Did you hear the one about the giraffe with asthma?

...ya, me neither.

This is epic. I wish I had been able to be home to see it. I wish I could have been in it, when it really comes down to it. Probs to J-Csap and Will for the reenactment.
So, this is really short: I've had peter pan all week, and in one hour from now it will be all I'm doing today. Before that time I have to read these articles for New Testament and take a quiz on them. Also, I have another German test on Monday.
It snowed earlier this week, which made work a lot easier (since we don't actually have to shovel the main pathways (the tractor plows take care of that), when it snows we just do general ice melt and curb cutting). And my first full payday was yesterday (by which I mean I was paid for a full two weeks of work, instead of a few days here and there as I was last semester before I really got into the swing of things). So that makes me happy.
I'm really enjoying my Japanese class: we're learning katakana, which is a system only used for words borrowed from other languages. So I can spell tape in katakana (romanized as 'teepu') or cake (keeki), but not any of the native Japanese words we're learning in class. It's actually quite fun, working on learning an entirely new alphabet. I'm thinking of getting a whiteboard for our kitchen, so I can practice there; also, it would just be neat to have a whiteboard.
I had a clogging quiz on Thursday; I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep the night before, and so I was ex-haus-ted. I did as well as I could, but it was physically difficult to get my legs up and going.
We started the cha-cha in social dance this week; but that means that we're testing the foxtrot on Wednesday. Cool. It's social dance, but I haven't really gotten to know anyone from the class because it's basically 'dance for a half minute, then switch partners. Rinse, repeat'.
Also notated:
||: dance for half minute, then switch partners :||
or:
while(class.hasNext()) {
dance for half minute;
switch partners;
}
all that to say that I don't really know who I could dance with for test.
Ummmm okay I have to get back to my readings now. Go Dwarves!
Also Cougars! We beat SDSU on Wednesday, which is like a huge deal. I guess. I was in the DeJong concert hall the whole time :/
Cool. Tchüss!

...and the yak wanted to go to Belgium, but I stayed back

hello, hello, hello! It's that time of the (insert time period here) again! I finally have a free day in which I can do stuff. Not to say that yesterday wasn't productive: I slept in until 12:30, then got a haircut from a friend, made German pancakes for breakfast, and played racquetball with my roommates. Of course, Peter pan followed...and it was an interesting show. I'm sure that it was just the product of 5 full nights of work, but things just got sloppy. NO, we did not drop anyone. It wasn't that kind of sloppy. There was one part, though, in the Peter v. Hook fight where Peter is supposed to fly, but she kind of forgot to put on one of her hooks...so she went up and did a kind of diagonal flip in place. There were other places, too, where the actors were rushing the music, and some lines that were forgotten or slow to come. I'm glad for everyone's sake that we get a two day break.
Today was church. Hurrah!
That's basically it....this past week was fraught with Peter Pan, and a small annoyance stemming from CS 235 having to do with a lab to turn in that I had to turn in late (good luck with that sentence). I am pretty much addicted to creamery chocolate milk, now...I'm going through a withdrawal seeing as how I finished it all last night and can't buy more until tomorrow...oh noes! In other news, I'm learning Japanese and German. Ist gut. Totemo Ii des nee. Also, I have a clogging quiz on thursday, and a New testament quiz on the same day. Also, I'm tired. I get really into these webcomics, and am reading them into the late hours of the night.
Ummmm yeah. We have ward prayer at 8, and our FHE is presenting. It should be fun. yeah. I want chocolate. Also, I think I'm going to go have a nap now..
Wait! I also went to walmart last night. I got some more contact solution, and some real peanut butter, and some parmesan cheese. And some bread. yay. wow. I need sleep. bye.

Pastels are for elephants and zoboomafu

So I know I went on this whole spiel about how I would post and then I basically didn't. But fear not, I have an excuse! It's called: I'm working and taking 18 credits. Yippee! I kid you not, every day of school so far has gone like this:
7:00--wake up and get ready for work (shower, breakfast, head out)
8:00-11:00--work. Usually consists of 40 mins to an hour and a half of actual work, the other time spent chilling in the shed or watching movies (last week I saw the A Team, Star Trek, and Bourne Ultimatum (twice)).
11:00 (12:00 TTh)-4:00--classes. MW are as follows: Social Dance 11:00. Japanese 1:00. German 2:00. CS 235 (Data systems) 3:00. Acting Fundamentals 5:00-7:00 TTh are as follows: New Testament 12:00. Japanese 1:00. German 2:00. Beginning Clogging 3:00. Friday is the same as MW but without Social dance and Acting fundamentals.
5:00 and on 'till morning--Peter Pan rehearsals. As a fly boy, I'm there early so we can get in extra not-dropping-people practice. And, it being tech week, those things go pretttty long. Which is why I bring my DS to the rehearsals. =)
Rinse and repeat.
This weekend was pretty chill: Saturday started off with (surprise!) Peter pan rehearsal. I came home to find that one of my roommates had broken his leg and was in the hospital. I then went to a little Summer FHE reunion with my...well, with my summer FHE. DUh. After that I visited some people, and ended up watching that facebook movie (I think it's called social network or something). I wasn't too impressed: It was kind of just showing how Zuckerberg screwed some people over in making facebook, portraying him as someone with mild asperger's and the founder of Napster as some ruthless evil guy (appropriate synonyms not coming to my mind right now: the after-midnight-brain-dead-effect.) That night we hung out with our FHE sisters, playing some intense Nertz, monopoly deal (which I won after 2 rounds :) and various ping pong games. It was nice. Come Sunday, I got a new calling! (which I did find out about on Thursday, so it wasn't a huge surprise or anything :). I am no longer the ward service committee co-chair: I am now my FHE's indexing specialist, which means I'm going to have to come up with creative ways to get my family to do indexing, and keep indexing. I'm thinking baked goods...but am open to suggestions. (homework help? ice cream?). After church I proceeded to do all of my home teaching. BOOO YAH! I like getting it done early. We had ward prayer at one point (~8:00) after wards I was really tired, so of course I stayed up until like 12:00. Today was pretty chill: I slept in until 10:30 (yay!) and then got a lot of work done (which is good because I won't be able to get any done the rest of the week. The highlight of the day was when I got to hang out with a friend of mine (Jennifer), who actually left the ward after last semester and I thought I wasn't really going to see much of anymore, but came to church on Sunday (which gave me the opportunity to set up plans for today). We went to J-Dawgs, a hot dog place just south of campus that is actually really really good, and not too expensive, either. We then checked out the Carl Bloch exhibit at the museum of art, which was really quite amazing. Their set up is spectacular, and I hadn't realized what kind of works Bloch actually has done.

And then we played ping pong, in our own, not-able-to-play-ping-pong way (it was actually quite fun). *cue awe inspiring picture of ping pong...* The only thing about that whole thing was that I don't know whether to classify it as a date or not...I did pay for her food, but never was the word 'date' mentioned....but who am I to question the mysteries of the universe? :P
Anyways: My roommates and I did go to visit Greg today at the hospital; I brought him my DS so he wouldn't get too bored (I did forget to bring the charging cable, though, which made me sad ): But he seems to be doing alright.
FHE today was fun: we made cards for Greg's room, so that will be cool for him when he comes home.
Now I'm really tired, so I'm going to bed. G'night!

stuffstuffstuff

wow, a lot has happened in the past two days. I'm gonna start with Monday and see how far I get.
The special thing about Monday is that it was Winter NSO, or New Student Orientation for winter semester. Needless to say, there are far fewer people new to BYU come winter than there were in Fall. As a Y group leader, this made the experience quite a ways more enjoyable. Highlights of being a Y group leader: free breakfast, free lunch, free shirt, being able to help people new to campus around, being able to appear experienced and sage through being a Y group leader, etc. Because of the people constraints, the event took place over the course of a single day. We got campus tours in, education in Zion, and a library tour, as well as convocation and traditions of honor (which the Young Ambassadors performed for). My group consisted of about 8 kids, 4 of whom were returned missionaries, 2 of whom were girls that had graduated high school early, and 2 of whom were girls that had transferred. The transfer student population come winter was a lot higher than in fall.
The other interesting thing about NSO is that there seemed to be a lot more international students. One of the new move-ins in our ward is from Albania.
Another thing that I noticed is that most of the guys are RMs. Out of the guys that moved to my hall (that weren't here in the Fall), at least 3 of them are returned missionaries (including one of my new roommates).
*soapbox moment*: Notice how I wrote "RMs". There is no apostrophe within the word, because it is merely an acronym representing a singular noun, and then pluralized. No "RM's" or any such thing. Remember that.
So NSO was over at 5, which allowed me to go home and chill...by which I mean I kind of chilled at my apartment, then went to visit some friends in Bowen until 11:00. When I came back my roommates were watching Bourne Identity which was awesome.
OK. I'm falling asleep now. I have a big day ahead, so I'll try and post more. Later.

Block.

Oh, hey, world. It's me, Jansen. I've been thinking about this blog..mainly about how I haven't posted on it in ages, but more so about the content thereof. When I first started this blog it was with the intent to display a piece of college life. However, my posts end up just being boring transcriptions of my life, and quite frankly, I think they're boring. Of course, once I'd stopped posting every day, it made it even harder to come back and post somewhat consistently. I did say in one *recent* post that I'd keep this blog to random thoughts of mine, but I realized a while back that all of my random thoughts that I feel are worth sharing end up going on facebook. Therefore, I am in a pickle about all of this: I think what I'll end up doing is sharing thoughts about my life, and fill in the background if necessary. Though again, the whole boredom factor is still there. I dunno. We shall see. It is a new year, and I have made a decision to myself to write in a journal somewhat frequently; only problem is I don't really have a journal, and I don't know if this would suffice, or if I should create a private venue for such matters. Or just both. Is the importance in journaling the fact that it gets written down, or that I have a record of my life that I can refer to in later years? Dunno.
Light bulb! If I include enough philosophizing in my ramblings, it might be interesting enough to keep people's attention.
Thought number n+1: I can *review* movies I've seen! Yay! Someone versed in the fine arts of the cinema might recognize my Light Bulb! quote: it's from Despicable Me, which I saw for the first time on Friday. Quite frankly, it is adorable. One might go so far as to declare the movie to be adorbz. Love the minions. Love the fact that Russell Brand played a comedically old doctor. Love the whole idea of the plot. Loved Steve Carell's execution of the Gru character. And of course, loved Agnes, Edith, and Margo (in that order).

What is he going on about?
Also over the break: I saw Tron and Narnia. Two exceptional movies, in very different veins. Tron was simply awesome: it took the world from the original movie and expanded on it. I have my issues with it, such as: how does a guy design a laser (in the '80s) that can convert mass into energy, and vice versa? How does a rich kid who lives in a shipping container have the ability to be good at disc combat? Granted, his skill with a motorcycle was already demonstrated, but his hand to hand combat abilities went unexplained. But besides all that, it was an amazing movie. Graphically beautiful, with a surprisingly good storyline and of course classic actors (Jeff Bridges did an amazing job). I'd definitely see it again. Now, Narnia I saw on Friday, and was quite impressed: at two things. 1) at the overall quality of the movie. They certainly did not skimp when it came to visual effects; *spoiler alert* Dragon Eustace was especially impressive. And of course, it being the land of Narnia, the inhabitants thereof were equally impressive. 2) I was impressed at the quite blatant (from my point of view) acknowledgment of the underlying Christian themes. I felt that in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the focus of the movie was on temptation and the resisting thereof. This was the thing most powerfully conveyed by the movie, but they also showed the repentance process, again, with Eustace. Of course, the best bit came at the end with Aslan telling Lucy and Edmund that in their world he was known by a different name, and that they needed to come to know him (Him?) there as they had come to know him in Narnia. Now, I'm not saying that they did this in error, quite the opposite in fact. I'm most impressed by the fact that they were able to get it produced through hollywood and have it be a major motion picture.

While I'm on this bent about changing up my blog posts, I'm going to try and not save a post from day to day.. just post it before the day's over, whether I like it or not. Maybe it'll come out rushed. Maybe not. But here it is.