking the law, but also causing lasting harm to a paranoid country that is not ready to receive the Gospel. My love for the Korean people was forged from service, struggle and help from the Spirit of the Lord. My love is strong for the many friends that I have in that country and my tolerance is thin for those who try to cause them harm. In my mind, hurting those wonderful people physically is just as bad as injuring them and future generations spiritually. Yes, the people of the North do deserve the Gospel, but they are not ready. Yes, the people of both the North and the South deserve freedom from fear and war. However, the North just isn't ready for it. The hearts of their leaders are cold and hard. Many do and will ask, just as many have asked, "When will the time be? When can we have peace? When will the healing begin?" My answer is I don't know. Only God knows such things. What I do know is that when the time does come, everyone will know. It will be obvious. The pain and the hurt, both physical and spiritual, will be ready to be healed. Until then, please stop hurting those I love with your foolish actions and your selfish deeds. I implore you, please stop.

The First Amendment

2010-01-21T16:25:00.000-08:00

Companies have been able to support and promote the country's athletes, celebrities and other public figures for years but would have faced criminal penalties and fines for doing the same for politicians running for office. Thanks to technological advances and websites such as Twitter, YouTube, Google, Facebook, Blogspot and many others the Supreme Court, on January 21st, threw out long standing campaign finance laws that had previously inhibited the expression of privately held thoughts and opinions. It is so nice to know that if a non-profit organization wants to bash the incumbent governor on their website or tout the merits of the governor's opposition for public office on Youtube, they can. Previously these rights were unconstitutionally denied specialized organizations, interest groups and companies of all sizes under the guise of fairness. Now we can finally see who McDonald's supports for president in 2012. We can hear the N.R.A.'s unadulterated opinion on the airwaves, sponsored by the N.R.A. itself, instead of hearing it contorted and second hand from left-wing news agencies like CNN. Thank the Lord that we live in the U.S. of A where such freedoms are allowed and whenever mistakenly refused us are swiftly returned.

Why need we know our Creator?

2010-01-21T03:06:00.000-08:00

Think about it in terms of understanding, using, maintaining and expanding upon someone else's source code. To make this comprehend-able, let's say this source code is millions of lines long. Also, this code has no external documentation or in-line comments. Therefore, without knowing the original coder there is a lot that you have no way of knowing. We would be unable to ask him questions about the code, his advice concerning it or even what his plans for it were. We would have no instructions on how to fully understand the code or how utilize the program it compiles into optimally. This sort of undertaking is virtually impossible and if it were possible would take a lifetime to complete. This is why we need to know our Creator, the original Coder. Through knowing Him we can come to understand the "code" that makes up our lives, who we are and what our purpose here is. Through knowing our Creator we can be guided to the portions of code that really matter and skip over or avoid the petty or less meaningful sections. Through knowing our Creator our days will be less stressful and more full of joy from understanding.

Back to school

2010-01-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

We got a moment of relaxation with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day yesterday, but now I'm back at school. I didn't do as much homework as I should have, and unfortunately wasn't able to spend much time with Steve, but it was a nice break regardless. Steve has been working on the car (that my Grandpa Bruderer gave to us since he can't drive anymore) and it's been taking longer than anticipated. It's either do the work manually while buying the new parts for a good couple hundred dollars or pay someone else to do it for about $1400. We don't exactly have oodles of money to spend... so it's costing Steve his time. I wish I knew more about cars to help out, but I would slow things down by not knowing much of anything. Oh well.

What else of importance? I was considering just losing gavinmikhailfans.net since I stopped updating it and the forums were getting swamped with bots. I had closed down the forums and the domain name had expired... but I decided yesterday to just get it for another year anyway. Gavin is doing more now, and I think I could keep up with it. I spent so much time on the layout and it got a fair amount of traffic; I think it could really be something. Unfortunately, I should not have kept thephantomzoners.com since that has been abandoned with a lot of bots as well, but I guess I had set it to automatically renew so I've already been charged for another year. Oops. I'll set it so it doesn't do that again. Maybe this summer I can give Jephthah's Domain a new look. It's had that one for a while. I think I might change the color scheme to something more happy as well. I unfortunately came up with black and blue in high school thinking that black was the coolest background color there is. Eh, it's alright. But, I think white with maybe a dark blue and and yellow or something would be more eye-catching and exciting. Then people might be more motivated to actually stay on my website and look around. I've had it for a while and have definitely spent too much time on it to give it up. I can put whatever I want on that website. Yay for websites!

This all came up because my dad is coming up with another business. He wants a website for his Christmas light shows. He's making a program that makes it easier to program cooler stuff, and he wants to sell it. superstarlights.com has been bought and is waiting to be made. I've got a basic idea for it, but right now the roadblock is that byethost (my hosting) is having trouble sending me e-mails, so I still haven't gotten the information to login and upload things to it. I've contacted support... and we're getting there. Wow. I've made a lot of websites. I've got jephthahs-domain.com, spiderwebman.net, gavinmikhailfans.net, thephantomzoners.com (didn't do much to make this though, since it's just a pre-made forum), and now this superstarlights.com. A pretty good resume if I wanted a job making websites. In fact, my dad is paying me to keep up with spiderwebman.net (his other business) and superstarlights.com, so that's pretty cool. Extra money is always nice.

Wow. I think this could possibly win the competition for most boring blog post ever. Oops. I was trying to make these more exciting. Oh well. Maybe next time?

Small Post Number 1

2010-01-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

In this world there are uncountable multitudes of objects, ideas, and life forms. Amongst all of these things, we humans seem to value only two. These two are the people and the things in our lives. Our society as a whole and usually as individuals as well, loves technology or the things in our lives. We love all our labor saving devices. We love all of the opportunities, places we can travel, time we can save, information we can learn, and things we can see because of our beloved technologies. When used for wholesome, educational, edifying or productive purposes this is a good thing. All of our technology, be it cars, planes, computers, or electricity becomes extremely valuable and important in such cases. However, when used to cheat, steal, pollute, degrade, put down, promote superiority, or defame, our technologies are horrible and inappropriate things. The challenge that we all face is discerning the appropriate use of what we have and safeguarding that other thing that we care so much about, the people, including ourselves, in our lives. If we were all to take the time and energy to do this, then internet filtering would be unnecessary, fewer laws would need to be enacted, and some could even be repealed, and who knows but that wars would cease and hunger would become a thing of the past. All of this because we would use the things we love to help better those we love.

Classes This Semester

2010-01-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

How do you like the new layout? I'm not completely sold on it, but figured I should change things a little bit since I've had the other one for a while. Eventually I might make one myself so I feel more unique.

I'm going to complain a little bit about powerpoint. Students of all grade levels know how painful they can be, and I think in college they tend to be a little worse since they have more material to teach, and most of them have never taken a teaching course. They just know what they're teaching really well, not necessarily how to be a good teacher. I'm really thinking of my philosophy teacher in particular this semester. His slides are just bullet points of sentences that are very wordy. He could condense them into bullet points of what we really need to learn. Then he talks, and talks, and talks, and talks, and talks about things not on the slide and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from the slides. Sometimes he says things on the slides and says that we won't be tested on them, and sometimes we will. I don't know how I'm going to do in the class. The good news is that I do enjoy doing the reading--even if there is a lot of it. I really enjoy philosophy and thinking about ridiculous things using logic. I just don't know what I'll need for the class, and his presentations are really really boring.

My schedule is slowly getting more packed during the day with less time for work, which just means less money. I won't be able to go to as many reed classes as I hoped... but hopefully I can still go to Geralyn's reed class on Friday. I'm finding that my palm pilot is really helping out. It helps my brain not have to remember everything. Whenever I remember a random thing I'm need to do, I add it to my to-do list. It's great.

It's weird to think that I'm getting so close to graduation. After this semester, it's just another year! Then a semester of student teaching, though that will be a lot different from normal school. It's all one class I'll be able to focus on. Hopefully I can student teach wherever Steve goes for grad school. He just has this semester, and then two more. It's amazing to think where my life is now. I'm almost in my 4th year in college, married, and 20 years old. The 20 years old isn't as hard to believe. I still feel young since most everyone else I'm around is older than me, namely Steve and all of his (now my) friends. Steve's 24 and they are around the same age. But, that's alright. I've always seemed to like hanging around people older than me, and now I'll be "hanging around" Steve for quite a while. :)

I swear there are more exciting things happening in my life. I don't know. I think this will do for now. I'll try to make future entries happen more often and be more exciting. Yay. :)

A great waste of time blocked on the CS servers

2010-01-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

http://www.stumbleupon.com/ is the best and most informative and educational waste of time that I know. Always something new and interesting. I do recommend it for passing time but don't recommend because it will waste more time than you have to pass. Good luck.
-Steve

Technorati

2010-01-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

For proof that I have, as requested by our CS 404 professor, signed up for Technorati:

"Thank you for submitting your blog claim on Technorati. Technorati will need to verify that you are an author of the site http://morleys2.blogspot.com/ by looking for a unique code. We have just assigned the claim token QW2RC6FE696H to this claim. Please visit http://technorati.com/account/ for more details, including how to use the claim token."

Testing 1,2,3

2010-01-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

This is a test of the internet blogging system. Were this an actual emergency, I likely would not be on the internet right now.

I'm Married

2010-01-03T22:45:00.000-08:00

I suddenly got terrible at updating this thing. I was doing so well with the Sunday update thing, and then I left for Korea and Japan/got engaged and it all went downhill. Tons of new things to talk about!

First of all, I got married on August 28th, 2009 in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple to Steven Adam Morley. I am now Sarah Bruderer Morley and have most things changed to say that. It's still a hard question when people ask me what my name is, but it's getting better. :) I am definitely enjoying the married life. It was a little weird for the first month or so since it was really just us two. Two people in an apartment. No other roommates, no other distractions, just us. Not to mention that he's male! I'm used to living with girls and their perks, it's definitely different living with a guy, but I'm into the swing of things. His habits, my habits, and just our schedules. Now it feels pretty normal. :)

We finally got all of our wedding pictures as of today. It was annoying because our photographer said she would send us CDs of the pictures 5 weeks after the wedding for editing and whatnot. Alright, sounds good. Two months later, we have nothing. So I called, e-mailed, called again, etc. She wasn't very good at responding... anyway, we finally got our CDs about 10 weeks after our wedding to find out that about 5 of the pictures weren't written to the CDs correctly. So I called... nothing for about a week. I e-mailed, and then she responded in like an hour. It was quite unexpected. Anyway, we finally got them all. You can see almost all of them (except the 5 that didn't work) on facebook. This is a pretty good one:

What else? The semester has ended and the new one is starting tomorrow. I did slightly better than my GPA, so I guess being married hasn't been detrimental to my grades. :) I took CS 240 which was rather intimidating since it's known to be a very time consuming Computer Science class, but I ended up with an A! Yay!

For Christmas, Steve and I flew back to Texas and we actually got a white Christmas! That's absolutely insane! I've never had a white Christmas in Texas. The only times we had white Christmases was when we went to Utah for Christmas, which I think was only once. Maybe twice. I thought it was cool. Kind of interesting that the first Christmas Steve comes to Texas for Christmas, we happen to have a white Christmas. :P

I got some pretty awesome gifts as well. The biggest one was a palm pilot! I'm actually really excited about it, because then I should be more organized! I have my calendar all set up for my classes and such and hopefully I can just bring it with me and schedule things right when I hear about them, set it to remind me, and then I won't have to worry about remembering them! It's pretty awesome. I really like being organized.

This past week has been a lot of fun. We got back from Texas on the 29th and have had people over almost every day to play games and eat food. That's probably my favorite thing to do, just play games with friends and family. It was a little ironic that the only day we didn't have people over was on New Year's Eve since Steve wasn't feeling very well. We ended up just watching two movies and playing the game of Life. It's been a long time since I've played that game--a lot more luck is involved than I remembered. :P It was fun, though. Steve wasn't really up for a really intense strategic game anyway. It was just relaxing and fun.

So, happy 2010! I'll try to be better at updating this thing.

I'm getting married!

2009-08-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

I know it's been an incredibly long time since I've updated... but... oh well. :)

Anyone who is reading this probably already knows, but I'm engaged! Steve and I are going to get married on August 28th at 10 AM in the Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple. Yes, that's a week from tomorrow. Wow! It's coming so close!

Other than preparing a wedding, this summer has been pretty insanely awesome. After Winter semester ended, I had a week or so of staying at my Uncle Don and Aunt Debra's place until I left on tour with the BYU Wind Symphony to Japan and South Korea! Whoa! Yeah, I totally went to South Korea for a week and a half and then to Japan for a week and a half. It was basically an awesome experience, though I was sure aching the whole time to just go back and see Steve again. It probably took away from what I could have gotten out of the trip, but it was still awesome and testimony building. My favorite part was probably going to church in Korea and Japan and seeing how similar the church is EVERYWHERE in the world! It's amazing! I loved singing hymns in English while the rest of the congregation is singing the same melody in Korean or Japanese! The same spirit is there. Oh... such good stuff. I loved it.

I did also happen to see Steve in Korea for a couple days! That was awesome. It was incredibly hard to leave him again in Korea knowing that I'd have to wait yet another two weeks before seeing him... but I obviously survived. :) I love him.

After coming back from tour, I stayed with Ashley in her apartment for a couple days before going up to Idaho with Steve to meet some of his family on his mom's side. We still aren't engaged at this point... but everyone is expecting it. I'm just waiting on Steve to buy a ring and propose. :) That was a lot of fun--especially to spend some time with Steve that I had earnestly wanted for about a month. (The couple hours in Korea hardly fulfilled that desire to see him.) But, alas, it didn't last too long as I left a couple days after Idaho to go back to Texas for a couple days before going up Nashville with my mom for Fan Fair! We got to help run Billy Gilman's booth since I'm on the staff at BillyGilmanFans.com and meet up with Andrew and Greg again. Aww, such good times that was. At least my cell phone worked that time and I got to talk to Steve at night before going to bed. I also have many pictures from this, but I don't have my camera with me. I'll post them on facebook later. :)

After Nashville, we went back to Texas where we happen to meet Steve at the Dallas airport! Well, "happen" meaning we planned it all out and such. That was also great fun. He got to meet my parents and all of my siblings except Paul. He got to see the house I grew up in and the town I grew up in. Still not officially engaged yet and Steve is making all these excuses on why he doesn't have a ring and how he doesn't have any money. I know he didn't have much money and I was just hoping it didn't go on for too much longer since we really needed to get to planning if we wanted an August wedding. Okay... yes. We were planning things about 2 weeks or so before we were engaged. :)

So, we flew back to Provo together that Saturday on June 20th. That night Steve and I had planned a dinner and a movie date at his place at 7. I thought it was cute to actually plan a date since usually it's, "What should we do tonight?" "We could watch a movie at your place like we always do." "Yeah, alright. We'll have ice cream, too." Something like that. So, I show up at his place at 7 (he insisted on me not coming earlier) and he's standing at his door with this grin on his face. He's definitely planning something. Proposal? No... he doesn't have a ring! Right?

I walk in and he has dinner prepared with candles on the table and classical music playing in the background. Oh boy. Somethings up. So we have dinner, and during dinner he tells me that he got the movie we can watch tonight in the mail. "What movie?" "You'll see." He won't tell me the movie? What the heck? After dinner he gets it out and it's a special edition DVD of "V for Vendetta" which just happened to be the movie we watched on our first date back in February. Okay... I'm really suspicious now. So he asks me to go ahead and turn on the TV and put the DVD in, so I did. I turn on the TV... open up the DVD case and this is what I see:

(That's a picture of Steve and I in front of the Seoul Korea Temple)

I looked at it not knowing whether I should answer just then or what, and so I looked up at Steve and he's walking towards me and he has a little black box and opens it... a ring! He has a ring! Not just any ring... but a ring that's absolutely perfect!

I gave him a couple guidelines on the type of ring that I'd like, and he did a great job. :) :) :) You can see the video when he actually proposed on facebook if you haven't already. Just as a warning, though, there is a lot of a kissing. ;)

So, I called everyone I could of think of and explained that same story to a bunch of people and went home utterly excited and overwhelmed. I'm getting married. I'm engaged. I'm only 19! I'm going to turn 20 two days after I get married on the 30th of August. I honestly never thought that I would get married so soon. It just kind of... happened.

So, after that Summer term started and we dove in head first into this huge check list of things we need to get done for the wedding. I took English 316 and Computer Science 236 and planned a wedding. Well... helped planning. Steve and I both worked on things. He was working during the day while I was at school, and in the evenings we'd try to get things done. At this point pretty much all the big stuff is done! We just need to actually go out and buy the decorations and food that we've planned on and get it all setup. Tomorrow night I'm meeting with my Aunt Kristi to see how I want my hair done when I get married. On Tuesday night I met with the Stake President to get my Temple Recommend and Living Ordinances Recommend signed. That was an awesome moment as well. Oh man, I'm so excited. It's sooo close! A week from tomorrow! This week went by quickly... next week surely will too with all the planning. I'm going to be married before I know it. Wow.

Classes finished and I'm pretty sure I pulled off an A in English 316 and a B+ in Computer Science 236. Not too shabby. It was almost an A- in CS 236, but I won't complain too much about a B+ for a pretty hard and time consuming class.

Pretty much I'm just going to Education Week and learning a bunch about marriage and life in general (volunteering at it as well so I could go to the classes for free) and just anticipating the 28th. Oh boy. So close.

I think that'll be it for now. I hope to see you at one of the three receptions!

School's Out For Summer!

2009-04-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'm officially done with my 4th semester at BYU. I should have this nice feeling of release and freedom from being done, but instead I'm just kind of there. I think I'm just a little nervous about some of my grades. I'm not going to fail any of them, but I'm almost positive I'm going to have my lowest GPA so far this semester... which really isn't too bad... but whatever. :P It'll be good. It's mostly Calculus 2, which was a freakin' beast this semester. I failed every test, but managed to be just about the average every time. It's a matter of how much they curve. I'm hoping for a B of some sort... which for a 4 credit class won't really help me out much. Oh well. It'll be okay. :)

Yesterday I moved out of my apartment, since they kicked us out, and am now at my Aunt Debra and Uncle Don's place for the next week until I head out to Korea and Japan for the Wind Symphony tour. I'm really excited to head out, but I've also this certain level of aprehension of not knowing exactly what to expect, nervous that I've forgotten something I'm supposed to have gotten since I was kind of late jumping on the tour bandwagon and haven't gotten all the information I'm supposed to have gotten the entire semester/year. Not to mention I have this huge solo I just got the part for about a week or so ago. I mean, I can play it. It's a matter of having a good read and whatnot. Which, I don't really have oodles of English Horn cane to kill a bunch of reeds with. It'll be okay, I'll just keep telling myself that. :) We have rehearsals on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from about 9-4 or something ridiculous like that. It'll be like an intense All-Region that ends with going to Korea and Japan for 3 weeks and performing. Oh boy, I really need to get back into practicing so it doesn't kill me when we rehearse. I think I'll do that tomorrow.

As far as Steve and I go (the boyfriend I went on about last entry), everything is going absolutely fantastically. There was the "Traditions Ball" that we went to about 2 weeks ago, and it was a wonderful night. Here we are all dressed up and such:

Aww... we're so cute. :) I love that picture. Right now he is in Korea since that's where he served and mission just visiting and whatnot. Yes, he was just "happen" to be there when I am for the Wind Symphony tour. Basically I really miss him right now, but I'm able to talk to him on gmail chat, so it's all good. I'm really excited to go to Korea to see him as well. :)

What else is there to go on about? Well, I've got a lot ahead of me in the next month or so. So, I'm going to be here for a week, rehearse like mad at the end of the week, leave for Korea at 5 AM Monday morning (ugh), fly on a ridiculously long flight basically all day Monday and get there and settle in Tuesday, including a performance, I'm pretty sure. I'll be in Korea for about a week and a half, and then we'll go to Japan (which will include a wake up call at about 3 AM...) for another week and a half. Then I'll come back to Salt Lake/Provo for another week or so. (I was going to try to come back to Texas ASAP after that, but I'm hoping to use that time to spend with Steve after a while of not seeing him... yes, I'm somewhat pathetic. :P) Then, I'll come back to Texas for about a week, and then head up to Nashville with my mom for the CMA Music Fest again and hang out with Greg and Andrew. It'll be a lot of fun. :) Then, after a week of that, I'll come back to Texas for a couple days, and then finally go back to Provo a couple days before I start the Summer term and move into my new apartment. It's pretty busy and travel-filled, but it'll be a lot of fun. Traveling really is a lot of fun, although exhausting. I'm not suspecting I'll get much sleep the 3 weeks I'll be in Korea and Japan. I also suspect that I won't really fully adjust to the new time zone (which is like 15 hours ahead...) and then come back utterly exhausted and probably sleep for 24 hours straight. Ugh.

Alright, I think that'll do for this update. I'll try to remember to update next Sunday, but then I actually have an excuse to not update for a while since I'll be out of the country. I have absolutely no idea if I'll have access to a computer. I'm hoping so since I'll have a ridiculous amount of e-mail to go through... we'll just see. I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures. :)

Sarah has a boyfriend??

2009-04-05T07:42:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is very true. Sarah does indeed have a boyfriend. Weird! That's my excuse for not keeping up with my blog, as well. We are both rather busy during the week, so we really only get to spend that much time together over the weekends, which include Sundays. Oh well. Here I am before Conference and I figured I should try to post to catch people up with my life.

This week was basically incredibly busy. I kept staying in the Talmage working on this lab for CS 124 until midnight, only to not finish it in time. It turns out I spent a couple hours on something I didn't have to do... which, I did learn a lot from, but it's not like I have oodles of extra time to learn something I don't have to. I'm pretty sure it's done now, hopefully it will pass off tomorrow. I also had 2 tests I took back to back, with another test I'll take tomorrow, and I had to play my mock jury in Master Classes and attempt to practice with my accompanist since Hindemith is incredibly hard to play with the Piano. Oh yeah, and I had a concert Thursday night. But, no worries! The week is over! There's just this week, and then half of next week, and then FINALS! It's so freakin' close!

Okay, so I'm dating. That's was something else that was somewhat upsetting this past week as well. I was so busy (and so was he, with this project that never seems to end) that we could never do anything. I'd come home and see my roommate and my 5th roommate (basically her fiance) spending time together studying or on the couch, and I'd get jealous rather than annoyed. "She has time to spend with her boyfriend..." But yesterday we went bowling and then watched a movie, and today I'm going to his place to watch general conference. :)

Something that made this week bearable was April Fool's day. Steve and I (that's his name, by the way, Steve Morley) were "officially" dating on the 25th (last Wednesday), and then on April Fool's we figured it'd be fun to be engaged. Somewhat of an impulsive decision at about midnight in the Talmage labs the night before. Oh boy, it made April Fool's utterly hilarious. It all started with my mom sending me a text that morning that said, "Sooooooo I saw facebook. April Fool's?????????? Call me. Love, Mom" LOL! I laughed so hard! I called her back, and she was actually believing it. I had to actually say, "Mom, I'm not engaged. It's April Fool's." It's been a week! A week since we've been dating! I am at BYU, but I could never make a decision like that in a week. Steve was getting congratulations all day long, as well. Wednesday was the peak of my stress/business this week, and I happened to have a great day because of my fake engagement. Steve did mention that this was kind of crying wolf, which I guess it is, but it was fun anyway. :) I figure when I actually get engaged it'll be something people will be expecting, and it will most likely not be on April Fool's Day.

If any of you don't frequent facebook, I'll include some pictures for your enjoyment. :)

Aww, we're so cute. :)

Happy Belated Pi Day!

2009-03-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I missed last week. It'll be okay. Honestly, it will. Just to "make up" for it, I have some new videos to post. So, look forward to those at the end of this post. Or, you know, don't. You could just skip all of my ramblings and move on to the videos. It won't hurt my feelings.

The past two weeks have been pretty fun. I'm starting to actually like my CS 124 class, and Calculus seems to be getting better. There was finally a new episode of Smallville (which freakin' rocked), and I performed my newest composition in Master Classes last Wednesday. I recorded it, and I'll probably post it next week or so. It's more of a contemporary piece with some new things in it. I like it a lot.

In other news, yesterday was Pi Day! There was a Pi Day celebration thing in the Wilkinson center on Friday during my CS 124 lecture... which I totally skipped to go to it. :P The biggest reason being that there was a pi recitation contest and the overall winner got an iPod shuffle. I could seriously win this thing! In the past couple of days, Ashley and I added about 40 digits of pi to our knowledge. We are now up to 240 digits. So many! Ashley went first in reciting pi, and she just messed up right at the beginning of where we started adding digits (just skipped a set), but she was still in first place. After a guy that proclaimed before going that he was "guaranteed to win." He got to 174 digits... got me worried at first. They were about to skip me, actually. There were going to end the contest, and so I walked up and said that I had signed up. So, I went. I was so incredibly nervous! Yes, I had recited pi many many times, but they were checking while I was spouting off numbers which meant I had to go slower than normal. I kept practicing saying it slower. The first 150 digits or so I usually don't really think about what numbers I'm saying. It just flows out without me thinking. But, I managed to get to all 240 without messing up. It was awesome. Right after I recited everything (in a microphone in front of a bunch of people... holy crap), this girl came up and actually interviewed me for the Daily Universe. It was kind of weird, actually. She asked questions like, "So, do you memorize other things?" Umm... yes, I do. I usually try to memorize equations for my Calculus test I had earlier this week, syntax for programming, my friends and families names and birthdays, music theory, etc... Instead I just answered that I was thinking about memorizing "e" since I thought that it usually got left out. People just love pi. So, there's a chance that I'll be mentioned in the Daily Universe... for memorizing pi. Weird. Anyway, I did win the iPod. Though, it's exactly the same as the iPod shuffle I currently have, so I'm going to sell it on amazon.com or something and split the money with Ashley. (Since we both know the same amount.) Oh man, I freakin' love it all. Being a nerd rocks!

What else of interest happened? I went and saw a play with Steve last night, "Berenice." It was actually really good! I really didn't know what to expect. Apparently it was an adaptation written by a BYU student. Really intense stuff. Our theater department has some really talented people in it. There were a couple times that this girl screamed off stage... and it freakin' scared the crap out of me every time. One: because the first time I didn't think it was part of the play and I was geniunely scared that someone was in intense pain. Two: it was done really well! It was piercingly painful to listen to. Three: I just jump at that kind of stuff easily. :) Anyway, it was good times.

What's not good times is that it seems I'm starting to get sick or something. I can't really tell what it is, either. Like, I just feel kind of weak with the occasional feeling of nausea. I took a nap today, though. That seemed to maybe help. Hopefully it doesn't turn into anything else, but I don't really see how I could "catch up" if I took some days off from school. Ugh... that'd be bad. It'll be fine. :)

Okay, so here are some videos. I really don't remember being that weird. Sometimes I worry about myself. These were all taken the same night. The "random" numbers that we're talking about are from pi... yeah... weird. But, it just makes it that much more fun to watch! Or something.

Into March

2009-03-01T23:11:00.000-08:00

Here I am in March, still surviving my 4th semester here at BYU. Things are going pretty well for the most part. My most frustrating class by far right now is Calculus. I really think I'm going to get some sort of B or C in that class, which will of course lower my GPA a fair amount since it's a freakin' 4 credit class. Though, I figured it out and it really wouldn't lower it too much. It'll be okay... I really am learning a lot. The most frustrating part is that my grades don't seem to be reflecting that very much, and our teacher hasn't really structured the class to give you much credit for trying really hard. Well, I guess he kind of has... but it's not really working for me. I got really frustrated on Friday night. There was an online homework due and I had literally spent hours on the last 4 problems that I just could not figure out what I was doing wrong. Some of them I just flat out didn't know how to do, and some of them I felt like I did but kept getting the wrong answer. So I ended up getting about a 50 on the assignment and just wasting a bunch of time trying to figure out the problems and getting no credit for using that time. It was rather frustrating. Though, I know that it really did help me learn more to go through it, right? Sure. I don't know, I'll just be happy to be through with this class.

I was complaining about CS 124 before, but now life should be a fair amount easier in that class since I passed off my last assembly lab on Friday. Now we get to do labs in C! I'm so excited. We have our second test this week, and I'm hoping to do well on it. I have learned a lot from doing the labs. Let's hope that shows on the test.

As far as other things going on, it's great. :) I absolutely love Music Theory, I seem to be doing fairly well in Dictation, Sight Singing exists, I love my Music Education class, private lessons are surprisingly going well, and work is fun. It's just the two classes for my Comp Sci major. There's this nagging thought in the back of my mind that's saying, "Why are you doing this again?" Then I remember that I'll love having the knowledge and that I really do love to learn it all. It can just be frustrating at times. I promised myself I could do it, and I'm going to stick to the plan. I can do it, gosh darn it! Prove all the people that don't believe that I can do it wrong! Mwhaha! :)

In other news, I'm actually going on dates. I know, it's incredible. What's even more incredible is that it's with the same guy! Well, I least I think you'd call them dates. We haven't really officially titled anything, but he has paid for my food and such. He's another CS 142 TA, and we were chatting on gmail, and then he said that I should come over and watch V for Vendetta with him since we were talking about it. He hadn't seen it and I was telling him how awesome it was. He happened to have it. So, about a week or so later, I actually did come over and watch it with him. Then I ended up coming over for dinner a couple days later and staying until about 10 just talking and whatnot. Then we went to Taco Bell and got ice cream on Friday night (which was somewhat unexpected), and then today I went to his place with Ashley to have dinner and play Settlers of Catan. Oh boy, it's been fun. We'll just see where it all goes. :)

I have another song that I wrote that I've somewhat deemed "finished." It's called, "Suppression." Some of the things in it have been somewhat experimental, but I like it a lot. Hopefully I can play it in Master Classes sometime and maybe record it or something.

Alright, I should head off to bed. Until next week! :)

So Quick!

2009-02-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

It's the last Sunday of February. Weird! It's gone by so quickly! That means that it's almost March, which means that we're already more than halfway done with the semester. That's actually somewhat worrisome. I don't feel like I'm more than halfway done with some of my classes, but it's all good. :)

So what happened of great importance this past week? Well, I suffered through yet another Calculus midterm. I think I did better than I did on the last one, but we'll see. I at least did better on the multiple choice, so that's somewhat encouraging. I also finished my CS 124 lab and even did the extra credit for an extra point, so I got 11 out of 10 points. I'm actually getting assembly, it's great. There's just one more lab in assembly, and then we finally get to start programming in C. I'm so excited! I'll actually know what's going on, and it seems like the labs won't take me as long. I plan on trying to do the extra credit most of the time and turn in my labs early to make up for the exam and some of the homework I've only done okay on. I could still pull off an A fairly easily if I keep that up. Oh boy, it's such good times. It's hard at first, but I love having the knowledge.

What is kind of depressing is Calc 2. There was online homework due on Friday and I worked for hours on it... ended up giving up when I had spent two hours on two problems that I just could not get. So I got a 67 on it. It just doesn't seem fair to spend that much time on something to only get a 67. I really hate the way that the class is structured. It doesn't reflect how much time you put into it very well. I really miss the way it was last semester. Our teacher likes to get behind on his schedule, so we have to shove all of these little things at the end before every test. I like him, he's a good teacher and obviously knows what he's talking about. I just miss the way it was. I am learning quite a bit, I suppose that's what matters most. I have a strange feeling that this semester will lower my GPA. It'll be okay. Maybe getting a better grade in Dictation will make up for it. I got a B+ on the last pace test! At this point I really think I have an A- in the class. That won't quite make up for some kind of B in the 4 credit Calculus class, but it'll do something. Oh well, I'm okay. Learning is what matters, and I'm definitely doing that. :)

Oh, how could I forget?? It's now official that I'm going to Korea and Japan with Wind Symphony this May! They are going on tour there, and I wasn't going to go because they just don't take the English Horn player. It's a money issue. But I found out last week that one of the Clarinet players has been having some financial issues and couldn't go, which left open a spot for me. So, I'm going!! It's insane! It only costs $1000, and then there's the fees with getting a passport. It is $1000... but this is the chance of a lifetime. I'm never going to be able to do something like this ever again. It's insane to think about, actually. I'm so excited. Which, with that means that I have to go to this culture class at 7 AM on Wednesdays. It's a fairly small price for being able to go, but that means that I'm on campus from 7 AM to 7 PM, at the least. Last Wednesday I was on campus from 7 AM until about 10 PM taking my Calculus midterm. It was such a bundle of fun. So, anyway... that's exciting. I'm also going to Fan Fair with my mom a couple weeks after that again. Man, I'm just getting into this traveling thing this summer. It'll cost some money, which I fortunately have saved up, but it'll be so much fun. I love seeing the world and different cultures. Oh boy!

Alright, I think this'll do for now. Have a wonderful week! :)

A Week of Extremes

2009-02-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

I missed Sunday's update... but oh well. This'll do. :)

This past week I felt somewhat bipolar. Maybe not in the precise definition of the condition, but just that one day I felt somewhat depressed and sad about certain things, and then the next day I was exuberantly happy. It was kind of weird. Since, though, I've mostly stayed with "exuberantly happy." Wednesday in general was a very stressful day. I wanted to get my CS 124 lab done so I wouldn't have to worry about finishing it on Thursday (since it was due on Thursday) and I had to perform the first movement of the Mozart Concerto in Master Classes that night only rehearsing with my pianist for the first time an hour before we performed (not to mention I was basically just learning the second half of it), and I had a couple other things that were due that day as well. I just wanted it to be over. I didn't seem to have much done with my lab by 8 o' clock that night, and after performing in Master Classes, I felt like I didn't do very well at all. Right after performing I was rather proud of myself for just making it through since I had only really rehearsed it once and was hoping to just get the notes and rhythms right with a couple other things. And I did just that! The 3 or 4 hours before I had spent at work listening to various recordings of people playing the first movement on youtube so I could just get it in my head. It probably would've helped to have the music in front of me, but I had that thing stuck in my head like nobody's business. I was feeling pretty good. Then came the comments. They weren't terrible, it was just nobody said anything good about it. It was all, "This should've been more exaggerated, the style needed to be more this and that..." Someone mentioned that I needed to just get a recording to know how certain things go. I knew there was one spot that many people played a certain way, but I just chose not to. I guess that made her think I didn't know how it was supposed to go. I did play one half note as one beat because I had gotten in the habit of doing that in my practicing just out of stupidity. Maybe that's what she was thinking of. After sitting down I just felt like I had completely insulted a standard in Oboe literature. Like I should've just nailed it and failed. All I wanted was one good thing said, and nobody said anything. If anything, it was like people were eager to tell me everything I did wrong.

So, needless to say, I felt pretty down. I think in retrospect it's just that it is one of those pieces that everybody knows and so the whole time I was playing they had a certain recording in their head and all they could think of was how what I was doing didn't match what they had going in their mind. I'm not a terrible Oboist, I know that. It was fine. I'm just learning it, and it's a freakin' beast. It'll be alright. :)

I got home and was just thinking about how I really needed to finish my lab, and I just wasn't getting it. It's frustrating because with Computer Science stuff I normally get it. I've had so much experience with it, and I freakin' teach it to people every day. I feel like I should catch on quickly. But in CS 124, we are dealing with stuff that's completely knew. Gates, latches, MDR, Program Counter, etc. So much information to absorb. I've found that usually with this type of stuff, I feel slower than normal right at first. Like I just don't get it as fast as most people are getting it. Then, one moment, it just makes sense. It's like an exponential growth of knowledge as things click here and there. I'm finally hitting that point where things are making sense. But, Wednesday night, I was still at the beginning slow stage trying to figure things out. All I had to do was making a program that took single digit numbers until you pressed "=" and it would output the sum. Sounds simple. In Java I could code that up in about 2 minutes. But in this class, I had to do it in assembly. I was actually excited to learn how to program in assembly. It's like the base level of programming. You have to tell the computer how to do everything. Right at first, it's just giberish. It makes no sense. Well, needless to say, Wednesday night I finally got it to work! Things made sense! I went to bed happy.

Thursday morning came and life was grand! Except for the fact that I had an incoming Calculus test I didn't feel ready for, I loved it! I was at work and I was just giddy. I taught a help session for CS 142 and I think I was just a little too excited for the students to teach loops and conditional statements. It was so weird. I felt odd being so happy after feeling so depressed the day before.

Oh! I also had a Dictation Pace test on Thursday--I got a B+ or A- again! (I'm not completely sure, but right around there.) I keep feeling like I'm getting lucky. I might just be able to pull off a B+ in that class. That'd be so grand. It'd make up for whatever grade I'm going to get in Calc 2. Ugh, that class is the death of me. It just takes so long to do everything. I'm planning on taking the second midterm tomorrow night. It's going to be torture again, I just know it. I'm hoping to pass this one, but we'll see. I attempted to study today, and it took me two hours to do the first 3 problems on the review. Well, we looked at some other things. Oh boy. It'll be fun, I just know it.

Let's not forget that this was a three-day weekend! We had today off! I know it's somewhat rare to get President's Day off in college, but this will sadly be the last day we get off until the end of the semester. Which, in terms of working is good. In fact, I'm not too torn up about it because we get out so early. Oh wow... we are already in the middle of February. It's actually kind of worrisome that we are already so far into the semester when I feel like so many of my classes shouldn't be close to finishing. Like I haven't done enough to really sustain my grade where I want it to be. *cough* Calculus! *cough*

Oh boy, I'm typing quite a bit. Today there was a kind of Music 276 party again. It was fun as always! We watched "Much Ado About Nothing" and had pizza and cookies, as well as played Mad Gab. What a fun game. It was somewhat frustrating to hear everyone complain about Keanu Reeve's "terrible" acting everytime he'd come on screen since I was somewhat obsessed with him back in the day. I didn't say anything. I wouldn't say that the first thing I thought of when they suggested watching that movie was that it had Keanu Reeves' in it. In fact, when they first showed his face, someone said, "Oh, I forgot he was in this movie!" Then people went on to say how he was Neo, was a horrible actor, and his best movie was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. They'd say that he probably didn't have any idea what he was saying and was just repeating lines he had memorized with certain feelings associated with it. If there's one thing I know, it's that Keanu Reeves is not dumb. He's actually very smart. I'm not gonna say he's the best actor I know, but I know that he's not as terrible as people make him out to be. Maybe I should've said something. It obviously kind of bothered me. Oh well! :)

Alright, I think I'll stop here and head off to bed. I've got to get up early tomorrow to do my sight singing homework. What a joy!

A Weekend in St. George

2009-02-08T20:28:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the UMEA Conference. (Utah Music Education Association) It was fun! It did require me to miss work and classes on Friday, but that turned out just fine that I did. We didn't have a quiz in Calculus, and we didn't have homework due in my CS 124 class. It worked out quite nicely, actually. I also got someone to not only cover my work shifts, but to switch some times with me so I wouldn't lose the money I'd make at work on Friday. It did require me to skip Calculus to work... but that's okay. :) There was so much free food! I stayed at someone's house and their mom was so nice! I got up Friday morning and she had all this food set out for us to eat. Then we went back for lunch--same thing. Food everywhere. She offered dinner too, but we already had a free dinner at Chuck-A-Rama that night. It was pretty much insane. The conference itself was pretty fun. There were these different workshops you could go to about different things. I went to this one about sound recording and editing... oh man, it looked so cool. He had this midi-keyboard that he was using that was exactly like mine except small. Aww, man I really want to get some of that stuff. It'd be really expensive, though. It'd be so much fun, though. Oh boy. I also went to this one about how to avoid burnout as a teacher, which was really boring, actually. I was falling asleep... but I did manage to write down some good quotes he said. Then there was this Ukelele class, which was fun and a couple other things. Some good stuff. It was kind of weird. This was mostly for actual teachers, and the Collegiate members could come if they wanted. This is what the teachers go to! It's like I was a real teacher. It's like I'm growing up. Weird! Graduating seems so far away, but in reality I'm not really that far away from being in a classroom of my own. That is such a scary and exciting thought. Here we go!

So, funny story. I bought my book for CS 124 online at amazon.com on January 7th, and still haven't gotten it. So, I e-mailed the guy that I bought it from asking for a refund or something since I paid for nothing. No response after a couple of days, so I filed a thing on amazon.com for amazon to give me a refund. Then, I left for St. George. When I got back, I checked my e-mail and the guy I bought it from had e-mailed me back. He apologized profusely and felt really bad about it. He just didn't see that someone had bought the book until just then. I kind of felt bad that I made him feel so bad. I mean, I know it was really inconvenient to me and everything, he just felt really bad about the whole thing. He gave me a refund and everything. But this is the funny part. I got another e-mail from him that said this:

"I just checked your address and realize that you live just 2 blocks from my house. If you want I can still give you that book. Let me know what you would like to do. Again I apologize for this horrible event. If you would like to talk give me a call at -------. I am from chicago but going to school at BYU. Sorry again."

WOW! LOL... that is absolutely hilarious to me. This whole time I've been wanting this book, and it's been 2 blocks away from me. I could've just walked and gotten it from him. So. Funny. It's totally fine, though. I'm just going to take the refund money and not have a book. I've survived so far and it's been fine. The online notes and wikipedia are working just fine. I'd rather just have the money back.

I think that's all I have right now. I should try to go to bed tonight so I won't be tired tomorrow. Until next week! :)

Happy February!

2009-02-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

It's officially into February for the 2009 year. How thrilling. Let's see, what happened of interest this week? Oh yes! I took my Calculus exam. It was basically toture the entire time. It was so hard and took so long (about 2 hours and 40 minutes) and my brain just felt like mush. I don't think I did that well on it, but we'll see. I think I'll find out my grade tomorrow in Calculus. I know there's going to be a huge curve on it already, so that's encouraging. I'm still aiming to match the A- I got last semester. We'll see.

I also got my first Dictation pace test back. I got an A-!! Wow! I'm so happy! Maybe I can pull off a B+ in that class. If I keep it up, it'd be amazing to get an A-, but I shouldn't expect too much. I was really worried because it's so hard. Oh boy, that was amazing to see that.

Then there's Music Theory. Yay for Music Theory! We had our first exam and I got a 96 on it. The two things I got off for were silly. I misread the directions so I just didn't do something he asked to do, and then I misunderstood another question. That class is so much fun. It's going into these intense patterns in music and how to analyze things to death. My specialties! My professor is really funny and intelligent, too. I love it.

My CS 124 class, which is doing Electrical Engineering stuff right now, is pretty hard. So far I've managed to do pretty well on the homeworks (29/30 and 59/60), but this last homework I'm not too sure about. If I just take enough time to do them and research enough about them on wikipedia and my notes, I get it eventually. It's starting to fit together nicely. There is a textbook for the class that I would most likely use to understand this stuff, but the one I bought from the bookstore I found online for about $50 cheaper... and I still haven't gotten it in the mail yet. I ordered it on the 7th of January and haven't gotten anything. I e-mailed the person I ordered it from yesterday to ask for either a refund or to just have it sent ASAP. I think I'd prefer the refund at this point since I'm already halfway through this semester of the hard stuff I'd actually need the book for. I could save myself 90 dollars. I'll take it. We'll see about that.

Oh, I said something about posting a video of myself last week... here we go. I just barely made this. Enjoy!

[Insightful Title]

2009-01-25T14:19:00.000-08:00

Another week has gone by and I'm surviving. :) I had my first private lesson of the semester on Friday. Friday at 9:00... PM. Yeah, it was rather exciting. We don't have Geralyn this semester because she's busy recording a CD and doing a mini tour thing with her trio. So, we have Sarah Holden for the semester. She's really nice and really knows what she's talking about, I just can't help but miss Geralyn. Sarah got a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Oboe at Juilliard. So she definitely knows what she's talking about. :P The only problem is that she has to arrange her schedule to fit her husband working so that at least one of them is home with her kids. So, she could only have lessons on Monday and Friday evening, and Saturday morning. I ended up being stuck with the Friday time at 9, which I actually switched to be at 8 now. It went well, though. She had some good things to say.

Other than that, Ashley and I got pizza Friday night and rented House Bunny. I've recently discovered the amazingness that is RedBox. It's so convenient! There's one about half a block away and Ashley and I can just go and rent a movie for the night for a dollar. I'm getting caught up on movies I haven't seen that I wanted to.

I had my first Dictation pace test last Thursday as well... I think I got a B+! I'm not exactly sure yet, but I got between a B and an A-. I was so proud of myself. I didn't do that well on the mock pace test. This semester is so different... and it's so much harder than the other semesters. I was getting worried, but if I keep this up, I'll get the highest grade yet in the class! Yay for that!

So far in Calculus, things are going okay. Our first exam started on Friday and goes until tomorrow, Tuesday being the late day. If I study I should do alright... there were just a couple things I wasn't exactly sure about. This semester doesn't require me to do all of the written homework, and I'm totally not. So I'm not doing Calculus as much, and it's not sinking in as well. Oops. I should try to get in the habit of doing that so I actually learn better. This class is structured a lot differently than last semesters was, it's taking some adjusting. I'm just going to hope for at least an A-, like last semester. I've got to really learn this stuff as well, since I'm taking multi-variable Calculus this Spring. It'll move faster and it seems like it'd be harder. If I just apply myself I can do really well at it, I know I can. It's just a matter of applying myself. :) It should be fun. I really do like math.

I started taking these online classes this summer: Biology 100 and Doctrine and Covenants 1. I didn't really do much... I only have until mid-May to finish them without paying an extension fee. They cost a lot of money! I just need to remember when I finish them I'll get reimbursed 75% from my parents... which would certainly be nice. It's nice to have money. I'm happy that I have quite a bit more money than I did at this point last year. Not to mention I'm making $1.40 more an hour than I was last Winter, and the same number of hours. I should be making a lot of money this semester! Maybe eventually I'll buy something big... like a laptop or a car. I really like my desktop, and it was a lot cheaper than buying a laptop, but the mobility would certainly be nice. I wouldn't really need it with the classes I'm taking right now, but this summer and on I could use it in my computer science classes. I can't decide if I'd want a Mac, PC, or a Linux machine. I want to get used to Mac and Linux like I am with Windows. I'm not sure I'd want a PC if it had Vista on it... or maybe I should so I can get used to that. Blech, I should worry about that later. Yay for having money!

Okay, I think that'll do for now. Maybe next week I'll have a new video to post since I do have a camera that can take videos now. Oh, that sounds like fun. Look forward to it! :)

The Long Weekend

2009-01-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

I didn't quite update yesterday, but I'll post today to make up for it. :)

Today was Martin Luther King's birthday... or what we decided to make it. Either way, I didn't have school today! Yay! I love being at college without having school. Then I just party, party, party and have a wonderful time. Well, I don't always party, but this weekend was definitely fun. Ashley and I rented some movies and watched them while eating some yummy food. We also went on some frigidly cold walks. I finally got to see "Eagle Eye" and "Wall-E." Both were really good! Eagle Eye didn't turn out to be quite what I expected, but I still really liked it. Wall-E was very interesting, and it was freakin' adorable. Pixar knows what their doing.

Just now I finished doing a "Biggest Loser" workout with Charlene (one of my roommates) and her friend Theresa. Oh boy, it was fun. :) I can already tell my legs are going to be so sore tomorrow. But within a week I'm gonna have this chizzled six-pack, baby. :P That would actually be kind of creepy. It'll be fun. I like to be in shape. It's a little hard to run out here, too. The air is so thin and it's so freakin' cold all the time! We also don't really like to pay that much extra for heating, so it's always really cold in the apartment as well. Right now, my right hand is so cold... and my feet. Maybe I should put on my slippers.

In the spirit of making lists, I'm going to copy Rachel's little questionaire thing and answer the questions myself. What fun!

Name: Sarah
Eye Color: Brown
Shoe size: 8-9
Height: 5'5"
What brands are you wearing right now? That's a somewhat odd question... I'm still wearing the clothes I worked out in: Champion athletic shorts and a BYU t-shirt.
Favorite Number: 2307 :P
Favorite drink: Probably water... nothing quenches thirst better!
Favorite Month: December--Christmas/Holiday time!
Favorite Breakfast: Cereal--I'll go with Oatmeal Squares. Oh, or french toast! That's delicious stuff.
***********Have You Ever*****************
Love/Liked someone so much it made you cry? I think for what this question is going at, no. I've never loved/liked another non-relative boy so much that it made me cry.
Been in a police car: I don't think so.
Came close to dying: Just the other day I was crossing the street and a car almost made a right turn into me. That was rather exciting. Fifth quarter sometimes worried me as well. :P
Been in a hot tub: Yes! Oh... that sounds so nice right now.
Fallen asleep in school: I did just on Friday!
Broken someone's heart: Maybe. Though, it was more like middle school/elementary school drama. Hardly counts.
Cried when someone died: Yes.
Fell off your chair: Yes! In fact, I have a video of me doing that.
Saved e-mails: Oh yes.
Ever been cheated on?: I'd probably need a real boyfriend to be cheated on.
***********What is-****************
Your room like: My room here is mostly clean. Right now I really need to do my laundry, so my basket is getting somewhat full. I also happen to have bananas hanging on my lamp. It's good decoration.
Last thing you ate? A bowl of Kroger brand corn flakes. Yum!
--------------------------Ever Had- ---------------------------
Chicken pox: I did when I was two or so. Don't remember it at all.
Sore throat: I'm not sure who hasn't.
Stitches: Sure haven't!
-------------------------Do You--------------------------------
Believe in love at first sight? I really don't think it'd be love. It'd be infatuation/attraction.
Like picnics? Depends on the weather--but usually yes!
Like school? For the most part--I love it! Especially here at college where I get to study things I'm actually interested in and be around people also interested in the same thing I am around the same age.
-----------------------Questions-------------------------------
Who was the last person you danced with? David! We were playing this game in Music 276--such good times.
Who makes you smile? Tons of people. Family, friends, the Oboe studio, Music 276 people... (not to say the Oboe studio or Music 276 aren't my friends. :P)
-------------------------Who---------------------------
Did you last yell at? Yell? Umm... I don't normally yell out of anger. The last time I remember doing that was this past summer, actually.
Do you wear contact lenses or glasses? Yes--usually contacts. (I'm not sure why this is under "who")
Do you like yourself? For the most part!
--------------------Final Questions--------------------------
Favorite song? That is impossible to answer. Depends on the genre, and my mood. Just now the song that popped into my head was, "Fight the Sky" by Gavin Mikhail.
What did you do today? I got up, ate breakfast, played Brawl with Ashley, talked with my roommates, took a nice long nap, ate lunch/dinner, worked out with roommate, and now posting on my blog!
----------------------RANDOM--------------------------------
Hate someone in your family? Hate? That is such a strong word. I dislike people at times, but I don't hate anyone.
Good singer? Sometimes I like to think I am. :P
Diamond or pearl? I'd probably go with diamond, but pearls are nice too.
Are you oldest? Absolutely not. I'm the youngest in my family, and usually out of my friends, too. The only time I was the oldest was when I played soccer way back in the day.
Indoors or outdoors? Lately, indoors! It's just so cold outside.
--------------------------Today did you-----------------------
Talk to someone you like? Umm, that's kind of weird. Yes, I did. I talked to my sister and my roommates. Though, if you're asking about a boy I "like", no. No I did not.
Get sick? Certainly not.
Sing? I did sing a little bit. Just heard a song I really liked and started singing along with it.
Talked to an ex: Ex-boyfriend? I guess that depends on your definition of boyfriend, but even then I didn't.
Miss someone: Yes.
Tell someone you loved them? I did! I got to talk to my nephew Mark and Kathy got him to tell me that he loves me and I told him that I loved him back. Aww... he's so freakin' adorable!
--------------------------Last person who---------------------
You talked to on the phone? That would be my sister Kathy!
Drove in the car with you? Charlene and Megan
Went to the movies with you? Charlene, Quinta, and Theresa! We went to the 12:15 showing of Ghost Town. 'twas fun!
---------------------------HAVE YOU---------------------------
Been to Mexico: Yup! Was kind of scary at times.
Been to Canada: I don't think I have.
Been to Africa: Nope.
----------------------Random--------------------------
Do you have a crush on someone: I think I do, unfortunately.
What books are you reading right now? Umm... Doctrine and Covenants, my Calculus book... no...not any real books. :P
Best feeling in the world: Performing for someone and having them react positively to it. (Even better when it's something I've written :))
Future kids names? I think it's a bit too soon for that. ;)
Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? I do! Aww, Freddy.
What's under your bed? Nothing that I know of. There's not really much room for anything.
Who do you really hate? Hate is such a strong word!
Do you have a job: I certainly do! I'm a TA for CS 142. I love it.
Ever liked someone you didn't have a chance with? Certain celebrities... perhaps. :P
Are you lonely right now: Depends on your definition of lonely.

Well, that was fun. :) Maybe I should start on some of that homework I've put off the entire weekend.

A New Start

2009-01-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

So I kind of stopped posting in my blog for the past couple of weeks... I guess because I was home and in my head the people who would be reading this blog were with me or something. At any rate, here I am back at college and I figured I should finally update this thing. :)

So, Christmas was splendid. My big Christmas gift was a midi keyboard. It's so freakin' cool! I sent it to myself up here and just got it yesterday morning. It actually got here Friday night, but it was in the office, so I waited until Saturday morning to actually pick it up. Oh, I love it so much. I bought Finale Songwriter which lets me just play stuff with a metronome going with the keyboard hooked up to the computer via USB, and it actually transcribes what I play! It's so cool, man. I really like just sitting at the piano and playing stuff. Now I can actually play something and get it as music without having to write it out or remember what I put. I love it so much. That, and I just have a keyboard with me in my room. I don't have to go to another piano and play on it. Granted, I don't have a pedal thing and I have to either play it on the floor or in my lap, but it's awesome. It can play like 120 different sounds (piano, harpsichord, oboe, saxaphone, etc.) and is pressure sensative. So, it plays louder when I press harder on the keys. Man, I love it! :)

Along with the keyboard, I also got a new cell phone (which wasn't technically part of Christmas, but I got it on Christmas anyway). Along with that, I got a new number. E-mail me if you would like it. :) I purposely picked out a Samsung phone that slides. It's very very similar to the phones that they used in the Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions. :P I always said that when I got a cell phone, I'd get one that was either Samsung or Nokia (what they used in the first Matrix) and that slides up like they do in the movies. I totally have! It's wonderful. It's got so many more ringtones, free weekends and after 7 pm, receive texts for free, and I can take pictures with it! So many more features and overall cheaper to use. It's great.

I also bought myself a new camera as kind of a gift to myself. I was already going to buy myself another one (that I plan on keeping/using for more than a couple months...) and I figured I might as well wait a little longer and get it at Christmas. So, I did just that. :) I also got Guitar Hero III (w00t!), Sing Star (another version), and some CDs. Oh man, I got this special edition CD of the soundtrack to the first Matrix movie and it's so awesome. I love it so much!! It's got this description inside about the composer, Don Davis, and what he was thinking when he wrote stuff and whatnot. It's awesome. :) I also got some oboe CDs, and a Weird Al Yankovic CD.

That basically sums up the big things for Christmas. Overall a good one. I officially left my job at the movie theater as well. (!!) I just worked for the two weeks I was there and told them that I'm never coming back. One, because I just don't really like working there and it doesn't really make that good of money in the first place, and two because I'm staying up here for the summer. I've got an awesome job up here as a TA that I enjoy more and that I get paid more for, so I'll just stick with that. Walking away from concession (which I had to work quite a bit of... ugh) for what I knew was the last time, was an incredible feeling. It was kind of funny because on my last day, they gave me a write up for being over on my till on the last day I worked in front stand. They felt kind of bad about it, and kept telling me it was just part of the paperwork and they needed me to sign it. I honestly could care less. The only danger about those is if you get too much, you could be fired... yeah, don't care. :P Too bad I don't get to see free movies anymore. I'll get over it. :)

So, being back at school is going nicely so far. Missing the first two days of school didn't really matter too much, but I don't want to do it again. I didn't like going to classes and not knowing what I had missed or anything. Ugh. This weekend I could care less about practicing (which I should probably really get back into doing...) and I went out Friday night with my roommate and her friends. (Who are now my friends. :)) We went to IHOP and then to a 12:15 AM showing of Ghost Town. I overall liked it. I probably would've enjoyed it a bit more if I wasn't falling asleep during the first hour or so. :P I still got most of it, but I definitely missed some parts at the beginning. It was fun! Then, I actually planned a party for Saturday night for Music 276 people. I had missed them over the break and really wanted to just talk and have fun with them! So, I called everyone and we all met at David's place and had soup and bread for a dinner type thing, and then watched a movie. We also played some games. Aww, it was so much fun. I really do love college. :)

Okay, well I think that'll cover things for now. I'll get back into the habit of updating this thing on Sundays again. Yay!

I'll Be Home For Christmas

2008-12-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

I've had that song stuck in my head for the past 2 or 3 weeks now. :P Every time I think about when I'm going to go home, I just launch off into singing it. Oh, it's so great. Things are really ending! At this point all I have left is my Music Ed final tomorrow morning at 8, Calculus at 2:30, and then my take home final for Music Theory. Right now I'm actually being pretty good and studying! I actually made a program where I put in the national standards for Music Education and type them all in order exactly as I listed them. When I finish I have a nice encouraging output of, "You'll ace the final tomorrow. :)" Oh man, I'm such a nerd. It's great, though! I've actually got them all down verbatim really well! I just keep doing the program and get it better and better ingrained. The exam is basically a bunch of short answers based off of pretty much everything we've covered. There's so much more to Music Education than you would think! So many things to think about when you're planning lessons and evaluating students and everything. It's pretty insane.

And then there's Calculus. I got an 84 on the last test. Not bad, definitely not bad at all. I feel like I should do well on the exam tomorrow. I just need to remember to look over everything. Umm... right. Everything. If I just do an example problem from every section we've ever covered I should be fine. Ugh. Okay, I'll try to get on that after this entry.

So the plan for this week is my two finals tomorrow and finish my Theory final either tonight or tomorrow night. Then I'm done! I'm freaking done! After that I plan on working as much as they allow me to on Tuesday and Wednesday to make some much needed money for the holidays. Then Thursday is off to Las Vegas for the bowl game! That should be fun... but I'm mostly looking forward to after the trip when I fly back home. Aww... home. Oh, speaking of home, I need to call the theater. Ugh. At least this'll be the last time I work there! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! That sounds so fantastic. Let's hope this time we have privileges so I can see movies for free. Oh boy, fun times.

I had my jury on Friday, as well. I suppose that's something to note. I did well! I think it was probably my best jury so far. I had a good reed (well, it sounded good and was in tune, it just was closed and was killing me to play), and they stopped me before playing all of the hard runs. Yay! I played mostly slow stuff. The past two juries I've gotten an A-, this time I'm hoping for that A. I think I'll find out tomorrow how that went. Oh man, that's so awesome to be done with. It's funny because everyone else still has all these finals, but I'm so close to being done! That's the beauty of being a music major. Finals typically aren't too bad. Good times, indeed.

I guess I should go and attempt to study some more. A week from today I'll be home!! Excitement!

I Can Make It

2008-12-07T18:14:00.000-08:00

I just finished my term project for Sc Ed 276 (my Music Education class). It was all about my reflections on the 4 lessons I had to teach to 6 students and how to be a good teacher and all that. It was concluded with a lovely paper about 5 pages long. It really wasn't too bad since I basically just rambled for 5 pages and then edited that. Thanks to my website I've gotten pretty good at just putting my crazy thoughts into words and sentences that go on too long. I was intimidated by the length, but to be honest 5 pages double spaced is just about a page more than my average Smallville Rambling. I just go!

There are 4 more days of classes left of this semester, and then it's just finals. Which, I only have 2 scheduled finals. The other ones are either take home or I don't have them. Oh, and then there's juries on Friday. Yuck. It should be alright... I just need to make sure I have a good reed. Ugh! I've been making so many reeds lately and I thought I had found one that was going to be good... and then it suddenly started sucking. I have my last lesson tomorrow and I'm just hoping my reed will be working then. I'm planning on getting to school early to work on some reeds/practice/do sight singing/do other homework. Like I always do on Mondays and Wednesdays. Fun times. The end is so near... I can make it. Then it's Christmas time! So close! I'm so excited to go back home.

I still don't know which Bowl game we're going to for Marching Band, which also means I don't know when I'll be coming home. I have a plane ticket for the 18th, but they'll be changing that ticket for me according to which bowl game we're going to. I should know by Tuesday what's going on... that'll be good times. The good news is that Christmas is on a Thursday, so if we go to the Las Vegas bowl (which it's looking like we will), then I'll probably come back home either Saturday night, or Sunday morning which is the 20th or 21st! Last year I didn't get back until Christmas Eve. Or was it the 23rd? Something crappy like that. This is earlier. I'm thinking I might just tell work that I can't work until the 26th. They already had my soul for the past 2 Christmases, I won't let them have it again! I'm not in that much need of money... I'd rather spend it with family. Awww... family. Fun times.

Let's see... all I have left now is my Calculus midterm (the 4th freakin' one!), which I have to take tomorrow for a 5 dollar late fee, Calculus final, Music Education final project (yeah... another one), Music Theory analysis paper, my jury, 5th dictation pace test and final, and the final concert for Wind Symphony on Wednesday. Oh boy, this week is going to be so much fun! Yay! Like the title says... I can make it! Wish me luck!

Two More Weeks!

2008-11-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

There are only two more weeks of classes, finals, bowl game, and then I'm going home for Christmas! It's officially the Christmas season now that Thanksgiving is over and I'm definitely feeling it. I went to Don and Debra's place for Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving I help them decorate their house for Christmas. Now that I'm home, Ashley and I are playing Christmas music and slowly decorating the apartment. Ashley had some nice window Holiday stickers and she already put them up. Aww, I love Christmas so much. I'm so looking forward to going back home and being back with my family and seeing how much my nephews and neice have grown! Yay!

While I was at Don and Debra's house, I made some of Mom's delicious chocolate cream pie! Debra just asked what my favorite pie was, and I told her that chocolate cream pie was among my favorite. She immediately followed my answer with, "Do you want to make it?" Uhh, sure! Why not? So, I called my mom to get the exact recipe and ended up making it all from scratch Thanksgiving morning. Well, I didn't make the crust. Debra had some graham cracker crust she had bought and I just used that. I think it probably would've tasted much better with regular crust, but it was still delicious. I just ate the crust first and then would enjoy the wonderful taste of the chocolate cream. MMmm... so yummy. We had a total of 9 pies! It totally reminded me of home, and I even got to participate in the pie making! They had two pumpkin, two apple, two lemon meringue, my chocolate cream, and two pecan pies. Wow! It was great stuff. Thanksgiving is good times. :) It was even better that the food was free. :P

Right now it's just a survival game until the end of the semester. I had my 4th and hopefully final pace test for Sight Singing right before the break. Then there's one more dictation pace test (which I got an A- on the last one! Wow!) and then I have my Music Theory project/final to do. There's one more Calculus midterm and then the final, my jury, and then that's it! Well, I have a final project for my Music Education class, too, but I've basically finished that. I taught all of my lessons, and now it's just a matter of commenting on how I did and getting peer feedback. Which, I already gave my videos to two people to review. Speaking of which... I need to do that for someone else. Fun for me!

I gave a talk today in church. I got a call Friday evening from the Bishop while I was at Don and Debra's place asking if I could speak in church. Something about the Spirit... so I ended up speaking on "listening to the Spirit." There were four speakers, and the other three talked about being "led by the Spirit", "following the Spirit", and "living by the Spirit." I think he did tell us all the same thing, but we all ended up remembering it differently. He told me Friday and I didn't end up preparing it until Saturday night. Don't call me on procrastinating that... I usually end up writing talks the morning of. :P It turned out alright, though. I ended up telling about 3 or 4 stories to apply the topic I was trying to talk about. They always tell us in our Music Education class that there should be little information and a lot of application. You actually remember more and learn from the application more than lecture. And it's just more fun to listen to stories in Sacrement meeting than someone reading a General Conference talk to you again. I got compliments from people about it, so I guess it turned out alright. :) I was surprisingly not that nervous. I think all these performances they make me do as a music major are helping me not be nervous when I perform or whenever I speak. It's nice.

I should really try to finish some of my homework so I can try to get some sleep tonight! Yay for sleep! :)

I Fail

2008-11-25T19:23:00.000-08:00

I was doing so well at updating this every Sunday, and then I missed last Sunday! Fail! Oh well, here I am updating on a Tuesday night. I'm now free for a week! No more classes until next Monday. Good times. Most of my classes today were cancelled. It's funny because I think they were cancelled more because the professors knew that hardly anyone was planning on coming to class anyway. I would've gone, but oh well. I'll take the free time. :) I ended up just programming a calculator in my free time... yeah, I'm that big of a nerd. I'm working on a calculator with lots of complex functions. So far I've got it getting any sort of root (square root, cube root, 4th root, etc), inverse, power, factorial, and now I'm working on getting the log to work. Ugh, it's so hard. I'll get it figured out eventually. It's just so much fun! :)

The plan for this week is to go to my Aunt and Uncle's place (Don and Debra) for Thanksgiving. It should be fun. Free food, fun, and just being with family. Even if it isn't my direct family... it's just under a month until I'll be back for Christmas and be able to see them again. :) My mom sent me pictures today from a family get together this past Saturday. Everyone in our family was able to come (all the kids, their spouses and their kids) except for me. That was kind of sad to think about, but the pictures were all freakin' adorable! How did I get the cutests nephews and niece in the world?? Man, it's awesome. I'm so looking forward to seeing them all again this Christmas. Good times!

My excuse for not updating on Sunday is that I was having dinner with some family! I met up with my Aunt Bonnie and some of her kids (Jonathan, Jared, and Alena) along with Jeff and Nicole and their kids, Grandpa B, and Kristie and her daughter! Shawn and Coby weren't able to come because Coby wasn't feeling very well. It was so much fun! We had this awesome dinner of potato cream soup with some topping stuff (bacon bits, cheese, and green onions) and this delicious salad and some jello salad. Then there was dessert: cheesecake and pumkin chocolate chip cookies. Mmm... it was fun to see everyone again. After a lot of people had left and Jared was waiting for his laundry to finish (LOL... couldn't pass up the opportunity to do laundry for free), we played Apples to Apples. Such good times. It's great having family up here. Jeff reminded me a lot of my dad and Bonnie reminded me a lot of my mom.

So this Saturday was the rival game between Utah and BYU... long story short, BYU lost 48-24. At the half we were only behind 24-27. Just a field goal! Then Max Hall, the BYU quarterback, fumbled it which led to a touchdown by Utah. That just seemed to get him down and he ended up throwing about 5 interceptions after that... almost all of them leading the Utah scoring somehow. I've got to say, many of the Utah fans are just not nice. I was honestly scared wearing a BYU marching band uniform while being in that stadium. One of their favorite things to do was to give us the finger. It seemed like when Utah would make a good play they would cheer at us to rub it in our face more than to cheer on their team. We had this combined show with the Utah band and they were all really nice. One of their Saxphone players started singing, "Why can't we be friends..." So true! Why not? Man, they were all great people. It was fun performing with them. I remember one person looking at me and saying, "I'm sorry... " Oh, is this person actually being nice!? "...I'm sorry that you go to BYU." Oh, just kidding. He couldn't have the class to just respect me as a person. Oh well... at least I can sleep at the night knowing that I'm not rude to the Utah people.

Okay, I should try to finish my Smallville Rambling for the most recent episode, Bride, before I leave to Debra's place. It's gonna be so freakin' long... so much to talk about!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

More ramblings!

2008-11-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

Ashley pointed out to me the other day that this semester is actually very close to its end! There's this week, and then a 2-day week for Thanksgiving and then two weeks and then finals! The Friday of that second week being a "reading day" to prepare for finals. Which, for music majors is jury day. It's really so close! Then we'll have our bowl game and then it'll Christmas/home time. :) Yay!

This week I finished the 4 music lessons I was supposed to teach for my Music Education class, and I performed a little mini recital on Monday. It went pretty well, I guess. I got many complimentary things said to me about it. For me, though, it could have been much better. At least I had a pretty good reed I had just made that weekend. People were commenting on how good my tone was, so I guess that's good. :) There are just this high F that I've hit so consistently and it's like a climax, and I totally missed it. I was still getting used to the reed, and I was used to a reed that was dying that would hit those high notes too easily. Oh well... people didn't seem to care. At least it's overwith and now I just listen to everyone else in the class perform.

Trombone is a lot of fun! It's so much fun to actually use my air again. Though, the Trombone is much bigger than an oboe and has much less resistance. I have to take so many breaths... I run out of air so quickly! Now that I have some basic slide positions down, I can sound somewhat like a real Trombone player while I'm playing easy stuff. Aww, it's so much fun. I can't wait until I start my workshops and all that we focus on is playing the instruments. Well, I heard it's a lot about how to teach it, too. That's fine. :) In this class, though, we are literally just thrown into the group with the kids and just kind of learn as we go. It's great.

I'm trying to decide if I should take an Exercise Science class next semester. I'm thinking about beginning weight training. I was going to take that class last Winter, until I realized that it wasn't very convenient in my schedule at all. The only drawback this Winter is that I'm already taking 17.5 credit hours and this class would bring that to 18 hours. It would also take away two hours of time that I could work. That would add up to a lot of money by the end of the semester I'd miss out on. Not only that, but it'd be time at work when there would hardly be anyone in the lab: 9 AM. People are in class then. So it could basically be like a time to do my homework and get paid for it. I'd really love to be more in shape, though. It's be right after sight singing, too, so I'd have half an hour to get ready for it and leave early to take a shower or something. I can sign up for the class tonight... someone help me decide!

Okay, what else is new... I took yet another Calculus midterm. I felt pretty good about it, not as good as the last midterm, but pretty good. This one took me two and a half hours to take it! The other ones only took me about an hour and a half, probably less. This one I just kept checking things and reproving things I wasn't sure about. It took so long and made my brain so tired. Let's hope I did well on it! I should find out later this week. Either Tuesday or Thursday. I'm hoping Tuesday. :)

So I think it's decided that my camera is broken. Sad day! I went to the Kodak website and the fact that it broke after I dropped it makes the warranty invalid. Understandable. I got an estimate of what it would cost to repair it without the warranty... they estimated 70 dollars. Umm, I think not. They have refurbished cameras that are just about as good as the one I have that are like 75 dollars or so. I'm thinking I know something I'll get for Christmas. :) I'll try to be extra careful with this next one! What the heck is wrong with my luck and cameras! I need a camera, though. It's so nice to be able to take pictures and videos and share them with people. Not to mention I'm planning on going to Fan Fair again, and I'd really like to have a camera for that. It's just nice. If I could just stop breaking them then life would be grand. I even tried just fixing the camera myself... instead I just go some plastic pieces that apparently broke inside the camera to fall out. I don't get it. It's fallen down before, what the heck made it break so dumbly this time? The battery was dead at the time... so maybe I should try a new battery before completely junking the camera. I don't know.

Okay, I should really go and practice or something. I've got a lesson tomorrow and I've got some things to practice. Oh the joy of it all. :)

More than halfway!

2008-11-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

As we get into November and closer to Thanksgiving... I'm realizing that the semester is really getting close to finishing! Which also reminds me that I have yet another Calculus midterm that I should take tomorrow or Wednesday. Fun stuff.

Tomorrow I have a mini-recital thing for my Music Education class. I just have to play something contrasting for about 8 minutes. I've got the song picked out and rehearsed with the accompanist I'll be playing with tomorrow. I had to get a different accompanist than my normal one since I'm playing for the class at 9:00 AM... which just so happens to be the time that everyone ever has class. Well, in the school of music at least. :P So, I've got someone whose in my class playing with me. He's a vocal major, but he's a really good pianist too! It seems like everyone in the school of music is already a very competant piano player except for me. Oh well! I'm not completely illerate on the piano, I'm just not amazing like lots of people. I'm looking forward to the piano class I'm going to take the Spring term next year. Though I hear that's really more of a class on playing cadences in different keys and whatnot rather than real piano technique. Whatever, it'll be fun either way. :)

My camera doesn't seem to be working anymore. I was using it to record myself playing while it was low on batteries. It was propped up so that it was angled so you could actually see me playing. I had it leaning on its lens... the one that comes in and out and it turns off and on. So, while I was playing it ran out of batteries and thus the nice lens thing went back in, which caused my camera to fall on the ground. I didn't notice it had turned off until it had already fallen on the ground. This isn't the first time that my camera has fallen on the ground and I've had to snap it back together again to get it to work. I wasn't too worried. Though, this time when I put it back together, it wouldn't turn on. Well, duh... the battery is dead, right? I tried charging it, nothing. And I know that in the past even when it turns itself off like that from running out of battery, I can normally still get it to turn on again for a moment before turning itself off again from lack of battery power. I think it just knocked just wire loose that connects the battery to the rest of the camera when it fell. I'm not sure how to fix it, though. I would probably end up breaking it more if I tried to hard. So, I need to find a way to get Kodak to fix it for me. I have a year warranty with them. I'm just hoping that they'll still fix it even thought it fell and that's what caused it break. Oh well. I'll try not to dwell on it. I just don't seem to have good luck with cameras. I really don't try to mean to them. Bad things just happen.

I registered for my classes on Thursday night. That was a bundle of fun. :) I can't believe I'm going to be taking my fourth semester music core classes. I'll be in Sight Singing 4, Dictation 4, and Music Theory 4! Wow... I should know my stuff by then. Though, I heard that Theory 4 was just contemporary stuff and completely left any kind of rules or anything. I'm really excited for it, actually. I heard that the 3rd semester was the hardest... but I love it. I love it all! I love music so much, man. It's all so freakin' fascinating. Is it weird that I sit through Sacrement meeting analyzing the hymns? Some are much easier than others... and some are just awesome. I guess Music is a good major for me. If I could, I would try to major in every type of music major offered. I could do performance, education, composition, media music (recording studio type stuff), jazz (could be fun!), or whatever else there is. I'd love it all. I've vaguely considered doing composition, but then I remember how much I love Education and how I've already started the program and got into it and everything. Maybe I can do a masters in Composition or Theory or something. So much to study and learn about! Why can't I do it all?

I think this blog is turning into a "General Sarah Ramblings" place. It's my padded cell, man. It's where I can let my insane thoughts come out into words! Such a joy.

New Song!

2008-11-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

Aren't you all lucky... you get to hear a new song I've recently written. :) I've been working on it off and on for about a month or so. I finally got to perform in my most recent master class on Wednesday. This time I remembered to record me playing. So, I uploaded it to myspace videos. I tried youtube... but youtube only allows videos to be 10 minutes long, and mine happened to be 10 minutes and 29 seconds. I talked about for about a minute at the beginning... if I just hadn't talked. :P Oh well.

I talk much quieter than I play, so be warned. Since I have a bad habit of mumbling and you can't really hear everything I say at the beginning, I'll try to explain what they are all about here. :)

It's three movements: Verwirrung, Traum, and Maske. It's German for Confusion, Dream, and Mask respectively. It's like a progression of emotion when something dramatic happens to you. It could be like a death of someone close to you, breaking up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, maybe even losing a pet. Just something that really hits you hard when you first hear about it. The way I portray it in these songs is initially you're just really confused as to how it could have happened and just angry about it. Why? How? It doesn't seem possible! That kind of thing. Things just don't make sense. A somewhat disjunct melody with some nice dissonant chords to throw things out of whack.

After that stage of confusion... the whole situation starts to sink in and you start to realize what really happened. It feels like a dream. You feel like the world is moving and you are just standing there in the background watching. As the second movement goes on, there are moments of just feeling the magnitude of it all... just plain sadness. It kind of moves from a dream stage to just a stage of mourning and sadness. You now know what really happened and have at least started to accept that it really did happen.

The third movement is settling into life coping with this new situation. You don't really move past it, but you put on a mask to make it seem like you have. The third movement is actually in the key of F minor, but I don't use any notes that would make it sound minor. It's just a mask... it's supposed to sound major and happy, but the reality is that I'm still in a minor key. I'm still sad and mourning... but I'm putting on the appearance that I'm okay. A happy melody that just keeps repeating with some slight variances. I keep telling people, "Yeah! I'm good! I'm happy! Everything's great!" Eventually I get tired of it, and the true emotions start to come out. Then it finally ends with me shoving the happy melody down your throat. "Yeah, it hurts... no I'm HAPPY gosh darn it!"

Not really the happiest of songs, but it was fun to write. :) Please tell me what you think!

Verwirrung, Traum, and Maske

2008-10-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

October is really coming to a close. It's almost November! Wow, I have to register for classes for next semester in like a week or two. Weird! Next semester should be fun. I should be able to be more consistent with my practicing and such, and I'll be able to work more hours without marching band. Which means more money! I don't really need more money, but it's nice to have it. I'll need it when I'm paying for Fan Fair, which I've basically decided I'm going again next year. The plan is that my mom will meet me in Nashville and we can go together again. Since I'm staying for Summer and Spring and not really coming home for the summer... it's time that we'll be able to spend together. It'll be fun. :) I'm just hoping it won't be too hard to miss that school. I'll know ahead of time so I should be able to plan ahead so it won't hurt me to miss school. I'll need a break, man. I'm going to lose my mind. I'll be taking American Heritage then too... ugh. That class just seems like so much freakin' fun...

This week I'll be starting to observe and participate in a middle school band class instead of an orchestra. I'm going from Viola to... *drumroll* ... Trombone! We'll see how it goes. It'll be interesting because it has such a big mouthpiece! I'm not used to buzzing my entire mouth when I play. I'm used to the little mouthpieces with French Horn and Trumpet. It should be fun. I'm excited to be able to use my air to play again! The whole bow thing was just not as comfortable to me. Though, it was just starting to feel better, and now we're switching. :P It's okay, I'll learn more when I'm taking a year of String workshop... next year? I don't remember. If not next year, the year after that. Man, I love my major. :)

I finally talked to a counselor and told her of my plan to double major, and surprisingly she didn't seem to care too much. I had everything I needed for Music Education and she already signed this paper giving me permission to double major. The only problem is I need like 3 other signatures to do it. I also need to meet with the Computer Science counselor to make sure I'm planning to have all the classes I need for the Computer Science major. That shouldn't be too big of a deal. I don't need to be accepted into the Computer Science major. It's the secondary major. :P Man, that's awesome. I'm insane. It's absolutely wonderful.

I finally got a calling, too. I'm the Music Director for Relief Society. Sounds pretty important and exciting, but it basically involves either leading the music or making sure it gets lead on Sunday, and picking which hymns we sing and making sure the pianist knows what they are. Not too hard, and I get to lead! Man, it's amazing how many people don't know how to lead. Not that I'm great, but I at least know where the downbeat is and what time signature to direct. I assume I'll get better when I'm going to take my conducting class. :P

Anyway... I need to go to bed. I'm planning on getting up early to finish the homework I neglected to do this weekend. I ended up spending a lot of today trying to figure out what was wrong with The Phantom Zoners... I kind of broke them for a while. But, now they are working again. Goodness, such a pain.

Off to bed I go! :)

Sarah had a date??

2008-10-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

So, I had a date Saturday night. I know, weird! This guy randomly called me on Tuesday and he did just what you'd expect. "I was just wondering if you would like to go out with me this Friday night?" Whoa! Weird! "Well, I actually have a band social Friday night I was planning on going to..." "Saturday night?" So quick! So, I couldn't say no. "I'll pick you up at 6." Now, before everyone gets all excited and whatnot, this guy isn't someone I would really date seriously. He's a nice guy, but not someone I could really see as a boyfriend.

We ended up going to dinner at this El Salvadorian place and had some delicious food! I don't remember what it was called, but it was nice. And it made me think of Flora back at home. :) Our waitress didn't even speak English. Oh boy, it would've been nice if Flora were there to translate for me. Though, we were able to point and figure out what we wanted easily enough. After that, we went to this comedy show called "Divine Comedy." I'd heard a lot about it and how funny it was. It was great! I loved it. :) We got there about an hour early to wait in line, and it's a good thing we did. There were already 20 or so people there waiting in line for it. It was a packed show. They even handed out these little activity packets with a word search and crossword puzzle to keep people busy. So we ended up doing that while we waited. After the show, I thought it would be it, but then he offered ice cream. Nice! So we went to Baskin Robbins and he bought me a single scoop of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream... yum. He was a real gentlemen and paid for everything. Free food! I always love free food. :) And there was no awkward moments when he wanted to hold my hand or anything. Man, that would've been really awkward. I hope he knows I wouldn't really want anything more than friends... man, I'm bad at this. I hate saying things I know disappoint people. Oh well, we'll see. :)

So, other than that I also had school and such this week. Thursday and Friday I normally go to schools to observe for my Music Ed class, but the Utah schools didn't have school! So I didn't have class!! It was wonderful. I got to sleep in and not have class until 10. Oh boy... it was so incredibly nice. Though, I realized about 10 minutes ago that I had a Sight Singing pace test planned Friday morning that I completely spaced about... I guess I'll have to make that up later. Yay!

In other news, there's another Calculus midterm that I'm planning on taking tomorrow. I feel like I should be able to do well, because I honestly understand all of the concepts and have most if not all of the things memorized that I should have memorized. If not... I should be able to at least figure them out from the other things I know. I'm hoping to pull off an A in that class. If I just keep up with the work and everything, I should be able to pull it off. Then it'll just be Calc 2 and all the other fun math classes I plan on taking after that. I really do enjoy math, though. It just takes up time. :)

Speaking of Calculus, I really should do my assigned reading and take the quiz that goes with it. Lucky me!

Here we go again

2008-10-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

Another week is approaching. I'm definitely glad that this past week is over, though. It got kind of insane. I actually just remembered something else I was supposed to do last week. All of the Education majors taking some form of Sc Ed 276 have to take this Technology test to make sure we're somewhat literate in Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and possibly Outlook. I'm not sure, though. I was supposed to take that last week, but I can still take it this week and it'll be alright. I just need to remember to do that...

Luckily this week we don't have band rehearsal Thursday or Friday! YAY! Theoretically, I should actually have time to practice then, or maybe even go to reed class... finish shaping my cane. Oh boy, I should be able to be productive this week. Key word: should. This week is the first midterm for CS 142 which means I'll have more time to myself. Like tomorrow... people will just be picking up midterms. I won't be constantly helping people. I shouldn't have a problem finishing the quiz and maybe even working on some of the written homework.

So yesterday was the homecoming game against the University of New Mexico. We won... again. :P 21-3, I believe. It was rather worrisome at first when they were the first ones to score a field goal. Too bad those three points were the only time they scored. I love having a winning football team. It's nice to cheer for a winning team. :) Though it was so cold! I couldn't feel my feet when we were walking back. We have these nice parkas that they let us use for the semester, but they are surprisingly not that warm. They are when we are parade marching, though. I was sweating in that thing. In the stands when we were just sitting there, though. I was freezing. I wasn't as cold as I was last year when it actually snowed at the game... but I was still pretty cold. Couldn't really move my fingers very fast and was probably playing about 20 cents flat all around. Good times.

The month of October is basically half over now, which means it's pretty close to November. Which means it's close to Thanksgiving break. Which really means it's not that far from the end of the semester! Right? No... I definitely shouldn't be counting down yet. That should happen after Thanksgiving break when we are actually close to finals and everything. It's kind of sad. I'm planning on staying for Spring and Summer. That means this Christmas is going to be the last time I'll be home for a while. In fact, I'm even planning on staying for the Spring and Summer after this one and then the following Spring after that too. It may sound like I'm setting myself up to disaster some sanity loss... which is inevitable for me... but, I really don't mind too much. I've really found that I like going to school. Of course I'm not a big fan of the stress, but I've realized I've grown accustomed to it. It's like I feel lazy if I don't feel that stress every once in a while. And I love being here on my own. Not that I don't like home and my family, I love my family. :) I just like feeling like I'm doing something with my life. Being home and working at the theater... doesn't exactly scream progression in life. I'm pretty excited thinking that this Christmas will be the last time I'll work at the theater. I even played with the idea of not even working this Christmas, though that'd be kind of silly. I might as well. It'd give me like an extra 400 bucks or so. Maybe even more. That's some money that's always nice.

Oh... speaking of money. I really need to pay my tithing. I definitely haven't paid anything yet this whole year, and I have made more money this past year than I ever have in a year. The good news: I have enough money to pay it. In fact, I have quite a bit of money. Especially compared to last Fall when I didn't have a job and was just spending money. It ran out fairly quickly. I like living at a cheaper place and actually earning money. It's nice. That and books weren't nearly as expensive as they were last Fall. Last Fall was absolutely ridiculous.

Okay, I think that may be enough rambling for now. Maybe I'll even go to bed on time today and won't be falling asleep during Calculus tomorow! Maybe! I could maybe even wake up early to practice tomorrow morning... it's an idea. We'll just see. :)

Until next week!

October is here!

2008-10-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

And I'm still surviving. :) I was starting to feel sick last Friday and Saturday, but am feeling much better. The cure? Walking in the rain for about 45 minutes to Smith's for some groceries on Saturday evening. So, it was only supposed to be about a 10-15 minute walk, but I guess I wasn't exactly sure where it was. I thought I did, but after turning into two or three roads and walking until I was sure it wasn't it, I ended up calling my mom and asking where the heck Smith's was. She led me to it, and I was able to buy some much needed milk for the cereal I was craving. I also bought some other things, such as a twelve pack of Slim Fast shakes (well, the Kroger brand), peanut butter, jelly, bread, apples, oranges, bananas, hot dogs, and bologna. I knew it would be kind of a pain to bring home, but if I wanted breakfast the following week, I need to those cans. It saves a lot of time. Let's just say it was kind of painful walking home. I can still feel bruises where the bags were on my arms. After I couldn't really feel my fingers anymore, I just had them hanging on my forearms while I held them at a 90 degree angle until I got home. I'm definitely sore. :P But at least I have some more food now! I should be set for at least 2 or 3 weeks now.

What else? Oh! I taught my first lesson to the middle school string players at Springville Junior High here! It was a lot of fun! I planned it out so extensively... in fact, I think it contributed to me feeling sick. I went to bed at about 1:45 AM Wednesday night, and I had run out of bananas, which I normally eat along with my shake for breakfast. So I had a smaller breakfast than normal, and I had woken up at about 5 that morning so I could get there early so practice the song I was supposed to be teaching. I had planned to demonstrate it to them, but I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing. So, little sleep, stress, and little food I guess made me feel a little sick. But I feel better now! I'll remember to try to take better care of myself in cases like that. :) Thus why I bought more food! I love food. :)

So I'm thinking about what I'll do with my life. I want to go on a mission sometime. I thought I would just go after I graduate, but thinking about it, I'd really want to just go right into teaching after graduating. So maybe I'd go in the middle of my major? The problem: I'm kind of young. When I turn 21, when I can actually go on a mission, I'll be starting my senior year. Granted, with the two majors I'll have two senior years... I don't know. I just wouldn't want to interrupt it. I can just see when I'm looking to get a teaching job when they see that I graduated in 2012, and it's 2013 or 14 and they see I have no teaching experience. "What'd you do?" "I went on an LDS mission." "So... you've forgotten everything you learned from your major?" Well, umm... no, not quite, but it is kind of rusty... uh... yeah. I don't know what's going on. But, besides the when I'll go on a mission thing, I was thinking about grad school. Which, I suppose could solve the mission problem. After I graduate, I could go on a mission, and then when I come back finish grad school, and then get a teaching job, or something. I was looking at the graduate music programs (well, and computer science, but I've basically decided I'd want it to be music), and the MA in Music Education looks interesting. There was one class: Psychology of Music. Oh wow... that just sounds utterly fascinating. It's honestly one of the most interesting things to think about. Why does music evoke certain feelings in people? Who decided that a minor chord makes people feel sad? Nobody! It just does! Nobody told you to feel that way--it just does! I really want to study how and why that is. Oh man... great stuff.

Oh, and Computer Science is pretty interesting as well. :P

Okay, as usual, I have homework I should be finishing. I'll get to that. :)

One month down

2008-09-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, not quite a month, but almost. Wednesday is the first and that marks the one month of this semester. How is it going so far? I have my first midterm for Calculus that I need to take by Tuesday (Wednesday if I want to pay $5) that I intended to take yesterday. I should study for that so I can take it tomorrow. That'd be nice. My Music Education class is still a lot of fun and it's starting to get more intense. We are starting to prepare lessons that we are going to teach to a group of 6 or more. We have to teach four 15-minute lessons at different times on different days. Just to get a small taste of what it's like to be a music teacher. We turned in our initial plans on what we were going to teach, and basically everyone was too ambitious--including me. I wanted to try to teach rythms, time signatures, and subdivision all within that time. Yeah. Right. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm pretty sure the majority of the group has absolutely not musical experience whatsoever--besides whatever they've done in church. I still need to re-write that plan and make some objectives for tomorrow... how fun that'll be.

Then there's the Oboe world. I had a lesson last Thursday that went well. I even had a reed that I made myself that was pretty good! She looked at it and complimented me on it. It's amazing. I might actually know how to make good reeds. The priority right now is to shape the cane that I gouged the other day (which took like 2 hours--freakin' insane) so that I can make more good reeds. Oh how wonderful it is to have a good reed to play on. :) Bad news is that the Thursday lesson was made up from Monday that she couldn't do. So everything she told me to practice that would normally be a week of practice would have to be until tomorrow, Monday. So I had to practice today (which I normally don't) to make sure I knew it. It's not as fast as I'd like it, but it'll be fine. I'll just ignore the fact that the good reed I had is really sharp... I don't have perfect pitch. Doesn't bother me when I don't look at the tuner. :P

Today was the first fast Sunday we've really had as a ward. We had a "break the fast" together. We all were assigned to bring a type of dish so we could all eat together. It was great! It was like a real meal... insanity. I love having food to eat. :) I've yet to get a real calling, though. We'll see how long that lasts. Last year I was a Family Home Evening Group Leader, or as they used to be known as--a mom. That was alright, but I'm hoping for something different. Then I don't have to worry about getting people to come and having something that people will like. I like other people planning that sort of thing. :P I'd really like to get a calling as a teacher, actually. It would take more time Saturday night (probably early Sunday morning), but it'd give me more experience being a teacher. It seems like it'd be kind of fun. I guess we'll see!

So my Dictation pace test--I passed! I didn't pass by much... but I passed. Hopefully I can do better on future pace tests so I can maybe average another B. That'd be nice. I really am getting better at hearing certain things. It'd be nice if the grade reflected that. :)

Yesterday we had our first cleaning checks. We got up at about 8 (on a Saturday morning... what the heck) and cleaned for about 2 hours. We all had different jobs we were assigned to do. It wasn't that much fun while cleaning, but it's nice to have a clean apartment. The area around my bed was getting rather cluttered.

Oh boy, I really need to get to working on my homework. I've got to do Sight Singing (which will probably end up being done in the morning), redo my Music Ed thing, Music Theory, read/study Calculus, and finish my observation sheet from my observation on Friday. Fun! I so should have done some of this yesterday... that's what I get. :)

Have a wonderful day!

Procrastinating is Phun!

2008-09-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

I should be reading my Calculus and taking a quiz saying that I read my Calculus, but I feel like procrastinating it a bit longer. Since I've written a blog the past two Sundays, I'll make it a goal to try and write a blog at least once a week--on Sunday. So here I am! Writing another blog. Good times indeed.

I took my first Dictation pace test last Thursday--not exactly sure how it went. This teacher, who is another grad student, grades them on his own. I guess to ensure that we don't cheat. But now I don't know what I got on it until Tuesday. A little nerve-wracking since I'm positive I messed up the last harmonic dictation part. I... had some weird stuff there. At least I'm pretty certain on the bass... and he grades nicely on the analysis. Even if the analysis is wrong, if we analyzed what we wrote as the chord correctly, we get points. I didn't do so well on the mock exam... I'm positive I did better on this one. Whatever. Passing the four semesters of dictation is my goal. I was able to pull off a B last semester--which was awesome. Having a B again would be cool. B+ to an A awesome--but highly unlikely. I guess we'll see!

I always have Calculus homework to do. Luckily, I mostly enjoy what I'm doing so it's not that big of a deal. It's just every night when I'm thinking of what I need to do for the next day, there's always Calculus on the list. I either have to read the chapter and take a quiz about it, or do written homework. There are also quizzes due on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but I luckily work on all three of those days and I usually just finish the quizzes then. I should try to get out of that habit though. There are going to be days that I'll be actually working the whole time and I won't have time to finish the quizzes. Not to mention the material is going to be getting harder and the quizzes will take longer. Calculus 2 should just be a load of fun. :) It is nice having a math class. I like math. In fact, I think I decided I wanted to minor in Math. Yup, a double major in Music Education and Computer Science with a Math minor. Three of the classes I have to take for the minor are already required for the Computer Science major, and one class can replace a class that's required for the Computer Science major. So really it's just a matter of taking 2 or 3 more classes. Not a big deal. I might as well, right? :) Somewhere down the road if I really wanted, I could probably get a job teaching Math. I hear those people are in short supply. That'd be fun.

I'm slowly getting better and better at the Viola. I got another oboist who also played Violin/Viola in high school to show me how to bow correctly. Now I actually play the instrument better! Now I just need to try and train my fingers to find the spots on the Viola for the notes so I can be in tune. Supposedly lots of string players are out of tune, even some string performance majors. At least that's what some people tell me. I'm not going to be one of them. :P I can try at least. I figure this is the time to try and get my fingers in the right places and train my ear to be in tune. I'm probably dreaming. Oh well!

My lesson last week went fine. Besides the fact that she asked me to play my E scale stuff. Which that just happened to be the one scale that I hoped she wouldn't pick. Literally, every other scale I worked on until it was back to where it was last semester. But 30-45 minutes later when I finally got to E, my mouth was getting pretty tired. I just ran through it until I played it right once. I didn't really get my fingers to remember sufficiently. It kind of came out with my fingers got confused up high. But, it's all good. I did practice it again so my fingers remember now. She'll probably pick another scale tomorrow--or forget. That'd be nice. :P I can play my freakin' scales. I practiced them to death my first semester. Literally, I played them an hour a day. For the first 20 or 30 minutes each hour that I practiced I would run through all my scales. I remember once spending an entire hour on just scales. It was rather boring and monotonous. Thus why I kind of am losing the will to practice them as much. I should try and be better about practicing. I scheduled practice rooms--but lots of them are in the evenings. Which means after I've already gone home and eaten and settled back in, I have to walk back to the HFAC and practice for an hour. It's not that big of a deal--it's just a matter of getting myself up and doing it. I need to get in the habit... habit... I just have so many classes this semester. Well, not really classes, just lots of classes that take up a lot of time. Then if there's anytime before 6, I'm working or practicing or something. I'm not like really stressed out, just have a lot to take my time. In fact, I'd say I'm pretty happy right now. I enjoy my classes for the most part, and I know how everything goes. Regardless, I'll be happy when this school year is over. :P I'll be done with the silly music core! (Music Theory, Sight Singing, and Dictation) I really like Music Theory, but I could definitely do without Sight Singing and Dictation. Oh... I just remembered. I have Sight Singing homework to do tonight. Blech... that'll be fun.

What else? Oh, I finally did my wash. Good for me. It costs so freakin' much here! I wonder if the prices went up at Helaman Halls, too. It cost $1.25 per wash, and $1.00 to dry each wash. I had three loads--it cost me a freakin' $6.75 to do my laundry! Insanity. Especially when you're used to umm... free. Oh well. I'll just remember to have more naked days. Anything to save money. Ooorr... I could just never do my wash. Be smelly! Totally worth the money.

I hope you all know I'm kidding.

I suppose I should end this post and do my homework. Fun!

A New Week!

2008-09-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

A new week is about to start. I have a private lesson tomorrow, and I'm not sure what to think. I always get nervous about them, and it always turns out just fine. I did practice what she wanted me to, and I have a fairly good reed. It just takes a bit to break in... so if I just warm up on it before the lesson or something, it should be okay. Right? I don't know. We'll see! :)

Calculus is turning out to be fun! I missed having a math class, and it's really not too hard of stuff. We just started limits, and it's making perfect sense. A nice review of what I once knew. I just need to make sure I have all this trig stuff down that I never truly had down in the first place. Let's hope I can pull off an A! That'd be awesome. Then there's just Calc 2 to worry about... but I'll worry about that next semester. Double majors are fun! :P

I taught my first help session for CS 142 last Friday as well. It was fun! I hope I didn't confuse people too much and that I actually helped. I'm pretty sure I did. They were all so quiet and attentive! Listening to every word I said and writing stuff down I said/wrote. It was crazy! I know when I actually get a teaching job (wow... that's so cool to think about :)) it definitely won't be that easy to have them listening. The help session is a special group of people. They aren't coming because they have to, they are coming to listen to get some help on the lab. So of course they are going to listen attentively and be quiet. It's nice.

Speaking of teaching, we've been going to schools and observing and I've officially learned the D major scale on Viola! They just taught us how to use the bow. Man, it's so many things to think about at once. Though, I don't think it'll be hard to get the hang of it. Just at first there's how to hold the bow, how to move my arm, where exactly to put my fingers/be in tune, what note is what fingering, and the freakin' clef! That took me by surprise. We first walked in and joined them and they were reading through this song. I look at the music... "What is an E# doing in here??" Oh! It's the freaking alto clef! Surprise! Okay, so a C is really a D... it's different. That's for sure. But it's oh so fun! :) If I could just get GOOD at it, that'd be even better. But I have a feeling it'd take a while to get good at it. I could just get proficient at it by the end of the semester. At least I have String Workshop to look forward to so they'll go over in more detail how to play a string. It seems like fun. You can eat while you play! Insanity! And there's to stinkin' reed to worry about!

Yesterday (Saturday) BYU had a football against UCLA. Which, I'm pretty sure is the team that we barely beat last year at the Las Vegas bowl. Yesterday, we smeared them 59-0. At the half we were ahead 42-0!! Insane! They just were fumbling and throwing interceptions everywhere! We just couldn't be stopped. It would have been more, but I heard we were playing all of our second and third string players during the last two quarters or so. Had to give our offense a break since they were playing basically the entire first half. We played the freaking "Cougar Cub" song that we always play during a first down so many times! That and the fight song for each touchdown and field goal. It was exciting. We have such a good football team this year. Yay!

Oh yeah, last Wednesday I had Master Classes and I performed my song for everyone. It went pretty well! Everyone seemed to like the song and Jesse played the piano part very well for not having it for very long. It had the tendency to go too slow (as opposed to too fast like in Sacrement meeting), but it was still good. Geralyn seemed to like it too and had some suggestions for me. But that's all they were, suggestions. She was encouraging me to keep adding to it and write some more pieces to perform in class. Yikes! We'll see how far that goes. :) Either way, I'm glad it's over and went well. Yay!

Well, I should try to finish up my Sight Singing homework before I head off to bed. Though before I do, I'll go ahead and post another video of a little snippet of something I wrote a week or so ago. On a whim I named it "Mixed Feelings." Just because of the switch from major to minor. Like I couldn't decide what it was supposed to mean. I don't know. Go ahead and listen or something. :P

P.S. I love getting comments. :) If you read this blog, please comment and let me know! It makes me feel like I'm not writing to a wall/myself.

So... school

2008-09-07T16:10:00.000-07:00

I've finished my first week of my sophomore year in college. Yup, sure have. I did my audition on Tuesday, which went just fine. I ended up making Wind Symphony playing English Horn! I'm so excited. I know that Wind Symphony is also going on tour to Japan after next semester... but I don't know I get to go on that. But, you know what, it's all good. It'd cost like 600 or 700 dollars to go (for a foreign trip... holy cheapness) and it would cut into the Spring term that I want to stay for. I'm just excited to be in a band that meets on Tuesday and Thursdays because it works out much better for my schedule. Oh, and being able to be in the same ensemble as Natasha... again! I can't believe it! We'll have a blast. :)

My Music Education class seems like it's going to be pretty fun. We get to go to middle schools and observe the teachers and take notes and such. Oh, and we get to learn two instruments: one string and one wind. We've basically split into two groups for the two middle schools, and one starts with the orchestra and the other with the band. I'm in the orchestra group first and I just found out that I'll be learning the Viola! So, that'll be fun. It doesn't seem like it'll be too terrible. Just takes up a lot of time since it's every morning for two hours, and for when we go to the middle schools we have to be there by 7:20 or so. But, it's fun. Great fun.

Calculus so far isn't bad. Just a review of trig and algebra, really. We'll be getting into the good stuff soon, which should be a review of the Calculus class I took in high school. So far I have an A in the class. The whole two online quizzes that I took that you can answer until you get it right. Yeah... we'll see how long that A will last. :P I shouldn't be too hard on myself yet. I could pull it off if I work hard enough.

So my song that I wrote this summer for sacrement meeting... I brought it up to my Oboe professor during my audition as a way to not talk about the fact that I didn't really practice that much this summer. She asked if I would play it at Master Classes this Wednesday. In front of all of the other oboe players and herself. So, I am. I just finished adding in all the dynamic markings I should have added in the first place, and I re-wrote a couple other parts. There were some parts that could sound basically the same (if not better) and be easier for the piano, so I changed them. And the end. I changed the end a bit. I'm probably going to end up showing the music to my professor tomorrow in my lesson. Nervous? Yes. She only has a doctorate in music and has analyzed a bunch of music written by real composers. We'll see what she thinks. I don't think she'll be too hard. It'll be interesting to see what she has to say. I'll guess I'll just wait and see!

So right now I'm in my room writing this blog while Ashley is off with her brothers and such visiting their grandparents and having dinner with them. My roommates and some of their friends are over talking and having a great time in the living room type-room. This is fairly typical. I tend to just kind of be in my room doing whatever on the computer or working on homework while they are out socializing. Interesting. I swear I'm not that anti-social. Every once in a while I semi-awkwardly walk out and just say hi or try to be part of the conversation somewhat. I just don't really know them very much. I guess if I just interjected myself into the group I would get to know them. Whatever. I like having the time to myself. My introverted self likes having that alone time to not have to talk to people.

Speaking of being social, Anthony and Curtis have come over every day for the past couple of days to play games and just hang out. It's been great fun! Too bad it prevents me from getting things done such as homework, practicing, or sleeping. But it's still a lot of fun.

I have little songs for each of my two nephews and now my neice! I'll go ahead and make little videos of them and let you all listen to them! Awww... they are all so freakin' cute. :)

Back at School

2008-08-31T13:29:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again -- school starting. Classes start on Tuesday and the week of marching band is now over. It was literally taking up all of my time. 8-12 morning marching rehearsal, then 1:30-5 more marching rehearsal, then 7-10 inside music rehearsal. Rinse and repeat. That was the schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday, anyway. Thursday we had a performance and they served us lunch and dinner (yay for free food!). Friday morning we had off so the freshman could go to part of orientation. (I'm so not a freshman anymore! Wow!) Then Saturday we had a game with a nice morning rehearsal before we had to meet at 2. We smeared the other team (North Iowa University) 41-17, I believe. So, that was fun. The shows seemed to be fine as well.

The only problem: I also play the oboe. In fact, that's the instrument that I have to play one on one with a professor every week for an hour and have an ensemble in. Have I played it at all this week or much over the summer? Not really. I did play it some over the summer, and I wrote a song that I played in church. I figure that writing a song kind of makes up for the lack of practicing. I also performed a couple pieces at our family reunion. So tonight I'm meeting with another fellow oboist, Jessie, to make reeds and hopefully practice some. Oh yeah... I have an audition on Tuesday for which ensemble I'll be in this year. Though, it's not as intimidating as it sounds. She already has in mind who she wants where, it's mostly just a check to make sure we suddenly didn't suck or get some bad habit. So, I'm thinking if I just pick two contrasting songs (like I'm supposed to) and play through them, it'll be okay. She had me play the first line or so of each piece last year. Not much at all. We'll just see how it goes.

Oh, and I need to sign up for practice rooms. I don't have the luxury of having practice rooms in the basement of my dorm rooms. I actually have to go to the HFAC and use a practice room like most other music majors. And they are almost always full. Let's just hope I can sign up for them. But at least if I only practice at the HFAC it means I can leave my oboe there in a locker I'll rent out and not have to carry it around back and forth like I did last year. That would be absolutely wonderful.

I've met my other two roommates and they seem really nice and fun people! One of them brought a bunch of stuff I forgot to buy and didn't expect to have. For instance, she has a blender, a bunch of pots and pans, a silverware holder thing, oven mitts, pillows for the couch, paper towels, and (this is my favorite)... an ice cream maker! Yeah! Who would have thought I'd have an ice cream maker in my apartment my sophomore year in college? It's pretty awesome. I'm thinking we'll be having some parties. :P

I am now officially in the cell phone world, as well. I've got a go phone! It charges me a dollar a day for each day I use it and 10 cents a minute for each minute I call someone who isn't with AT&T. I can also text, but it's 15 cents a text either sent or received. If I really wanted, I could use the internet as well, but for the 30 seconds I used it last Sunday, it cost something like 61 cents. So... I'll try to avoid that. :P

Right now my room is a total wreck. You want to see how it looked yesterday at the peek of messiness?

It does look slightly better now. It's just a matter of lifting my bed up on cinder blocks so I can put stuff underneath it and moving those boxes and suitcases to the convenient basement they have here. That's what's taking up the most room right now.

Oh, guess what? Yesterday was my 19th birthday! Good times. :) A person in the horn section in marching band made me a cake and they all sang to me at the end of the morning rehearsal on Saturday. Aww, it was so sweet! Not only that, but when I got home from the football game my roommates had made me a cake with candles and they all sang to me! They even had some trick candles! Ha! Just like home! :) I definitely felt loved. I also got many many comments on facebook wishing me a happy birthday as well. Pretty awesome.

I'll try to get back into the habit of updating this thing during school. It's nice to have a place to record my thoughts and happenings of my life for all to see. :)

Insanity Must Be Hereditary

2008-07-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

So, my family is basically redesigning the entire house. We've repainted pretty much every wall we could and are going to get new carpet next week for the upstairs. When I was gone at BYU this last semester, they already took out the carpet in the living room and dining room and put in tile instead. Pretty crazy. So we are basically taking everything out of the rooms upstairs and either throwing it away or putting it downstairs so we can get the new carpet next week. It's tons of fun, I've got to say. Though, we do have a ton of junk, so we really needed to go through it and just throw it away or give it away. My room was already taken over by Mark and Flor, so my stuff was already in boxes and various piles. It's just a matter of going through it and deciding what to do with it. So far we've thrown away quite a bit, and I know we'll throw away even more as go finish going through everything when we move it all back upstairs. Hopefully the house will be much more clutter-free with no random boxes of stuff in the way. I'm looking forward to it, but also sad to think that the look of the house that I grew up in is slowly fading away. Though, if I really think about it, it's been like that for a while. That's what happens... things get old and need to be replaced. So, I'll get over it.

BUT, that isn't really the point of this post. My dad was painting the ceiling white to cover up the water damage we had there, and he had some extra white paint. He didn't want it to go to waste, so what did he do?
Why, he painted his face! It would be a waste otherwise, right? He asked if I wanted my face painted... well... it would be a waste if I didn't. So...

He just painted my face white... no way! Yes way.

So, especially after watching the Dark Knight and with all the hype surrounding it... there's only one thing that would come to mind when your face is painted white like that.
My mom found some old lipstick and mascara and this is what happened. I've got to say my dad looks like a much creepier joker than me. He smeared the lipstick better to make it look like he had the scars, and having the shirt with paint all over it helped too. :P Here's some more pictures just for you!

This is my Dad during the day... with his glasses no one can tell he's the Joker! Bwhahaha! Yeah... I thought it was pretty funny. Though, he did go on and continue painting and cleaning things up for the next couple of hours and ate lunch with the paint and make-up on. Kind of odd, but hilarious.

And why have an update without having some more of cute little Alex!
Awww!! He's so freakin' adorable. That picture was taken right after I took this video. I came downstairs and he was just giggling and smiling while his mom, Flora, was trying to feed him. He was too cute to not take a video of. Unfortunately, when he got sight of the camera, he got interested in that and stopped smiling, but you can still see his cuteness. :P

My New Toy!

2008-07-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

As I said in the last update, someone stole the camera that I won at work this past Christmas. Sad day, indeed. So yesterday my mom was at Costco and said that she found a camera for $130 that was originally $160. She gave me the make of it, and I saw its specs and how it looked at Kodak.com to see if I liked it and if it was worth it. First of all, at Kodak.com it was priced at $180. My other camera was 5.1 megapixels with 3x optical zoom and no digital zoom. This camera was 8.1 megapixels with 3x optical zoom and 5x digital zoom. It also has a zillion settings for different lighting situations and has a much bigger LCD screen on the back and many more little features. So... I went with it. :P My mom bought it and I'll pay her back. So now I have a new toy!! It takes videos just like my last camera, but they are higher quality. It can take panoramic pictures, which I have absolutely no experience with, but it looks really cool. Oh boy, it's awesome. Totally worth the $130. It also came with a nifty camera case thing and a 1GB SD card. It's not just silver like my last one, either. It's this icy blue color and silver. Basically it just rocks my socks off. Look forward to some more silly videos and pictures this next year. I'll try to not get this camera stolen. :P

So... I can update

2008-07-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

I haven't been so good at the updating lately. Oh well. Here's a little filler on how my summer's been going lately.

I've mostly just been working at the theater and watching little Alex. I practice the piano on occasion, and haven't really been practicing oboe. Oh well, I will when school comes closer (probably in August) so I can look like I haven't been slacking off all summer. I did go to Fan Fair in Nashville! Sure, I'll post some pictures from that. :) I recently became one of the moderators at Billy Gilman Fans, and because of that I was special enough to help run his booth there.

There's me in the booth with Andrew -- one of the admins at Billy Gilman Fans. People were constantly asking him if he was Billy when Billy wasn't there. LOL... it was funny to me.

But, besides Billy I was also able to see a bunch of other big artists perform at LP Field! Some of the highlights included:

Faith Hill! :)

Keith Urban! He was a surprise appearance. I had heard of him, but didn't really know much about him. He did a great job and really got the crowd pumped up.

Rascal Flatts!! They weren't listed to appear, and I really wanted them to, but I had conceded to just try to make it to one of their concerts eventually... and then they just popped on stage with "Me and My Gang" as a surprise! I was so happy! They did, "Me and My Gang," "Every Day," "Bob That Head," a part of "I Melt," "Take Me There"... and I think that might have been it. Oh my goodness it made my summer to see them. So awesome...

Taylor Swift! I was really excited to see her perform, and despite what some people say about her live performances, she sounded great. She did "Picture to Burn," "Should've Said No" (with an awesome drum thing she did...), and "Our Song." (I'm pretty sure... maybe one other) It was funny before she sang "Should've Said No" she introduced it with, "You know, I try to be a nice person. I really do. But if you break my heart, I'm just gonna have to write a song about you!" Or maybe that was to "Picture to Burn." Hmm... I remember her saying, "This next song is about choices..." So, I guess I don't really remember. :p But, of course... it was awesome! :)

Sugarland came on to the stage in these balls. They rolled back through the crowd and then back to the stage. It was weird. LOL... but they did pretty well. I wasn't too familiar with them, but I know I had heard at least one of their songs.

And Carrie Underwood! She did "Last Name," "Wasted," "Jesus Take the Wheel," and of course "Before He Cheats." I'm pretty sure she sang at least one other song, maybe two... but I don't remember. :P She was awesome. :) (Maybe I should try to find another adjective other than awesome)

Of course, from running Billy's booth I was able to meet him for the first time.

Little does he know he was pretty much the only music that I listened to throughout middle school and the beginning of high school. I got his CD (Dare to Dream first) and then my sister got me the Dixie Chicks first CD (Wide Open Spaces) and it was pretty much just Dixie Chicks and Billy Gilman. I was the typical 11 and 12 year old that was crazy about him. I thought I was going to marry him one day. Don't worry, I've definitely grown out of that phase, but I still like him as an artist. (and still have all of the lyrics to all of his songs memorized...) I'm especially excited that he's started to write his own music and seems to be getting close to getting signed to a major label again. His new songs really sound great. The one that seems to be the most "controversial" is the song called "Damn." I know! Billy Gilman saying the word "damn!" It's atrocious! *cough* It's actually a really rockin' song. I really like it. ;) Some other songs he sang include "It's My Life," "I've Changed," and "This Time." I'm pretty sure there was at least one other song he sang that he said was literally just a couple days old, but I don't remember the name of it. All of them are awesome. Much better than the popish sounding stuff he did at first.

Anyway, at the booth when he was there to sign, I was the person to take pictures of people. They would come through the line, give their camera to Andrew, who would then give it to me, and then when they had gotten Billy to sign whatever for them, I would take the picture for them. Andrew purposely gave me this job so that he would definitely notice me... since he had to look at me for the 3 or 4 hours that he was there signing. It worked. :P He was making fun of me for being the "sloppy camera woman." (Just from maybe two or three times that I was distracted and wasn't ready right when they needed me to be to take the picture.) Once he actually said, "Sarah! You know I'm joking, right?" "Yeah." He actually knew my name! I didn't know that he did. So, that's like... unbelievably awesome actually. The 12-year-old inside of me is kind of spazzing out at the thought of it. What really struck me about him is how incredibly nice and outgoing he was! He always seemed to have all this energy and made an effort to be as nice as possible to every person that came to the booth. It's not something that can really come across in interviews or performances. He's a genuinely nice guy. He made an effort for everyone to thank us (the BGF staff) for putting together the booth and getting everything together. And he had a firm handshake. I was very proud of him for that.

Oh yeah, and at Fan Fair someone stole my camera. Good thing my mom was the one taking most of the pictures. The exhibition hall (where the booths were) had already closed and people were just leaving (there weren't many people left), and my mom had just handed me my camera. I put it on the table, and then the next thing I knew it wasn't there. We looked everywhere and couldn't find it. We contacted security about it... nothing. So I guess one of the few people left decided to get a free camera. Granted, I got it for free... but now I'm cameraless again. I really just liked the video option on it. Hopefully I'll win another free camera sometime in the future... *cough*

Okay... enough about that. What else happened?

Well, my grandfather turned 90 years old. We kind of had a family reunion type thing in Utah a weekend or two ago for it. My entire family was able to make it! Kathy and Craig with little Mark, Lisa and Byron with little Kayla, Mark and Flora with little Alex, Paul and Brittany, and then me and my parents! And of course many other cousins, Aunts and Uncles, and some other people that I don't really know very well. :P It was so much fun to see little Mark again! I hadn't seen him in a while, and he's gotten so big! He'll turn 2 in August and he's just learning to talk and do things independently. He knows what his sippy cup is and calls it "cupa." (cup-uh) So adorable! Kathy thinks it's because she would say, "Do you want a cup of juice?" Or something to that effect, and he interpreted that to be "cupa." He knows his eyes, nose, juice, cup, door, water, avocado (that's cute to hear), banana, "what's that?", "yay!", flower, shoes, and some other words. Of course, most of these words are kind of various versions of the word. Like banana is "nana," and water is more like "waer." It's so adorable to see him say "yay!" He does that a lot. Like in the car I was with him in the back, and Kathy and Craig were in the front. They put on some karaoke song and sang a duet, and at the end he would always say, "Yay!!" They said they knew they had done badly if after they finished he just looked at them and didn't say anything. LOL

I could probably go on forever about all the cute things he did, but I'll stop. :P This Saturday I'm going up to Kathy and Craig's house for the fourth of the July and I'll get to see him again! I spent a lot of time with him before, I'm hoping to just hear him call out my name to know that he really knows who I am. His cool Aunt Sarah. :) Awww!!

Okay, this entry has been ridiculously long enough. It kind of makes up for the lack of updates...

Alex is freaking adorable

2008-05-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Life has gone on. I work at the theater (which is, of course, an absolute pleasure) and I just do whatever at home. I should sign up for those online courses I keep saying I'm going to take. Yes, I will do that sometime... perhaps this week. We'll see.

But for now, I shall show you some adorable videos of little Alex. He's actually here at home now! Well, Mark and Flora go back and forth between here and her parent's place, but at least half the time he's here! So I get to help in taking care of him. :)

My new nephew!!

2008-04-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

So, I got home last Wednesday! w00t for that! I've survived finals (and did pretty well) and survived my first entire year at BYU. Go me! So far from being home I've had the privilege of painting our entire living room. Both coats. That pretty much consumed yesterday and today. It was tiring, holy cravitz, but it was nice to get done. My parents are kind of redoing a bunch of stuff in the house. Replacing lots of carpet with tile, and apparently they are going to replace the carpet that's left with some new carpet. We need it, too. It's old and kind of falling apart in some places.

Oh, and before I get to the incredible cuteness that is my new nephew Alex, I've got to mention the fact that I'm going to a Josiah Leming concert tomorrow night. He just happens to be coming to Dallas! Holy cravitz! Yay! Despite my whining about him in my last entry, he still rocks my socks off. The ticket was a whole 10 dollars... I can deal. :) I'll post pictures and videos for sure after tomorrow night.

But, for now we get to see little Alex! He was born today at 5:38 PM and weighed 6 pounds 12 ounces, and was 20 inches long.

Holy cuteness! His little face... you can definitely see both his mom and his dad in him. My camera was running out of batteries, but I was still able to get a little video of him. He's just sleeping... but, holy cravitz. He's so adorable.

A Little Rant

2008-04-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this could be a Random Rant on my website... but whatever. Maybe I'll move it there later.

Okay, so like I said before I really like Josiah Leming. He's incredibly talented and can compose some great songs with great lyrics. Though, I read a couple weeks ago that he doesn't really actually write out music or read it. If he had a week or so he could figure it out, but he doesn't really read it. Quote...

"well, i picked up piano REALLY easily, it was second nature to me, almost like breathing and walking. after i started playing, my parents hooked me up with a year of fundamental lessons, with a local elderly lady, who hated the way i didn't practice the songs she gave me lol. i was always all about writing my own stuff on piano, and had no desire to learn songs that were already written. i play by ear, but i can read notes very poorly. put a piece of sheet music in front of me and it may take a few days, but let me listen to it, and i can usually play it note for note in a few minutes. if i'm feeling lazy i get the guitar chord tablature, bc i know all the chords and that jazz."

Well, that's great and fantastic. It's an awesome gift to be able to play by ear, but that's no excuse to not practice the stuff that's already written. By learning to play music that's already been done you learn more about music in general which could help you compose better. But he does play other music... just by ear. That is very true, and I'm sure that's how he's picked up various techniques and sounds, but it leaves out the possibility of other people playing his music (unless they can also play by ear) and being able to read and write music is a vital part to the whole music world! Why did people come up with a way to write music in the first place back in the days of Gregorian Chant... oh, so it could be done the same way without people forgetting how it went. It's a way to record the music that people make, and to keep it going throughout time. It's skipping a vital part to music. Part of being better as a musician is practicing the "boring" stuff and getting through exercises. It may seem pointless at first, but it really does help you play better. I've had to drill scales my entire musical life, and it honestly helps. Especially in music where they have runs that are really quick. I've practiced the scales so many times I see it and think, "Oh, that's a Bb ascending scale from F to C." So my fingers just do it.

You've got to be able to play Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Haydn, Liszt and all the other great composers. (even the not so great ones) The great composers of our time wrote down their music to be heard and played. You don't want to spend your time to learn to play it because you want to work on your own stuff? His compositions, as great as they are, could still and always get better. Rather than having a part of your music be there because you know that it sounds cool that way, you can think, "I want the listener to have a feeling of longing for the chord to resolve... how about a deceptive resolution, or modulate to a minor key." Rather than... "How about this chord? Yeah, that sounds cool. I'll go with it." You might have chosen a deceptive resolution, but you weren't thinking it. What if you wanted the same sound, but didn't know how to get it in the different key? It might take longer to figure it out, but if you knew the theory behind it, you could do it quickly and know exactly what you're doing.

It seems like Josiah is an inspiration for other people, too... (another quote from someone on youtube)

"I just love how you can play by ear. I've been playing piano for quite a while, but I just sorta lost interest in it because all my teacher makes me play are songs from books. Hah." (not talking about Josiah, but someone who made a "tutorial" of Josiah's music also by ear)

Yeah, those dumb teachers making their students play songs from books. Ha! They are so silly and don't know what they're doing! Why don't all people just make up their own music all the time, blah blah blah... silly theory and scales and simple songs that will do me nothing...

NO.

Those exercises from "books" are there to build various skills and make you a better pianist. It may seem boring, but it honestly does help. Then you'll be able to play harder stuff and move on as a musician. People didn't make these books to make students suffer. They made them to make students advance and become better. By not doing them and just doing your own thing, it's like you're telling them that they are useless and you are better without them.

A response to Josiah's comment I quoted above, "Be glad you don't require formal lessons as they can sometimes be a royal pain in the [butt]."

Yeah. He doesn't "require" them. *rolls eyes* Everyone could do better with lessons. This is a case when Gavin Mikhail wins over Josiah. Check out an answer on his FAQ...

"I started classical piano and pipe organ when I was 7 and played/competed until I was 19. Started singing when I was about 9 or 10. And yeah, lessons were part of the deal. My Mom was MILITANT about me practicing (think 5am wakeup call to practice before school :), but honestly, even though I hated it at the time, I really wouldn't trade it now. That training has become much of who I am as a writer and musician, so I definitely recommend taking lessons if you can. Don't get me wrong, there are some amazing self-taught artists/writers in the world (and you may be one of them), but I think even if you're self-taught, having a few lessons under your belt can only add to what you already do..."

There is the point I'm trying to make right now. "Even if you're self-taught, having a few lessons under your belt can only add to what you already do." Holy cravitz Gavin! He's obviously a very talented musician, but even he had strenuous lessons that he wouldn't give up for anything. It only added to what he could already do. Yes, you can do fine without it... but in my opinion, it's kind of arrogant and shows that you aren't willing to expand your horizons.

...that's my two cents for the day. :p

One More Week!

2008-04-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

So now that it is the end of Wednesday life is pretty good. :) My jury is now over, and it seemed to go pretty well. I didn't really mess up anything. A couple little things, but they're forgivable. :p So now I just have to do my other finals, which are significantly less worrisome. I've basically taken it easy the rest of today, though. Tomorrow I'll try to actually study and finish some finals and whatnot. I'll try to be done with my finals by Monday. Yay! :)

So a week from today right now I'll be back home with my family. I'm so excited! I was planning on driving back with Ashley, but suddenly her brother changed his mind and is not going to stay Spring term. That means I'm no longer required to driver back with her because her brother will be there. That means it's cheaper (with my Dad's flying benefits), faster, and easier for me. I'll be home on Wednesday rather than Sunday. Wow. I'm unbelievably excited to be back home for the summer. It's so close! SO close...

Okay, so right now it's about 11:38 PM and I have no idea what time I'm planning on going to bed. Though, I do know that I'll be sleeping in tomorrow... yay for sleeping in! I love getting sleep. Though, it's nicer when I have cool dreams. Last night I had dreams about Computer Science. Not really exciting at all. I guess that's what happens when I help people with their programs for CS 142 for about 9 hours in one day. Yeah, I stayed until a little after midnight Tuesday night helping people since it was the last day to pass off labs and such. It was good times. That'll somewhat make up for the hours I'll miss on Thursday since it's a reading day and I normally work for 5 hours on Thursday. Yay for getting money! :)

Alright, well I guess this is it for now. I can't think of anything else significant to say... so until next time! :)

Life is almost awesome

2008-04-12T23:43:00.000-07:00

After Wednesday I shouldn't have too much to worry about. You know... just the rest of my finals. That will include Music Civ 202 (which is online), Book of Mormon (as long as I do the review... I should be good), CS 235 (which shouldn't be too bad), Music Theory (which is take home... shouldn't be too bad), and Dictation. As long as it's a good day for Dictation, it should be alright. If I get an 85 or so, I'll get a B in the class. Let's hope for that. It's much better than a C-, that's for sure. :) Last semester I was hoping to pass, this semester my goals are a little higher. Yay! :) So, those other finals shouldn't be too bad. It's just that and working. Just grading CS 142 finals. I'm all for getting more money. I wasn't counting on getting money for working during the finals week. So, yay for more money! I suddenly have realized that I have a good amount of money. Well, a good amount considering I was basically out at the beginning of the semester. Good thing I got that job. :) I think this'll be the only semester that I'll be able to pull off working 17 hours a week, though. I just don't think I'll have the time otherwise. Either way, I should be able to make enough money to go through college without debt. That's my goal. I think we'll get there. w00tness!

What else? Oh, so I am capable of making good reeds. I ended up making a pretty good reed on Tuesday, that worked okay at Master Classes. It just wasn't quite broken in enough. Geralyn did make a comment after I played about how the reed wasn't good enough for me. Eh, it's a lot better now. It's not perfect (I don't think the perfect reed actually exists) but I think it's pretty good. I'm trying to make some other good reeds... but so far it's not working too well. We'll see where that goes. Oh, I need to call my accompanist and run through my jury again with her. We really need to work out a couple parts in the Hummel. I thought we got it worked out before Master Class on Wednesday, but then at the performance, it wasn't together. Ugh. Hopefully that doesn't happen this Wednesday. I guess we'll see. Even if it does... whatever. I'm not going to fail my jury. I'm just hoping to end up with an overall A.

Wow, this semester is actually ending. I've pretty much survived one whole year at BYU. I had a really hard time seeing this in August last year. I was so intimidated by college. I didn't know if I could handle it and be able to practice and whatever. It's been fun! Yeah, I get busy at times, but it's mostly fun. I enjoy pretty much all of my classes, I have my own computer, and I get to completely manage my own time and schedule. It's lovely to have freedom like this. Though, of course, as much as I love it, I'm excited to go back home for this summer. Just to be back with my family and not stress about school. I think overall I'm less stressed here at college than I was in high school. Eh... that might be a lie. I think I'm just overall happier here. Yes, I think that's it. There isn't the politics in band like there was in high school, and I just love the fact that the church is mixed in with learning. Almost everyone is Mormon! It's crazy!

Okay, well I still need to read about 60 pages of the Book of Mormon in about 2 days, so I'll get on that. :) I love it, it's just time consuming.

End of semester, here I come!

One week left...

2008-04-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

A week from today is the last day of classes. Then we have "reading days" which are supposed to be days for studying for our finals. For music majors, though, it means jury time. A week from tomorrow is my jury... and I'm in need of a good reed. I made a good reed about 2 or 3 weeks ago, but guess what? Yeah, it's dying. That's what happens to reeds. I'm surprised how long it lasted, actually. It still plays... okay... I guess, but I really need another one. Just now in the past hour I attempted three. They all have the same problem: FLAT. I would love them if they weren't 50 cents flat on every note. There's something that I'm doing wrong... consistently. I thought I had it figured out with the last good reed I made, but I keep doing something wrong. I don't get it. I'll probably just come begging to our grad student for help and get something good for Master Class tomorrow. Yeah, I'm playing AGAIN. I played the past two weeks, and I get to play again. And guess what I'm playing? My jury. I'm playing two movements from Telemann and the Hummel. Not only need I need to practice them to make sure I still know them (which, I do, but... whatever) but I need to have a good reed. My good reed that was working so well, suddenly didn't work well last week when I played. I definitely can't use it again. And I need to rehearse with my accompanist and make sure we have some parts that are hard to get together...

Basically, it's be nice for it to be a week from Thursday. :)

Anyway, in other news I finished sight singing today. I turned in my last two assignments, had my last pace test, and was told I had an A for the semester. So the optional last pace test that could replace the lowest score... I'm definitely not taking. So, that's one class down. Well, actually two classes down. My Music 176 class ended back in February. Anyway, I just have the rest to worry about. :P If I just get an A on my final in cs 235, I'll have an A in the class. I turned in my last lab on Monday. I just have one more homework assignment due on Friday (which I'll try to actually turn in on Friday this time) and then the final. So... hopefully I can pull that off. I deserve an A in that class. I understand everything, go to lecture, and turn in my labs on time. It's just my homework I kind of slack off on. But, I slack off in a way that still gives me credit for it. :p

What else? Oh, I made a video of Allison Mack's challenge on allisonmack.com. She challenged her fans to make videos of their favorite scene from a TV show, movie, book, or whatever, and recreate it! So, I did. :) I remade the scene from the episode "Justice" from Smallville. The scene between Bart and Lex. Ashley was gone at work, and I didn't feel like working on homework or reeds or practicing (which I should have done... but whatever) so I used my lovely camera and filmed myself playing both Lex and Bart. Then I just quickly edited it using Windows Movie Maker and picked a song. Voila! I have a nice scene of me playing Bart and Lex from "Justice." I'll go ahead and post it here for your viewing pleasure. :) Yay!

It was a lot of fun to make. :)

I can feel it now

2008-04-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

There's just under two weeks of classes left now. The end really is coming. Two weeks from yesterday is the last day of classes, two weeks from today is my jury, and then after that I just have my finals... and then sweet freedom! I'm really looking forward to this summer. I'll have my own computer in my own room with my own internet. Well, it's my parents internet... but it's not blocked or anything! I'll finally go to myspace, youtube, and any other streaming video site at my own free will! This should be the last year to worry about it, too, because I'm definitely not planning on living on campus for the rest of my college career. Yay!

Some other good news is that I finished my AVL tree lab for cs 235. It was rumored to be the hardest lab of the semester, and I finished it early! So, I got a 102 on it. :) Yay! Though, it did pretty much consume my entire weekend. (Mostly Saturday) There's just one more project, and 2 more homeworks. Though, the homeworks always turn out to be really easy. It's actually really funny. There was a homework due last Friday, and I turned it in Monday morning before the TAs got there. Oh yeah, and on their website they have in bold that there's NO LATE HOMEWORK ACCEPTED! Yeah... I turned in homework due on Friday on Monday morning... full credit. Well, actually I missed two points on it because apparently I thought that 7 was greater than 9. Whatever.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to maintain my GPA this semester, but at least my Dictation grade is significantly better! I have about a B in the class so far. Yay! I had barely a C- last semester. That is really good news. Though, I'm basically guaranteed to not get an A in Music Civ 202. I can hopefully pull of an A-. Book of Mormon, surprisingly, I'm really hoping for another A-, but it's probably going to be a B+. Burn. I thought religion classes were supposed to be easy. Oh well. At least I'm learning a lot from it. :)

Oh, and it's official. I'm going to Fan Fair (or CMA fest... whatever) this summer! My mom and I bought tickets and booked a hotel yesterday and the day before. If I didn't go now, it would be a drastic waste of money. It's looking like it will cost me about 700 dollars. It seems like a lot of money... well, it is a lot of money, but I was expecting to pay about 1000 dollars, if not more. So, I'm pretty excited. It should be so much fun. :) YAY! This summer is going to rock.

And since I'm sucking at life at posting in this blog, I'll go ahead and post another video. Yay for videos!

I just turned on the camera, and apparently the room spun around me. It was all rather thrilling.

The End is Coming...

2008-03-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't been that great at updating this. Maybe I'll try to be better from now on. Or something.

So, the end of the semester is coming. I shouldn't be thinking that the end is coming, though, because then it makes me think of the summer and not having to worry about school and everything. So, then... I'll stop worrying about school now. :p So, the end isn't near as far as I'm concerned!

Right now I'm working on a CS 235 lab. XML Parser. They give me XML code (a lot like HTML code) and I'm supposed to parse it into a tree linking the different tags and stuff. It seems to be going pretty well so far. You can put stuff into it and print it out, but it just doesn't quite work how they want it to yet. Hopefully I can finish it tonight so I can turn it in tomorrow for one point extra credit. I'm looking forward to it.

The good news is that this weekend I finally made a good reed. It's not perfect (if that even exists), but it mostly plays in tune and plays soft and loud! It's response is pretty good too. I'm proud of myself. Now I should try to make the other blank a good reed. Then I'll have two good reeds at once both made by me! Oh wow... that'd be incredible. We'll see if that happens.

Today I also broke my flash drive. Sad day. I just had it in my computer and then my leg bumped it and... it broke.
It looks like it might still read, and yet... no. The good thing is that there isn't really anything on there that I really need. With the last lab I had actually done my work on the flash drive and just brought it back and forth between TA-ing and being at home. This time I worked on it on my hard drive, and then copied it on the flash drive to work on at work. So, I didn't lose any work. I'm just going to buy another one. In fact, I already have. I bought a 4 GB one for about 9 dollars. w00t w00t! It was actually like 19 dollars, but I got 10 dollars off for being a first time customer. I'll take it. :)

So, since it's been so long since and entry, I'll include a nice video.

Josiah Leming

2008-02-29T11:42:00.000-08:00

So, I happened to fall upon a myspace for this guy Josiah Leming that apparently lots of people had known about from American Idol, but since I don't really watch TV (except for Smallville when there's a new episode) I certainly didn't know anything about him. Just from reading people's comments and such I had gotten the impression that he was this really talented kid but was a brat, or overconfident or something like that. Perhaps full of himself. I looked him up and tried to find as many videos of him as I could to see just how talented he is, specifically the American Idol videos. I watched them all and... wow. He's incredible.

He doesn't come across as a brat, stuck up, overconfident, conceited or anything at all to me. His second audition wasn't his best, but I feel it was just an unfortunate situation. Check it out:

See, from that video I don't think he was being overconfident or thinking that he could pull it off by himself without the band. He was trying to come up with the best solution to do his best. He had never run through the whole song with the band before, and they weren't playing the song how he heard it in his head. It made him more uncomfortable to sing with them. In his mind, he'd have a better shot if he just didn't sing with them. That way they wouldn't get off and he wouldn't be singing it in a way he didn't like. Unfortunately for him, this song wasn't exactly for him and he does better when he's playing at the piano. It was already hard for him to just have to sing while not doing anything in the first place, but it was even harder to have to play with a band that wasn't playing it the way he wanted it, and he had never actually completely rehearsed everything all the way through. It makes sense to dismiss them. Now, I suppose Simon called him annoying thinking that Josiah was referring to the fact that Josiah said that it took a lot of guts to get up there. I think that Josiah was referring to the fact that it took a lot of guts to dismiss the band like he did, which he's right. I wouldn't have the guts to tell them to leave and sing by myself, though at that point it did look like the best option.

Now that I've beat that completely dead, people also made fun of him for crying. But, let's see, what was he crying about? First of all, he cried about having to live in his car for about a year and being lonely. I don't know about you, but that's a pretty good reason to cry. Second of all, he was crying when it was in the middle of the night and he was getting frustrated about choosing an appropriate song to sing and getting it rehearsed with the band and it just wasn't working. He was tired, nervous, and just trying to do his best and it wasn't working. Not to mention what he was trying to work out was for something that could determine his future and getting a record deal and all that jazz. (Which, it looks like he's going to get one anyway... yay!) That also seems reasonable to cry. Then, when he actually performed it and the judges were all in agreement that it wasn't very good, and then Simon calls him way overconfident which wasn't right at all... I started crying just watching the video. I would have cried for sure in his position. He's awesome. I'll definitely buy his first album that comes out. I'm actually kind of happy that he didn't make it to the top 24 on American Idol because his style is just so different than what American Idol looks for. To be honest, I don't think that he's the best singer out of all the contestants. Actually, I'm going for David Archuleta--he's an amazing singer. Though, Josiah's incredibly talented at composing music and expressing himself with it. It's awesome. Just plain awesome.

Anyway... I think that'll be all for this entry. Maybe later I'll post an entry that's actually about my life. We'll see. :)

Another Day

2008-02-26T23:32:00.000-08:00

So, another day has come and gone. I was able to finish my lab for CS 235 this weekend and turn it in today for a 100. I had it finished yesterday, but the TAs leave early on Mondays for FHE, so I turned it in today for a 100 instead of a 101. It turns out when you try to turn in a lab fairly late at night (pretty much the only time that I could today) on the day that it's due, it's kind of busy. So, when I got there I had to wait in line for the one and only TA to help some other students before passing me off. That's okay, I didn't have to wait too long. As long as I was able to pass it off today I was happy. Yay. :)

I also didn't have sight singing today. Last week we decided to change the way we have class. Before, our class was split up into two groups. One group met for the first 25 minutes, and the other group met for the second 25 minutes. I'm in the second group. So, usually I would just do some other homework for 25 minutes while the other sight singing class was going on, or take a small nap. The other group also decided that they would do the "fast track." Basically, they went twice as fast as us so they could finish the class half way through the semester. So, they just finished last week. We decided that we would meet for an hour on Thursdays and turn in two assignments, and then not meet on Tuesdays! Good plan. So, now I only have Dictation on Tuesdays. Good times! It gives me some more time to get homework done/practice/make reeds/whatever. Yay. Today in this time I was able to buy a new plaque (for oboe reed making) so I can finally give Becka her plaque back since I lost mine last semester. It cost a little under 2 dollars; I can deal with that.

I also finally did my wash. In fact, that's what I finishing up right now. I'm waiting for my clothes to finish drying, and then I'll put them away. I basically have to put them away because it's either that or they end up on the floor. I don't have an extra basket to keep them in like I did at home. It's a good habit to get into anyhow. Then, following that I hope to start and finish my CS 235 homework that's due tomorrow by like... 9 PM-ish and do my 30 minutes of reading. So far it's look like I'll get somewhere around 5 hours of sleep. Not too shabby, I'm thinking. It's better than say... 3... or 2. Yeah, that's not such good times when I get 5 hours of sleep in a 48 hour time period. I'll try to avoid that.

In other good news, my sister and her husband were able to bring home little Kayla last Friday night! Yay! Also, my mom is going to come up here to visit her sister, and so she'll be able to come visit me too! I'm excited. :) We'll probably end up doing something fun, and maybe go out to eat somewhere and see a movie or something. Aww... such good times. Apparently Ashley's mom is also coming in town this weekend. Kind of odd. Though, her mom is coming to visit/take care of Ashley's... grandmother? Something like that. I don't quite remember. So, Ashley is probably going to just leave and spend the weekend at some relative's house. We'll see how that goes. There's even a small possibility of me being able to finally launch Gavin Mikhail Fans this weekend. I've made 3 wallpapers for it in the past couple of days. Aww... they make me so happy. I'm excited for this website. Finally, a website that has a good focus that hasn't been done over and over again by someone else. I haven't found any other actual Gavin Mikhail fan website. I've seen one forum for him, and that's it. So, hopefully this'll be able to be something successful. I'm hoping.

Alright, I'll go ahead and end with another weird video from that one night a week or so ago...

Yeah, I'm kind of a freak.

More Pictures!

2008-02-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

My mom sent me some more pictures of little Kayla ... aww...

My new niece!!

2008-02-19T21:11:00.000-08:00

I'm a failure as an aunt, because I keep forgetting to put pictures up of her. She's adorable!

She was due on March 17th, but was born on Valentine's Day! But, even though she was premature, she weighed a whole 6 pounds and one ounce! She's still in the hospital for another couple of days until her lungs are matured enough for her to breathe on her own, but overall she's doing great.

Meet Kayla Nichole Price!

And the proud father!

She is just too freakin' adorable. I can't wait to see her. :)

I'm kind of odd

2008-02-19T20:35:00.000-08:00

So, after finishing a fantastic 3-day weekend, a new one begins with a Tuesday that's pretending to be a Monday. Last semester I would have been thrilled to skip a Tuesday, but this semester Tuesdays and Thursdays rock, so it kind of sucks that I get a Monday and Wednesday back to back. Oh well, it'll be okay.

So, tonight I was in a kind of odd mood. What do I do when I'm in odd moods? I make weird videos. Tonight I felt like dancing. Ashley suggested dancing to a freakin' awesome song, and I agreed. She started the song and I just went. Enjoy! Hahahahaha!

The week is almost over

2008-02-14T23:19:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Friday. Well, actually it's already Friday, but it's only been that way for about 20 minutes. I'm looking to get about 5 hours of sleep tonight. Not too shabby.

Tomorrow will also begin the 72-unsleep-a-thon. We've even made a blog for it:

http://explodingslush.blogspot.com/

Yes, Exploding Slush. I considered having that name for this blog, and then figured it was too random, or something. I like Insanity Lane. Anyhow, Exploding Slush came from the fact that it's everywhere here. Whenever it snows (which seems to be all the time nowadays) and they melt the ice/snow on the sidewalk for us, it kind of makes this slush stuff, and it explodes when you walk on it. You just take a step on it, and BOOM! All this slush just explodes outward from under your foot. Exploding Slush. It seemed like a fun website name.

So, yes. Now that I've sufficiently rambled about slush that explodes, I should really move on to homework so I can get as much sleep as I can... while I can. So, on to bigger and better things.

2008-02-12T23:36:00.000-08:00

The week is almost halfway over. Almost. I've gotten through Tuesday. I had my pace test this morning... it was alright. The good news is that I passed it. The bad news is that I didn't pass it by much. Oh well. It'll average out. Even if I get another C in that class, it won't be too bad. What really matters is just passing. And it's only a one credit class, so it doesn't affect my GPA too much So, good times indeed.

Though... I've been terrible with sleep this week. So, Sunday night I went to bed at about 3:20 or so, and got up at about 7. Not too great... but manageable. I thought that I might be able to get some more sleep last night to make up for it. What did I do? I went to bed at 4, and woke up at 6. What the cravitz, Sarah. You suck at life. Andrew was online and we were having a really good conversation that I couldn't just leave. Now, he's online again and it's 12:40. It's not looking too good, again. At least I'm kind of building up for this weekend of no sleep at all. I plan to get some sleep, real sleep, Wednesday and Thursday night. Andrew will be out of town then, so I should be able to. It's not that he forces me to stay up really late, it's that I get caught up in a conversation and suddenly it's 2:30 in the morning and I still have homework to finish. Oops. Whatever, it'll be okay. This weekend should be very interesting, though. I can already tell that I'm losing my mind from the lack of sleep. Like, this morning when I was taking ma shower... I was so confused. Honestly. I was trying to do some sort of math problem with the shower and water, but it never added up right. I kept thinking that I had to wash my hair a certain way or do certain things to make it work out how it should, but I was never doing it right. It doesn't quite make sense... but all I can say is that I was really confused and finally just turned off the water. I realized that I was just making up everything and that I didn't have to solve the shower. How... confusing.

At work today, it was insane. I was helping people the entire time. Just explaining the same things over and over again. I started to lost my voice from all the talking. Don't get me wrong, though, I love it overall. It's fun to see how different people coded it differently. I think it's making me a better programming being a TA. Not to mention I get paid. That makes it fun, too. :p

Today I had to go to a woodwind sectional/rehearsal at 9 PM. What the heck? Apparently the principal flute player felt like we needed some extra practice, so she arranged for us to get together and practice. Though, it turned out not to be too bad. It did make more of my night kind of disappear, but I think it might have helped a bit. Just to know how everything fits together. We'll see if there's any noticeable improvement tomorrow in Orchestra.

I think that's all. I'm tired. Perhaps I'll go to bed. Sleep is nice...

And, I'll go ahead and post another video. It should be good times.

Hi-yah!

Survival

2008-02-11T22:55:00.000-08:00

So, I got through today. I swear today has felt like a week. It just wouldn't end. In fact, it still hasn't quite ended. There's still a whole 4 more minutes of Monday. Though, by the time I finish this entry, it will be Tuesday. Good times.

So, I was able to start and finish my theory homework in Music Civ without too much sweat, and I finished my silent dictation in the 20 minutes I had between Orchestra and CS 235. Luckily we got out a little early today. Then, I started to get nervous about teaching a musical concept tonight. I had a plan of teaching different rhythms, or just different subdivisions of the beat using different fruit names. It sounded like it could be fun. Though, I was terrified that these college students that I would be teaching would think that it's really childish and not want to go along with it. But, it was actually the opposite! They got so into it! They loved it! We had all 8 of them saying different fruits with different rhythms... oh, it was great. I hope it was what they were looking for in teaching a musical concept. Either way, I had a blast doing it. :) Maybe Music Education is a good major for me. :p Now all that's left in the application is writing two papers, making a portfolio type thing, and record myself (ideally accompanied) playing the oboe. All by Friday. It can and will be done. I'm looking forward to Friday being over.

Tomorrow I have my second Dictation pace test. I'm hoping to get some sort of B on it. In fact, I'm hoping to get some sort of B in the class. That would be much better than a C-. It would be unrealistic to hope for an A, so I won't set myself up for disappointment. :p We'll just see. I seem to be on or off with Dictation. I just question myself so much during the pace tests. Whatever. I guess we'll just have to wait and see! :)

It turns out the program that I thought was finished wasn't quite finished. I fixed it (at least I'm almost positive that I did), but the TAs were already gone. So, I guess I'll just have to turn it in tomorrow for 2 points extra credit. I'll deal with it.

I'm going to be really tired this weekend. Though, at least the first night shouldn't be too bad. In fact, it'll be fun! :) I've done my share of all-nighters that it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal anymore. It's the second night that I've never completely gotten through... I don't want to imagine what the third night is going to be like. Blech. Whatever. It'll be fun when it's over and I'm sleeping... mmm... sleep...

Okay, this closes this entry. I'll not post a video this time, just to make it that much more exciting the next time that I post a video. ;)

Preparing for this weekend

2008-02-11T01:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's currently 2:49 AM Sunday night and I've yet to go to sleep. Though, I did finish my Boggle project for CS 235. That's a plus. I can get extra credit to make up for my late LZW lab. I suppose this way I'm preparing more for my sleepless weekend. Man...it's going to be so hard. But... fun. Yes, it will be FUN!

Umm... today was good. I got to eat Kix for breakfast. Usually I don't get breakfast on Sundays because the cafeteria doesn't open until noon, which is when church starts. Very inconvenient. So, we have to wait until after church, at 3, to eat. But, we bought some Kix and milk and finally got some breakfast. Yay! I love having breakfast, and it was cool to have it in our dorm. It was a taste of what it'd be like next semester when we'll be in an apartment and all the food that we'll eat we'll buy from the grocery store. Odd... but it should be good. And cheaper. I'm looking forward to that. Though, I imagine it'll be a pain to have to go to the grocery store to buy the food, but that's okay. I'm sure I'll get over it.

What else? This week is going to be pretty hectic. I've got to finish a project for Music 176, do homework for CS 235 (not the project), a Book of Mormon quiz, a Dictation pace test... oh cravitz. I just remembered something else I was going to finish tonight. My silent dictation. If I turn it in by tomorrow at 5, I can get an extra point on my pace test. Which, since this is the class that I got a C- in last semester, it seems like a good idea to get as many points as I can. I'll see if I can do it tomorrow morning or something... I can just whip it up really quick. Or something. We'll just see. Anyhow, yes. This week should be busy. It'll be good when it's over and I won't be sleeping all weekend. Mwhahaha!

Okay, I think I should go to bed/work on silent dictation/work on theory due tomorrow/do my Book of Mormon reading. So, I'll end this post with yet another fantastical video:

Don't get too scared.

Suddenly today became awesome

2008-02-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

So, I woke up this morning at about 7:00, like always, and Ashley needed to print something real quick from my computer. So, she got on my computer and just checked her e-mail out of habit and saw that she had gotten an e-mail from our Music Civ professor -- we had no class today! Apparently he got sick, and couldn't make it. *snap* Too bad. And, I got an e-mail yesterday from my Music Theory professor, and apparently he was sick too! So, I had no 8:00 or 9:00 class today. The only class I had was CS 235 at 3:00, and I worked from 12 to 6 with my 3:00 class in between. So, it was good times. Ashley and I got up and ate breakfast since we were already up, and then came back and took a two-hour nap during the time that I would normally be at class. Mwahaha! It was awesome! I love naps... they're so refreshing.

So, I went to work and then came back. I practiced for 2 hours (which went by unusually fast) and now here I am. Posting on my blog at 1:24 AM. I'm still not doing so well with the sleeping thing. Though, Ashley and I are planning on staying up for 72 hours next weekend on Kokiri Kids, so I guess this no sleeping thing is kind of in preparation for that. I figure I'll already be used to getting not very much sleep, so my body will be more accustomed to little sleep. Granted, it'll still be hard and suck when I'm sooo tired and just want to go to sleep. But, it'll be fun to look back on, and it'll be an awesome record to be able to tell people. Right now my record is something like 42 or 43 hours of no sleep. That was hard, especially since I was doing it by myself. I would have stayed up longer, but there was something else I had to go to the next day that I figured I should be awake for. Oh, and I was really freakin' tired. But, this should be fun since I'll have Ashley with my to keep me awake. We'll keep each other awake. We were considering making another blog just devoted to that. We'll have like hourly updates or something, and possibly post videos of how insane we'll be from lack of sleep. It should be fun. Yay!

The creepy caller didn't call again, either. I almost miss him/her. Why did they stop calling? Why were they calling in the first place? I just want answers...

So, to close this amazingly awesome blog entry, I'll post another video from last night's insanity.

I meant to just rock forward slowly, but I ended up falling instead.