Matchmaker

No seriously. My wonderful student ward has a wonderful bishop who has a wonderful wife who has taken it upon herself to be the ward matchmaker. Oh, Yenta. She's super nice and is taking the time to get to know all the girls and guys in the ward, and then having us fill out little index cards about who we are and what we are looking for in our ideas of "a match." Then she will suggest our names to guys who may or may not subsequently ask those "suggestions" out on dates. Wow. Only at BYU. Should be ... interesting ...

Life Plan

....for the next year. As stated by myself and my roommate Jamie. I must say, it is quite a good plan for life.

Step 1. Meet a Guy. This semester or next winter semester, I must meet a guy who will fall in love with me and I with him. He must have access to quite a bit of money for the rest of this fantastic plan to be carried out.
Step 2. Study abroad to Vienna Summer 2010. This will be financed mainly by aforementioned guy who I will meet. He will accompany me to Vienna, where we will fall more madly in love than ever.
Step 3. Get Married. At the end of July, we will get married in a temple in Europe. Either Bern, Switzerland or Frankfurt Germany, or Rome, Italy. This aforementioned guy will have enough money to fly out his and my families to the city of our choice to see the ceremony. And I'll have a wedding dress direct from Italy.
Step 4. Honeymoon. All around Europe, for the entire month of August. At the end of August, we will return to Utah and hold a reception before going back to school. This way we won't have to pay for married student housing before school starts!
Step 5. School. Ah, yes. We can't ignore school. We will live happily ever after in our little apartment / house / cardboard box after spending too much money in Europe.

Can't you see it happening? I'll let you know how it progresses at each step. I have yet to fulfill step 1, the most important step, but I will. Oh, I will.

Gachliliot

Fireflies. I like this song.

P.S.

I love Provo.

Tonight my roommate and I hiked to the Y. Yes, all the way to that wonderful beacon of wisdom and enlightenment that's just as white as the front door of our apartment. And we made it there and back in an hour. 60 minutes. 3600 seconds. I feel accomplished.

Then we watched Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Oh, Flint Lockwood, you are such a genius. But your research is completely ungrounded. It would never work here in the "real world."

And today is Regional Conference. We'll all trek to the Marriot Center to hear some words of wisdom. Should be good.

Friday night I went on a date. With a guy named Justin. Who's in my math class. Who's been off his mission for 2 weeks. 2 WEEKS! Anyways, I think we both had fun. We went to see HumorU, got free pizza at Fall Fest, danced one song at the dance outside, and took tours of our respective second homes on campus (the Eyring Science Center and the Clyde Building). When we were done, we walked down to the parking lot where he thought he had parked his car, only to figure out we had passed it in an earlier parking lot without realizing it. So he just walked me all the way home, then walked back to his car. I felt bad; we could have turned around and saved him that extra trip, but oh well.

Anyways, this weekend was great. I even finished all my physics homework! And I got a new schedule for work. No longer must I work until 10:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays! Hooray! Honestly though, I love my job. It's fantastic.

P.S. I love Provo.

A Nice Quote

“I am satisfied, I know it is so, that whenever a man has a true witness in his heart of the living reality of the Lord Jesus Christ, all else will come together as is should. . .That is the root from which all virtue springs among those who call themselves Latter-day Saints.”
~President Gordon B. Hinckley, BYU Marrieds Regional Conference, Feb. 10, 1996

Work....

....is just that. Work.

The very word brings endless hours of drudgery and pointless tasks to mind.

So far, so good. The TA lab has seen one student who hasn't even asked a question. So I'll sit here and do my homework, because in a few days, I won't have time to breathe in between answering questions. At least that's what they tell me. Right now, it's just "work". Or lack there of.

Oh and did I mention that I'm doing this for seven hours today? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that's right. Seven hours of homework. Well, at least I'll be a little ahead in my Calculus class. Five assignments ahead.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I have this job. I just wish I could actually do something to earn the money they're giving me. I'm sure I will. Just not right now.

So I will sit and write at my blog instead. :)

Ratatouille

Last night I watched Ratatouille with my brothers. What a cute movie! Having been raised on Disney / Pixar classics, I thought it was very well done. Yeah, I know it came out in 2007, but it hasn't gotten old by 2010! Watch the following clip:



The darling Alfredo Linguini attempts to tell Colette his secret. But when words fail, well, the following clip shows the rest:



Notice the pepper spray. Colette really thinks Alfredo's crazy! But she hears him out and gives him a chance. Ah, love, in Paris. With a rat on Linguini's head. So romantic! Anyways, just remember to give the crazy ones a chance. They'll end up changing your life (whether or not you're in a movie).

Say Hey

I like this song. I don't know how long it's been around, but it popped up on my Pandora the other day, and it was love at first sight......I mean note. Love at first note. I like that too.

Nice People

I love nice people. I really do. Especially nice people who I don't even know. Whose cars I run into.

Nice people, you make the world worth living in. Thank you for being so nice.

Anyways, I was pulling into a parking spot in the Cutler's parking lot with the HUGE van and I misjudged the space between the cars, so I scratched another guy's car. Really, it was just paint rubbing off onto my car. The guy and his teenage daughter came out and looked at it; he got my name and number and insurance information, said he thought it would be about $400 to fix. He drove off (there weren't any dents, just a little bit of paint rubbed off), Caitlin and I went inside to eat lunch. I called my mom to let her know what had happened. I enjoyed my lunch and talking with Caitlin (another of the world's nicest people), but afterwards, when I was driving home, I started to freak out.

Fortunately, when I got home, this guy called and said not to worry, he had taken care of the paint damage himself, he wasn't going to call the insurance or anything.

I breathed out a huge sigh of relief.

I love nice people.

Perfection

You know what's frustrating? Sitting down at the piano and playing a piece of music you learned years ago. You remember most of it, you play it through a few times, then you get frustrated. Because you can't play it perfectly. You never could. You perfectly remember every note you learned incorrectly, every chord that you couldn't voice right, every musical phrase butchered by your imperfect fingers. You remember it perfectly. You play it perfectly. But it's not perfect.

Every piece of music that I love I destroy. Rachmaninoff's Prelude, Grieg's Concerto, Chopin's Etude, Debussy's Doctor Gradus, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I love them so much. My heart breaks every time I hear them, because I cannot play them the way they sound inside my head.

In my mind, they are perfect. I can see every note, every dynamic marking, the composer's birth and death years, the double bar signaling the end. They're each beautiful. They look beautiful, they sound beautiful, they're perfect.

I am not. I try so hard to reach that perfection, and every time I reach, I fall short. Someone once said "shoot for the moon, if you miss, you still land among the stars." I'm not shooting for the moon. I'm aiming at the perfection that is always just out of my grasp. So even if I miss, which I do, I have nowhere to land.

I've been told no one is perfect. If that's true, why do we keep trying? Maybe it's because we are commanded to be perfect. It's not an impossible task. Sometime in the future, I will be perfect.

Let me say that again: I will be perfect.

No one can stop me. I will try to reach perfection every day of my life. I will still be frustrated. I will still have mistakes. I will still remember all the wrong notes I learned so long ago. But I will fix them. And one day, I will play music that is perfect. So perfect that the music in my head will match it, and there will be no disharmony. And I will finally be satisfied.