Confessions

I must confess. For as long as I can remember, I have said that I like all music except country. Today, I was watching a rerun of Ellen and Carrie Underwood was on. She was singing (I'm guessing) her new single, "Cowboy Casanova". I recognized the song once she started singing, but I had never realized it was her when I heard pieces of the song before. So, after Ellen, I checked out some snippets of songs from her new album, Play On. And...I liked most of what I heard. I realize that I am probably a bit late jumping on this train, but country isn't something I dive into often. I have to give her credit-this girl can sing. Don't worry, I haven't completely crossed over the fence. I still love me some Bon Jovi, Thriving Ivory, State of Shock, Rob Thomas, etc etc. I'm very picky with the country that I do like. It can't be too twangy. Maybe that's why I like her-it's not complete twang. That and her angry/vindictive songs are great. I'm currently addicted to "Undo It". So, here it is: I am not completely opposed to country. But I am still very picky with which songs I like.

P.S. DO NOT try to get me to listen to Taylor Swift, it will not happen. And I think I finally figured out why. She's just not edgy enough for me. Her songs aren't necessarily bad and she isn't talentless, but they just don't have that extra punch that I want. That and for some reason, the fact that she has a pink jeweled guitar totally grosses me out. I like my songs to be full of emotion and hers just don't seem to hit the mark for me. So sorry, Taylor. I may be a little converted to country, but you won't be a part of it.

I'm done!

Well, that's it. I'm done at SLCC. I took my last finals yesterday. Besides the wondering how I did on my comm final, (that thing was intense) I'm pretty happy! So will I miss SLCC? Mostly no. I've been ready for a change of scenery for a while now. I'm pretty excited to get on with my schooling and move more into psychology. But of course, there's also the jitters that come along with something new. Weber does get points for starting a week earlier than SLCC though, because that means I'll be done a week earlier!! Haha.

I will miss my friends that I've made out at SLCC though. Life is always better with friends. I've had many good times with them. They've taught me a lot. There's a part of me that wants to pack them all up and take them to Weber with me, but I know that I need to continue on into this next chapter in my life. I didn't want to come to SLCC, but I'm glad I did. And as some of us were sitting and talking yesterday, one guy said "There's never a waste in a journey". I agree with him and I can see that now. So, farewell SLCC, I will not miss thee. But the friends I have made will not be forgotten easily.

Hey I rhymed!!

Not my gumdrop buttons!

There's a winter storm advisory for Bountiful in effect until tonight. And some form of advisory or warning for the rest of the state as well. Guess I'm not going anywhere today...

Friday night, I made gingerbread houses with Stewart and Kimie and Mike. *since they're engaged now, I think I should try to combine their names like Brangelina. Kimike?* Well, graham cracker houses. Real gingerbread is too much work.

Kimie was in charge of buying all the candy for us to decorate with.

I don't know how well you can see it, but we had Nerds, Skittles, coconut, sprinkles, mini candy canes, Dots, Mini Charleston Chews, Twizzlers, AirHeads, those little sugar gingerbread men that aren't very tasty, peppermints....yeah. I've probably forgotten to mention a few things.

This is mine and Stewart's house. We decided it was the Griswold house so Clark is on the roof and Rusty is by the ladder with the "little knot" of lights.

While making the roof, Stewart realized it made a star.

This is Kimie and Mike's house. They modeled it after the house they're in the process of buying. They even put themselves out in front of it.

I'm doing the "Stephen and Melinda Gates Foundation" pose here. I was pointing at Clark on the roof. Stewart is showing our pathetic attempt at making a mailbox with the lone Jolly Rancher we found on top.

I love my friends.

In the mood

I love this man. My mom and I went to see Jon Schmidt last night in Ogden. He was performing in the Egyptian Theater, which of course, I loved. It's really cool in there. And of course, Jon was awesome. The roads really weren't bad by the time we left. People were still driving slow and so it took us a while to get there and find a parking space, but it was so worth it. I wish I could compose stuff like he does. He is a musical genius. And I love the fact that it's easy to tell that he's just having fun up there and absolutely loves what he does. It helped to get me in the swing of Christmastime since most of my time recently has been focused on school. I have two finals on monday and then I'm done! I took my last sociology test today and aced it, so I don't need to take the final!! Woot! So now my main concern is my communication final...yuck.

Kitchen adventures

I love to bake. And I love trying new recipes and experimenting with old ones. Well, since we had some pumpkin left over from making Amy's pumpkin pie, I found this recipe I had remembered for chocolate pumpkin cheesecake bars. Sounds delicious, right? The recipe is from Everyday Baking, which is supposed to be simple enough for anybody to do. Keep that in mind, "or nothing that follows will seem wondrous" (Muppet Christmas Carol).

I started by crushing Oreos in the food processor. But before I could do that, my mom and I had to find the other blades for the food processor since the one in there is used for slicing zucchinis for zucchini bread, so that wouldn't work. It didn't take us long to find them, though. Crushing the Oreos went just fine. But then I had to add in melted butter so the crust would stick together and our food processor doesn't have a bottom blade. So I transferred the crumbs to the blender. The blade was stuck. So my mom dumped the crumbs onto a plate and then soaked the blade in hot water to get it un-stuck since it's just stupid and does this sometimes. After fixing the blade, we got the crumbs back in the blender and my mom pulsed them a few times to figure out which button to use. I took the lid off to go get the butter and asked which button she used. She came over to show me and pushed said button...while the lid was still off. So of course, we had crumbs go flying. Not too many, but enough to make a mess and be annoying. I went along and poured the butter into the blender and tried to pulse the crumbs. I ended up with a wet lump in the bottom. So I gave up and poured them into the pan. I spread them out the best I could since the parchment paper in the pan was not laying smooth. Let's hope these things taste good because they will not be pretty.

After baking the crust, I made the filling. That went much smoother. The recipe says to mix everything in the food processor, but I just used a hand mixer and it worked fine. I was supposed to dollop the chocolate on top of the pumpkin mixture and then swirl it. Well, the chocolate just kind of sunk. I don't know why, maybe because it was thicker. I did the best I could, even though right now you can only see a few stripes of chocolate on top. I hope there isn't a layer that sunk to the bottom.

They're in the oven right now and smell fantastic. Again, I hope they taste good because they are not pretty.

Useless

I've been pretty useless today. Yesterday I told myself I was going to spend today working on my final paper for communication---yeah, I haven't even touched it. But you know, I think we all need days that are completely lazy and you only do what you feel like doing. There's an odd pleasure in ignoring the things you know you should do for the things you want to do.

Last night, my singles ward decided to have a dance for FHE. Apparently, people have been wanting another one since the last one we had in July. Last wednesday night, I think, one of the FHE co-chairs asked me if I would teach the cha cha. Sure, I figured I could do that. They gave me another guy in the ward who knows how to dance too for my partner so that was nice. I didn't have try to convince Ryan to come help since he's really the only one of my guy friends who knows how to dance. Sunday after church, those of us who were teaching, minus my partner, had a little meeting to figure out what we were doing and give the DJ some good cha cha, waltz, and swing songs to play. I would have much rather taught swing since it's my strong point, but oh well. They decided that each couple should do a demo and then go about teaching, to kind of show everybody what the dances are about. Ack!!! That night at ward prayer, I had to fill in David, my partner, on what we were planning. He wanted to do some complicated stuff for the demo. Awesome. So yesterday at school, I enlisted the help of my guys so I could brush up on my cha cha steps. Ryan had to work, so the other guys only knew the basic step. Not terribly helpful. So I went to the dance early to have some time to practice with David and figure out what exactly we wanted to do. He's a pretty good leader, so it wasn't too bad and I felt confident. They started with the waltz, so I was just kind of floating around if anyone was confused. Then we did the cha cha.

*Now, I have to sound like an absolute nerd for a minute here. Most people think the cha cha is danced on 1, but it's actually on 2. 2, 3, cha cha cha. Not 1, 2, cha cha cha. But usually you just start people off on the first beat so it's less confusing.*

David decided to teach them on 2 right off the bat. Oy...Because of this, we ended up spending A LOT of time on the basic step and really only got time to add in the cross body lead. And that felt wrong to me the way we were doing it, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it. I just followed. It was irritating. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's a pivot on your forward step. Not forward, forward, toss the girl around to your side. One little rant I have to have about leading: find the fine line between throwing the girl where you want her and just hoping she catches what you want her to do by staring at her. We so should have taught the guys how to lead. Anyway!! The dance itself afterwards was alright, really there weren't a lot of people there. Interesting, since apparently lots of people had been requesting to have another dance. Okay I'm done now.

Crazy week

I am so happy it's saturday. This week has been crazy! I had tests in both my online classes due this week, a test in my psychology class, and a rough draft of my final paper in communication due. Whew! And on monday, I have a group presentation to do in that same communication class. But really, I'm happy it's finally here so we can just get it done. It's been hanging over our heads pretty much all semester.

The final paper has been such a pain though! We had to pick a theory that we found interesting and write about it-but it can't be the same one we're doing our presentations on. It's supposed to be 6-8 pages (not too bad) and we need at least 4-5 sources, (again, not too bad) but the sources can only be from communication articles/journals and stuff like that. It is impossible to find that stuff without having to subscribe to the websites!! So finally I bit the bullet and went to the SLCC library to use a search engine SLCC subscribes to called Communication Mass Media Complete and was able to find stuff. However, when we brought in our papers yesterday, the teacher just had us get in groups of people who wrote about the same or similar theories and critique each other's papers. So, his opinion, the only one I was really interested in, I didn't get because by the time my group got done with my paper, there was only about 10 minutes left in class and he already had a line of papers next to him. *eye roll* I knew that would happen. Oh well. Writing usually isn't that difficult for me so I should be okay.

On tuesday, I went and got Bon Jovi's new CD as a present to myself for studying for my psychology test. I'm in love. I know, I know, no surprise there. Absolutely go check out the song "When We Were Beautiful"-it's AMAZING!!! I also went to a new dentist to see if there is anything that can be done about the gap in my teeth. Most of you are probably wondering, what gap? Well, it's not really noticeable but I am missing a tooth on the right side of my mouth and it bugs me. He said that I could get braces again (heck no!!) or just build up the teeth in the surrounding area since the space isn't big enough to put in an implant. He decided to play around a little with building them up so I could get an idea of what it would look like and "it's fun". This guy is crazy! But I liked him. I'm still not sure whether or not I'll decide to get it done permanently or not.

Today, mom and I went shopping out to Layton because I needed moisturizer and I also needed new jeans. Maurice's is seriously my new favorite place. Either their jeans run big, or I've lost weight!! I'm thinking probably a little of both. I've been trying to be good and work out and everything since I bought some kick boxing DVDs from Amazon.com a few months ago. But either way, I was able to fit into a size I never have before and so I'm super happy right now!! So seriously-Maurice's=cute pants that make you feel good.