Beliefs

I've needed to say some things for a very long time. I finally can't get away from the feeling so I'm going to do it here. This year has been interesting as far as mormonism goes. I've had a few friends "quit" the church, and many movements have been spreading around to create "awareness" for certain issues and at times I wonder myself what is right and what is wrong. But there is a fix for that, for me at least. And that is the Book of Mormon. I haven't been reading it regularly as of late and that has been not so great for my spiritual health, but I still know it is true. That book is from God and it speaks to me. Or at least has spoken to me. And why should I forget the times it has spoken to me in the past? Those were very powerful experiences. And so when I hear "Joseph Smith did this" and "Joseph Smith lied about that" and stuff, the question should not be "Is the church he 'founded' a lie too?" Rather, I prefer to ask myself "Is the Book of Mormon still true?" Of course it is! I'm not going to be a Laman or a Lemuel and forget/disregard the spiritual experiences I have had. The Book of Mormon says itself "And if there be faults they be the faults of a man." Yes, Joseph Smith was a man. He probably had many faults. I prefer not to study them because that is not important. The important part is that The Book of Mormon came from God and Joseph Smith translated it and so he was a prophet. Just like that. Same thing in the church today. The question is not "Are the people in this church perfect?" but "Is this church directed by Jesus Christ?" I see around that there are many people with many faults. I choose to ignore them and go with what I know to be right, and that is the teachings of Jesus. Jesus would not hate another person, He would not shun somebody who has different views, He would not kick somebody out of church for not wearing best dress. Anybody who has read the Bible knows he said to "love one another" and "judge not" and "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick." Everyone is welcome to come unto Him. Everyone is welcome to church. Everyone is welcome to be my friend (even if I am a horrible friend). I know that there are many members of the LDS church who may not fully understand these things, but that does not make me believe that it is not the Church of Jesus Christ. I believe that my church has the proper authority to administer sacred ordinances here on the earth and that I, personally, must still do my part to endure to the end, that I may find myself worthy to enter the Kingdom of God in the next life.

I realized something.

You wanna know why Mormons are so adamant about marriage being between one man and one woman? Because that's what the federal government forced down their throats when the practice of polygamy came about. Polygamy was not illegal in the United States until after the Mormons started practicing it. People who didn't like the Mormons needed a reason to get them in trouble, so they created the law that outlawed something they were already doing legally. The renouncement of polygamy followed naturally because Mormons also believe in honoring the law. That's why some Mormons get so heated up about the subject of the definition of marriage, because the government defined it in order to punish members. Maybe that's why the government is hesitating now to redefine it, because they were wrong to define it in the first place.

I've commenced!

April 20, 2012
I graduated from Weber State University today.  There are two important things to get out of that sentence: one, that I am a college graduate, and two, is less obvious, but Weber State is awesome and so therefore I am awesome for graduating from there.  What a feeling!  I may never have to write a paper again or go to classes I don't actually personally need!  I can read books and work out again!  And yet, there are some things I will miss.  Like Dr. van der Beek.  And Dr. Yang.  And Dr. Carroll and Dr. Palen and Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Johnston and everybody that is awesome.  Also dropping things off of tall buildings.  And practicing on nice Steinway pianos every day. Oh boy, I'm going to miss my departments so much.  I'll go back and visit :-).  My life existed until today.  Now, I don't really know what is next.  Everything is changing and there are so many options and plans can change any time, at this point at least.   So when anybody asks me what are my plans, I really don't know what to say.  In school, the answer was always clear--do some stuff in the summer then go back again in the fall.  Not so anymore.  I don't know where I'll be in the fall, hopefully somewhere awesome, but I will try to post here more often, especially since I don't have to worry about writing papers now!  It was overall a pretty dang good day!  Weber State graduate!

Oh, and I bought an iPad to reward myself!

New York Trip!!

So I went to the National Conference for MTNA again this year, in NYC. It was awesome. I made good friends with the people in the Steinway booth in the exhibit hall. Right, the Steinway booth--they totally brought in a guy to carve out an ornate piano case in front of everybody for the three days. AWESOME! And they had out a finished ornate piano (I forget the name of the design, Chippendale maybe) to play on, and oh, did I play on it. I kept going back too. By the end they were requesting certain of my pieces and remembered my name. One of them gave me his card in case I ever want to try and work for Steinway. Work for Steinway!! That would be super awesome!! Well, I also got to go on a tour of the Steinway factory. Super-awesome-sweetness!!! You bet I enjoyed that. They bent a piano rim in front of us and I saw the ladies assembling the action and everything was so clean but a bit loud. It IS a factory. A cool one. They all wear T-shirts that say "I build the world's best piano." Heck yes.

I got lots of free stuff and learned a few things too. Sunday evening I tried to go see Stomp but they were mean and wouldn't let me buy a ticket. So I went to go see NEWSical the Musical off-Broadway instead. 'twas fun. One of the funnier parts was when a gay couple got married and both sets of parents tried to give the bill to the other, but they just kept passing it back and forth cuz they each think their son is the groom, right? LOL. They also made fun of Arnold Scwarzenegger (the guy playing him WAS actually pretty muscular), Lady Gaga (side note: at the conference there was a piece introduced as "Lady Gaga Fugue," a fantasy on "Bad Romance" for piano duet, that was so hilarious I might actually buy it one day), Paula Deen, President Obama, Angela Lansbury (as a phone sex actress), the Italian cruise-ship captain, the republicans (Mitt Romney every few moments: I'm still here!), and so much more, including a commercial on how to escape the IRS by faking your own death. The show changes monthly.

Monday night was freezing cold (wind chill factor: 32). But, I had to go to Times Square and get those name-paint things for the grand piano practice rooms that I've been wanting to get ever since I found out the conference would be in NYC. Due to the wind, there was only 1 painter person I could find. Glad I could find one, though! She kind of tried to rip me off like last time but I didn't even have all the cash she wanted so it turned out okay. Speaking of ripping me off, the hot dog guy made me pay $2 and the pretzel guy made me pay $2, but I was sure they should each be $1. Oh well, no biggie. I tried to talk them down but I wasn't confident enough, not having paid close enough attention or asked someone who would know first.

Stories from Tuesday night to Wednesday will have to wait a few months until they are declassified. Because they are SO classified right now. My resume is going to be SO awesome!

What I've been working so hard on that I hardly had time to post anything ever

No, not the flyers! The recital, silly! But I did have a hard time choosing between the two, so I've been using both.

I DO know all the answers.

Brother: But, do you know the answer to LIFE?
Me: Oh yeah, it's 42.
B: Wow, 42, and it's the first one!
M: You googled it?
B: Yes.
M: I told you!
It was so much more awesome in person. Go, nerdiness! Also, I'm proud to know that Google does know the answer to life, the universe, and everything :-)

Physics

So I have senioritis. If I'm at school I can do my work but if I am at home, it's rough. However, the point of this post is not that. I'm writing because I am at home and should be doing my physics homework. I will but after I tell this story. I took Physics for Scientists and Engineers way back in 06-07, along with all the other physics and science majors. I did VERY well in that class. A lot of people assumed I was a physics major cuz I hung out with some to do my homework all the time but really I never was one. This still confuses people. I guess because I did so well in the class. Anyway, back in 2010 I was informed by a good friend that I only needed 8 more credits just to be a physics minor. I totally took her on. Fall 2010 after not having done much physics at all since 2007, I took Astrophysics. Totally rocked that class. 3 credits down. Spring of 2011 my schedule conflicted with Modern Physics so I put it off until this spring. After having looked into various scheduling options and being assured that it would not conflict this year. Fall of 2011 I started to freak out because I could not schedule in a physics class again. But, the department is cool and I got into a Directed Readings course for 2 credits. We read "The Physics of the Piano" and it was the most awesome book ever. 2 more credits down, 3 to go. Spring 2012: time to register for Modern Physics. What a surprise when suddenly the week before I registered, my music history class was changed from 9:30 MWF to 8:30 MWF. Not my idea of a happy day. That's exactly when Modern Physics is taught. So long story short: I go to my music class and someone records physics for me, then I listen to it and copy her notes afterwards. So far, I haven't had any help on any of the assignments and I'm doing GREAT! Last week I had to stare at one problem for a while three different times before I whipped up some awesome trigonometry-ness to tell it who was boss. And today actually, I thought I needed help on a problem, but it wasn't to be found, so I worked on the problem for 10 or 15 more minutes and got the answer by myself! I haven't done much hard-core algebra, calculus, or trigonometry for a long time. But I can still do it.

I was made to be a physics minor.

My First Opera

I went to the Opera for the first time last night. I never went before because I knew I wouldn't appreciate it, but lately that has changed. I've taken music history classes before, so I wasn't that keen on taking it AGAIN because the history for music minors and the history for music majors are "different." I'm still not that thrilled about it, but my teacher is pretty awesome and honestly I have learned some stuff I didn't already know. Like how to appreciate opera.

So, it was back in the time of Shakespeare, when people went to see plays a lot. Plays could be comedies or tragedies, and were performed in verse (i.e. iambic pentameter). Songs were/are also in verse. There was this group of guys in Italy who decided to try an experiment and write a play that would be entirely sung. Not that weird, really. They tried it, and it was cool. So they did it again. And it caught on. And the costumes, the scenery, the drama, it's all supposed to be overdone. It's a show. I get it, I can appreciate it now for what it is. Even the recitative parts, I knew that that was more dialogue-ish parts but the way he taught us was that he handed us each the first three lines of the Gettysburg address and made us notate the rhythm of the speech. I so GET it now. Then I figured I should go to the Opera because I would be able to appreciate it. And I did. And I will again.

2 Lists

List of things that are good:

my husband
music by Franz Liszt
computers
internet
eBay and Amazon
my pink pen
graduating
Filipinos
summer
techno-cello
Steinways
the Physics department


Un-named list of things that did not make it onto the first list:

Drivers License Division
Zions Bank
my hair
Science Saturday
piano lessons on Wednesday

The 1st of December

So, the first of December was the second-to-last day of class. I had a 7:30 class that day. When I was headed out the door at 7:15 (yeah, I know...) my mom says, "are you sure you want to go outside?" And I'm thinking like, of course, I have to go to school... She tried to talk me into taking the nice car but I didn't. Apparently much of I-15 was closed because of semis blowing over. Once I started driving I did realize it was quite windy. Up on the highway there was stuff blowing around like branches and trash, and I saw shingles flying off buildings. On the other highway I hit a branch but it wasn't bad. Getting to the building from the car was fun, being as light as I am. The door was really hard to open.

I was late and had somehow left my notebook at home so I didn't actually go to class. I went out the 2nd exit (even harder to open) and to the next building. It was really loud there with the wind blowing around, you could hear it. The guys I needed to see there didn't show up so I went back to the other building through the 3rd door. When I walked back through to where the 2nd door is, some people told me how the wind just blew it shut and all the glass shattered and it was an amazing mess! I was too scared to go look at it. As more people began arriving at school, the stories got more intense. They saw trees blowing over, debris smashing car windows and cars, fast-food signs exploding, power lines coming down, etc, I was sure glad I got to school early even though I didn't go to class!

The glass ceiling in another building was getting stuff on top of it and breaking it somewhat and the college sent everyone text messages to not leave the buildings they were in around 9:15. My 9:30 class was supposed to take the final exam. We tried contacting the professor to convince him that that shouldn't be necessary anymore but to no avail. We went to class, and had our exam, but the north wall is 80% glass and it was loud and scary and distracting. At around 11 the university texted everyone again to say that classes were cancelled until the afternoon, and to stay inside until it was safe. Not a problem for me, I had a lot to do.

I finally left around 4 and had to go to a copy place, but the standard one(s) I would have gone to (and everywhere else on or around Harrison Boulevard was closed for damage/power problems, so I had to go to this other place and they made me do it all myself which wasn't cool but it got done since Dec. 1 was the deadline. The trees by the parking lot had fallen down and crews were already cutting them up. Stop lights had blown off their poles and gotten lost. Many places between Ogden and Layton had lost power and places further south where the wind had actually been worse. Many homes (especially ones close to the mountains) lost shingles, fences, and trees.

I just figured it was December saying "Hello." So, I said "Hello" back, with the quip, "We love you too!" Sarcasm! Roofs are still shingle-less in places and many fences are still down. But we are all okay and that shouldn't happen for another 50 years or so. There's your story :-) Sorry I take so long sometimes!