Want to see what 2 feet of snow looks like?

...yeah......it's crazy and insane!

November - Finals

Again, I must apologize for delaying posts on my life. I was busy living it out ;)

But I have been extremely busy, especially with final assignments, exams, and a few other fun events that I want to get onto!

First off: last night :D

Take a super-powerful green laser...

...get a bunch of physicists, engineers, and computer geniuses (especially one that has a car)...

What do you get? Experiments!!!

I've been a part of two so far. The first was simple: blow some air into a balloon, shine the laser at the balloon, and watch it pop! :D

Second was a little more interesting: Test to see if the laser can be seen from the Y (for non-Provo types, the distance from the Y that has been painted onto the mountain to my dorm (straight-line, not the pathway up) is just short of 2 miles (1.826 miles is a closer estimate (Yay for Google Earth :D )) 3 of us drove and hiked up to the Y around midnight. When we got to the top, after taking in the view, we called the guys back at the dorm. Our plan was to have them set off camera flashes towards the Y so that we could spot exactly where the dorm was. I'm not kidding when I say that we could easily spot these flashes! We shot the laser towards the building and apparently it was visible! As expected it was rather large too; according to a couple guys, they estimated the diameter to be about two stories wide! They could easily identify exactly where on the Y we were because the laser was so bright.

...this what the laser light looks like up close.

I also managed to capture the view from up there:

I tried to video tape it, but I didn't make the realization that even though I couldn't feel the wind, my camera could! You'll hear me talk in the vid, but sometimes I get cut out by the wind :P

(WARNING: video gets fairly loud thanks to the wind)

The Cannon Center is making wonderful progress:

In other news, Michelle and I (check my previous post if you need a refresher) are dating now :) It's been about a month now (again, sorry for delaying the news to some of you) and I love her! She's really fun to be with, especially because her laugh is rather contagious! Here's a couple of pics we took one afternoon:

She's from West Virginia and is studying to be in the International Relations program with a Middle East/Arabic emphasis. It's always a mouthful for the both of us to say it! If it raises questions: no, we are not going to stay together during the mission. We've already discussed this and we've come to the conclusion it would just be too hard on both of us.

The weather has been interesting for the past month, from very clear and warm days to cold, chilly, and sometimes rainy days. Naturally, I thrill in this because I get wonderful opportunities to capture the phenomena:

'Tis the season: the Christmas lights are up and functioning at BYU:

This next pic is a 360-degree view of Brigham Square. It's made up of 10 pictures that I stitched together. Hope everyone can see it cuz it's pretty cool!

Even the floor below me in the dorm decided to deck the halls:

In other exciting news, (if you haven't already peeked at my mom's blog) I've been accepted to be a part of a 26-man workcrew for the Hill Cumorah Pageant!!!!!!!!!!! I was so excited to receive this honor! Here's all the details I know so far:

• I was accepted out of 67 applicants
• Transportation, housing, and food are all accomodated for
• I report in on June 26 and am released July 24
• The actual show dates are July 10, 11, 14-18
• It's a free show *hint hint* ;) Plus it's nearby a lot of church history sites (Joseph Smith farm, Sacred Grove, and the Hill Cumorah to name a few!)
• Once there, our team of 26 divides into a light crew and a stage crew
• I'm not sure what I'll choose at this point, but I'm leaning towards the stage crew

I'm planning on getting mission interviews and other such business done after I get home late-April through when I have to leave for Hill Cumorah. I'll turn in my papers before I go and then get ready to leave for my mission after I get back. Unfortunately, I'll be coming home in April a little earlier than I had hoped. I was planning on watching the Wicked broadway show in April before I came home. I got on the website THE minute that the tickets went on sale. I attempted to purchase tickets like 12 times before I decided to wait like a half hour. They closed the website when I checked again because they were so overflowed that they couldn't handle it. By the time I finally got around to calling them 4 hours after initial sale time, the tickets had sold out FOR EVERY SHOW IN THE MONTH OF APRIL (there's a show at least every night of the month)!!! I was a little depressed about it, but I guess I have to move on now............darn.....

Well, I think I've satisfied everyone's curiosities about my life, I'm off to go study for finals :) Hope everyone is doing better than I am right now (actually I'm willing to bet many of you are ;) it's ok though, it's snowing right now and I'll be done and home on Thursday!)

Playing Catch-Up

I know I've committed a terrible crime in not posting in forever. It'll be a miracle if I get some readers of this particular post! I suppose I should play a little catch-up then so everyone knows what's going on.

I was asked to the Preference Dance (girl's-choice) that happened on Nov. 8. SUPER FUN!!! Her name is Michelle Lindsey. She chose the chess-themed dance, which was a black-tie formal dance. I felt happy that I was able to wear my black shirt-silver tie combo that I wore for jazz choir in high school. I really like the outfit! Michelle looked absolutely stunning in her dress! So much so that I was speechless and I failed to compliment her on it until later in the evening. She nailed me for it later, and I felt terrible about it. I don’t suggest any of you do that, no matter the circumstance. All's well though! :) Our entire group consisted of 8 people. We had to drive a little ways to get there. It was really fun. A great variety of songs coupled with great friends makes for a wonderful evening. The dance ended at 11:30. We headed to Wal-Mart and bought some root-beer ice cream, drove back to the dorms, changed, and headed to a nearby park. We stayed there until 3 AM just playing around on the play toys, having leaf fights, and enjoying each other’s company.

The Cannon Center has made huge progress since my last update. They've poured most of the foundational concrete now. The following pictures show what they've started on with the construction of the building.

For those of you who don't know, BYU has a huge rivalry with University of Utah. The big game between them is actually happening as I'm writing this (cue huge gasps and screeches of "YOU'RE NOT WATCHING THE GAME?!?!"). They make a big deal of it during the entire week previous to the game, also known as Rivalry Week. For those of you who've attended BYU (and for those interested in the explanation of the following pictures), BYU has had multiple experiences with U of U kids coming down and pranking and vandilizing BYU property. Recently BYU has come up with some solutions:

Plastic wrapping works wonders in preventing vandalism!!! Yes, this was BYU that did this; it's not a prank :D

I've also been informed that the ham radio club here patrols alongside the campus police keeping watch for pranksters! It's pretty intense!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

The Ungrateful Ones

I digress from my current pattern of humorous and amazing posts to bring you an important message that was discovered upon by my friends and me just recently. I apologize for my inability to thoroughly explore this topic as I'm not an English major ;) I hope instead that this may spark the interests of the rest of you to write some amazing philosophical writing that would change the world. Something like what the transcendentalists did way back when. (I guess I should cut to the chase, hehe)

We, my friends and I, have discovered a sign of the times. We are very disgruntled by the fact that stores and homes around the nation begin decorating for the Christmas holidays directly after Halloween. Even BYU has caught the bug! I witnessed three plastic Christmas trees being placed in the library the other day. Tinsel has been wrapped around various stair railings on campus too. What happened to Thanksgiving? Everyone has a blast decorating, dressing up, and partying for Halloween. Wouldn't you consider Thanksgiving more important than Halloween? Do you get days off of school for Halloween? What about Thanksgiving? I venture to say that this nation is becoming ungrateful for the basic provisions that have been provided! With regard to Christmas, I agree the principle and season of giving is important. But is it more important to give gifts or to give thanks? At least pay a little respect to this dwindling holiday and wait until after Thanksgiving to bring out the tree. It won't kill you to have the decorations up for 1 month instead of 2!

While we're on the subject of debate, another politically active friend of mine from eastern Oregon and I have come up with a brand new idea that we feel has very much potential for success. Here is a political map I put together (thank you CNN.com for the pics) of Washington and Oregon with the current boundary line between the two (red is Republican-dominant, blue is democrat-dominant):

Here is our new proposed boundary line between Washington and Oregon:

Don't you think this will solve so many problems!!!

Now my friends and I don't really plan on debating these topics thoroughly because we were just giggling about them.

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these [words] did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;"

But comments on this one are always appreciated ;)

In other news, I really felt like posting up this video I took on my phone Halloween night. We were at the dollar theater waiting for a movie to start. We were having fun with the air hockey paddles when we discovered this awesome thing you can do with them:

Try it sometime!

High on the Mountaintop!

For the longest time, I've been eying this mountain called Squaw Peak. I've been dying to get pictures off of there because it perfectly juts out of the mountain.

I finally got my opportunity today. Four of us decided to head up this morning at 10 and we got back around 3:30.

It takes about 2 hours to go one way. Moreso going up because there are tons of steep areas that really give your legs a workout! Of course, knowing me, I got plenty of pictures!

Here are the panoramas from the top (sorry about the random lines running across the pictures, it's hard to capture a moment as grand as this and make it look perfect):

This one I actually managed to get a 360 degree view shot!!! I was so excited awhile back when I realized the software that I use comes with a 360-degree option! So i definitely took advantage of it:

Cool pic of the smokey background:

Here's my dorm complex (mine is the right of the 2 that are parallel and oriented horizontally to the right of the small white building (the new Cannon Center) in the middle-left of the picture):

...the football game I didn't go to today :P

Don't die Rudy!

We were just chilling and enjoying the view when this random guy came up and did the most genius thing I've ever seen:

(If you can't see the vid, the guy had a bag filled with these helicopter leaves and would throw them out a handful at a time. It was genius because they actually caught wind once they were thrown out and they would fly upwards and away instead of down the mountainside!) It was soooo cool!!! He had like 6-8 handfuls of them too!

So yeah, it was a blast, and I felt like I didn't totally waste a Saturday ;)