Happy New Year!

I hope that all my loyal readers had a great Christmas and new years, I know that I did. I got to go home for two fabulous weeks, I got to wake up later than 4:00 am every weekday, and got to spend time with my family and not do homework, what more could a person ask for.

Then that blissful time ended (as it always does) and I had to come back to frigid Provo. (It was 60 degrees in Portsmouth the day I flew out) Cheryl Medley and I flew out here together, unintentionally I might add, but nevertheless pleasantly. We had a five hour layover in Baltimore airport, but this time I didn’t miss my connecting flight out of there, and we arrived in Provo and were picked up by my once and future (now current) roommate Ben.

I did move apartments, from number 11 to number 7, and my phone number changed because of the move, if you need an updated physical address let me know. (Especially if you need to mail me goodies or something) I now room with Ben and Aaron (both of whom I roomed with before) and Sam, and they are all great guys.

I have a pretty demanding schedule this semester, four classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, but only one on Tuesday/Thursday. I have many church duties with my new calling as ward clerk, and have many other things to keep me busy. For homework there is mostly a lot of reading to do, the writing will come later I have no doubt. I have childhood socialization, cross-cultural families, and foundations of eternal marriage for major classes. I have multivariable calculus going toward my math minor, and writing in the social sciences as a general education requirement. I plan on attending institute classes through the stake during the week also since I don’t have any religion classes this semester.

I’ve included a few pictures: one of Cheryl and I in Baltimore airport, one of my collection of BYU T-shirts (sizing may be an issue), and finally one of some of my gifts I received, and I think I’m required by law to note that the Groundskeeper Willie bobble-head is the greatest gift ever!!

Finally!

It has been many days since I have updated, and things have been busy: projects, papers, reading, tests and then finals on top of all of that. For thanksgiving I remained in Provo so I didn’t have long driving to do and had dinner at my bishop’s home, and all went well, there were many projects due right before that all got done. (There was a little while that I was afraid it wouldn’t all get done)

I celebrated my 24^th birthday on the 8^th of December. Ruth and Dana took me out to Red Lobster for my dinner, then after we watched Cars. There were some more papers due; one that I thought was a two page paper that was really a five pager, it kept me up late one night. Then the 16^th was Ruth’s birthday, so I exercised my cooking muscle and made a cake for her, it turned out ok, but paled in comparison to the ice cream cake and cheesecake that her other friends brought.

I finished my finals today, one scheduled this morning at 8:00 am, and two more on blackboard, none in the testing center so I went and bought myself a finished with finals present, the mega edition of monopoly, I’m gunna bust it out and play with some of the others who have finished their finals, here soon. I’m flying home on Friday (only 3 more days) then I’ll be home for two weeks. I’ll also be moving for winter semester, but I’ll be staying in the same complex, I’ll be moving from number 11 to number 7 (11 old, 7 new) so be sure to get my address right when you send me cakes and candies and gold ingots. There will probably be pictures in my next post.

And also, best of luck to my several friends that are getting married over the break.

Happy Halloween… and stuff

The last several weeks have been eventful, there have been many tests, which I did well on, and I read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, and am starting The Horse and His Boy. I also finished “Homeworld” for any one who is interested, and I’m done with video games for a little while.

There was a Halloween party in our ward on the 30^th, and I won a prize in the costume contest, I went as a regular resident of the Talmage building, and I won a container of play dough, it was basically the best costume out there.

I went to hear the BYU Jazz vocal concert and the BYU Women’s and Men’s concerts this last week, and they were great. This coming week looks like it’s going to be brutal, I have 4 tests before thanksgiving break next week, and several short papers that I have yet to start, so If I can survive, then finals will be a cinch… or cake walk… or really easy. (Ok, not really) The end of the semester is coming quickly, and then I can go home, and what a glorious time it will be, I can wake up and go to be whenever I want, and there is no homework, and no tests, it will be great. Well, talk to you all later.

Look, it’s a bird, no it’s a plane, no, it’s …

Here it goes; I can’t believe that it’s already over halfway through October, the semester is chugging along. I’m finished with all my midterms but one, and they have gone very well so far. I even got the “great job” message from the testing center TV screen when it gave me my test grade for my cognitive development class. The last test I have to take for a while is for my history of math class; we have to prove that pi is constant for all circles, and also prove the Pythagorean Theorem. My other classes are going well, in my swimming class we just learned how to do flip turns, which is a way to quickly burn your nose and give yourself a head ache if you don’t constantly blow water out of your nose while you are flipping.

In other news, I saw “Lady in the Water” in the illustrious Varsity Theater on Friday night; it is a very strange movie, my favorite guy was the one who was only exercising one half of his body, and the Asian mother and daughter was funny also. And oh yeah, there are evil dogs and monkeys and giant birds and sea nymphs, and something about destiny… or was it density… hmmmm… I also recently bought “The Chronicles of Narnia” all in one volume, and just finished “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and have started on “Prince Caspian.”

In my infant development class, my professor showed us some thing that I thought was worth passing along. Go to www.babyplus.com and check it out. There you can pay $150.00 to buy a speaker that a pregnant woman can wear on her belly to play sounds to her unborn child. These sounds are pulses that are not unlike the sounds that the baby hears in the womb from heartbeats and respiratory sounds. And here’s the funny part, these sounds not only make your baby more intelligent, but they will let you teach your baby words, and they baby can respond by kicking back on the mother’s abdomen. (Check out the link on the bottom called “the Science”) This is clearly a breakthrough in pediatrics, and I wonder why modern scientists have not accepted this to make all babies smarter.

Cure for the Summertime blues

Well, summer ended in a glorious blaze of…something, but I had a good last hurrah, the Idaho trip and Ruth’s mini reception were good. Roommates have changed, and I have received three new, great ones, and there has been much change around the ward also, probably 50% new people. There was a stake opening social the first week of classes where we went to a home up the canyon and ate a lot of pizza and listened to music and watched people ride the human sling-shot, and there was a dance also. There have been other activities also, a leadership retreat up to the bishop’s cabin (I’m the assistant executive secretary in the ward) and an opening social where they taught dance lessons.

Classes are going full swing, and I’m taking 14 ½ credits and working part-time at early morning custodial still. Mondays and Wednesdays are my busiest days, with four classes on those days. I have: Adolescent Development, Infant Development, Cognitive Development, History of Math, 2^nd half of the D&C, and beginning swimming. The development classes are all for my major and the history of math class is toward a math minor, and the other two are general education requirements. Infant and Adolescent development are both being taught by a visiting professor from Arizona State University, and she is way cool, I just had a test for the Infant devo class, and one is coming soon for the adol devo class. Both classes are very interesting, and insightful. Cognitive development is taught by a full time BYU professor, and the topic is very interesting, about how our brains and thought processes develop and change from when we are born, or even before. Unfortunately the class is 8:00 am so many of us in the class have trouble staying awake. (I’m not the only one, I promise) My history of math class is also very interesting to me, and is probably my most intense class so far, we have learned about pi, number systems with different bases, Pythagorean therom and a few other things, the class is taught by an Indian professor who is a tad mumbly, and he has an honor-code violating beard, but I guess it’s ok for him. My D&C class is great, it is taught by Bro. Fluhman, he is pretty funny, and good at inciting discussion in the class, which some teachers have a hard time doing, but his class is good, and I’m learning a lot in his class. Last and least is my swimming class, on Monday and Wednesday nights, it is a good class, the first few days were very difficult for me to keep up, but it has gotten better now that the class has been going for a few weeks. The teacher is a grad student who just has shoulder surgery, so he can’t get in the water and swim with us, so he stands on the side and tells us what to do.

What else… I’ll put some new links on the page for you all to stare in awe at. The first is another blog from a friend of mine, Bukran, he was in my freshman ward, and has never been the same since, and that is his blog, the bukran blog. For a short while longer you can go on the internet and watch a series of student films, and one of them is produced by none other than my FHE brothers, go and watch them and vote for them (good through the end of September only) in Glad I got a Sword Today. And if you want to support some of the weird stuff that I do, and you like video games...a lot you can check out battlereports.com and look at the report submitted by Rabid Fox (that’s me) about Jedi Academy, or even look at some of the other reports written there. So there you have it… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Enjoy General Conference and the time change. (I know I will)

-Singing off, The matador