Married, married

Hey, guess what? We've been married for a year now, and we still like each other.

That's pretty good!

I think my favorite thing about this first year together was being able to learn more about each other; our personalities, our interests, our embarrassing stories from middle school, etc. I love and admire Jordan EVEN MORE than I did a year ago, and I know that those feelings will only grow stronger with time.



On a less cheesy note, I GET TO TALK TO MY BROTHER ON CHRISTMAS VIA SKYPE YAAAAAAAAAAAY. I'm excited to see his adorable little face. Look at it. So cute.

Failure is just success rounded down, my friend!

It turns out that you can pass Music Civ 201 without doing any of the readings, only going to class about half the time, and starting to study for the final roughly two days before it happens.

Although if you want an A, you should probably do the opposite of what I did.

Blanket

"Hey Jordan, I'm cold. Wanna get me a blanket?"

"Okay!" [Disappears into the bedroom and then reappears]

"Here you go!"

[Blank stare] "Jordan, I'd expect a 5-year-old to bring out the comforter with the sheets.... Okay, I'd expect it from you, too."

The face of depression

I'm a private person. I don't really share things with other people; not because I dislike or distrust others. I just keep to myself. I guess that's part of being an introvert. So I write this post not to ask for sympathy, or to showcase myself in some strange way, but to reach out to those out there who understand my situation.

I have depression.

Yep, depression. That thing where you feel sad for no apparent reason, or lose interest in things that you used to enjoy, or generally prefer staying home and sleeping than facing the world. It saps you of energy, hounds you with constant negative thoughts and feelings, makes you hyper-critical of yourself, and makes you feel guilty for losing control of your emotions and not being happy and normal like other people.

It sounds lame, doesn't it? That's because it is lame. However, I do feel optimistic about the whole thing. I have an excellent support system, a counselor to help me understand what's going on, and the gospel to anchor me when things get stormy. Although I've had many, many days lately where I'd rather stay in bed than, say, go to school or church or do anything mildly productive, I do have hope that this is something I can work with, and understand better. I certainly don't expect it to just "go away," but I do think that I can still have a semi-normal life while depressed.

If you happen to have depression and understand what it's like, know that you're not alone, and others out there are suffering too.

#mormonism #christianity

I don't know if you've seen this or other similar videos making the interwebs rounds, but there seems to be some confusion and misperceptions about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also called the Mormon Church. Seeing as I am a Mormon and have an opinion about this, let me just make it clear: We do believe in Jesus Christ, and we most certainly consider ourselves Christians. In fact, Christ is the center of our religion.

I could go into more detail on this, but I understand that, well, most of you reading this probably share similar religious persuasions, and those of you who don't would probably prefer to do your own research. If you are interested in learning more specifics, please visit mormon.org, which gives really great information on what we believe.

Also, I very much appreciate the respectful attitude most news reporters and politicians have shown regarding our faith. I find that very commendable.

Help thou mine unbelief

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately. When it comes to the gospel, I really appreciate practicality. As great as it is to have a testimony of a certain principle, I feel like it can't change us very much until we do something about it, and I suspect that many people feel the same way.

So when it comes to the principle of faith, I find myself a little stumped at times. I know what it is. It's the "substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). I know that it's important and that we need it. But what am I supposed to do about it? What does it mean to have faith or exercise faith?

There's a man in our ward who, over a year ago, was diagnosed with cancer, and was told he had only months to live. Despite this grim prediction, his family went ahead with treatment, while our ward prayed for him in meetings and privately at home. They have spent days and weeks and months doing test after test and treatment after treatment. I can't even fathom what that was like for them. But they trusted in the Lord, and they continued to do good even through this hard time (he was in the bishopric), and today, every trace of cancer is gone. The doctors are amazed, and so am I.

I know it's a simple example. I also know that there's no way that I can sum up what faith is or how it works. I really think that faith can mean a lot of things. Maybe it means that you keep doing what God has asked of you, even though things are hard. Maybe it's about choosing to be positive instead of being overcome by discouragement. Maybe it's even about overcoming your fears step by step, trusting that the Lord will be with you the whole way. Maybe it's trusting that one day, the Lord will make everything right.

P.S. This post isn't meant to be melancholy; more musing. Also, I found this talk on faith, and I thought it was a pretty good read.

I'm so excited (...I just can't hide it)

This is currently on our wall. You can feel jealous:

And these are things I'm excited about:

-General Conf'rince (also called "Gen Con" by a select, elite, incredibly attractive few) is this weekend and I'm going to watch it on the comfy couches at Jordan's and my families' houses. This also means that delicious food will be involved.

-I only had one migraine this week, and I slept it off. If you don't know anything about me, you don't understand how amazing this is.

-I had the coolest field trip ever on Tuesday; I went to the library. My History of the Book class visited the Book Repair place and I fell in love with the idea of binding books even more. I am totally jealous of the people who work there.

-We probably maybe have a sweet place to live next spring. As nice as our current place is...it's not really that nice.

Rise and shout

When you buy cheap pizza, it's crucial to buy two of them. That way you can have lots of cold-pizza leftovers, and we all know that cheap pizza becomes exponentially more delicious when eaten cold.

So today there's the big rivalry game. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably don't live in Utah or worship any of its schools. I don't worship any of its schools either, but I attend one of them, so this game is still a Big Deal anyway. We intend to go to the Folks' place and watch it, because my mom is probably the most fun person to watch football with, ever.

In other news, Jordan and I went to the Awful Waffle for the first time today. We ate crepes smothered in everything that can give you serious health problems. It was the perfect way to start a day full of eating pizza.

I wanna write you a letter...I wanna write you a BOOK

What I did this weekend:

I took a blurry picture of a book! A BOOK THAT I MADE.

The book really has pages inside!

It was so fun, I made another one, but this one's a hardcover!

Was your weekend as full of paper, glue, thread, and fabric as mine was, or did I just have the best weekend ever?

Mess to be made

What I learned this week:

1. When your fridge smells like death for no apparent reason, look under the veggie drawers. The apparent reason will be there in the form of congealed chicken juice.

2. When you leave baked beans on the burner on low heat for an hour, the bottom will turn black, but the rest will be okay. Just peel the weird skin off the top.

3. NSO will always be the same: sweat, exhaustion, pickles on sandwiches that have no business even being there, and too much yelling at the Freshman Mentoring meeting to try to drown out the sound of other mentors talking to their students.

Arms filled with miracles

Have we done that title already? Oh well. It fits my favorite picture from the weekend:

That's my sweet little sister, Alexa, holding Grace (my cousin's daughter). Among other family events, there was a 50th anniversary party for my grandparents on Saturday. As was expected, Grace was the most popular person who attended.

Oh, what do you do in the summertime?...

...when you don't have a car?

We have a "creative" date at our apartment, consisting of Jurassic Park, dino-shaped pancakes, and all the dinosaur toys we own.

And a festive Scrabble board that really has nothing to do with the dinosaur date.

Oh, and by the way--that last post by Jordan was not announcing that we're expecting a cute fat baby. When that time comes, you can expect a post from me, the trustworthy one.

Sounds fun!

I hope they call me on a mission

Hey cats and kittens,

I've advertised this on facebook already, but if that's not your scene, I'll give you the big news: Trevor is almost 19! He's going on a mission in two weeks! He just got his nametag today!

...And there's a blog for him. That's the news. (http://elderhuffmissionstuff.blogspot.com/)

In the summer, oh the summer

One day when I'm all grown up, I will tell my kids about the summer Jordan and I lived without air conditioning.

(That's this summer.)

So far, it hasn't been too bad. We have a fan that we drag from room to room in our apartment throughout the day, and we stay pretty cool. It's nighttime that's bad; somehow all the heat from the day pools up in the bedroom and unleashes sweaty heatwaves all night, no matter how close the fan is or what setting it's on.

My solution, which has worked well enough, is to get everything ready for bed, take a cool shower, stand in front of the fan for a while until goosebumps appear, and then go to bed. My rationale for getting everything ready before taking a shower is that I don't want to exert much energy afterwards, lest I get hot and sweaty again.

The only problem with this situation is that I tend to wake up in the middle of the night, dying of heat, so I have to take another shower. But what isn't totally awesome about a shower at 2:30 a.m., right?

P.S. I saw Harry Potter and Voldemort and Malfoy hugged and I weirdly felt like my life was complete.

We'll all rejoice and sing a song

About two nights ago, I became mysteriously ill with some strange stomach bug; I felt like the contents of said stomach would surrender themselves to the toilet bowl, but for whatever reason, it never came. Don't you hate that? I mean, it's bad enough to feel like you're going to die, but at least when you throw up, you feel about eight jillion times better.

Anyway, as I sat on the floor of the bathroom, I entertained myself by trying to figure out where middle C was and to memorize it. It so happened that I knew a song in the key of C that started with C, so it was pretty easy to find. I was incredibly pleased with myself for figuring it out, since I could add C to my list of...(now) two notes that I've memorized. I've also memorized A.

The reason I was able to do this is that I have good pitch memory, meaning that if I hear a song enough times, I "memorize" what it sounds like and I know which key it's in by ear. (I hope that makes sense. This isn't to say that I can exclaim, "Oh, that's in A minor!" when I hear a random song...unless I happen to know that the song is in A minor somehow). This strange gift is great for singing a cappella. It's also awful for listening to people a cappella, because I know when they're singing it in the wrong key.

So my life goal now is to train myself to have perfect pitch, if that's the correct technical term for it. I feel like it would be great to expand my weird talent even further, don't you?

[Obscure song lyrics]

If you're in need of a spiritual lift, check out this video. It was given by Elder Busche at a BYU devotional in 1996. I watched it last week during my students' writing class and I was so impressed by his message. I hope you enjoy it too!

I wanna hold your haaaaaaaaaaaand

I like Jordan. Here are a few reasons why:

1. He's spir'chal.

2. He entertains me all the time. Whether it's a silly pun, an in-jokey text, dazzling impersonations of Homestar Runner characters, or sleep talking, he makes me giggle lots.

3. He packs me lunch every day. Really.

4. When I'm sad and acting like a girl, he lets me sit on him and cry.

5. He lets me eat his nachos even when I lie about not being hungry, and then steal most of them.

6. He gives the bestest hugs.

7. He always knows exactly when I want to watch The IT Crowd.

8. He makes up silly songs about why we're awesome.

I love you, I've a drowning grip on your adoring face

I like wearing Jordan's jacket. It's like wearing a hug.

Did you think up something you didn't think of?

Guys, this week has been hard for me. I mean, not only did I take my anatomy lab final, but I've had a streak of terrible songs stuck in my head. I don't know if it's just because they play terrible music at the office where I'm shadowing an orthodontist, or if there's actually some part of my brain that is actually an alien trying to slowly take over control of my body by inserting subconscious signals through terrible music. Either way, my wife has had to suffer through some ridiculous songs lately. Here is a sampling of the mixed tape that has been stuck in my brain lately:

• "The Little Drummer Boy"
• "The Reason" by Hoobastank
• "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia
• "Wherever, Whenever" by Shakira
• "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park
• "Teardrops on My Guitar" by Taylor Swift
• "The Reason" by Hoobastank (I had it stuck in my head on two completely separate occasions)
• "Ich Bin Dein Gummibär" ("I Am a Gummy Bear" in German)
• "Bedrock Anthem" by "Weird Al" Yankovic
• "Photograph" by Nickelback (I have spared you the official video; this one is probably worse better worse)
• Probably the worst of all: "Pieces of Me" by Ashlee Simpson

...Needless to say, the past week has been tormentuous. I think it has been worse for my poor wife, actually. So anyway, what terrible songs get stuck in your head?

I want to be the best I can!

Reasons why my sister's baptism was muy bien:

-Lots of our peeps came, and by peeps I mean family.

-Everyone in my immediate family participated in some way, which was really awesome. Mom gave a talk, Jordan and I sang, Trevor, y'know, baptized Alexa, and Dad confirmed her.

-I got to hold cousin Joshie's slightly floppy, completely adorable baby Grace.

-Food.

The whole [redacted] universe is laughing...

Heh. I promise that the swear in the title isn't a bad one.

Finals are in a week and a half. I've written six papers and taken ten tests so far this term, with two and four left, respectively. I suppose that sounds pretty [redacted] awful, but when you consider the fact that I'm only taking Spanish 105 and ELang 529 (?... I still don't know), that none of the papers have been longer than three pages, and that all the tests have been for Spanish and haven't taken longer than 30 minutes, it isn't all that bad.

I have nothing else for you, so go look at this adorable blog.

i miss video games.

Sometimes, the fact that the majority of my childhood consisted of extensive video gaming comes back to haunt me in the most entertaining ways. I don't think it's very common to think about holding Z then pressing A to do a long jump all the way down the stairs instead of walking down them, or thinking about how I could bust through a wall with a good Falcon Kick aimed just right. For some reason, these thoughts tend to occur to me at completely random times.

But seriously, think how cool it would be if the world worked like it does in video games! First off, no one would be afraid of heights, since usually you could just fall as far as you want without any damage (or even constant acceleration due to gravity). Worst case scenario: you might lose half of your life meter and wobble vertically for a few seconds, but that's okay--just grab a few coins and you're back to full life!

Getting up long flights of stairs would be much easier. You could just wall jump all the way up (although some people are certainly better at that than others). Some people would just be able to hold their breath and fly the whole way up.

Jealous of the athletic abilities of Jimmer? Just inhale him and then swallow, and suddenly you've inherited his abilities! Tired of waiting in traffic? Just grab a feather and you can jump over everyone else (although only the older generation have access to the feather--younger drivers will have to be content with the golden mushroom or some other way of getting ahead). And if your kids are acting up, you can just grab them with your tongue and turn them into eggs for a while!

On the other hand, I guess there would be come drawbacks if life were like a video game. First off, you'd always have to worry about Peppy coming in over the communicator telling you to do a barrel roll when you don't want to, not to mention having to save him and Slippy all the time. But at least Falco would be pretty cool to have around. If you had a girlfriend who happened to be royalty, you would probably spend most of your life trying to rescue her from some creepy turlte/dinosaur/dragon with spikes on his shell, relying mostly on his own stupidity (placing bombs conveniently near where he's waiting to fight you, standing on a bridge that is easily destroyed by the axe he left at the end, or butt-pounding himself through the floor) to defeat him. And if your girlfriend wasn't royalty, she would probably be more likely to hang out in one spot and never move, providing musical instruments, healing powers, "save spots," or some other semi-useful item, but not her love and attention that you really wanted.

Speaking of save spots, I think that might just be the best thing about life being like a video game. Of course, the older generations would be out of luck, but our generation would be able to push themselves beyond their normal comfort zone (or even past their physical limits), then just revert back to their last save spot if things don't work out. Think about how well that would work on midterm exams! Of course, some people would have to go all the way back home each time they started their game, but plenty of people would be able to save whenever and wherever they wanted!

Well, there are plenty of other awesome things that would happen if life were like a video game. I think my favorite would be Pokémon. But in the end, I think things would get pretty chaotic. Not to mention the confusion when some people die multiple times and just reappear at the entrance to the same room they died in. Some people would even be able to loot their own corpses. That would probably be just a little disturbing. Maybe it's better that life isn't like a video game. Sometimes, though, I just really want to throw a vegetable at that annoying kid who asks stupid questions in class.

Hungry like the wolf

For some reason, I couldn't quite think of song lyrics that would go well with this post.

When I was a small child, I had stuffed animal toy unlike any other--it was a purple, pregnant kitty called "Kitty Surprise." There was a velcro opening along her tummy that you could open (to simulate a very intense C-section, I suppose) to reveal several kittens nestled inside. To impregnate her again, all you had to do was put the kittens back inside her fabric womb and close the velcro.

As a 21-year-old, I'm not exactly sure what the point of this toy was. To initiate a conversation about how those little kitties really got there? To relive the miracle of birth over, and over, and over again? To play "Surprise Surprise," where the mommy kitty actually gives birth to...puppies? Dad's car keys? A sock? Pokemon?

Anyway, Happy Mothers' Day, all. Here are some pictures.

Who wouldn't want one?

The miracle of...birth?

I'm wide awake, it's the middle of the night...

My Spanish class forces me to do cultural activities every now and then, to help me become a more well-rounded person, I guess. Jordan and I decided to go to El Salvador Restaurante yesterday, because they apparently had a legendary food I needed to try, and I figured, Hey! Food=culture. Good plan!

So we went to this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and man. The atmosphere was sweet. Half the tables were legit booths, and the other half were the kind of cheap white tables you put on your patio.There were El Salvadorian decorations plastering the walls, in a weird-but-charming way, and the owner's kid/nephew/cousin was sitting in the corner, wearing an apron and coloring.

We ordered our food from a woman who spoke rapid-fire Spanish. I mostly understood what she was saying, and gave really good two- to three-word answers to her questions. All the while, I questioned myself: Was anything I learned in Spanish real? Do I sound like a total and complete idiot right now? Is anything I'm saying coherent or remotely grammatically correct, or am I just stringing together unrelated words in an unforgivable Spanish accent?

Apparently we did all right, because our food got to us, and I was so excited to devour it. We order "pupusas," which is Spanish for "a corn tortilla injected with the most delicious cheese, meat, and vegetables you've ever had in your mouth before." It also came with this shredded cabbage stuff that had been...marinated...in sauce. It was a lot better than it sounds.

After our happy mealtime, we got home, and within a half hour, my stomach said, "Dria. You made a bad choice today." And it proceeded to violently surrender its contents.

I suppose this means I had food poisoning. I was, in fact, food poisoned. Can you say it like that? Should it be hyphenated? I've never really understood what the term means. When people say, "Dude, yesterday sucked. I got food poisoning," do they really mean, "Yesterday I went to a shady 'authentic' restaurant and had the most amazing food ever, which I later threw up and now I never want to think about that place again, ever"?

Perhaps I'll never know what that phrase means, or if I was finally able to be an unwilling participant. I do know that I deserve extra credit on that Spanish assignment.

I know, that you know

I've recently decided that the most delicious thing to eat for breakfast is a peanut-butter banana smoothie.

I've also decided (read: HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN) that when we have a half-me, half-Jordan child, this blog won't suddenly turn into a "journal" where I talk about Baby's intimate diaper happenings, give weekly weight updates, and tell you weird, gross stuff that you didn't want to know but that I'm making sound cute for the internet (breastfeeding schedule and habits, barfing, snot volume, etc.).

But I'll (we'll) probably post some pictures every now and then, because EVERYONE likes to look at pictures of babies drooling on things.

I think of His hands

I happened upon something cool when doing a homework assignment for Early Modern English. To celebrate the KJV's somethingth anniversary (...400th? I'm sorry; I don't remember. I'm terrible at life), each member of the class read a chapter from Isaiah and had to "find something interesting." Mostly the teacher meant "grammatically interesting," but I found something "interesting in a more profound way." So in chapter 50, verse 6 says, "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting." I decided to look up the word "give" in the Oxford English Dictionary to see if I could find anything interesting, and I discovered two definitions that really stood out to me:

-to render a service without payment

-to devote, dedicate, or sacrifice

When I re-read verse 6, instead of only seeing it as the Savior handing over his life to those who would ultimately crucify him, it took on the added meaning of how he also atoned for the sins of these people. This added a level of beautiful, hopeful poignancy for me--Christ loves everyone so deeply that he'd even suffer for the people wicked enough to kill him. I know that I'm nowhere near that level of love for people, but it does make me want to follow His example.

Gamble if you want to win

I guess I should clear the cobwebs from this old blog with the latest news. We haven't been updating very often mostly because we don't have a lot of exciting stuff going on like we had before we were married. I guess that's mostly because there's no drama from ambiguous relationships, girl/boy trouble, messy roommates, or any of those other exciting things that come with being single. Also, we don't have anything big like getting married to build up to, so... Yeah, not a lot to write about.

That is, not until NOW. Dria almost spilled the beans in her last post, but we still weren't sure whether it was true or not. Now, however, it has been verified to be 100% true.

We're going to have a baby!!!

I'm seriously so excited! We both love babies, and now we finally get to have one of our own. I think moving into a ward with 70-80 babies under the age of 2 was what really made us decide to have our own baby now. We had been talking about it for a while, but we finally feel like we're ready to accept this big responsibility.

Of course I'm nervous about what this will mean for us as a family. I'm going to have to be even more of a responsible adult now that I'm going to be a father. I can't describe all of the feelings and thoughts that are going through my head. It's crazy! But I'm excited and happy; I know we're going to have a wonderful experience with our first baby. And in eight more months, we'll be able to share tons of cute baby photos for everyone to comment on and enjoy.

Now we just have to figure out what to name the baby! (And whether it's a boy or a girl, of course!)

Baby, baby, baby, OOOOOHHHHHH

Man. Guys. Man. Jordan and I should have a baby or something, because our blog is super boring. Then we would have something to write about, yeah? WINK.

Totally kidding, we're not planning on babying it up anytime soon. But seriously, our blogging has been lacking lately. Buhhhh

Sometimes? We see this guy walking across campus who reads Star Wars fanfic books while he walks. They all have words like "Battle" or "Prophecy" or "Destiny" or "Planet" in the title. Jordan and I decided that it would be really easy to make cash on the side writing Star Wars fanfic. Except we might get the physics wrong, or the laws of the Jedi Order wrong or something.

Yeah...I got nothing. I love you.

Valentimes is serious times

This is the first Valentine's Day that I've really, really looked forward to. Last Valentine's Day was only kinda fun (it was made better because my awesome sauce mom sent me a package with dino stuff). Jordan already got me flowers and the dang coolest card I've ever seen in my life. And later? We're going to a delicious restaurant and to the dollar theatre to see Harry Potter, yaaaaay!

You have to do everything I say

I never before realized that I'm one of those crazy, overprotective older sisters, but I am.

Lately, my brother has suddenly turned into a fabulous musician, and as we all know, this can only mean one thing in college: attention from the opposite gender. He posts his songs on Facebook and hordes of hormonal young ladies vie for his attention with comments like

"Name this one after me, Trev."

"This sounds like a chorus of angels conversing about you, Trevor."

"Omgsh, this is lyk teh best thing ever lolol!"

Now, normally adolescents cyber-flirting wouldn't bother me, but for some reason, when I see those coy little misspellings, those subtle pleas for late-night hand-holding, something in my sweet little personality snaps and an angry, sisterly bear is unleashed.

"A CHORUS of ANGELS?!!??!?!!111?! Oh my GOSH. Jordan. Jordaaaan! These girls can't talk to my brother like that! He's a, a, a kid. Not a piece of meat!"

"Uh..."

"Exactly! These little hussies will give him nothing but trouble. I know! I've done it before! He has a tender heart!...probably...."

The point I'm getting at is if you're a woman and if you're trying to love my brother, you have to go through me first. Good luck.

I won't grow up!

I think that there's this unspoken expectation that when people get married, they suddenly have to grow up. As evidence to the contrary, I will tell you that my husband and I had a pancake picnic in our living room last night and then read about a chapter of the first Harry Potter novel before our attention spans wandered.

Isn't it encouraging that even though we're grown ups, we don't have to act like it all the time?

Yeah, you were as brave as traffic

Our apartment complex is waging a war against invisible roaches.

They're invisible because I've never seen them, and because I've never seen them, they probably don't exist.

From what I've gathered, they've bombed for roaches roughly 3 times in the past year. Each time this happens, tenants have to take all their things out of the creaky kitchen and bathroom cupboards and put them on the kitchen table (read: what kitchen table?) and wait for it to end. The whole process was upsetting for me because 1) We didn't have a table (which we remedied anyway by buying an awesome cheap 2'x4'x3' one at Wal-Mart) and 2) We had just finished putting everything IN the cupboards in the first place.

And they say married life is boring...

Come with me; go places

Everybody:

My life is so good right now. I have the most wonderful wife in the world who always helps me feel happy when I'm sad, and I love cuddling with her to watch movies or read books.

That's all. :)

Whatever the mess you are, you're mine, okay?

I think that over the past two weeks, I've had every minor illness that one can possibly contract without going to the hospital room or dying. That being said, what should've been the best first week of a semester, ever, has actually been the most difficult and frustrating. But I made it through, and I'm surprisingly still optimistic about this whole Winter '11 idea.

My classes (and schedule) are awesome. I'm only taking three, and they're all language-related. If you know me at all, you know that this makes for good times for me. Which reminds me--yesterday, someone asked me if understanding the English language well helps in learning other languages, and my answer was an emphatic no. Exhibit A: me; Exhibit B: the German language. I did think it was an interesting idea, though. What makes one good at languages? Some people pick them up so easily and it's almost a hobby for them to learn another language.

As for me, I'm sticking with my native tongue and trying my hand at Spanish again, since I have a little experience and am married to my own personal tutor.

I'm still optimistic about meeting all my students, even though my getting-stick-all-the-time escapades sometimes get in the way. I've been able to talk with about two or three of them so far, and it's been so interesting to hear about how they came to choose BYU and to observe the mannerisms that make them unique. I know that people like to stereotype and generalize about BYU students (not to mention members of the Church), but I've found that every time I'm willing to put forth the effort to get to know someone (anyone) better, I end up appreciating and liking them more. People are a lot smarter, kinder, and better than we give them credit for. I love my job so much because I get to discover just how incredible people are.

You put the keys in the car...and DRIVE!

You know what? 10 proof cough syrup is so NASTY, but it makes my sore throat feel so much better. I've decided that after this bottle is empty, by my own doing or Jordan's, I'll only ever take pills. It's so much less nasty.

Last night I made the mistake of checking my work email right before going to bed. There was an email from one of my students asking for help with her schedule, and I got so excited that it made sleeping very difficult. I wanted to help her right then, but I figured that sending at email at 12:45 a.m. probably wouldn't be very professional.

I really want to go back to work (and school). The past two weeks have been AWESEOM [sic, but I like how that typo turned out], but I do enjoy some structure and having things to do, other than boring stuff or watching Psych.

Oh, and happy new year. :F