The first steps are always the hardest

Have you noticed how it seems the blog titles have stopped correlating to my actual blogs? yeah, me too.
So...last time I blogged was..some other day. Thursday? I could go check
yep, thursday. So, anyway, I guess I should talk about what I did Friday.
So, I slept in, because again I didn't need to go to class. I spent the day doing really productive things, such as uploading an emulator onto Katie's computer, and then playing Zelda. I beat the shadow temple, and got part way through the spirit temple. I also played the piano, and ate food, and I'm pretty sure I took some kind of nap. The only notable things I did happened starting at 7:30--but I'll preface that by telling you that the HumorU show was that night. As opposed to Divine Comedy, which is skit-based comedy, HumorU is all stand up. But, unlike other stand up, HumorU is clean. Completely clean. Now, back to what I did at 7:30. I got two tickets to the show, for the purpose of bringing a date. My date was Erin, whom I had met the summer previous at the Plymouth, NH EFY. We had a small dinner at the creamery before heading over to the Maeser building (also known as the farthest point on campus from Heritage). The show was really great-most of my FHE group was there as well, and so since then we've quoted it multiple times. Ironically, the group was started by an Arab non-member, who made a surprise appearance. I absolutely loved having the jokes pointed into our campus; it's a perspective that I missed. After the show/date, I hung out with some of my FHE group. We basically chilled until 12:00, when we had to leave our apartment (visiting hours), but instead of leaving it at that we hung out outside, playing music and random games. Finally, we just decided to go to sleep outside. We got various blankets and pillows, and just camped out on the grass behind Bowen hall. We all were in varying degrees of sleeping, some people talking while others slept. I fell asleep for real at around 5:00 (my phone was dead by that point, so I wasn't really sure), but I had fallen asleep a few times before that, so it was all good. We finally got up and went back to our own beds at around 8:00. I slept until 12:00, then woke up and made some german pancakes for myself and some of our FHE girls. Unfortunately, something went wrong, and they weren't as good as they could have been, but I got good reviews on them anyway. (In case you couldn't tell, I have now segued into Saturday). Saturday continued with more chilling/playing around, but I got somewhat tired as we got into a game of volleyball, so I came back and showered (don't question the causality of events--they just happen). I started fasting around 4, my last meal being a burger from the creamery. Things I did that night-ish: I followed a circuitous logic chain regarding the nature of human self-identity, until I finally broke out of it to a hopeful conclusion. I am attempting to recreate my logic in an essay, so hopefully if this made no sense to you, you'll be able to read it when I'm done. Also, I met more people: Emma, Jenna, Nate, Jacob, Alex, Paul, Maddie, and I already knew Kaitlin. We watched the end of Sherlock Holmes with them. Then, I kind of went to sleep while writing this post....
fast forward to today: I got up by 9:40, got ready for church, went to church, had church, then stayed at church to practice for choir, which was an hour after church. Finally, choir ended, and I came home and ended my fast and ate food and typed this. Now I'm done.
Bio #3

Richard Anson Call

Anson is the shortest of everyone in our apartment. He hails from Austin, Texas. Yes, he is Anson (and I am Jansen), and he is from Austin (and I'm from Boston). Weird, I know. He is somewhat of a mac freak (has a macbook, iPhone, and his dad has an iPad). He has a ginormous house (even for Texas standards). He was a techie in high school, coordinating the lighting for several shows at his school. He enjoys building. He enjoys doing occasional farm work, including on the ~500 fruit trees on his family's property. His favorite thing(s) ever is(are) cooking, being with his family (some of whom were here today in Sacrament meeting), water sports, general sporty activities, and hanging out (and Melissa). His pet peeve is being ignored. If he had 10 days left to live, he would travel and spend time with his family. Classes he is taking this term are: Living Prophets, Mass Communications, and Anthropology.

How

Insert personal commentary about blogging in general, and the general awesomeness of the above video.

Stop personal commentary and talk about what I did.

Wednesday: I slept in. The last day of lectures for bio was on Monday, so I slept in. Slept until about 10:30-ish. Got past the water temple, and got the hover boots from the shadow temple. Also, during that time, Rachel stopped by and hung out with me (oh, and Trent was there too). 'Twas oodles of fun. I also practiced my choir songs, and generally just killed time until my music class. We learned about american people--Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, as well as others. Class got out typically late ~6:20, so I just came back and chilled some more.. (I know, wicked productive. Hey, it's a balance thing. Tuesday was good. Wednesday was just...meh). Around 10-ish Chris came by and we went to go meet more people. We met Bethany, Emilee, and Lauren (Kristy wasn't there and we already knew Daneka). They're pretty fun--it's a great icebreaker to start reading people's quote walls (though sometimes it goes just a little bit too far). Then I played some Halo with Chris, but not for too long (I did have to go swimming in the morning)

Thursday: I got up and went swimming. I had bought goggles the day before, so I was ready for it all. I actually did a lot better than Tuesday, but ended up getting a really bad pain in my neck from the breast stroke (having my head point forward that whole time). That was followed by NOT OoT, surprisingly enough. I decided to finally start reading my new Rick Riordan book--The Red Pyramid. Being somewhat of a mythology geek, I really like Riordan's stuff. BoM at 2-4, followed by more reading and a nap. Then, at 7:00, I had a Boston Stake reunion! Mike and Jacquie are both out here for the summer as well, and we haven't spent any time together as true Bostoners. So we finally got together and talked, caught up, got some ice cream--it was great. Jacquie is in Heritage-she's staying in Fox right now. Mike is way out in Wyview, so he had to wait until 8:45 for his bus to come, but it was alright. Jacquie had to leave at 8:00 because her home-teachers decided to finally get around to home teaching--even though she had never met them before. After Mike left, I went to this hall meeting about how to check out of our rooms after Summer term was over. Essentially, it boils down to "ask the HA." Then, Chris and I went to introduce ourselves to more people. We started in the basement, with 10-we met Serena and Corrie, and it turns out that Corrie is taking harp lessons, and she totally got is unto a practice room AND I PLAYED A HARP! I was so happy. I love the harp, and it's always been a dream of mine to learn to play it, and it's actually pretty simple! The strings are set up in a diatonic scale, but then there are pedals you can move to change the key and everything. It's really neat. Also, did I mention that I PLAYED A HARP?!? I did. After getting back from the HFAC, we went up to 17 (Autumn's apartment) and met (almost) everyone from her apartment. Besides Autumn and Amanda (who I already knew), we met Lisa, Emilee, and Hallie. Again, the quote wall is a great ice-breaker. In totally related (random) news, Chris showed me how to change my phone so that the date displays in Hawaiian. Swieckt! (I just made that up. Sick+Sweet). Anyway, That brings me tooooo

Bio #2

Chance Austin Bozeman

Chance is my awesome home teaching companion. He hails from Gilbert, Arizona, where there are four different stakes that go to his school (there are roughly four stakes that have membership within the entire state of Massachusetts). He likes to play basketball, run/workout, go to the movies, flirt with girls. He likes music (unfortunately, his favorite is country, and he hates heavy metal)--but he likes it as long as he can dance to it. His pet peeve is dirtiness *cough*neat freak*cough*, and if he had 10 days left to live he would go to Europe (specifically Italy) and sight see.

He wants seven kids. His ideal temperature is 72 degrees. He enjoyed his childhood, and wouldn't trade it for anyone else's. He loves his parents. He can't wait to meet his wife.

He is currently taking Book of Mormon, Writing and Rhetoric, and Ballroom Dance. He enjoys his ballroom class, even though it is early in the morning and he claims not to be that good.

Donesauce.

Productivity FTW!

Hi. It's me. Today I went swimming, and have been tired all day. Even so, it was a good day. I went swimming, then came home and made some German pancakes while playing around on scratch (I've made a snake game). I'm glad that I went swimming, but I need to be going a lot more. Good thing that's what I'll be doing, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. At around 1, Trent suggested doing a date-hike, and I readily agreed. We decided to go up to bridal veil falls, but I had to go to Book of Mormon before I was able to ask anyone. After class, I came back and asked Autumn (who is in our ward, and who is coincidentally the ward choir director) to go, and she said yes. Trent and I prepared a nice picnic-y lunch and we went and picked up our dates at 5:30. It was pretty fun: it was amazing hiking in the canyon, while at the same time there was a river to our side. I didn't feel like I was in the desert, except for the sheer rock cliffs above us (which were pretty cool). We kind of just walked, and then found this nice big rock to eat on. On our way back, there was a small water fight, but I am happy to report that there are no casualties. It was really neat; Autumn and I were able to carry on a really nice conversation the whole time (i.e. there were no wicked awkward pauses). Afterwards I was bored, so I went out and met people. With Chris (who isn't in my apartment but is in our building) I went up to random people's doors and chatted for a while. I met: Casey, Lauren, Hannah, Sutton, Ryan, Jessica, Jen, Allison, Marin (it's her birthday today), Jessie, Parker, Carter, Tanner, and Ben. It was really neat, though I wish I had done so sooner, what with only 2 weeks left of the term.

That's pretty much it. I don't feel like doing a bio. I'll see about doing one tomorrow morning.

Good night!

Things in that dark that go "NI!"

Hi! Yes, indeed, I am posting two nights in a row! *GASP* It's a miracle (also I just don't have other work to do). Today I went to bio. It's a good thing I did, because it ended up being the best bio class ever: he brought his alpacas. It was really cool; there was a five day old newborn alpaca that was really cute. I did take pictures, but putting them up would be too onerous of a task to undertake, so instead I'm going to put them up on facebook or something...later. After bio I went back to the ranch and spent my time productively *cough* Ocarina of Time *cough*, as well as taking a good 40 minute nap (see my status from last night for explanation of why I was so tired). Music (at 4) was okay-we talked about Ravel, Puccini, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and people like that. When it was finally over I talked to Chance about home teaching our last people, and we ended up home teaching them soon after; right before family home evening, in fact. Then, for FHE we went swimming. It was a very good decision (Thank you Anson!) though it revealed the fact that I have HORRIBLE cardio-vascular. Trent and I decided that we would go swimming in the mornings, which means I need to be getting to bed with good time tonight (hopefully that means that Foster will be done on the computer soon, and I can get to sleep). After swimming I came home and wrote my final paper for bio! I don't have to do any more! Hurrah! Then it was done. Now I'm done

..Almost :)

Finally: Bio #1 !

Trent Nathaniel Taylor

This is Trent. He hails from the great state of ..Utah. Yep, that's right: he is the one Utahan in our apartment (Saint George). He is about my height (which is tall' ish''), and has some horrible disease that requires him to wear these funny things on his face to help him see. His claim to fame is that he is the "coolest person alive." He is the one other person in my apartment who sings, which helps me keep my level of sanity (notice I didn't say helps keep me sane; I passed that point a while ago). Trent is majoring in theatre, as well as doing the pre-med program. Though he sings, he doesn't go for musicals; he is strictly a straight theatre guy. He is a very ebullient person, and thrives among groups of people. He is clean, though not the biggest neat freak in our apartment.

Currently, he is taking Book of Mormon, University Chorale, and Theatre History. His favorite thing to do is: "sing dance act swim play the piano." His pet peeve is: "when people don't clean up after themselves" and "really mean people." If he only had 10 days to live he would "take his friends and go to disney world. He would go snorkeling, skydiving, and then build an orphanage in Brazil." He is usually up for anything fun, even hiking the Y at 1:00 in the morning. In our very first conversation, I found out that he had played Kingdom Hearts and that he sang, and I knew that we would get along.

The (real) end.

Gah

Hi all. I have been trying to go to sleep for the last three hours. Nothing has worked. So, in a fit of desperation, I am going to do a complete blog post of all my activities since last Wednesday.

WARNING: This is going to be text heavy, but hopefully it will involve enough mental stimuli to tire my brain to the point where I will finally be able to sleep.

Wednesday: Bio. Bio class and bio test. Class was boring (big surprise). Test was alright; 94. No class for the rest of the day, because Music was canceled (the professor had something else to do). So I kinda chilled for the rest of the day until Anson showed me the N64 emulator he had downloaded. There went the rest of my day. I think by the time I went to bed I had gotten past the first two dungeons of Ocarina of Time.

Thursday: more of the same. Woke up late (No, I'm not saying how late I went to bed) and got some pointers from Trent who had played the game as a child (I must confess that I had never played OoT in my life). Took a brief break for Book of Mormon from 2-4, but then continued on in much the same vein. Got past the fourth temple that night.

Friday: Good news for the summer-attending BYU student: a Utah-only holiday called Pioneer day. To be fair, it is on the 24th, but they gave us classes off on Friday, too. That meant I could sleep in (yay!) but not by much. The reason for this was because BYU was holding a little something called Cougar Cooldown. I'd explain it, but I think this video does a better job. It was buckets of fun, though some of those balloons hit quite hard. I got hit, the very second time, square in between the eyes; had to turn around and throw balloons backwards until I could open my eyes again. Associated with the water balloon fight was a blood drive, and I figured why not. I have blood, and am always making more. I might as well. It actually was a really neat experience, and I was not much the worse for wear because of it. Note: I love Utah. I totally struck up a conversation with a random couple that were in line ahead of me. The other thing I love about Utah; they had just gotten married a month before. The actual giving of blood wasn't a big deal-it went faster than I would have thought. Then, a nice surprise: after giving blood I went over to talk to this girl I kinda knew-she was a friend of Chance's. As it turns out it's a good thing I did, because she happened to ask me out on a date. I readily accepted, of course.

The date was wicked fun; it was Rachel (my date) and four of her roommates that all got dates. We had breakfast for dinner (I cooked the eggs-scrambled, first time ever. I did a pretty good job), then went to see a show put on by a camp that was going on at BYU-YASE. It turned out to be pretty neat. Trent, who had gone to that camp the previous year, knew someone on the inside and got us in. They did a wide variety of musical numbers, as well as solo pieces (one of which was ridiculously funny-it was from the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. We left early to do other fun things; played volleyball and then went back to their apartment to make (and eat) cake in a cup-a really cool recipe by which you make cake. In a mug. All in all, it was a really fun evening.

Saturday--went to my grandparents, did my laundry (for free!) and spilled chocolate milkshake on my computer. Yippee. It seems to be working alright now, but I kind of freaked out. It is not a good feeling to watch chocolate milk shake drip from out of your computer. The day continued improving; I spent at least an hour searching for my flash drive, the one I got such a good deal on (and the one that has all my N64 roms on it). Needless to say, I couldn't find it. The day did improve, however, with the fact that I went on another date. This one was a group date within my FHE group; we had a nice picnic at the JFSB, then went skittles bowling at the wilk (which gratefully was still open on pioneer day) and finished it up with ice cream at the creamery and a nice few games of catchphrase.

Sunday-Woke up at 10:20. Church started at 10:30. Made it there 5 or 6 minutes late, but it was okay (especially considering how late of a start I got and how far away the church building is of a walk). Choir practice went alright, but I have boatloads of practicing to do for two weeks from now. After that, I pretty much just wasted time; spent some of it with my FHE group but after ward prayer (at 8) I realized how tired I was, and how trying to do anything productive would be a waste of time. So, I went to bed. Or tried to. Of course, I'm still up now four hours later, so what does that tell you? I must be some kind of a freak. Oh, and to add to that that apparently I've started snoring within the last four days. I thought Foster was kidding. He does that. But he seemed to be serious. I have no idea what the cause could be, but it worries me. I am not a snorer. It needs to stop.

And so does this post.

Bios this week!

I come in peace

Hi.
Begin Blog
Monday: I woke up and went to bio. The reason I did this was more than just because I had missed the last two classes; I was also going to meet with Elizabeth and Juliana Morrison who were going to start EFY this week; Elizabeth is thinking about starting BYU in the winter, and wanted to get an idea of what class was like. I got there early, grabbing breakfast on the way, and saved them seats. As class went on, I could tell they were engrossed, as was I (which is why I was playing desktop defender). Unfortunately for them, it's a wicked boring class. Fortunately for them, they had to leave to actually go sign up for EFY. I stayed for the post-class review, because of the whole not-having-gone-to-class thing. After class I went back home and split my work between my BoM midterm and my Bio paper (that was due that day at midnight. Or is it the next morning at midnight? Confusing) until 1:00. That was when Grandpa and Grandma came to drop off some stuff from home for me (Grandma just came back from visiting my home) and take me to lunch. The stuff included some red sox paraphernalia, some of which I am currently wearing (proudly). They took me to lunch at this great place called El Azteca, a low key mexican place with the most interesting guacamole I've ever tasted. Besides that, though, their stuff is pretty good (especially their chips; I LOVED their chips. They're home-made, or something--reminded me of acapulcos in that sense). Also, Dylan came to lunch. After they brought me back home, I continued working until going to Music. We learned about Wagner (who is the most written about person in western civilization besides Christ himself), Debussy, and modernist art. Class ended just in time for us to go bowling (yes, again. When it's only a dollar a game and 2 dollars for shoes, it becomes rather attractive to go). We played two games; my first game I bowled a 65, or something like that; I wasn't on top of my game. But, the next game, I got a strike and two spares, and got my score up to 116. Which is almost a 100% increase. I call that skillz (Also, it meant I beat Dezzy by 2 points, who is the most intense bowler out of all of us). After bowling I came back and managed to finish my bio paper by quarter to midnight. It's probably mostly BS, but I got it finished (who assigns an essay on one's role as a steward over the earth's resources, anyway?).

Tuesday: woke up at ~10:00 to finish my BoM midterm. Met my goal and finished it by 12:00, which gave me the next 6 hours to study for Music (except for 2:00 when I had to bring my midterm to BoM--my teacher is kind of old-fashioned when it comes to digitizing of school). I didn't stay for class, though; came back home to studystudystudy. I crammed my mind so full of information that I had to take a nap at around 4 (which lasted until 5:30). Got up and studied some more, then finally went to go take my test at ~7:40 (the testing center hands out tests until 8:00, and closes at 9:00). On monday our professor told us that out of everyone who had taken the test so far, the average score was around a 74. I had studied a ton, but it was still only for one day, so I was pretty nervous. However, over the course of the next hour I sped through most of the 119 questions (with only 4 or 5 really tripping me up). After finishing, I schooled myself into accepting a grade above an 80; end result--> 83 (which, funnily enough, was the same grade I got on the music ID test). I'm alright with that, though it means I got 20 questions wrong (but I'm pretty confident with the picture ID part of the test. I am surprised that he got the testing center to print that one Boucher painting).

Afterwards I came back, chilled at the girls' for a bit, then went over with a group to the library to 'study' (it's a group of people going to the "No shhh zone" of the library; there's not going to be much studying done). I went through all of the information for bio, and then decided to write up this post before going back to the apartment. Now I'm in the present moment, which is always awkward, so I'll stop here.

Yep. Iiiit's the weekend. Or, it was.

Hi. I'm tired, so I'll claim to make this short, but I doubt that will actually happen.
Saturday: I woke up at around 9:30, 10:00, but was wicked tired. Essentially lazed around until 3--literally. I stayed in my bed, or went out on to the couch, trying to go back to sleep. That's how tired I was. Finally, I got up the energy to do my überpost, but when I finished with that it was sometime around 5. Feeling productive, I dropped my books (the ones I borrowed to do my essay) off at the library, but after walking through the hot hot sun (uphill both ways and through the snow. Don't question it.) I got lazy again, and just chilled around the apartment. Around 8, a bunch of people from my FHE group decided to go see inception, but I didn't go. Turned out to be a good decision: After about another hour of laziness I finally started preparing my talk (after a brief trip to the creamery). I think it turned out pretty well. It was on gaining and building a testimony, and in my usual style I put together notes and prepared a spiel. I have to say, it was really great being alone in the apartment. I could sing, act like I was 5 (who says I'm not?) and do generally random stuff and not have people question me. It was pretty nice.
Sunday: Ward choir practice was at 9:20 (preparing to perform that day in sacrament meeting), so, as a good little pianist, I decided to get there early: got up at 8:30, got ready and ate breakfast. Strangest thing: as I was eating breakfast, this complete stranger walks in and asks if I had seen this cup he left on the stove. If any of my roommates are reading this, please explain to me WTFudge this was. I was very confused. Anyway, got to church, practiced, had church: three of the four speakers in sacrament meeting were from my FHE group (me included), which was pretty neat. I was the closing speaker, which meant I didn't have to worry about going over (though to be fair, it's a student ward. Not enough people go over). Choir performed after the 2nd (Courtney) and before the 3rd (Anson) speaker, and I kind of flubbed it. Not too bad, but I was kind of nervous and messed up on a few parts. My talk went tons better: I started off with a good 'Aloha' which was returned relatively enthusiastically, introduced myself (my full name, of course), and then proceeded. I probably took 8-10 minutes, which isn't too shabby. Afterward, the bishop (following the theme of testimony) called some people up to bear their testimonies, Bishop McQuivey style (though it was funny; talking to people afterward that had never happened in their wards). Rest of church passed reasonably well; I found out that there is a senior (RM) in our ward. Go figure. After church we had a potluck, which only went off well because certain apartments were actually given lasagnas to prepare; ours being one of them. Time passed, and then I found myself here, writing this. There; that wasn't too long, was it? (Hoping to start roommate bios either tuesday or wednesday)