Yay for Spring

Oh Spring...

Thou art beginning to appear...

The sun is shining but those days are cold...

And the warm days are the cloudy ones....

And I determine that I will import all my slippers (flip-flops) from Hawaii from now on...
I LOVE LOCALS! They are wonderful. Locals are wonderful.

And I begin to long for a tan...

And I can't wait for the daffodils to appear...

I love daffodils about as much as I love Locals.In fact, last year I found a random field of daffodils in the middle of Salt Lake when I was getting my bridals.

Spring also means hiking...
And hopefully a backpacking trip. That is a picture of Andrew's trip to the Sawtooths in Idaho.

I am glad I could go hiking on Saturday with my boss, Carol, and her dog, Sienna, in Card Canyon (a side canyon of Logan Canyon). Yes, my boss. Andrew is too busy and she offered. I had a blast.

Oh Spring...

Hurry faster...

Today it rained mud on my car, just like it did last week.

But don't hurry too fast cuz then I'll miss it.

And have to stop procrastinating on my thesis.

Yay for Spring.

Museums

Today, I went on a field trip to the Utah Museum of Natural History. It was pretty fun. Except we rode all the way to Salt Lake and back to Logan on an Aggie Shuttle. So that means that I had to sit on uncomfortable seats (that are only meant to take one up or down the hill) for an hour and a half and had to sit sideways the whole trip. I planned to accomplish a lot of stuff on the bus. I got sick and ended up sleeping. When I woke up, I was sleeping on the girl-next-to-me's shoulder.

I hate buses. I truly do. Not that I'm against public transportation, cuz I really like riding trains and saving the environment and all. I just don't like buses.

Things I don't like about buses of any kind:

1) The smell.
2) The uncomfortable seats - like on school buses where your skin sticks to the pleather.
3) The heating situation - hellish or arctic.
4) Riding sideways in a winding canyon.
5) The giggling girls at the front of the bus. Believe me, this was rarely me. I was the one in the back chugging Pixie Stix in high school.
6) When the bus driver yells at you through the intercom and you can't even understand them.
7) The rumble that feels like your vertebrae are smashing together and you will come off two inches shorter.
8) That you are one of the biggest things on the freeway but still feel like you will die.

Upon reflecting on this post, I find there is little that has to do with museums. All I will say about museums is that I like them and didn't have enough time at the UMNH today because we had to go to short seminars about working at a museum in which I almost fell asleep. I didn't get to look at the Bug Zoo or the stuffed animals. I guess I'll have to go back on a Monday when it is free.

Birthday List - April Fool's!! :P

My birthday is on April Fool's Day and I want things for my birthday. Here is my birthday list.
Hiking boots for me! Andrew did not get hiking boots for me for his birthday. That is OK. I still want some so I can break them in before the summer starts.A bird feeder would be very fun to have. The only problem is that we would definitely have problems with squirrels if we had one. But it still would be fun. Maybe if you want to get this for me you should really get instructions and the materials to build it cuz Andrew would love to build a bird feeder for me.

Gumbo for my Princess and the Frog birthday part. Stay tuned for updates on that!

A Topsy Turvy tomato grower so we can have tons of yummy tomatoes right outside our apartment! We don't know if we'll have a garden plot and having a bunch of tomatoes would be cool. I also saw one for strawberries, YUM! Either would be excellent, but not necessary. A lady I work with invited Andrew and I to come help her weed her garden in exchange for all the produce we could want in the summer! It still would be cool to have one of these.

A puppy! I want one, I want one! Some women, after being married for 10 months, become extremely baby hungry. Not me. I am so puppy hungry! For some reason, goldfish and a gecko just don't cut it for pet loving fests. But we can't have a puppy at our apartment and I would not be able to train it cuz I am gone all day. This shall be one of my unattainable dreams for now.
I just found this funky bookshelf on the internet and thought it was pretty cool. It could be a cool birthday gift. :D

If you are one of those people who gives gifts for their practical purposes and not for the coolness of an item, you should truly get me canned foods for my birthday. Not only is it practical, but extremely helpful. As poor college students, we go through canned foods like we go through bread for sandwiches. Some of our favorite types of canned foods are hot chili, refried beans, corn, black beans, tomato paste/sauce/etc., canned tomatoes, and pineapple.

I hope that this gives you lots of ideas of what to give me for my happy birthday. You can also give me other things - I don't care! These are just the only things I could think of right now.

PS - happy birthday to my Dad (today)!

Fish and Friends and other Randoms

Here are some random pictures that pretty much describe my life.


I was walking along and then I saw this and I laughed so hard.

I can just imagine the snowman saying, "I just took a nap and now there is this tree sticking through me." Poor fellow. This was about a month ago. Now the snow is almost all melted.


Andrew has a really bad cold. I have been taking good care of him and he has been drinking cough syrup.


Andrew helped Mark Twain and Squishy make three new friends this morning. What a fishy day! I call Mark Twain and Squishy my pigs cuz they truly are. Every time you walk into the room they swim to the top of the tank and flap their mouths like they want you to give them fish food or something. I am so glad that there are more fish to be friends.

Who Would Have Thought?

Who would have thought you could be so happy all by your lonesome for 21 years and then get married and then go absolutely crazy when your husband is gone from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 that evening?

I'm pathetic. I have read, napped, did the laundry, folded the laundry by my own free will and choice, gone shopping thrice, and talked on the phone. It has been a long and lonely day. Not that we spend a lot of time together anyway. It is that I can't tell him weird things and have someone to talk to during dinner.

Plus, my tailbone hurts from sitting. Now it is too dark and cold outside to go for a walk. Plus again, I was cold all day and had no one to snuggle with.

I don't know how I'll make it in June when he's gone for two weeks.

This is why I need a dog.

Books, Books, Books

If you know anything at all about me, you know that I love books and that I love to read. Favorite Disney Princess? Belle - because she loves books and she has brown hair.

She goes to the bookshop because needed another book and slides around on that sweet ladder thing. She just loves to read. As do I.

Then she meets the Beast and it turns out that he has a huge library. Probably more books than you can read. And I am sure that it was marvelous.

I love this little thing. I think I own it. I got it at Disneyworld or Disneyland if I do own it. But look. Belle sits on books while reading books. Of course, I am not encouraging people to sit on books because that would probably hurt the binding, and I am definitely not encourage people to bring tea pots around books cuz that would definitely damage them if the tea spilled, but doesn't she look happy on the books?

Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading and I LOVE it. I am working on a research paper and I read for most of the day. the only bad thing about reading is that it makes my butt hurt, due to the fact that I broke my tailbone when I was a senior in high school.

As Hugh Nibley said (in a paraphrase): to get an education, you must read, and read everything. He said that you must start at the top floor of the university library and read until to get through the library.

Of course, I don't know if I should take his advice, as someone commented that it is obscene to know as much as Hugh Nibley. He knows so much because he read so dang much.

Now, the library at Utah State, the Merrill-Cazier Library, is not as big as the one at Berkley or BYU. But there are still tons of books. Whenever I go to find a specific book, I always pass fascinating sounding books on my way there, such as: Naked Communism (I imagine this to be about communism at its root, not about nude communists), Imprisoned Apart: the World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, and I can't even think of how many others I have wanted to stop and read.

But I can't. I have to work on my research project.

And going along with that, I have to read particular parts of the books I check out because only a chapter pertains to my research. It is so depressing.

For example: Missing Stories: An Oral History of Ethnic and Minority Groups in Utah. The only chapter that pertains is "Japanese Community". But look what I'm missing out on! "Ute Community," "African-American Community," "Jewish Community," "Chinese Community," "Italian Community," "Greek Community," and "Chicano-Hispano Community." And they all sound interesting to me!


The only thing that I can do to find solace in the fact that I don't have enough time to read all the things that I want to is that I will be here, in Logan, for the entire Spring Break. Woot woot. At least I can read and read and write my rough draft and then read something that doesn't pertain to my topic and read some more and then play racquetball. Hopefully. That is the plan at least.

Light and Darkness

In Institute, we've been talking about Moses 1. Above is Michelangelo's sculpted version of Moses. Yes he has horns. Maybe he was Mormon. ;)

First, we learned that oftentimes, messages from God are given to us through His Son or angels. In this case, Christ speaks to Moses in God's stead. It was glorious; Moses saw "the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; of the same he greatly marveled and wondered" (Moses 1:8). Then, the vision closes and Moses realizes that he saw God (Christ) with "not my natural, but my spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld" (Moses 1:11). Basically, you can't see God (Christ) unless you have received the gift of spiritual eyes. So what are spiritual eyes?

I think they are kind of like sunglasses. Only the kind that you use to look at the sun so you don't burn your eyes out. The glory of God is too much for our naked eyes to behold, so we are blessed with spiritual sunglasses, if there is a message that the Father or Son needs to give us personally.

Then, Satan comes, and tells Moses to worship him. Moses looks at Satan and realizes that he is not God, and therefore cannot (should not) be worshiped. Moses asks, "where is thy glory, that I should worship thee? For behold, I could not look upon God, except his glory [sunglasses] should come upon me...But I can look upon thee in the natural man [aka, without the sunglasses]" (Moses 1:13-14). We learn that even when Satan imitates God the Father or Jesus Christ, he does not have Their glory. What is glory? Perhaps the next verse can help us. "Blessed be the name of my God, for his Spirit hath not altogether withdrawn from me," Moses says. "...where is thy glory, for it is darkness unto me? And I can judge between thee and God" (Moses 1:15). What is glory? Maybe it is light.

We can tell the good from the evil by the light which the good has. Feeling light is a glorious experience. I feel it with my family, Andrew, in the Temple, and at Primary. Places of faith where we show love and exercise faith are places of light, and therefore glory, and therefore God.

Thank you Moses, for reminding us of the Light of God and of Christ, and the darkness of Satan.

People, places, and things that are against our Heavenly Father are also darkness and Satan. Alma, in teaching Zeezrom, said that "It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God" which is given "according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him" (Alma 12:9). We gain light and understanding as we are obedient to the covenants we have made with God. For these people who are obedient, "is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full" (Alma 12:10). Wow! As we continue to progress and accept light, we come to understand that light, and God our Father, more fully. It becomes easier for you to receive the sunglasses. However, for "they that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion..until they know nothing concerning his mysteries; and then they are taken captive by the devil" (Alma 12:11). So, even if you had light, if you harden your heart, that light and knowledge will be taken away.

I just wanted to share some of my thoughts with you and I hope that it helps you strive for light more often! And isn't the Hagia Sophia awesome? It was constructed as a church to be filled with light, which the Byzantines equated with God.