books.

I like to read.

If I like a book, I have a hard time doing things that need to be done (including sleeping) until I am done. This week has reminded me of that.

I feel like I have spent a lot of time reading. However, today I looked at some lists of the "100 greatest books of all time." On a couple of the lists, I had only heard of 15%-20% of the books. On other lists, I had heard of more than half of the books. And, obviously, I haven't read all of the ones that I've heard of. All of the sudden, I feel very uneducated. One of the lists only had English-language novels written since 1923 so it doesn't include a lot of the actual "great" books of all time but does include some random books. Who has heard of the book Ubik? Honestly, props to you if you have.

And, why is Animal Farm on every list? Maybe as a 7th grader I didn't quite understand its deep meaning or moral lessons or whatever is so great about it but I don't remember it being overly impressive...just my opinion. Maybe I should read it again.

The lists I looked at gave me a few ideas of books to check out from the library but more ideas are always welcome. What are some of your favorites?

gorgeous

Tonight we had a YSA fireside and a few of the YSA bore their testimonies in different languages. We heard Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. Someone from Belarus joined the church a few months ago and it was fun to hear "real Russian" again. It was gorgeous. It makes me want to start practicing Russian again.


I came out of the temple on Friday and it had just finished raining. The clouds were starting to dissipate and the sunset was gorgeous. As was the sunset tonight. Sometimes I wish I had a camera in my head so I could capture the beautiful things I see and share them with others. Like the ice-covered field shimmering in the sun on the way home from Winter Quarters in December. That was gorgeous, too. You'll just have to take my word for it.



Fresh vegetables from the garden are gorgeous and taste good, too (okay, so this zucchini is from the store).




We had some gorgeous gladiolas growing outside of our apartment last month. I don't know if I had ever seen (or noticed gladiolas) before. They were even orange :)



This zucchini is gorgeous:

The weather this weekend has been gorgeous. It has been cool at night and I want to stay it's only been about 80 during the day. I haven't checked, but it definitely hasn't been very hot. the mornings feel like a summer mornings in Utah. I hope it lasts a few more days.

I helped in the library at church today and noticed that they have a DVD from my stake's Christmas Festival last year. It's a slideshow with music from the choir in the background. Gorgeous. Honestly, they are like a mini Tabernacle Choir. Everyone I talked to loved their concert at the festival last year. I'm looking foward to this year's.

We are gorgeous, too:

chocolate raspberry truffle

This was a good weekend. I got a lot done on Saturday and then went to a BBQ at a friend's house. A lot of people came and it was fun to get to know new people. After the BBQ, some people went to Bridge Street but a few of us went and did our own fireworks. I hadn't set off fireworks for years. Turns out, I'm a lot more cautious than I used to be. There was one kind that I would always light in my hand and throw it at the right time so it would explode in the air. This time, the thought of lighting them in my hand scared me. It was kind of strange.


Me being awesome?:
The parachutes that didn't get away:

Our grand finale:

Church was really good, too. Nothing that stands out but I remember getting home and just thinking "Wow. I love my ward." There are a lot of good people here who are trying to do what is right. The rest of Sunday was awesome, also.

FHE was good. I was able to talk to a good friend for awhile. So, here's a question: what are good ways to continue your education without going back to school? I just don't know if I really want to do grad school but, I do like learning. I know that in Kansas, the community had classes that people could take. I don't know if they do anything like that here, though.

Tuesday was just nice and relaxing.

Today I was able to spend time with an amazing friend and her family. Dinner, ice cream and good conversation. There are some people who make me want to be better and whenever I'm with this family, I definitely want to be better. My sisters are all far away (although, I think they all want to come and visit, right? *cough cough*) so it's nice to have someone who reminds me of them and who I can be myself around.

And finally, a lot of people post about how they got the title to their blog. Pretty much, I'm just not creative and use it for my title to a lot of things (like mine and Jessica's fake ward newsletter that we would distribute at 3am). But, I randomly looked at my Xanga page today (my blog from my college years) and found this from 4 July 04:

"Sometimes, I'm thinking about something or talking to someone and the phrase 'And thus we see...' keeps popping into my mind. But, the rest of the sentence remains as mystery. If I could only figure out what it is that "we see," then maybe um...I actually don't know what would happen then. Something grand, I'm sure."

When I think about it now, the end of the sentence isn't always a mystery but the ending is always changing depending on the circumstances. Hopefully I'm learning from my "And thus we see..." experiences and not repeating my mistakes.

Happy 4th of July!

The video on http://www.youtube.com/mormonmessages is really good this week. And, one of the people in it is also in one of my favorite movies...which doesn't have anything to do with the 4th of July. This video is also good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxEUATS8bx8

Garden update: I've picked a few tomatoes - small ones but, they work. There are about 4 more small ones that need to turn red. I was about to give up on my zuchinni until I saw this when I was headed out today:

So, maybe I'll get one.

A tiny watermelon:

And, my 1 (and possibly only) squash:

Wednesday night, my car hit 100,000 miles. And, it's definitely in need of a tune-up.

I went to a regional YSA campout (for the Nashville region) a couple of weekends ago. It was fun. Really hot but, fun. I even got to play basketball :) On they way back my friend and I stopped at Famous Dave's (a BBQ place that I love) and as we were headed back to the interstate, we saw this:

We both took a double take and I commented on how it's too bad I forgot my camera. Luckily, he had his. I definitely don't take all of Dave Ramsey's advice but, I have been listening to some of his cd's at work and my friend had just finished reading Dave Ramsey's book so, it was fun to see his "headquarters."

Work is going well - I finally am feeling the pressure of a deadline for a map I've been working on since January so it makes the days go by more quickly. It'll be nice to be done with this one. Really nice.

Other than that, I've just been hanging out...trying to avoid cleaning. My piles of paper and junk just keep getting bigger and bigger and they probably won't get any smaller today. Okay, maybe a little. But, I do think I'm going to buy fireworks (I haven't set off fireworks for years) and there's a YSA BBQ tonight that I have to get some stuff ready for so, I probably won't be doing tons of cleaning today like I should.

I feel like I had a lot more to say a couple of days ago when I was thinking about posting. I guess since I have forgotten, this would be a good time to go put my laundry away...

жизнь

My garden is growing but, not as well as I had hoped. I'll get a few small tomatoes and It looks like the squash is doing okay. The watermelon is growing slowly but, it's growing :)

Here's where I assume my brother has called all of our siblings and told them that...he's engaged! If not, sorry for spilling the beans. His wedding will actually be the first temple sealing I'll get to go to so I'm pretty excited for that. His fiance sure is lucky - not only does she get a great guy (I tell people that my parents kept having kids until they finally got a perfect one - is that right, Mom? Haha) but, she also gets 40 adorable and amazingly talented nieces and nephews who already think she's great (at least the ones who have met her).

Matthew (right after his mission):



He's my favorite younger brother because he gave me a car for Christmas last year (he even put a nice bow on it):

And, a nice shot from the last November's Conference issue of the Ensign:

Congratulations, Matthew and Stephanie! Or, should I say "best wishes"?

I was talking to my 5 year old nephew last night and I think that he somehow got the idea that I'm going to buy him a green Ferrari and tow it to Kansas for him (yes, I would be the one driving the tow truck). I don't know how he got this idea but, this morning he called and didn't really say anything so I tried to make conversation and then he just says, "Um...could you make it a yellow Ferrari instead?" and then said "bye". I guess I had better start saving my money.

Denmark:

Denmark was great. I loved it! Thanks to my brother and sister for taking me sight seeing and for letting me go to Sweden. If anyone ever feels like they need someone to go to Scandinavia with them, let me know...I'll be there. Here's a slide show but, I'm headed out soon so I haven't written any captions. A lot of the pictures are just random buildings that I liked, a lot are blurry, and the awesome Carl Bloch paintings were hard to get pictures of because it was cloudy outside and you can't use a flash in the museum. So, everyone will just have to go see them in real life.

I was just reading some posts from my Xanga days - wow, I kept busy. I feel like when people ask me "What have you been up to?", the only answer I have is "work....sleep...work." I need a hobby. Any suggestions?

I still need to upload pictures from Denmark. I will....someday. But not tonight.

And...I'm out.

hot dogs

I asked my roommate for an idea for a post and she said "hot dogs." If you would like to learn more about hot dogs, please visit Wikipedia.

There is a chain of gas stations in Europe (I'm not sure which countries have them) called Statoil. In my mission, many trainers take their compnaion to Statoil to get a statdog (I made up the spelling). From what I've been able to find, they are a French-style hot dog and they are delicious. I'm sure that somewhere I have a picture of me eating a statdog but I can't find it. However, I did find a picture of a billboard:

Tiff - do they have Statoil in Denmark? If so, let's make a stop there. I'll buy...

While looking for a picture of a statdog (which ended up being from Vilnius, I found a few other random pictures. So, here is a tribute to Vilnius.:




Click on the slideshow to go to the original source and to see larger pictures.

My wrist is healing pretty well. I can't bend it very well so I'm doing physical therapy. My garden is growing. Does anyone know if I need more than one zucchini plant in order for it to actually produce any fruit? I don't think I'll have room for more than one. What about squash? Watermelon?

did you know...

...that worcestershire sauce has anchovies in it? I didn't.

I was trying to make an angry face in the second picture. Didn't work . I had a cyst removed yesterday and it was pretty non-invasive so, the only annoyance is not being able to use my right hand as much. Here's a video I found on YouTube...I wonder how they got this. I guess that's what they did yesterday. There really isn't any pain so that's nice. Typing is tricky, though.

Today I slept in..until 6:55. But, I talked to my sister, ate breakfast, went to 2 stores, came home and did nothing, got a haircut, went to Wal-mart again, and was home by 11:05. Now I need to decide what to do with the rest of my Saturday.

round two

It's time for round two of trying to grow vegetables in a container. I've seen posts online about people who have great results. This year I'm trying to grow zucchini (which was hard to find seeds for), yellow squash, tomatoes, watermelon, and chives.

Last year, I had really small tomatoes and peppers and a couple of cucumbers. Didn't work very well. I bought a couple of "patio" tomato plants - the stems (do tomato plants have stems or stalks?) look a lot stronger than the plants I used last year. I'm going to buy some wire to build some makeshift cages for the tomatoes (I haven't seen tomato cages at the store the last couple of years). I tried building (okay, I did build) a fan trellis but then realized that it probably won't do mem much good. I also read online about people building "vine teepees" and it looked easy enough. I just wanted to do it on a smaller scale. Ha. You can see from the pictures, mine did not turn out as beautifully (maybe because I didn't harvest my own bamboo?). I'll probably have to use some wire on those, too in order to give the plants more stability. I bought "sugar baby" watermelon seeds and those are supposed to be pretty small so hopefully they'll work okay. They just look so...unstable. Maybe next year...

I still have a small pot with just dirt if anyone needs to plant anything...and then come here to get it.

Even if I don't use my fan trellis, it was still fun to hammer something. Makes me feel...productive. And yet, the day is more than half over today and I feel like I have done nothing. I really have been working...the garden just took longer than I thought.

The video is of some rain from a couple of weeks ago. It's been raining a lot lately and this batch came and went really quickly.

I think my roommate and I are going to try and make 72 hour kits this weekend - any ideas of good lists of what to include. This has been an expensive weekend already...at least the garden and the 72 hour kit are for good causes.

When I was a kid, I had the impression that our hackberry tree was 150 years old so I wonder how old it is now...It used to seem like the tallest tree in the world and I could see it from a distance on the way home from places. Now the other trees in the neighborhood have caught up but, I still like our tree the most.