Weekends Are Nice

Last Saturday, Dad and Drew came down (on a college tour) and stole me away to go skiing at The Canyons....HOLY COW THAT PLACE IS HUGE!!!!!! It turns out Dad had a medical conference in one of the lodges there so we stayed in a nearby lodge:
Drew and I headed up and Dad joined us after lunch. Oh the beautiful views I captured:



These are just a few of them! :D So yeah, awesome day of skiing!!! I then got to perform for my ward as well as Drew and Dad on Sunday at ward wrap-up. I had a buddy on electric guitar and another singing and we performed "Fix You" by Coldplay. Unfortunately I ran into technical difficulties in adding the video to here. I did manage to add the video to Facebook and embeded it following this paragraph. To view it however, you need to be in one of my networks or be at least a friend of one of my friends (that means you can view it if you're my "friend"). NOTE: Please don't add me as a friend (or get a facebook account for that matter) just to see this video. I'll work on getting it to be viewed by everyone shortly.



So yes, last weekend was a really nice preface to a terribly busy week of schooling. I'm down to 7 school days left followed by 5 days of finals. And then Spring term! Lots of final projects and big labs are falling due now. I must say I really despise writing papers...luckily I haven't really had to write any, but I'm not looking forward to English 150 in the spring.......
I made it through the crappy week though and was rewarded with a nice visit by Dad and Drew along with Uncle Jim and Aunt Lisa all at Grandma's house. Dad managed to get 5 tickets to the Priesthood Session of General Conference and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience!


A really interesting thing happened as the prophet and his counselors walked in. He started motioning for someone to come up to him. He was calling up this little boy that looked like a deacon to come up. President Monson reached down and shook his hand for a few seconds and appeared to quickly get to know him. It was really cool to see that! I'm sad I didn't have my camera out for that, but I got some of him afterwards:


Unfortunately, everytime President Monson turned around, the picture turned out blurry :/ Oh well, that's him, his counselors, and a good chunk of the Apostles!
Again, it's been a really nice weekend to be with family again. Unfortunately this coming week is a pretty close snapshot of the exact same things as last week :( Hopefully all goes well!

Decisions Made

I'm actually quite surprised. I don't really have too many pictures for this blog post! All I have is this nice sky that I was rewarded with after spending 4 hours in the Computer Science lab finishing up my lab assignment....


...and a couple pans of the full Cannon Center:


You'll notice on the second picture that there's kindof a line of symmetry running down the middle of the building and the walkway. I took this picture and drew up a quick sketch of what I'm envisioning in my head:

I'm pretty excited!

Since my last posting, I've made a pretty big decision. I'm going to be staying in Provo to finish out spring term! Here's what I'm seeing: it'll be nice to knock out a couple more GE's before I head out, the last day of finals for spring is June 18 and I fly out for the Hill Cumorah Pageant June 26, I don't really want to be doing concrete work, which is the job that would be waiting for me at home, and getting a job here (especially during spring) shouldn't be too hard, and I'll be moving into the on-campus apartments so I'll get a taste of apartment-living before I hit the mission. This does mean sacrificing the 2 months I would've been home with family and friends, but I think this will be worth it. I'll probably have to celebrate my birthday here in Provo too.

This last Sunday was a really interesting day. For the past 2 weeks we've had completely clear, 60-degree weather. But this last Sunday, it started out completely overcast and windy. I think the mountains were covered in smog or dust because they were completely fogged out but we could see down here...anyways, church was nice. The choir sang and we did pretty well. The big event of the day though was the dedication of the Draper Temple. We all assembled in the Marriott Center for the broadcast. My little group of friends and I sat near the top and it got a little warm and sleepy up there! But when we got to the hosanna shout and singing of The Spirit of God, I got a little choked up. It really gets to me when you're in an arena of about 10,000 people and they're all singing! As we walked out, the sky was completely clear and blue, minus the doughnut of overcast around the horizon. We got back inside and it clouded over and lightly hailed for a little bit. It was really cool! Tunnel singing was awesome, once again. I was walking home with 4 of my good friends and as we were walking, we made the impulse decision to drive out to Denny's at midnight just because we could. We had so much fun, but all the singing and the quick change to cold weather gave me a cold :( My voice has gone to the deep end and I've got a runny nose right now. I'm expecting a cough to soon follow. I hope I can get through this pretty quick because I'm skiing on Saturday and I have to perform a song on Sunday night. I'm just the backup vocals, but the song does sound better with them. We'll see what happens I guess...

Event Crazy

Happy Pi Day everyone!!! (in case that doesn't ring a bell: March 14 = 3/14...pi=3.14 in math.......yeah, Pi Day :) )

As I began to construct this blog entry, I realized that I have way too many pictures that I've been keeping to myself recently. Allow me to get them out of just my hands ;)


Here's the pic I'm using for my mission papers:

A little blurb about Utah:

Only in Utah can you get beautiful, clear-blue, sunny skies and views such as this one:

...and yet still find in the exact same location at the exact same time this view:

Kinda funny :)

I also realized that I've fallen behind in my Cannon Center documentary. A lot has been constructed inside and out since the last time I posted about this. Lucky for you, my eagle eye managed to scrounge up a peek inside of the building (legally of course!)

I managed to get that view by looking through this peephole :D

Here are your views of the outside:

...and a couple more of the inside hallway:

(here are the doorways!)

So yeah, big progress!

The purpose of the title for this entry derives from the two concerts I attended this past week. Take a guess at the first by these next 2 pictures:

Try the 5 Browns!!!!!!!!!!!

They were utterly amazing! I love how well they can play (and the sound quality coming from those pianos!)!!!! They surprised us with many wonderful arrangements, a few popular classics, and a couple curveballs including the beautiful 6-hand arrangement...

...as well as a little singing and plucking of the strings (both of which are occuring in this pic).

Here are the close-ups I got afterwards:

And as if it couldn't get any more fun, I was also able to watch the BYU Men's and Women's Choruses joint concert:

Both groups did a marvelous job! I could've been on the stage for this one (drat!). I guess I'll have to try again next time!
In case you're wondering, yes, I've been able to keep up with my school work amidst all this craziness. I just got off a 3-exam streak so I'm doing much better. Only a month until this semester is over!!!

The Truth About Sundays

I've come to discover of recent times that Sunday's aren't really turning into the "day of rest" that is allotted to us. Just today, I happened to attend and participate in 8 separate church-related meetings spanning from 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM, a practice for a talent I'll be performing with a couple friends, and Tunnel Singing. I've had very little free time to relax at all! I barely squeezed in 50 minutes of piano-time to myself. And even then, about half of that was practicing ward choir songs because we perform in two weeks! I can't really decide if an exam-infested week is busier than Sunday's at their best!!! It's a good thing I enjoy the business or else I'd snap really soon...but we won't go there :)

Michelle and I broke up on Wednesday.............yeah not much to say........but after some time, we've been able to get back on friendly terms (thank goodness).

In the realm of fun events, I attended the Vocal Point concert last night, and it was AMAZING!!! If you ever get the chance to see them, don't question. Do it! I purchased the tickets before Michelle and I broke up and I felt like I should bring her because she was counting on me for the opportunity to see them beforehand and I thought it was appropriate to follow-through. We ended up having a wonderful evening. Here are a few of the not-very-many-more pics that I have. If you glance in the first picture at the guy 4th from the left, he managed to pull off the Vitas Opera! If you don't know what I'm talking about, your assignment is to visit YouTube NOW (I'd give the link, but BYU actually blocks me from accessing YouTube.com) and search for 'Vitas'. Definitely a crazy song!