A Marvelous Revelation and Day in General

Today in my History 4990, I learned a marvelous thing...

effect is a noun

affect is a verb

All my problems in life have now been solved.

And it was a marvelous day in general. I woke up early and did yoga and I was so happy and awake all day! I should do that more often. I am all stretched out and was upside down for a bit so that pumped blood into my brain. While walking to school, Andrew did not look thrilled about my new-found gusto.

As my sister, Leslie, said two days ago when we called her to sing Happy Birthday to her, as it was Leslie's birthday, "I could hear Sarah great, but Andrew sounded like he was moaning." He isn't much of a morning person.

Today, a snowflake landed on my NOSE! Do you know what that means?

Pretty soon, there were raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles, and warm woolen mittens like the ones my mother-in-law knitted for me, brown paper packages tied up with strings; cream colored ponies, crisp apple streudels which sounds so delicious right now, doorbells, sleigh bells, and schnitzel with noodels (you know, my Oma-in-law probably knows how to make schnitzel, I should learn how), and wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, a truly beautiful sight; girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into spring (come on, Mother Nature, it's freezing here in Logan...)

Not all of those things are my favorite things.

Then, History 4990 got out and I walked home. I entered the cemetery. There was no one anywhere. Well, no one living. So, I couldn't help but singing and dancing to that song. I hope the dead people enjoyed it.

It was so marvelous! It made me happy.

I came home and turned on Sound of Music on my iTunes. I wish I had the movie. I also wish I had some German chocolate. That stuff is so amazing. I want it. I need it. Maybe I'll go buy some dark chocolate Toblerone. Or ask Oma for some suggestions.

WHQ

Hooray! Today, I was offered a position as an editorial fellow with the Western Historical Quarterly here at Utah State. It is through the History Master's Program. I am very excited! This is the editorial fellowship (and fellowship in general) that I wanted the most. I'm still waiting to hear if I have been accepted to the History Department as well as the American Studies Program and the journal there. Decisions, decisions! I just wanted to let you know! I am excited!

Mary Poppins?

I Have An Amazing Husband

I am so proud of Andrew. I made soup to sit in the crock pot all day while we were at school. Then, I thought we needed some biscuits, but I wouldn't have time to make them when I got home until I had to leave again, so I asked Andrew to make them.

He was nervous, as he had never made biscuits before, and claims that he is only good at making rice and other types of Chinese food. I reassured him that he could do it. He read the recipe all by himself, and only asked me what it meant to "cut flour into shortening". He is so awesome. And look how they turned out!

Good job Andrew!

And he ate them (so did I). And they were delicious.

Hawaii - Day Twelve

This was our last day in Hawaii. We went to church with Kirsten and Dave and then we went to the 'dry' side of the island and hiked around for a bit.

The coast here was very very rocky and I loved it. The black rock was so beautiful! I also could not believe how blue the water was against the old lava rock!

Andrew is a very handsome fellow. He looked good against the lovely scenery. Well, he always looks good.

Me in my so so cute dress that I bought at the swap meet.

The area was really rocky and the waves broke and splashed in such cool ways. It was really loud, and I loved to hear the sizzle of the the foam when the waves receded.


These two guys asked Andrew and I if we had ever been to the area before, and we said no. Then they told us to follow them and they took us along the cliffs and through two caves. It was so cool! The caves are old lava tubes. After they showed us, we took Kirsten and Dave through. In this picture, I think we look kind of mystic with the bright light glowing around our heads.
Andrew climbing on a cliff.
Andrew scrambling across the rock while the waves crash and splash. I'm in a cave.


Me coming out of the cave.

AND I SAW ONE OF THESE COOL SPINEY SEA URCHINS!! I always wanted to play in the tide pools, but this was the first place with a lot of tide pools.

We came out of the caves on the other side of the highway. I liked this picture of the flowers with the graffiti.
Andrew by a snazzy car.

Then we went on a hike to a lighthouse. The area made me think about parts of Utah, where there is just grass and it is hot.

Except in Oahu, there is an ocean nearby. Andrew on the edge of a hundred + foot cliff.

The sea turtle! It was really cool to be hiking on this cliff because we could see the humpback whales splashing and blowing water out of their spouts.

The moon. Just look at the color of the water! And the color of the sky! I have never seen water that color. Just fantastic.

Andrew and I on the edge of the cliff. I tried to get some smiley pictures, but I had to give up. This was our third one so I made a funny face, too!

People waaaayyy below us swimming in the tide pools. It looked like so much fun!

Weird plants that looked like starfish.

And the weirdest thing about this part of the island was the cacti! Right next to the ocean. So weird...


Islands that we could see from the lookout.

Cool scenery...

The cute little lighthouse.

Andrew and I in a tree cave. :)

Our trip was so much fun! We went back to Kirsten and Dave's and had gluten-free chicken cordon bleu. Then we went to the airport. I took some Tylenol PM and I slept soundly through the whole red-eye flight back to frozen Utah. We will have to go back to Hawaii another time. I wonder where our next adventure will be to?

Hawaii - Day Eleven

We didn't do too much on this day, but we did a very very fun hike to Keolia peak (or something like that). It was by Dillingham Airbase, and the beach where they filmed Lost.

That's a picture of the airbase and the ocean from the mountain.

Alura, Andrew, and Dave hiking in the grass.

A very cool picture of Alura.

More of the mountain...


Me.

Alura and I at the top of the mountain. There were pine trees and the ground was covered with pine needles. That was the weirdest thing. They are introduced species, but it they still grow very well there. Hawaii has so many climates! You couldn't see much from the top, but we made it and that was cool.

The view from the top.

Andrew's pregnant belly. ;)

BBC Book List

The BBC says most people won't read 6 of these books in their lifetime. Ha ha...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible -
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurie
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaet Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens:
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables — Victor Hugo

I count 35! Eat that BBC! (and I own about 15 of the ones I haven't read yet.)