wikipedia

I didn't know about Wikipedia until after my mission. Was it around before? Probably...just not as well known. Kind of like facebook and youtube. I know they were around but, I had never really used them. I like Wikipedia. I don't know if I use it every day but I use it frequently. I usually don't remember half of the things I read but. I usually just skim the article until I find what I need.

For years, I have been curious about the "YKK" that is on almost every zipper. Yesterday, I looked it up. There are cartels and price fixing involved with zippers. Who knew?

Some other things I've looked up:

Dallas - also known as the "Big D"
Geocaching - "those not familiar with geocaching are called 'geo-muggles' or just muggles." Also, has anyone gone geocaching? It sounds fun.
Intestate - hey, I want my money to go to someone I like (because I have oh so much of it) .
Timpanogas - don't remember why I looked this up. I think I wanted to know the translation.
Whirley popper - they didn't have anything
Rice paddies - i don't remember much about this but, the 3rd picture down on the right side is gorgeous. Does anyone know where our rice comes from? I looked on my bag of rice tonight and couldn't find it.

These are just things I've looked up since I was stuck in the Dallas airport. I know I've looked up zucchini, I often look up different cities to look up population data, haha...I think I looked up Brandon Heath the other day (my new celebrity crush. sorry zac efron). You should look him up, too.

There is also this: http://www.mormonwiki.com/Main_Page but I haven't really ever used it. Maybe I should.

sunday night

This has been a nice, relaxing Sunday. We've had gorgeous weather today so it's been nice to be able to open the window and have a nice cool breeze come in.

Got to hang out with some awesome people this weekend...made pizza, took ridiculous pictures, ate really good chocolate cake (Wal*mart is good for something). I also got some organizing/packing done for our move in a couple of weeks - hurray for a two bedroom apartment!

In an attempt to be profound, here is a paraphrased quote of something our Institute teacher has been saying lately: "Disconnect your expectations from your love. That way your love won't vary." Definitely something I need to work on. Plus, now that you've read this, you have to continue loving me when I fail your expectations :)



This bag came all of the way from Sweden.

back to real life

It took me 24 hours longer to get home than planned but after spending the night in Dallas and then having my flight canceled the next morning and spending the day in the airport, I made it. I wouldn't have minded as much if it had been a Saturday but, I'm kind of stingy with vacation time and there goes another 8 hours of it...oh well. Now back to work, bills, organizing (ha, yeah right!), and everything else that normal life includes.

I'm wondering if my car suddenly started making more noise than it did before I went to Utah or if I just got too accustomed to driving this:



Not necessarily a car I would buy but, I do love driving "new" cars.

Dinner tonight made me excited for Thanksgiving. I was cooking up some zucchini and squash (which has a really thick peel) from my garden and included onions, some dried cranberries, rosemary and cinnamon (yes, cinnamon) and it reminded me of the smell of sausage stuffing (the kind Heather made a couple of years back). Plus, I'm excited for some cooler weather! And football. Here's hoping I'll get to see a BYU game this year!

road trip

I woke up bright and early (actually, it may have still been dark) this morning and drove up to Bowling Green, KY to pick up Matthew from his last week as an EFY counselor and take him to the Nashville airport.



I wish I that I had spent more time to explore Bowling Green. In some ways, it reminded me of Lawrence. The houses downtown right by campus were a lot like the ones in downtown Lawrence. Their business section of downtown was definitely different, though. Their campus was really pretty. Everything looks so...new.



One interesting thing, though....I saw a sign that said "School starts August 4th." Okay, that's not interesting. But, then it had it written in Spanish and then it said "Skola pocinje 4 avgusta." I knew it was a Slavic language and I knew which languages it wasn't. So, I used Google Translate and I guess it's Serbian. I haven't been able to find any reasoning behind this but, there were 260 Vietnamese people in Bowling Green in 2000. I'm really curious as to why they chose to write it in Serbian.



Then we headed down to Nashville - stopped by Andrew Jackson's house but didn't want to pay $17 to actually see it but, we did see some hay bales. Ate lunch and headed over to the Grand Ole Opry House. I saw a mall cop when we were at the mall there. I had never seen one. He had a scooter and a helmet and it was awesome. We walked through the museum really quickly, took some pictures, and then headed to the Wax Museum of the Stars. Once again, we didn't want to pay. They need more free museums :)




It was a lot of fun to see Matthew and to spend some time with him before he grows up and gets married. He used to be 5. Well worth waking up early on Saturday morning.

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.