We started talking about Beethoven in my Intro to Music class today. I don't think this chapter (15) will be too hard to memorize.
In Pearl of Great Price we talked about why black people couldn't get the priesthood for a long time and how we aren't prejudice and don't care about skin color. We also talked about the events leading up to the flood and some other things that are blurry.
Because I went to a strong recital tonight I just went straight home after school. I wanted time to do other things, I was pretty tired. I took a short nap and just hung around for a while. I left again around 6pm and went over to UVU. I played around on my phone and just did random stuff for a while. When the doors opened for the recital I sat in the middle of the 3rd row. The recital was amazing, I wish I could have recorded it. I went and listened so I could finish my first concert report for my music class.
Here are pictures of the program.
Anyway, after the concert I had to wait a while for mom to pick me up, but after I got home I typed my concert report. Here is a copy of my report. I'm not especially great at writing these things. haha.
STRING SENSATION
Concert Report #1
Tonight I went and
watched the UVU string faculty give an hour long concert. As you can guess all
the pieces primarily focused on string instruments like the violin, viola,
cello and bass. There were a few pieces with a piano, and the violin was
definitely the star of the show. No one did any solos, there were only duets,
trios, and quartets. Most of the pieces that were played were from famous
classical composers, but one stood out above the rest because it was quite
literally made up on the spot. Denson Angulo brough his bass up and had some
children pick a few numbers. These numbers represented do, rei, mi, fa, so, la,
ti, and do. Using the numbers that the children picked he just made up a rather
amazing song. The song was fast tempo and unpredictable. The dynamics were also
unpredictable, you could never tell when he was going to get quieter or louder.
I am sure that out of all the pieces except for maybe Serenade. Op. 10 by Erno
Dohnanyi that was performed by a trio of people playing violin, viola, and cello
that one was my favorite. That had my feet moving and I felt excited. The piano
and violin duets were pretty great and there were two of them. The first piece
which was Mozart’s Duo in G Major, K, 423, and was played by a violin and a
viola. The piece was quite remarkable, the melodies were predictable, but the
way they switched parts of the song was amazing. They were in great sync and
brought lots of excitement. This is one of the pieces that was in allegro. The
last one Divertimento in G Major by Johann Baptist Vanhal was in 5 parts and
the pacing went something like allegro, menuetto, adagio, menuetto, and then
allegro. The whole concert was amazing.
Today in church we talked about the conference talks from last week. Mom also made chicken soup today from scratch. It was amazing and had veggies, rice and I added some cheese on top. Other than this noting much happened.
This is a new series on my blog I'll be starting. I'm not sure when I'll be posting more of these, but you will see them around. I am not doing anything today, so I figured that it would be a great idea to start this today. I usually don't write on Saturdays, but I can make another exception this time. I'm going to read a talk from conference or some other church meeting and write about it. I don't give my spiritual thoughts nearly enough, so this is a great place to start. Today I'll start with the last talk from this past woman's conference.
A few days ago as I was waiting for Laura to pick me up from the Mall I decided to just read this while I was waiting. The story looked interesting, and now I am very glad I read it because it gives a really great message. I tend to learn a lot from stories. The talk was given by President Uchtdorf. I will leave the video of the actual talk at the bottom.
I took some little notes on this talk and I'll leave them at the bottom of this paragraph before I go in depth. You really should read or watch it. You might get something different out of it than I did. I'll start off with saying that the first thing I learned from this talk was that we should always be open minded about new places. No matter where we are there is always something that is worth seeing and worth doing. Being open minded an curious instead of close minded and stubborn can and will bring us a lot of happiness. We will sometimes be in situations just like Ava's, and it's better to take it all in and search for the good in our situation. There are situations that have no good in them, but those are rare, and you will usually never be in one of those. Almost all of the situations you will be in in life have something good in them. Being close minded is only going to promote unhappiness and pessimism. Look for the good in everything, and don't be afraid to explore new knowledge and go places around the world. God made ths world and you are supposed to learn from it and him.
Prayer is a powerful thing, and it can bring you comfort. Heavenly father doesn't want you to suffer. Him and Jesus and the Holy Spirit only want to help us and they are always watching and waiting for us to pray when we are not only in bad situations, but good ones as well. Prayer can bring us the insights to get us out of any darkness. Answers to prayers may take time, or they may be quick, but they will always come. There is no need to despair and give up because we will always get the answers we need and we should never give up or get impatient. Faith in Heavenly Father and his answers is a good thing to have, we should always have it. If we have faith in prayer and are always sincere we will have countless doors of knowledge and understanding opened up to us. Prayer is there to comfort instruct and guide and if we use it to its full potential we won't have to fear or doubt at all.
Also don't forget that scripture reading is often the door we need to find out these insights. Prayer and scripture reading together with fasting, faith, hope and love is immensely powerful.
People make the mistake a lot nowadays of thinking that you need everything to be happy. The world is wrong on this point. I grew up poor and sometimes we couldn't afford anything but paying bills. It was hard and we had to get food from the bishop's storehouse, but even though it was hard and we didn't have much I learned how to appreciate what little I had. I think the way I grew up was a blessing and now I know how to be grateful for what I have. I understand that things and money don't bring you happiness. I find that I feel like I have everything I need already. Heavenly Father, Jesus and the Holy spirit can fill any void. There is no need to have everything, you just need the important things. Music, heaven, family, memories, experiences, and other permanent and everlasting things like that. Those are the kinds of tings you need to have more of. You will find limitless happiness if you can learn to be grateful for what you have.
As I said any void, even emotional ones can be filled by Heavenly Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. You have no need to being in despair or hopelessness because there is always hope all the time and it'll never disappear. You are never alone, and they can fill any void that you have. Trust in them and believe and you can get anywhere and do anything done. You can find happiness.
Too often we avoid unknown relatives. I learned that we should get to know some more of our relatives better. You never know what kind of amazing people are out there until you meet them. Some people might seem not worth knowing, but always make sure you look deeper and make sure you are judging correctly. Some people, like me aren't that simple.
Optimism is like a muscle, just like a lot of other things. At first it can be hard to see the good in things, but if you keep trying your ability to see the good more than the bad will grow and the world will become more and more beautiful. We got through a lot of different trials, and they sometimes seem miserable and hopeless, but if we strengthen our optimism we will be able to see the good things even when we are having a hard time. God would never leave us in pure darkness, there is always candles. Prayer can also help strengthen optimism of course. Another good reason for strengthening optimism is in situations where your life doesn't go as planned. Sometimes our life goes awry or we aren't supposed to go down paths we want to go down.
Strengthening your optimism and your ability to listen to God through prayer and scripture reading will help you be able to see the correct paths that you are supposed to be on. Sometimes your life will turn out drastically different than you wanted it to be but there is still so much to be grateful for and so much you can do with your life. Also regardless of what you accomplish in this life or don't accomplish you will have all eternity to do everything in the next life as well. There are countless things you can learn and skills you can acquire in this and the next life. Your life is never over, and you will never become a failure. You just have to keep doing your best to improve. Never forget that life and God has a lot in store for you. You can't even imagine the wonders the future holds. Always have faith in God, the Savior and the Holy Spirit. Hope, faith, and love will get you to really high places. The savior can save you from any darkness, so never give up and call upon him. You will reach higher than you can even imagine if you have these things in your heart. Your potential is limitless.
Remember not to be ruled by regrets, I have in the past. You can't change the past and making mistakes is okay. You learn a lot from failures and mistakes and so they are okay. Everyone blunders sometimes, no one but Jesus has ever been perfect on this planet. Failures and mistakes can be scary, but they do help. Plus learning how to face failure can make you more courageous as well.
The last thing I want to say before I end this is that make sure you don't stay too busy. Taking breaks and meditating is also important. too often we get distracted by our buy lives and forget, neglect, or procrastinate to talk to God. We should strive to open up more time for peace and quiet and not get caught up in the chaos of the world. We won't hear the spirit if we get too distracted.
Anyway, I hope you loved this post. I'm going to put just as much effort into my future posts of this nature. I hope I can help influence someone in a good way and bring people closer to God. If you haven't listened to or read the talk, here it is right here.
First, I should mention that the design I have up right now on my blog is only temporary. I am thinking up a better design. To be quite frank, orange drives me nuts and it was only an experiment.
Today was an interesting day. I was a little slow getting ready today , so I had to get a ride from Laura to school. She let me have some of her Sunbelt cereal bars for breakfast in addiction to my own bars. I really do recommend you try KIND bars, they come in a lot of different flavors. My favorites are the dark cherry and the dark chocolate with pecans and sea salt. They have saved me from a lot of binds in the past.
We did something really fun in Intro to Music today. Random people got to pick songs they like and we just used what we've learnd over the past few weeks to tell a little about the elements of the songs. We did 10 different songs, and I got mine in as well. The teacher was looking for something a little harder than classical, the first few songs were classical. I am well versed in the good side of metal music, and I suggested we listen to part of Ghost Love Score by Nightwish. It actually isn't the brightest song in the world, but it is a genius work of art. Not very many people can write 10 minute songs. I don't really listen to the song anymore because I listened to it so many times a long time ago that I got tired of it, but I definitely still understand its artistic genius. It's passionate, but it is kind of dark as I said before, so I know a lot of my friends won't be interested. I love Nightwish, but I do tend to avoid a few of their songs that can get downright creepy. I am a lot wiser about music than I used to be, but I do admit I do have a few blind spots. I am filling in my gaps more and more day by day. Learning takes time you know.
Anyway, we were supposed to get a full side of a page written down, but I didn't quite make it. I know that regardless I'll get a good score on it though. I am still memorizing and learning all the different music concepts and vocabulary. I think I might try a little harder from now on to do that. After how nervous I got before our last assessment in class I think it's a good idea most likely.
After class I just got on the bus and spent a couple of hours at the gym. I wanted to burn off all the calories from those cereal bars so I did 60 minutes of cardio and burned 500 calories. I didn't burn off everything, but I did burn most of my calories. I like to eat a good amount, but if I don't burn enough I gain weight. It really is a good idea, plus the exercise makes me really healthy. I do have a tip for those of you who have tight muscles. Try stretching in a hot place for a while. I find my favorite place to stretch is the gym sauna. Most of you already know that stretching before warming up is a bad idea, but stretching when you are really hot is even better than just warming up. I learned this when I was learning how to do yoga, you get really hot when you do yoga.
After I was done at the gym I had to wait for the bus to get to the transit center, so I spent a little time in Sports Authority and then went home. I took a nap and did a whole bunch of unimportant things, you know my usual stuff like watching stuff on Netflix and spending time on facebook. I really DO need to be more creative in the future. I think now would be a great time to paint that wooden shelf I've been meaning to paint.
So later this evening after all my randomness I went to a ward game and movie night. We played this game where we spun this wheel and had to pick one of two jelly beans we landed on. Like for example someone landed on the part of the wheel that said you will either get a rotten egg jelly bean, or I think a buttered popcorn jellybean. No one knew which of the two was which, and it got really funny. I got lucky and ended up with a tootie fruity instead of a smelly sock jelly bean. I can't even tell you how glad I was. Afterward we played a game where we all wrote down a funny sentence and then we had to pass the papers to the right and someone had to draw a picture of the sentence we wrote. We passed the papers again and then wrote a sentence describing what the picture we saw was. this was repeated until we ran out of space. Mine started out as "A fluffy demon apocalypse bunny" and ended up as something like a Canadian moose or something like that. I don't remember exactly what it was in the end, but it was funny. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I am dreadful at drawing, so anything I drew always changed dramatically because no one knew what it was. I have to say it was really funny though. Here is a short collection of clips and photos from tonight.
We watched Hotel Transylvania after this and ate treats. There was stuff like seven layer dip, chips, popcorn, pumpkin cookies, cheesecake squares, chips, Cheetos, candy bars, dumdums, and Chinese candy. I haven't seen the movie in a long time so it was fun watching it again. The house I was at had a home theater room with a really big screen, it was so nice. Afterwards while I was waiting for a ride to get back home I just surfed facebook on my phone. It took a while for anyone to respond to me about a ride. Laura eventually came and got me from the rather big house I was at and I've been eating Hot Tamales candy and watching Tim Burton movies ever since. I usually get in a Tim Burton mood around this time of the year.
I'm glad I went to the party tonight. I like spending time alone, but I know it is healthy for me to spend time with people. I rather enjoy spending time with people as long as it isn't too much time, I am an introvert dominantly after all. I don't mind testing my boundaries at all though.
I kind of understand why God hasn't let us be around each other since high school. I was going through some pretty heavy stuff and I know that God was just protecting Sam. I am just glad that I have turned from all my previous troubles. In truth I've only ever wanted to do the same thing he did for me. When I met him he was a real blessing (he still is) and I recognized that. I was further in the darkness than I thought i was and seeing his amazing spirit made me want to be a better person. I know God would have preferred that I came to him first, but I was stubborn and prideful. It probably would have taken me a long time to pull myself from that slump I was in in high school. I am absolutely sure that God new he could crack my shell and so he momentarily let him into my life. It didn't solve all my problems, but it got me to start trying. Eventually I learned to go to God myself without any help from other people.
I still feel like if I'd listened when I thought I should become his friend the first time I would have never ended up in the mess I was in in the first place. I know I regrets won't get me anywhere though, so I'll just be grateful for what I have.
I know exactly why I fell apart two and a half years ago almost when I saw him last. I knowingly went to Sam knowing that I was drowning myself in darkness still. Of course there was a barrier between us. I really shouldn't have been selfish enough to try and get close to him when I knew I wasn't being righteous and I was spending time with people that dragged me down. I should have stayed away from him until I was out and I know that. I opened a hole in my heart because I let myself see him and the darkness poisoned my heart for over a year. I held a great number of negative emotions towards him for a while. I was so absorbed in my feelings for the person that was dragging me down that I was blinded and what was bad seemed good and what was good seemed bad. To me Sam was the one that wronged me when really it had been the other way around. Now that I am fully out of that mess I see all my errors. Needless to say I escaped eventually and after a momentary relapse of selfishness things with Sam are back to as normal as they can get. I'm still friends with the person that dragged me down, but I'm not longer blinded by the feelings I had for him, plus he is married now. It allowed me to reset and handle our friendship the proper way. This particular friend needs me, so I'm more than happy to be there for him the right way. Plus we were friends long before I got reckless, so I know keeping him as a friend isn't a mistake.
I have no plans of trying to get near Sam any time soon. I still have a lot of growing to do before I will feel like I even deserve to be near him. Right now his heart being mostly closed off to me is a blessing in disguise. We are friends, but I'm not even going to try to become more. I know now not to mess with the way things are supposed to be. I know if God wants me to be near him it will happen at the right time. I also want to endowed before I see him as well. I just have to keep fighting against whatever problems I have. I want to be the kind of friend Sam is proud of and that all my friends are proud of. I want to lift people up just like Sam unknowingly helped lift me up a long time ago. I never want to be trapped in the darkness ever again, it was miserable. someday I want to be able to help Sam, the same way he helped me. I just want to do something good for him so badly. I know that he is much further along spiritually than me though so I'm going to have to work really really hard. I am fine with whatever obstacles come my way though. I know I can make it through anything because God made me strong and I know it.
Anyway, these are all the thoughts I have for now. I was going to talk about something completely different, but I'm glad I decided to talk about this instead. I think it's important that I get these thoughts written down so I'll never be able to forget what I've learned. I definitely get why God likes us to write things down.
Yesterday night I made a blunder. My philosophy professor cancelled class today, so my brain got mixed up with that and next weeks fall break. I thought I didn't have class today, so last night I stayed up pretty late waiting for another container of Jello to finish. I was also watching season 5 of Blue Bloods. Anyway, so when I woke up around 11:45am I saw a few texts from my presentation group for Family Studies and realized what I had done. I literally just grabbed my backpack and got a ride from Dad as he was leaving to go on a run with Panda. If I had woken up even a little bit later I would have missed him. Today in Family studies we just talked about a similar subject to last time so I won't even mention the details, I missed most of it anyway.
After class I went and did the usual stuff at the mall. I like going to the mall a lot because it makes me feel like I'm doing something. I love seing people's creativity as well and the ideas for fashion and other stuff. People think the mall is boring, but if you look deep enough it is actually a haven of creativity. Things are always changing as well, so I usually never get completely bored, and it's just going to get better and better with all the remodeling and stuff.
I went to the store on my way home after this, I was going to originally buy some Hot Tomales candy and then go home, but I changed my mind whenit was there in front of me. I decided to get something better because I knew that I am low on money right now. In the end I got some potato soup and a roll. That reminds me, yesterday I forgot to mention that I got some peppermint flavored water. It was worth a try, but nothing I'll buy again. What I got today I like a lot better.
I went home and the rest of the day hasn't been too eventful. I took a long nap after surfing facebook and watching Garfield and Friends for a little bit. After that I had sausage and eggs for dinner. Now I'm just eating popcorn and watching stuff on Netflix.
I was feeling nervous, so I went to school early today. I just sat there for a good 30 minutes by the classroom and just studied the flashcards on my computer. Last night after I posted I ate green Jello and got to know some of the music by Bach, Vivaldi, and Mozart a little better. I studied the digital flashcards and read a bit as well of course as well yesterday. I was so nervous as I said and I had no idea what to expect.
Well, the test, or assesment as Dr. Smith calls it went off with a hitch. All we had to do was listen to 2 pieces of music after getting into pairs and asses or evaluate what each other knew about the pieces of music. My partner, Ben did know a lot more than I did, but I think I did well enough. I know without a doubt I passed with flying colors. There was a piece of music by Bach, and another by Mozart.
I was so relieved after class that I decided to go and get some ice cream. I decided to get 3 different flavors. I got English Toffee on the bottom of my cup, then I got Oreo Cheesecake as the 2nd layer, and Mint as the final layer.
Anyway, after ths I just walked around for a while until my Pearl of Great Price clas here we talked more about the wicked religious practices of the Egyptians. They really had some truly sick rituals. Basically take every requirement that you have to meet to get into an LDS temple and flip it backwards. That is how bad it was.
After class I just went and di my usual shenanigans at the mall and then went home after an hour. I was fooling around with my camera on the bus and I got this cool shot of myself.
The only other thing of hote that happened today, well tonight actually was that I went to home Depot and got an air filter, a new bathtub stopper for my bathtub and a couple of other things. We also just looked around at the lights and the plants and stuff. The bathtub stopper didn't really work, but we think that is because the metal part around the drain hole is leaking. There is another drain plugger I am going to try soon, and hopefully it works.
Oh yeah, and we had tacos and burritos for dinner tonight.
I have been nervous for about a week. My music test is tomorrow and Dr. Smith is a bit unpredictable when it comes to tests. Actually, he calls them assements. Last time he put us in groups of 3 and we had to help each other with the different elements of 3 different pieces of music. We had to explain the dynamics, rhythm, melody, and a couple of other things. Sadly, I know that without my teammates I would have been doomed.
I just have to post this on that note...
I'm planing on staying up and studying for the majority of the night just to be safe.
Today in Family Studies we talked about (physical intimacy) and that is all the details you are going to get. I try to keep the S word off my blog, so I won't even go there, plus it s a really uncomfortable subject for me. Honestly, I had forgotten we were going to talk about it in class and I would have skipped if I'd known.
I'm not going to try to explain what we talked about in Pilosophy because I am still trying to wrap my head around it, but it was about this Philosopher named Hume. Unlike Descartes I don't think he believed in God or anything like that. I guess you could say he was the anti Descartes in a way. We have actually described Hume that way before. Most of Descartes Philosophies revolved around God.
Anyway, the rest of the day was boring, and I have a lot to do, so I'm just going to end here. I currently have some Jello I'm waiting for in the freezer.
Today was pretty darn fun! First a blog update though. I missed a few entries earlier last month, but I have everything for September pretty much up except for the first four days which wont be hard to fill in. I think I'm actually going to do those after I am done writing this. I'll get August up really soon, I just have to get through Wednesday's music test and then I'll be able to concentrate more.
Speaking of the music test, we did a review today. I am a little nervous to do the test to say the least. I really really hope I get through it okay. I am going to do a study day tomorrow because I didn't get to study today, so much happened. After music I just walked around for most of the hour in between classes. I went to Pizza Hut 25 minutes before class and got some chicken alfredo. I love the pizza there, but their pasta is pretty great as well. I took my food and ate it in the classroom that my Pearl of Great Price class is in. Today was kind of a bit mind blowing, well I guess every time I go I learn so much that I'm not sure how to even summarize it. We talked about one of the illustrations in the Pearl of Great price and explained what was happening and the context around it. I'll have to get back to you on the details later, but it wa something about a sacrifice and some evil priest or something. I'm sure anyone that has read the Pearl of Great Price can probably guess what I am talking about.
Anyway, after class I went on the bus and went to Deseret Book. I was thinking of buying a set of those mini pocket scriptures, but I'm going to do that next month instead. After this I headed to Dollar Tree to get some more deodorant because I have been out of my favorite deodorant for a few days. I ended up getting some combs, a new hairbrush, some hair clips, and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper. I usually never drink Diet soda, but I wanted to just do it today. After I was done at Dollar Tree I headed over to the new stoe that is right next to it, which isn't all that fantastic and looked at the rather random assortment of items. I don't even remember what it is called to be honest. Anyway, after that diversion, I looked at throw blankets at Joanne's craft store that was right next to that other store, but I didn't find one I wanted.
I headed to Barnes & Noble and thought about getting some hot chocolate or something, but decided not to do that today and headed off to the mall. I just walked around for a while like I usually do. I was going to leave around 5pm, but decided to call Laura for a ride because I knew she was out. I was about to get on the bus when I decided to do this, so I ended up just going back to the food court to wait for her. Time passed and I went and walked around Sports Authority, and then decided to go to Taco Bell and get a burrito supreme with a cherry starburst slushie. She still wasn't at the mall 15 minutes later so I just ate my food and then went outside. I sat on a rock and decided to read one of the talks from the women's conference from the weekend before last. I'm not going to talk about it right now though because I want to give it it's own post.
Forty minutes had passed and I still did not see any sign of Laura so I called again. Turned out she forgot when she was dropping Natalie and Kayla off at the house and so she told me she would come in another 15 minutes. I bought a little package of salted carmel from the Zapple's place and then looked around Sports Authority again for a little bit. She got to the mall around six and we went home. When I got home I charged my phone and then headed off to FHE with my ward. I actually nearly forgot, but luckily I checked my texts while I was in the car going home.
tonight 45 of us got together and headed off to Thanksgiving Point. They have this thing called Corn Bellies, I guess it's kind of like a fall fair kind of thing only with haunted houses on the weekends, mazes, food, and other stuff. I'm actually not quite sure what to call it, but it is fun and there aren't any big rides or anything. Anyway, we all met at the church and gave a spritual thought and then headed up. When we got there we got wristbands and then went inside. We took a group picture and then I saw this.
This wasn't even the half of it, there were Minions EVERYWHERE around the place. While I was there with my group I came up with we went to the dark corn maze and got lost in it for 45 minutes. I lost my group and then found some other people to follow, but then lost them. I eventually ended up finding some people that are in my ward that already had found the exit and decided to go backwards to the beginning again. I just followed them, and ended up finding the end after what seemed like an eternity. If you remember, I am also legally blind and it was dark, so I could hardly see anything, espcially while the lights in the distance were in my eyes.
After the maze I got a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with fries, then ended up wandering off from everyone when they went to go do something and I was still eating. I got a powerade and then walked around for a while looking for everyone. I found some of my group around a large campfire and just hung out around there for a while. Some of us got together and took a picture on a giant chair before we got back into our carpool groups and left. I do not have that picture yet sadly.
Anyway, we went back to the church and went our separate ways and I got a ride home. The rest of the night has been pretty normal, I've been mostly watching Power Rangers and I have Garfield playing in another tab while I am typing this. Anyway, I'm pretty worn out, so I'm going to go wind down.
This weekend was a lot of fun, I love it when General Conference comes around. I'd say the past two days turned out even better than I thought they would. First though a blog update. I have finished adding all the July entries I missed, and I'm going to do a couple of August entries tonight. I am so close to filling the gap I left.
Saturday was amazing, I got up close to 10am and found the mormon channel website. The Mormon Channel is usually where I either listen to or watch conference. I'm not going to talk about the actual sessions until the end of the post, but they were all awesome this weekend. I probably won't get into details until I can read them later this week when they are in text, but I will tell you my favorites! I fell asleep in the 2nd hour of the first session for only 15 minutes. I was pretty good at listening to all the talks this time around; though I did zone out quite a few times. I can't beat myself up too much though because I came back from space fairly quickly. I had some Apple Jacks and a cheese and chicken sandwich for breakfast during the first session and then went downstairs after that.
After the first session I got a reply from Sam about Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. I asked him how to start playing and he gave me a good amount of advice that I am thankful for. Pathfinder is like a spinoff of D&D, and most of his advice was about it. More of my friends have been playing tabletop RPGs so I think it's about time I learn as well. I've been interested in Dungeons & Dragons and stuff ever since I met Sam, but I've been putting it off. Anyway, I'm just happy I can get him to reply to me on facebook still. That tells me everything is clearing up and going back to normal. I sure and glad I took the initiative and decided to calm down and let go of all my regrets and torments.
For the first hour after the first session of conference I just mostly hung out in my room surfing facebook, watching Power Rangers on Netflix, and other random stuff. The hour before the 2nd session I decided out of nowhere that I was going to go get some chocolate from the store. I grabbed my phone, headphones and wallet and headed to the store where I looked around for a good 45 minutes at everything from shampoo, to soap, to crackers, to other stuff like cereal. I wanted to buy some other things, but I'm already low on money, so i decided against it and actually walked out of the store with nothing but two bars of the amazing Lindt Excellence dark chocolate. One was pomegranite and the other one was lemon, it was a new flavor.
I walked home at this point, it was cloudy, but the sunlight was still coming through in a good amount. The walk was nice, and I listened to Evanescence until just before I got home. I was walking onto my driveway and I had the Mormon Channel on and right when I got home conference turned on. I was paying attention to the time, so I knew when exactly tot turn my music off. The picture above is from right after I got home and was in my room again listening to conference.
I ate chocolate while listening to conference and following along with the tweets about it on Twitter. I try not to spend too much time following everyone's tweets on twitter, but when I do it is always interesting and fun. Part way through the second session I found out Laura made oatmeal raisin cookies! This just made the day even better and I felt so blessed.
The rest of the second session on Saturday was amazing, and I felt so lucky to have bee listening to it. After the conclusion of the second session though afer an hour of doing pretty much nothing interesting besides watching Garfield and Friends I decided to go outside and take a walk. The clouds up until this point had been pretty bright and the sun was still shining through them quite a lot, but in the half and hour I walked things took a drastic turn and the darker clouds came in. I listened to techno and the temperature was perfect.
Then there was this random rainbow... It was super weird because the sun wasn't even out from behind the clouds and the position was off. I have no clue what could have caused it.
Things were going well on my walk until the darker clouds came in. 33 or minutes in I heard thunder and felt a few drops but decided to go one more lap. I was so sure I would make it before it started pouring, but I was wrong. Half way through my last lap it started coming down, and I had to stick my headphones under my shirt and turn off my music so nothing would get damaged. I knew I was in a real pickle right then, but realized the rain was blowing west and so because my house was East I knew the best thing to do was to jog backwards with my back towards the rain. I'm sure I looked silly, but it was kind of fun. I had to jog kind of sideways for a little bit before I got to the part of the track that went East. Everything worked out and when I got to the end of the track and crossed the street the rain calmed down enough for me to go south to my house. I am grateful that the rain calmed down long enough for me to get home. I am also glad that the weather wasn't colder, because that would have been miserable. That moment was kind of intense, but it was really fun actually. After I got inside I grabbed my yoga towel and dried off quickly.
Nothing all that interesting happened until I decided to tune into the priesthood session of conference that is primarily for men out of curiosity. Brother Uchtdorf blasted cynisism almost right off the bat when I tuned in and I was caught off guard. I don't think it was a cooincidence that I chose that moment to listen out of curiosity because I have trouble with being a cynic sometimes. I'm an optimist most of the time, but sometimes I do fall into those shadows in a big way. The rest of the meeting was pretty interesting. NOthing much happened afterward, I just spent the rest of the night pretty much watching Garfield and Friends and filling in the gaping two month hole I left in my blog. As I said above though, I am on August now so I'm half way through!
Anyway, today there were two more sessions of conference. I am sad it is over and I did fall asleep again during part of the morning session again just like yesterday, but it wasn't that long. I made sure to take a nap inbetween the sessions this time so I wasn't tired for the last session. Everything has gone great today and I pretty much have been just relaxing all day. I went on another walk today after conference, but this time it was mostly sunny. There were a lot of clouds, but the sun didn't go behind them often. I've just been watching stuff on Netflix and other random boring stuff ever since.
I am not going to talk much about the talks now, because I want to wait until they are in text format. I can gain more and talk about them more than, but for now I should tell you that some of my favorite talks over the past two days were the last one on the church leaders, the one about the importance of women, the one about the importance of mothers, the one about the holy spirit, and the one at the beginning of today's morning session that President Monson gave. I loved all the talks, but those were the ones that stuck out the most to me. When I get to read them later in the week I might have some ne favorites, or more favorites at least, but I don't know yet.
Anyway, I'm just going to end here. I'm pretty tired and just need to relax and let my mind wind down. I think eating all that chocolate yesterday zapped a lot of my energy. I'm glad I decided to do this post early because I probably would have been too lazy later haha.
Last night it thundered, and I woke up enough to notice it though I was still mostly asleep. I love sleeping and taking naps listening to the rain and thunder. Weather can be scary, but a lot of the time it can also be beautiful. I went to school early today and on my way to the bus it was sprinkling a little bit. I am glad I went early today because I feel like it is easier to study my music textbook at school. We have a test next week and I am very nervous. Before I did some studying right outside of the classroom before class I went to Jamba Juice for lunch though. I had an Oarnge Carrot Karma with a whey protein boost and an apple cinnamon oatmeal. The oatmeal was amazing since they out of the kindness of their hearts gave me extra apple.
In music today we continued talking about music around the time of Mozart and Haydn. We mostly talked about the music of those two composers and listened to their music. Dr. Smith went over some of the main types of music like string quartet, symphony, sonata, and so on as well. Apparently while I was in class another big storem happened, of course inside my big theater classroom no one could hear anything even though apparently it had been raining pretty hard. After class I was going to get a ride from mom after walking around the school for a bit, but decided to get on the bus and head to the mall.
Laura called me on the bus and said she would pick me up at the mall after she got done with her buisness at the bank. I headed to the mall food court after I got off the bus and waited for Laura. It didn't take too long for her to show up. Oh yeah, and I decided to take a random selfie of me with one of my new headbands on right after i got off the bus.
We went to pay off some of Natalie's violin and then went to Subway for lunch. It took us a while to decide where we wanted to go. I got a turkey and black forest ham sandwich with cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, ranch, mustard and mayonnaise. I think the person that did my sandwich put way too much mayo on it. That was really the only thing that was kind of gross about it. I also had 2 white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.
We went home and I took another one of my long after schoool naps. I fell asleep watching Garfield & Friends again, I've been doing that a lot lately. Later on I went on a walk and tried out my new jacket, it is warm and awesome. The rest of the night has been pretty boring as my evenings always are usually. I've been working on watching all the seasons of Power Rangers. Funny enough mom wouldn't let us watch it when we were younger. I am kind of happy that I've been seeing power rangers themed stuff around lately, it's kind of cool! Oh, and we had spaghetti tonight, though I wasn't super hungry. My cousin and her kids also are staying with us for a couple of days while General Conference goes on. It's going to be an awesome weekend, I just know it.
Today was pretty fun. I got my government money today and so as usual I went on a mini shopping spree. My day started off kind of rocky though. I fell asleep after my alarm went off a few times and woke up at 10:50am. My class was going to start at 11:30am, but my hair was a mess and I had a hair appointment today, so I decided to clean up and let myself be late today. I got a ride from Laura and by the time I got there it was 12:20pm. I think the subject today in Family Studies was financial issues of married couples, but I don't remember for sure.
After class I went to Jamba Juice and got a sourdough parmesan pretzel, and an apple n greens smoothie with a whey protein boost. I brought it to Philosophy and ate it there. We finished talking about Descartes Meditations of First Philosophy. His thoughts on God are truly interesting. I don't understand anything, but it was interesting none the less.
After class I took a small trip to walmart, but ended up not buying anything. I decided to go to the mall and get my ears pierced. I picked the star studs with the jewels in them. Getting pierced was only $25 and it only hurt a little bit this time. This was my 3rd time getting pierced. I didn't leave the studs in long enough last time. I'm not going to make that mistake again.
After this I went to hot topic and looked at some shirts. I went to some other stores as well, but I don't remember what they were. I didn't buy anything though, just looked. at around 3:50 I headed to Regis and Brenna cut my hair again. It is looking better and better every time I get it done!
I also bought some shampoo and conditioner on my way out of the salon. I've missed the orange citrus scented Regis Designline products. (picture is below). I went to Claire's and got some headbands, a bracelet, and rings. I wanted to get this rainbow infinity scarf I saw, but decided to wait. I'll have to get a picture of it soon for this blog. After this I went to H&M and got my new jacket. I haven't gotten a good jacket for a while.
I headed home after this and just took a nap and just did random stuff. I'm on Garfield & Friends season 4 now and Supernatural season 4 as well. Anyway, the rest of the day was pretty boring. we did have potatoes, BBQ chicken and broccoli though!
