Freezing Rain. Right.

~ Highlight of the Day: Studying in the greenhouses - it's warm there. And green :) ~

 Bright (ok, not so bright, still kind of dark) and early this morning my roommate and I woke up and walked to campus for our Soil Science lab. Our topic of discussion on the way up the hill was the freezing rain that had been predicted to fall on Provo at 6am. We shrugged off the fact that it was 7am (and not raining), and went to class.

 

After class we emerged from the depths of the Widtsoe Building to discover something somewhat  similar to this:

 

 

Then I spent the next several hours applying ice melt and salt :)

And I'll be right back at it come 5 O'clock tomorrow morning.

Gotta love working for grounds!

 

Cabbage Soup

~ Highlight of the Day: Dinner. I love experiments that go right :) ~

 

 

Today we will leave the world of strings and green things behind and enter the world of . . .

 

COOKING BLOGS!

 

Ok, so I've already been blogging about food off and on for some time now, I know. But today I actually took time to take a fancy ingredients-all-gathered-together-artisticly picture. And this happens to be my favorite recipie right now. So here it is:

 

Cabbage Soup

 

Ingredients:

• One thingy of Italian sausage (the big one or the small one, doesn't matter :)
• One head of cabbage
• A good amount of carrots
• Onions or Celery or anything else floating around the fridge
• Kale - the curly awesome stuff
• Chicken broth (however much you feel necessary)
 
Directions:
 
1. Cook sausage in a frying pan on medium heat until well done.
     Saute onions with the sausage if desired.
2. Assemble the cabbage (sliced), carrots (chopped), and the kale (torn).
3. Add sausage, carrots, cabbage, and chicken broth together in a large pot.
4. Add water untill it is just visible.
5. Bring to a boil and then bring down to low and let simmer for 30 minutes.
6. Add kale and simmer for 5 more minutes.  

 

 (Beautifully gathered ingredients, masterfully sliced and chopped)

 

 

I forgot to take in between pictures. . . so this is the finished soup.

 

 

This soup is soooooo good! And it's what I'll be

living off of for the next week and a half :)

 

 



This is Homework!

~ Highlight of the Day: Leftover tikka masala for lunch :) I love good food ~

 

I was going to do something awesome with this three day weekend we just had. Promise.

 

But instead I did homework.

We learned about negative space. So I drew the space around the stringed instruments. . .
 I'm not sure you can really see what's on the paper at all. . .
but it kind of resembles the acoustic tower to my left. 

'Cause homework for a drawing class is fun. . . :)

 

So. Back story:

I was in weights class with my good friend Annie, and she was telling me about her drawing class, and how she wished she was taking it with a friend so she could talk while drawing for hours on end.

 

Then we had a brilliant idea.

 

I already had 14 credit hours worth of classes, but I could audit the class!

Then I could set aside time to work on drawing (which, let's face it, I just do instead of homework anyway, so why not make it homework too! :), and then Annie would have someone to talk to in class.

 

The plan was flawless.

 

So I emailed the professor.

 

And emailed the professor again.

 

And again.

 

Until the professor gave in and gave me an add code.

 

But I needed an audit code, so after class on Friday (the add/drop deadline) I talked to him in person and explained my predicament. He had mercy on me and emailed me the code I needed to audit the class.

 

Content, I went home to begin my three day weekend.

 

And completely forgot to audit the class.

 

So now I'm taking 17 credit hours.

 

Like a fully responsible college student who can handle the kind

of homework load 17 credit hours produces :)

 

 AND THEN I HUNG OUT AND WATCHED ONCE UPON A TIME WITH THE COOLEST GIRLS EVER KATIEMARIE AND MARINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(a comment brought to you by my lovely roommate, Katiemarie )

 

 

Two Weeks Down, How Many To Go?

~ Highlight of the Day: Playing that one game where two people say random words and try to eventually say the same word. . . I forget what it's called. . . we played it on the bus in Turkey. ~

Well! It's been quite some time since I've last posted. . .

School makes life so busy! I'm currently signed up for 17 credit hours. Once of those credit hours is made up of two classes (martial arts and weights), and I'm planning on auditing 3 of the others, so really life isn't too bad. It will be a miracle if I figure out how to fit 20 hours of work in a week though. We'll see what happens!

It's been cold here. Freezing cold. So cold my hair froze solid on the way to the car Monday night. It's wear-20-layers-so-you-get-to-class-alive cold, and the buildings on campus are strip-down-to-your-bottom-layer warm. Oh the joys of a lovely Provo winter :)

So I've discovered this awesome thing called Kale. It's beautifully green and frilly, cooks wonderfully, and can even be frozen! I'll admit though, I mostly like it because its such a cool looking plant. . . :)

I spent all last year trying to figure out how to make smaller portion sizes cause I was only cooking for one, and this year I'm trying to undo all that - leftovers are so convenient for lunches and dinners!
(if I can win the bitter battle with the tupperware. . . )

*Heartbreak of the Week: The Imagine Dragons concert in Las Vegas sold out right before we decided we had a car and could go. 

To Be Back In Provo

~ Highlight of the Day: Getting my job back at BYU Grounds! ~

(Snow shoveling, here I come :)

I've been experimenting a lot with food in the last few days. Which means I get to eat some really good things, and some not so good things. . .

This is bok choy, or Chinese cabbage, and it is definitely one of the better things I've discovered.
  

And it's snowing! It's kind of hard to see it in the picture, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
I love this place. It's good to be back.

I need to figure out how to incorporate the feel of it into some physical form. . . maybe I'll become a comic book artist and make this the setting of some fascinating story line.
Yeah. I like that plan.

Oh! And it snowed a ton in Jerusalem apparently!
 Here's a picture my professor posted on facebook earlier today:

Looking at pictures of Jerusalem and the Center practically put me in a home-sick-for-Jerusalem coma. It was pretty tough. And then I stumbled upon a Longwood Gardens board on Pinterest, and I was a goner. The past nine months have been amazing. . .

It'll be a good break to have 'normal' for a while though. I just need to figure out how to deal with the occasional bought of 'I just want to be back there!' and I'll be fine :)

First Day of School

~ Highlight of the Day: Seeing all my Jerusalem people on campus - so good ~

First day of class down, many many more to go. I think this will be a good semester though. If I can only figure out how to not freeze solid before getting to class, I think I'll be set! :)

First day of class story: 

I'm a Junior now. I've been attending the good ol' BYU for two and a half years now, and would count myself fairly familiar with my surroundings here. I may even allow myself a bit of pride in knowing where the Cluff building used to be (like the old timer that I am :). 

So I wasn't too worried about the fact that I had no idea where my first class was. Surely, I thought, I can figure it out on the way there. So off I went, decked out in two coats, a big fuzzy hat, and perhaps (as the morning would shortly show) a little too much confidence.

I met up with my roommate (also taking the class) and we set off for the Wilk. We had about 8 minutes before class started, and in those 8 minutes we managed to walk the entire building, but didn't manage to find our class. We were getting a little desperate (almost-willing-to-ask-random-strangers-for-help desperate) when we ran into our RA from freshman year.

She informed us that the room we were looking for, 'EXTENDED IPF', was in the IPF building. Not the Wilk. 

And so began our quick, and slightly embarrassing, trek across campus to the Intramural Practice Fields. Upon getting there (only 12 minutes late :) we saw a group of students just beginning to disperse, and assuming it was our class, walked up and took a syllabus from the pile.

 It wasn't our class.

 So we put the syllabi's back and took a last desperate look around.

That's when we saw the other group of students sitting about ten yards away, listening intently to our professor.

So yes, I am a Junior, and I totally got lost trying to find my first class.

It's been a good semester so far :)

And this was dinner tonight. I was rather pleased with how it turned out, so I thought I'd share:

(tilapia!) 

Good Music

~ Highlight of the Day: playing with gerbils! ~

 

I found a great song. It's soooo great I want to share it with all of you:

(the actual song starts at 2:12. . . you can listen to the first two minutes if you want to, but it's the song that's really good. And the audience members. They're pretty funny too :)

I will be learning this on guitar and serenading my roommates/future husband with it.

Be warned.

  I've already found the chords and lyrics :)

 

 

 

 

 

TRON. . .

~ Highlight of the Day: Getting a letter from my JC roomie :) ~

In the last 12 hours I've discovered a deep love of the band Radical Face. And Spotify. How have I never used this wonderful music software before!?

 

Anyway, we watched the original Tron today. And here's a few pictures just so you can all appreciate the astoundingly realistic graphics:

 

 

It was pretty good stuff. I must say, Flynn (the 'User') has a definite Han Solo/Indian Jones feel to him. . . but in a computer games sort of way :)