Just 5 Things

1. I spent 14 hours straight on campus today. Seriously, that is ridiculous, and now I am completely ready for it to be Wednesday.

2. This morning I figured out that I have access to all the movie trailers I want through the new and improved Front Row feature now that Shawn upgraded me to Mac OS Leopard.

3. Last night I spent all night finding every single way to sleep with two stuffed animals at the same time. It was a wild party that I'm hoping doesn't repeat itself.

4. I am the only male in my Editing class, which still makes me feel a bit funny for 2 and a half hours every Tuesday.

5. I discovered at lunch today that BYU now sells churros every day for 99 cents. Macaroni and cheese is good, orange dreamsicles are better, and churros are the end all of culinary excellence!

What a Day!

I have accomplished quite a few things today and after being up late yesterday it has left me tired and ready to go to bed in just a few minutes.

I did every single thing in regards to homework, and not only that, I did it well and quickly, which is something that doesn't happen all of the time. By far the greatest news of the day was when something finally clicked in my head and I understood the concept we have been discussing all week for Grammar class. I have been working really hard to understand this new stuff after having struggled for the first half of the semester so far. I went to see my professor during her office hours just to be sure I was on the right track and I had almost every single thing from the assignment right. I had mixed myself up on one small detail but while I was talking to her I managed to get it fixed in my head and it shouldn't happen again.

I also spent a great deal of time at work today typing up the mid-semester evaluations that the students of the composition courses fill out for their graduate instructors. Most of the time I can count on some pretty off the wall comments from the students to make me laugh for a couple of minutes. For example, today I had one of the male students going on about how cute and sexy his instructor was in that "teacher sort of way." I literally had to read that one three or four times before I could believe what I was reading. It had nothing to do with the question on the evaluation, but he felt it necessary to make his feelings known. Man, what a crazy thing to say on something like that.

The rest of the day has been spent doing laundry, carving one heck of a cool-looking pumpkin (of which I will try to remember to post a picture), and keeping up with my duties as a Tournament Director for Conquer Club. We are looking to do a major revamp to the tournament system on the site this next week, so there have been plenty of projects to keep me busy added onto the tournaments I am normally running. I also couldn't resist the temptation to give some of the other players what they wanted, and created a new clan. However, with the clan I am nothing more than an overseer while esteemed colleagues Gozar and Night Strike take care of the majority of the details. It's still somewhat disconcerting to be viewed as a "figurehead" type of person on that site and I still find myself shaking my head about it some days.

Gotta Post...

Well, I almost forgot to write a post for today, and I'm just noticing that the clock is almost ready to click over to tomorrow. That wouldn't be good to miss a post just because I lost track of time.

So anyways, here is my post for the day, and I think I've done a pretty good job at not having any cop-out posts during this experiment, so you'll have to allow me this one. :)

Almost Forgot....

I almost forgot to post for today which would have been a shame because I think I have been doing a really good job this past week and change to make sure and have a meaningful (for the most part) post each day.

Today has been an up and down day for me. I was excited and full of energy in the morning and then later into the afternoon I started to get grumpy because of the overcast clouds and gloomy looking outside weather, and then I got tired, but then I got really, really awake, and then finally I got hungry. Lucky for me, that was when Holly decided to make some Shake'n'Bake chicken with corn and mashed potatoes for dinner so that I wouldn't starve.

At the moment I'm typing this on the Dell laptop and not my MacBook and I have to say that I never realized how cramped this keyboard is until I started typing on it just a couple of minutes ago. I didn't think that the MacBook has that much bigger of a keyboard, but I guess it does and I guess that I had gotten used to the larger size because I keep hitting the wrong keys from time to time while using this computer.

Weekend of Joy

I've been looking forward to the weekend all day. It will be the first weekend in a long time where Holly doesn't have to go to work, I don't have to go to work, I have very little stressful homework, there are no big tests to prepare for, the house is clean, the cupboards are stocked, there are no errands to run, and I am completely caught up on all major Conquer Club related activities. I will have to do some homework here and there, mixed in with a few smaller Conquer Club things, but overall, it will be a pretty stress-free weekend for me and I'm looking forward to it like nobody's business.

Tonight, Holly and I are going to make an appearance that the English Department Fall Social where we will be having Tucanos for the very first time. I'm a little skeptical, but I'm also starving and it is only 3:17pm in the afternoon. Dinner isn't even until 6:30pm. What am I going to do? It will also give my co-workers a chance to meet Holly and to see that she really does exist and I didn't just make her up.

Little Skunk in a Costume

Today Holly and I went to return a couple of things to JC Penney and while we were standing in the line to talk to the Customer Service guy I was looking at something off to the side when I hear Holly say "Do you see that little skunk over there wearing a costume?" As a matter of fact, nope, I didn't see the skunk, but if I had a skunk I would totally make it wear a costume. Who wouldn't?

Apparently, I was supposed to know that she really meant "Do you see that little kid over there wearing a skunk costume." Who knew? How could I have been so wrong......

Deeper Than I Thought

I was talking to my German 102 instructor this morning to review for a presentation that I have to do tomorrow morning in class and to check and make sure I had some of my vocabulary correct when I began to notice that my voice seemed to be extraordinarily deep for some reason. It struck me as a little bit funny because I kept trying to clear my throat to make sure there wasn't anything weird going on. What worse thing could there be than everyone in the room thinking to themselves: "Wow, he has a really deep voice today, he sounds like a moron." Of course, there wasn't anyone else in the room to think such a thing, but the thought was there nonetheless, so all of you get to hear about it.

My new job as a Tournament Director is running very smoothly so far, although I have had a bit of a fiasco with accidentally deleting a tournament thread for my OWN tournament. Yeah, that was pretty funny after I figured out what it was that I had done. It's all good now though as I have recreated the thread and posted the brackets once more and all is well in the tournament world.

Carter (that would be Steelhorse) and I have been working up some pretty intense proposals for a revamp of the Tournament Forums. He posted the official proposal yesterday and this morning we had Lackattack say that he couldn't find anything that needed to be changed. Hopefully that means that this weekend there will be some fun new additions to the site. Late last night Lackattack spilled out a huge new update that has the players up in arms with excitement, so if we can add some great tournament features that would be awesome.

The BYU football game got canceled for this week. It wasn't a home game, so I don't know why I care so much, except that it was going to be fun to have them clinch the Mountain West Conference title at home against Utah this year. I guess it could still happen, but we'll need some other teams to lose and help us out.

I had better get back to my homework for now. I just found out we have yet another day of extension on our Grammar test which is great news because verbs and adverbs are still giving me problems.

Almost There

It took me a long time to finish that Print Design project last night, but when it was all done I was pleased with the way it turned out. I finally managed to make it into the bedroom at about 2:00am this morning, so I am running on a pretty empty tank at the moment. Luckily for me, the only real work I have to do today is study for my Grammar test later this evening.

I was thinking this morning that I've been abnormally hungry the past couple of days, but I can't think of a reason why. I haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary as far as activities are concerned--no extra exercising, walking around, or general exertion, but it seems like all I ever want to do is eat. For example, on Saturday I ate and entire box of pasta, yes, an entire 1lb box of pasta all in one sitting and hardly felt full when I was done. I haven't had that happen before as usually if I try to eat that much I am having to force it in at the end.

Weird, isn't it? It doesn't matter if I am eating three good, solid meals a day, I'm still starving an hour later. Perhaps I am going through some kind of awkward growth spurt or something. All I know is that I've eaten a lot of food this weekend, A LOT of food.

Just Gotta Do It

I'm sitting here wide awake at nearly midnight and decided that I had better get my post in for the day so that I can keep my streak alive. This will make 4 days that I have managed to get a post down. I think that might be a new record for me, although, it might just be tying a record. I'm not sure, and I'm sure as heck not going to go back and check on something that trivial.

I'm only up this late because I refuse to go to sleep without my Print Design project that is due tomorrow finished. There is no way I can guarantee that things will go smoothly in the morning, so I don't want to finish it then because Adobe InDesign is a little picky from time to time. I would rather just stay up tonight and finish it. Holly, bless her heart, stayed up with me as long as she could doing diligent duty as my study music DJ. She just got too tired though and I sent her off to bed. I make sure to go and check on her every now and again because otherwise she will just leave the light on all night waiting for me.

This is the last major project of the week, and then I can finally get back to the regular grind of 3 hours of homework a day. I can't wait to be back into my normal groove, especially with my new work as a Tournament Director. I have a big grammar test to take tomorrow, but I managed a couple hours of studying for it today, and after finishing this project tonight will have all day tomorrow until 7:30pm to finish studying for it. Finally, for once, my plan for when homework will be done is working. Now, if only I can make it work for the rest of the week as well.

Week of Friends

This week I has three consecutive days when I ran into old friends that I had not seen in months, one of them for years, and had the opportunity to spend a little while talking to each of them.

It all started when I was sitting in the Wilkenson Center eating lunch on Tuesday and I ran across Aaron Anderson, an old MTC buddy and mission friend. We got to talking and managed to catch up on all of the things in our lives that neither of us knew anything about. Then, the next day I was at work a little early and working on a bulletin board project when Rob Callan, my good friend from freshman year here at BYU, taps me on the shoulder. It was great to see him because a couple of the other guys from freshman year had been over to dinner with Holly and I recently and we had been talking about Rob and how much we missed him now that he was married. Finally, on Thursday while Holly was at work there was a knock on the door and Robert Ameling, one of my favorite mission buddies was there. I hadn't seen him since the day he left the mission and I was thrilled to have the chance to sit down and see what he had been up to for the past 2 years.

Like I said, it was a good week.

Tournament Director

I didn't have the time to write about this yesterday, mostly because I was so excited I couldn't stand it, but that is beside the point.

Yesterday, I was contacted by the Community Manager for Conquer Club and was offered a position on the site as a Tournament Director. I was given the ability to grant tournament privileges to other players, move forum threads around, edit posts and have a fancy little title underneath my username. I was also given access to the hidden forum that is reserved only for other moderators to discuss changes to the site and I was appointed to the Advisory Panel. My main duties are to mosey around the 4 tournament forums and make sure that all is well and help out other tournament organizers in an official capacity. All in all, it was a pretty good day for me.

Holly was excited for me as she knows that running the tournaments on Conquer Club is pretty much my main hobby these days. It wasn't a job I was gunning for by any means, but it was one that I was excited to be offered, that's for sure.

I have had many other exciting things that happened this week, something every single day to be exact, but I am going to save those for future posts in my quest for the 21 days of habit I've got going on right now.

21 Days of Habit

Someone, actually, multiple someones told me recently that if you can manage to do something every day for 21 days then it can be considered a habit. I don't have many things that I really want to develop into a habit except for writing on this blog, so starting today I am going to do my best to write something, anything, at least once a day for the next three weeks. I already know that some of the posts will be short and incredibly uninteresting for everyone else, but I really do want to have a blogging habit.

Yesterday I got caught up and a little bit ahead in all but one of my classes which means that I now have a whole lot less stress weighing me down each day. If I can make it a couple more weeks without being sick or missing class for some other reason I think I will be doing alright. Hopefully,....that's all I can ask for.

Yeah, Those Verbs Were Smooching

This morning I took my German 102 test. Turns out it was a little bit easier than I thought it was going to be. My day is still incredibly busy and full of things that I have to get finished, but it is looking up because of that test not being as terrible as I had thought.

I've also finished the last editing assignment for class this evening, and I even think I'm starting to get a better handle on how to read through a section at a time and pick out all of the details that need to be fixed rather than just the ones that jump out at me. I still have a lot of practice left to do, but at least some of the concepts are beginning to stick for me. That's nice. Now I just have several hours of online German homework to finish and I'll be done for the day.

In reference to the title of this post, Herr Smith, my German 102 instructor, began class today with a sentence he wrote on the board. After which he loudly proclaimed: "LOOK! The verbs are smooching!" None of us had any idea what he was talking about, but apparently he was talking about the fact that the dative verb and the accusative verb were right next to each other separated by nothing more than a mere comma. He quickly explained that he had made it home from a long trip very late last night and then his wife wanted Taco Bell, however the Taco Bell took 45 minutes to get his food ready and so therefore he hasn't had much sleep for today. Still, the verbs were smooching and he was terribly excited by that.

Early Morning Drudgery

I am sitting here this morning as a very begrudgingly awake individual. I went to bed super late last night due to watching the Colorado Rockies clinch a spot in the World Series, and also because I was trying to tidy up the house a little bit before going to bed.

Now I have to go take a German Text at 8:00am in the morning, go straight to German 102 class from there, meet with two different professors, go to work, CHum class, Editing class and then back home for the end of a very, very long day.

All the while I need to get a moderate amount of homework done, and it isn't homework that I can put off any longer. Fun, eh?

I'll let you all know how it goes.

I Got It IMAX'd!

That's right everyone. I got to see Optimus Prime and friends in full 80 foot glory this last Friday. It was glorious and the perfect way to celebrate the release of the Transformers DVD....TOMORROW!!!

In other news, I am sitting here writing this blog post after finishing all the homework for Editing, Grammar, and Print Design. Of course, I still have a massive stack of German to do, but I'll get to that in a little while after I finish posting on my blogs. I've been doing pretty well at posting at a decent rate for the past week or so. Shelley will be so proud of me.

It was another crazy weekend in college football, and I have to say I couldn't be happier. Now all I need is for Ohio State and South Florida to finish the season undefeated and we can finally have a year where Florida, LSU, and USC are not the end-all to college gridiron action. Honestly, South Florida is 2nd, I repeat...2nd in the newly released BCS standings. My weekend could not be any more perfect in the sporting sense. Even the Rockies have a 3-0 lead over the Diamondbacks in the NLCS for crying out loud.

Holly gave me a haircut this weekend too. I like getting haircuts because I don't have to use as much shampoo, I don't get as hot, I don't have to comb it, and I look smokin' hot with short hair. Well, at least that's what I've been told.

Rockies Win

That's right. The Colorado Rockies have continued their amazing run into and through the postseason by recording an impressive 5-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks last night. That gives them a 1-0 edge for the best-of-seven series and they have now snatch home-field advantage for themselves. I'm pretty excited about it. As a matter of fact, if NLCS tickets weren't $110.00 I would have already made plans to go to Coors Field this weekend for Game 4 just in case it was the clincher that gets them to the World Series. It has been a long time since my favorite baseball team did anything impressive, so I'm pretty happy about it.

I didn't sleep so great last night, and it has made for a bit of a slow morning. I don't have any class today due to my teachers being at various training conferences, so I am just minding my own business here on campus waiting for 1:00pm to roll around so I can go to work. I think I might go see if my CHum TA is in the lab in a little while and get a few pointers on my Personal History design project that is due in a couple of weeks.

I think by the end of the day I'll have been pretty productive because I feel like I am in a productive mood, but we'll see. Perhaps I'll just save it all to do on Saturday and leave it at that.

Finding A Fresh Start

So today I decided that I once again wanted a fresh start to my blogging experience....

HA! You totally thought I was going to list a link to my new blog didn't you? Well, I didn't. I just changed the title of this blog to something different! Sneaky, eh? I think so.

Anyways, I've had a pretty good day so far despite the fact that I had to go and spend 15 dollars buying new editing pens because my professor has decided that the ones I normally use are "too bulky" for his tastes. Who comes up with that kind of thing? Well, in the end, they are pretty cool pens even if I had to spend $5.00 a piece for them. I hope they last for the entire semester or they can shoot flames at my enemies for that kind of price.

Work has been pretty low key for the past few days which has meant lots of time for me to get miscellaneous projects done for myself. For example, today I am writing on both of my blogs while at work, that way I don't have to do it at home. I also called the Financial Aid office to get a question answered, I've written an email to my grammar professor, and in just a few minutes I'm going to start working on some small "busy work" types of assignments for a couple of my classes. Aren't you so proud of me? I am.

I went to the Rocky Mountain Review last night to see Roximus Prime perform with the BYU marching band. She had requested that Holly and I make an appearance, but circumstances prevented Holly from going, so I went to give our support. I actually got to sit on the second row of the stadium, so I didn't really have much of a grasp for what shapes the bands were making, but I could tell that the drummers were having a fun time of it. I remember in high school watching the band at halftime and thinking that the only job I would ever want to have in said band was to be one of the drum players that has the four drums at once. I think those are pretty cool.

I saw two other bands besides BYU (which performed last). I saw Skyview High School and American Fork High School. Sorry, Britni, but American Fork blew the pants off of anything the Bartlesville High School band did back in the day. It was pretty intense. I also saw Brittany Bird during the BYU show. She looked very intense while tootling away on her fancy little piccolo. I wonder how good of a trumpet player I would have been if I hadn't quit playing because I didn't want to be in the marching band during high school. Guess we'll never know. That's okay.

That's about all of the exciting news I've got for today. 6 more days until the release of Transformers on DVD. That's the most important thing.

Kiss Me, I Dare You

Yesterday, Holly made it known that I am not such a great kisser. Well, she didn't really let it be known, it was pretty much a joke that we made fun of her for the rest of the evening with, but I still think it was funny. I'm not so sure if she does though.

I've been working hard today an getting homework done. I thought I was all nice and caught up, so I took a couple of hours off the other day and look where it got me. Neck deep in more homework that I didn't even know was coming. Thank goodness that my ELang 325 professor decided it wasn't worth it to give us any more homework today. Now I have a little bit of breathing room. I never thought I would have to work so dang hard with 4 classes in my whole life. Now, if only I could manage to get ahead, that would be amazing.

My sore throat keeps threatening to re-emerge from it's hiding place, but I'm not going to let it. I've had a bit of soreness today, but I took some Vitamin C to give it a punch back into painlessness. Take that tonsils, you shall never defeat me!

Holly and I had the rare chance to spend my downtime between classes together today, as she didn't have to go to work until 4:30 this evening. That meant that I had her pick me up from campus when I was done with my morning classes and then she brought me home to do my homework. While I spent the morning laboring over commas, semi-colons, colons, and apostrophes she spent the time taking a bath and talking to me from the bathroom while I worked. It was a nice change of pace from the usual routine I have of sitting in the library for 5 hours until I go to work. We even decided to use our student discount card and get a large pizza from Dominos for 4 bucks. It was delicious.

8 days until Transformers on DVD. Note to everyone: don't bother trying to get it for me for Christmas, it will be coming to live at my house on October 16th; the day it comes out.

Yes, I'm Still Alive

It wasn't until yesterday when Holly said to me in passing that it had been nearly a month since my last blog post that I realized I had not actually posted in awhile. However, I believe I have a good excuse. I almost died because Julie tried to give me mono for reasons still unbeknownst to me.

I managed to get sick about a week ago, and I was sick for pretty much an entire week. It took 4 different doctors, and allergic reaction to Amoxicillin, and being put on house arrest for three days for the sickness to finally go away. Thank goodness it did though because I was seriously starting to wonder what I was going to do with myself if I didn't get out of the house a little more. Holly, bless her heart, forced me to stay home and rest, which was almost torture at some points because while she was at work all day I was sitting at home trying my best not to be too bored. Thank goodness for Conquer Club I suppose.

I'm all better now though, and after missing several days of class, I have finally managed to catch myself up to all of my classes and while I still feel completely overwhelmed at every single opportunity when it comes to school, I am doing a bit better. I've managed to find a way to stay relatively focused on doing my homework, but I do still have my moments when I wish I didn't have to go to school anymore.

On a more exciting note: Holly surprised me with tickets to the Colors Reunion Concert a couple of weeks ago, and I had the time of my life. I'm a pretty big Colors nerd and sang along to every single song, laughed at every single joke, and clapped louder than anyone else there. It was one of the best surprises I have ever had in my entire life. I hope they have a concert again sometime because I will totally want to go to that one too.