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.

What a joke

I looked at my last post...September. It seems like a lifetime ago. But this is the end of the first week of midterms. I took three this week. Nursing 300, 320, and 330. I got an 87, 85, and 83. I am satisfied. Especially since in the last month and a half I have read about 15 of about 40 assigned chapters and completed approximately 5 hours of study for tests. Oddly enough, the test that was supposed to be pretty tough I got the highest grade on. That, and I didn't study for it, nor did I complete any reading for the class the entire semester (upwards of 400 assigned pages).
Don't get me wrong, some people have accused me of being a genius or jerk. But I really don't think I'm either, I think that being relaxed and paying attention in class gives you a huge advantage over being stressed, reading without comprehension, and not saying that the class is boring.
I'm sure that by the end of the semester the pattern of doing nothing will probably come back to bite me in the kiester but I am having a great time now and I really enjoy life. Which may be normal for most but, it's surprising how many times I have felt that it wasn't that fun. I'm just trying to stay positive, get motivated, and be friendlier than I have been in the past.
On that note, I hope that right now, reading this post, you are relaxing and enjoying life. :) ...that's for you.

School

The first week of school has come and gone. I feel like this is going to be my most productive semester ever. I have always just coasted through school and did the minimum that it would take to get me an 'A' (which sometimes was a fair amount) but I have already read more for two of my classes than I have for many others put together.
Right now I am staying up too late and considering some more reading. I have a book called "Life w/Big All" to read. I'm almost done but there is still a lot to go. Class starts at 0800 hrs and its 0003 hrs now.

interesting

I have just realized why it is that I like my blog layout and theme so much. It is just like the In-n-Out sign but in green and gray. I love it!

So I came home, right?

Wow. That is the best thing that I could say to describe the last week.

I decided to go on a study abroad before I had met Hayley Burch. But then in the course of my preparation I started dating her. Of course, she is the coolest thing since , but I still decided to go to Vienna. It was scheduled to be a 3 month and 3 day trip, but at about a month I was feeling pretty anxious to get home. Talking for hours a day on Skype is great but it isn't the same as being in person and being able to hold the person you love. So I figured it all out, I got in contact with the BYU travel again and I was surprised that only 75 dollars to switch my ticket around. I also figured out with enough time to spare that classes could be dropped and I wouldn't have any black marks on my transcript.

At first I didn't want to get Hayley's hopes up by telling her I was thinking of coming home and then not being able to, but then it turned into me wanting to surprise her. Of course. And it was a full two weeks of me trying to not tell her anything as I spoke with her almost every day on Skype for about 3-5 hours. The study abroad group new after about 4-5 days and then I also had to have someone pick me up from the airport so I had to tell someone at the apt. I asked Joseph Seth and Janette and they figured out to come get me at 11:30 at night. Of course, anything to help me surprise Hayley :)

I flew out of Austria on the 7th and got here 26 hours later even with the hour and 15 minute delay at JFK. Not much could get my spirits down. After getting home at 2:30, staying up for another hour and getting only 3 hours of sleep I was ready to go see Hayley.

I knew that she goes for a run with Canada every morning at 7 so I got out of the house at 6:30 and bought some flowers (orange roses). I had already brought home 2 pairs of earrings and an orange scarf from Vienna but needed a way to wrap it so I got a bag as well. I set all that up and then before Danny went to work I asked him to do some reconnaissance and he found out that at 7 she was still in bed. I wasn't sure what to do but I got online and looked to see if Canada was there but she wasn't so I went over to her apt. She was still asleep and her roommate didn't want to wake her up so I just went home to wait and worry. Well, I saw that she was online about 15 min. later so I chatted with her and went told her to stay in her apt. She knew then that I was going to be coming over and that I was back from Vienna. At her apartment we said that I would watch for them to leave to go running and then I'd catch up.

I waited and saw them leave, took the flowers and the present and put them on her table, then I took off after them all sneaky-like. Quite as a mouse and only taking steps when Hayley was talking, I came up behind her and put my hands around her waist. I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not but after she turned around and looked like she was going to die she was just so excited that it didn't matter that I am a creeper. :) She couldn't believe it! I was there and she had just been chatting with me about 10 hours earlier. She said, "This is so surreal...you aren't REAL!" So she had a hard time looking over at me as we were running, or at least she was just so blown away that she had to look over every few seconds to see if I was still there. She even hit me in the arm to make sure that she wasn't dreaming. I was very happy with the whole event.

When we were done running we got back and she loved the flowers. I mean, she LOVES the flowers. I am glad, and she loved the other gifts as well. It was funny because she was really happy to get them but I think that she was just so overwhelmed by the fact that I was back that the coolness of the presents was toned down a bit. Be that as it may, I think that the last 3 days have been the best days of my life!

I love you, Hayley Burch.

Rain and dessert

Today is a fun day. I am first off, thinking of Hayley, and then I also went out in the rain and walked around. It looked like rain when I left today but I just brought my umbrella. I wore shorts and flip flops and the rain wasn't cold. It was fun. The umbrella is broken a little bit, luckily there wasn't a lot of rain. Then I decided, what the heck, I'm going to go get a bit of Appel strudel since the several that I've had until did not give me a good impression. I went to a place that got high marks in Megan and Chelsea's book and I was surprisingly won over. The strudel was excellent and it came with vanilla sauce that was also amazing. And because it was raining I also got a bit of Hot cocoa that was, of course, awesome. I went a little earlier to the museum that McKay and the others went to as well. The ancient instruments/weapons/armor museum in the National Library. It was pretty radical. Now like most evenings I am wasting time at the institute before FHE starts. But of course it's not a complete waste because I get to chat with Hayley! ;)