As always

I have tons of things to say...write...type, but I always get the urge to blog when I also get the urge to sleep.  Right now I know my priorities.  Tschau.

Leading up

It seems at the moment that everything with the band has been balled up and shoved in my direction...I like it.  I like having time to practice and perform.  And soon go record!  Alex Vincent might not come down to CA with Emily and I because of work.  If not we'll probably take a little extra gear from the band.  I can't wait for the trip....For real.

Tonight was the Green House Effect concert.  Great venue, great friends, great show.  we followed "Truman" and another guitarrista, ten after us went Mr. Dane Brock.  That was a good show too...I really enjoyed the first guy's song about Jim Jamal the pirate.  Awesome.  Also Emily Thurston, Keri Nelson and Rachel Bradshaw came to the concert.  Life is good. :)

This morning I got to go help Pepe and Melissa Armstrong pack up for the move to Ogden.  That was fun and I had some good cookies.

Sometimes you start a post only to find that it's late and you would rather just go to bed.
Although tonight is one of those nights, I will forge ahead.

I went to the mall to activate the old Audiovox phone that Seth gave me that I think first came out in 2003.  I switched phones because I have dropped my other one enough that most of the buttons don't work and I need to get something that will work.  I have a full upgrade available so when I find the phone I like then I will probably get it.

The day was fairly unproductive as far as school goes but somewhat productive otherwise.  I got some errands done and fixed my bike a bit.  However, when I was at the mall I talked with Dana to get my application for the Footlocker finished and I forgot to text her my available hours until about 30 minutes ago.  Doesn't bode well for my discipline, eh?

Katie Dellenbach has me in a musical headlock.  I like it.  I haven't really been playing my fiddle a lot but now that I have someone twisting my bow I am playing almost every day.  We played an hour today, a few hours yesterday, and a few the day before I think.

I feel bad about standing up some mission buddies over a baseball game.  I told Sean Castellano that I could go to the ball game today and I would have like to but we had a hometeaching appointment and I also had a ward activity at the bishop's house.  It was pretty dang good.  I had some good food, and a great time talking with a lot of the ward.  Aubin Lewis showed up with Sammy Webber also.  What a grand old time.
I have forged...adieu.

Should I stay or should I go now?

I am considering pest control sales...if it's available in southern California.  I would like to see my friends and spend some time in the sun.  If that isn't possible then I could always just stay here and work for a footlocker part time.  That would not be nearly as much money, but it could potentially be much more fun.  I need a job either way you slice it.  I believe if I stayed I could find 2 jobs.  One on campus and one at the foot locker but it could be difficult. I would also have to juggle schedules with school because if I stay I'll be in classes.  Maybe I'll just do that because I would like to do a lot of reading and outdoor recreation.  Plus I would be able to get some stuff done for my research which is super important.  As it stands right now I plan on taking 6 credits in the spring taking psych, religion, and music.
Today was a typical Tuesday, 6 hours of lecture, I wrote a 5-6 page paper, and had music the rest of the night.  I am now just not getting to bed so I'll keep this post much shorter than the rest you may or may not have read...leave a comment and tell me what you think:  Shorter posts, longer posts, whatever I want to do posts...

What a long and arduous day.  I could have easily planned it better throughout the last week but I instead put it off until the day before:  N300 take-home mid-term exam.  That was absolutely horrendous.  So, that just put a kink in my Monday, but fortunately I have it done and I feel pretty good overall.
This morning was the BYUSNA binder exchange so that the new board can take over...or move over, like me.  I gave up my 2nd VP binder for a newsletter editor binder.  Hopefully I will be better at this than I was as a 2nd VP.  I am not getting many people who want to take pictures for the "Stethoscoop" (which is, by the way, probably the dumbest name for a newsletter I have ever heard).  And I am sure that I will have even fewer people who are willing to write articles for the scoop.  I will try to get the name changed and hopefully encourage people to be in the SNA and get involved in all of the activities.  Unfortunately, the SNA puts on activities and everyone comes no matter how many people sign up for the association.
It's okay, and I enjoy working with the SNA; I don't enjoy the class that I took and failed, but hopefully one day I will be able to get that expunged.  It is a black mark on my transcript for sure.  This semester and last were just despicable.  I  withdrew from a class this semester and failed a class last semester.  It's  amazing that 1 credit of F still takes you down 0.03 GPA points.  I am just hoping that I can still get the scholarships and pell grants that I need.
This spring and summer are frustrating because it is the first time that I haven't gotten a full tuition scholarship in the spring and summer.  But I hear that no one got a full scholarship.  I believe BYU is trying to spread the wealth and the economy is doing poorly.  I imagine that if I were from a different country I would get a scholarship.  If you haven't heard of it yet, I encourage you to go to youtube and look up indoctrinate-u.  It is a documentary about universities and their "fairness."  It is really interesting.  It is in 11 parts I think, or you can go to indoctrinate-u.com and download the digital DVD for 10 bucks.  It's a good investment I think.  My brother Colt got me into it.
I have been thinking about getting my car insured through the army and since I could put my address as his address in Montana, I think that it could work.  I will have to ask him and get it done.  It seems a shame to have to give up the great hunting and fishing of Montana too.  But I don´t get out to do much here.  Maybe I should just get the residency so that I can fish.  No, no, I have to think of the bigger picture.  It´s more important to have cheap insurance and cheap meat...yeah.

buenas.

Friends and Planning

Yesterday was clinicals, but that was most definitely not the best part of the day.  I had a little mission reunion.  It was absolutely phenomenal.  I really enjoy those people's company and I think they're all so awesome.  They're spiritual, funny, intelligent, and happy people.  It turns out that Shar Mumford married Derek Stokes so that is 2 sets of missionaries from the mission that hit it off because Ernesto Escobar married Leanna Dellenbach a few years ago I got to see their daughter Azeléa.  She's gorgeous and super social.  Cute.  Matt Kiisel got married last year to Heather.  Jack Christensen had a baby a few months ago with Sausha.

It was the best to see Sister Weipert.  She is amazing and has been through a lot.  I love her very much and hope I can make time to go to San Diego and see her again.  She came up with her daughter.  I didn't think I would ever say it, since he pushed me till I broke...literally, but I wish I could see President Weipert again.  I know, though, that he's watching me and saying, "me tienes que rendir cuentas, Elder!"

That was a great day and after the reunion I gave Sebastian Palma a ride down to temple square.  They are doing tons of construction for the new city center so I am sure that the conference goers are having a crazy time.  It's General Conference weekend and the talks today were really good.  It was funny that during priesthood session before President Monson gave his talk he stopped to say that this was one of the greatest priesthood sessions he's ever been to and that we would do well to remember and follow the counsel that we received.  I really want to start reading the Ensign more.  I hope that this summer I might be able to start doing that.

There are so many parts of my life that need re-vamping.  I look at my brother Ross and think, "man, has he got it together!"  Ross plays in 2 bands, holds down 2 jobs, is finishing his baccalaureate and working on his masters all at the same time!  Plus he has a girlfriend.  I don't know how he does it and still pulls off A's in all of his classes and doesn't get depressed.  I think to myself, I am doing a course load of 16 credits, don't work, hate doing homework, get depressed on a regular basis, don't play my fiddle more than 1x per week, sleep less than 6 hours a night, and only get B's in my classes.

So tell me, how is it done?  Am I broken?  Where does my time go? I think if I tried really hard I could get things straightened out though.  I would just need a different place to live where I didn't have as many distractions.  I am going to get a job soon, probably working at the mall.  I just need some sort of income.  I live on my pell grant and student loans.  I know they say that you can go into debt on schooling but I think I've taken it to an extreme, seeing as how I am not working when I have extra hours in my day that disappear.

The plan (which needs to be implemented sooner rather than the unreachable 'some day')

Start going to the temple each week at least.  Start waking up and going to bed at a set time.  Start preparing to go to bed at a set time.  Start doing homework on campus and having set times for meals.  Take lunch to campus and have a dinner planned out.  Exercise each day.  Start making sure that my prayers are being said no matter what.  Start reading the scriptures in the morning and studying them for a set amount of time in stead of reading a chapter and forgetting about it.  Start implementing latter-day revelation and current scripture into my study.  Begin planning out times for study and setting goals that I can reach each day, week, month, semester and year.  Go on dates regularly and do not stay out till curfew.  Keep my room clean and organized.  Take care of my health through eating, exercising, and relaxing (yoga, stretching, enough rest at night, good activities).  Start working on fulfilling my calling well.  Work on my family history.

So that is the plan.  Not to be implemented someday, but this week, today...well it's too late to go to bed at a decent hour and such but I can try to get up at a good time and work on everything from there.  Alright!  (don't you just love motivation?)  I just wish I had people around who would facilitate this all.  I just have to do it I guess.

Ok, there is my spiel...as always.  I rant on things for a while.  I really want this one to work though.

I made a new blog...and no you can't see it.  As if you actually had any desire. Pshh.
So it will be the temple to my posts that are more "dear diary" than I would like you to see.  Hopefully you are not offended at my secrecy because if so, there's nothing I can do about it because I don't know that you are offended.  Anyway...
I find that I am a fan of ellipses...they just kind of make my day...but I also find that I am putting them into my
APA format papers...not a good idea.  Okay, okay, I'll stop now.
It's 0240 on a Friday morning.  That doesn't bode well for me because I have class at 0730 - in Salt Lake City.  Meaning that if I am to get ready and go in the morning, I must be up and out of the house by 0600.  It may be snowing right now, so I may be in trouble when I am driving.  My car isn't the greatest, that and I don't have any gas in it right now. 
I'm getting broker by the minute because I don't have a job and I haven't had one for almost 5 months.  I'm thinking of applying to a bunch of different places, but I don't even have a functioning rèsumè.  I haven't needed one for ages and even when I needed one I didn't really need one.  I have never gotten a job that required me to submit a resume and I don't think that I have held any good jobs for long periods of time so it seems pointless to have one.  I suppose my education and volunteer experience (as well as my love for jiu-jitsu) could be selling points.
I am thinking about my writing style right now.  It seems a bit, shall I say, detached.  I have short paragraphs, long paragraphs, ones that are not in the least bit cohesive.  I have written about a dozen topics in the 3 paragraphs in this one post.  I just don't think that writing is in the stars for me.  I am trying to get better though.  I am in my advanced writing class this semester and it is helping me a little.  Unfortunately I don't have Sabrina Hewett's help.  She was a writing fellow before her mission and she was absolutely phenomenal at pointing out mistakes, giving suggestions, and proofreading.  But her main skill is empowering!  She took all the things I did wrong and made me able to change them for the much better without really giving me a handicap.  I can't even explain it.  I wish that I could fathom what went on in her head.  Plus she didn't even have to do that for me.  I didn't take my paper to the fellows, she just offered to help me when I told her I had a paper to write.  She's amazing.
Okay, so a perfect example has just been shown you of how bad I am at writing.  But I think that with a little work, a lot of luck, and a team of proofreaders I can improve.  But since this is just essentially a journal and I don't expect you to read it, it isn't as though I have to try to impress you with my abilities.  It's obvious by the lack of comments that people don't feel the need to read this blog, so I will just not worry about it.
My day had a nice twist in it.  At 1700ish Emily Romesser called me up and asked for help to surprise her roommate/best friend/MoH, Emily Davis.  She wanted to do something nice for her on April fool's day because in previous years she and others have pranked her so bad that it has come up years later.  Well, as soon as ED got home from school she was blindfolded, kidnapped, and whisked away to ER's boyfriend, Tyler Brown's truck.  I was in the back seat, quiet as a mouse, we were on our way to the Olive Garden but on the way ED felt bad because she said that she would call me.  Well, still blind folded, she called me and I decided to answer into her ear from the back seat.  (I think to myself...I am kind of a creeper.)  It all went well and we had a nice double dinner date.
The end.

A blog, a blog, we have a blog and we need no more blog!

So I am thinking of creating another blog; one that is private so that I can use it for my journal. It would be so much faster and easier to manage than an actual journal and I think that it would benefit anyone who wants to read about me...they will actually be able to read about me. I am just envisioning that if I put anything really private on there that it will somehow be sounded abroad among the many internet-goers. I probably don't have much to worry about (it's not as though I have any truly deep dark secrets...at least not ones I would put in my journal). The other thing that worries me is that I would in some way lose all of the things that I have put into it. A journal seems too sacred an object to just leave to a digital steward. It is just much more tangible if it is bound in leather and printed in ink. I feel like I would be leaving something behind (penmanship) if I stopped writing and started typing as well. What if I should forget how to scrawl?!
Ok, ok, so I think that I will do it. But it will start with a little research. I want to find out the most user-friendly and secure blogging sites. I will most likely revert back to Blogger because it is linked to my google account, but if there is something out there that is spectacular in it's usability then I may just be converted.
For my posts, maybe I will just use this blog? Is that what bloggers do; write posts about anything and everything that is going on in their life? Or is a blog supposed to have a flow, an order, a theme. By doing this will I be committing blogsphemy? Do I care?

In my hand-written journal I always start with the day, date, and time, then I continue on to the oh-so-important life events. Fortunately, that is already done in the fact that I post this electronically and it is stamped with that information. So, here I go with my first post of my E-nal.

It's late...I am wasted, not the wasted where I feel tired, but the wasted where I could probably stay up for another 5 hours and have nothing to show for it but a lot of random webpage surfing. I woke up (and floated out of bed) at 0830 this morning, showered, and stumbled to class an hour late. It's a three hour lecture so 1 hours doesn't make much difference; I never study for the tests anyway. The amazing thing about the day was that although I didn't start sawing logs until 0500, I didn't have any desire to doze all day!
You may be asking yourself, "Why would anybody lead such a lifestyle - where 3 hours of sleep in a night is only achieved by waking up an hour late?" I confess, I can't do that every day, but it has been known to happen multiple times in one week. This time [I'm definitely getting fuzzy now, I just tried to wright, "this occlusion] I could blame the "nap" on a paper. My 18-page literature review that was due at 1700 but was turned in at 0430 the next morning. Luckily, I'm not sure how, I got in good with that professor and I can just turn in everything late without the threat of a good docking.

Wow, I fell asleep mid-blog...maybe I should be writing the date and time on my journal entries.