Bit of Ivory

Today marks 93 days until Order of the Phoenix comes out, and over in the Sugar Quill forums, someone suggested a great idea!

There are 93 chapters so far in canon. Starting today, if you read 1 chapter a day, you’ll be done with the first four books before book 5 comes out!

Cool, eh?

I’m doing it.

We got a new painting opposite the reference desk today. This painting, actually. Because it’s worth so much (I think we paid more than is listed on that site, even), they had to install all these security devices and the area is blocked off by velvet ropes. Not the prettiest painting I’ve ever seen, but it’s better than the highway overpasses we had before, and especially better than the painting of the head of John the Baptist we had a few years ago. I still don’t think they hung it quite level, though.

This next bit of news should come as a surprise even to my family. The other day I walked into the workroom here at the library, intending to do some web surfing before I was scheduled to be at work. Gary Gillum, the Philosophy/Religion Librarian here followed me in, and said– “Hey Emily, how’d you like to make a couple hundred bucks editing a book?” Well, what do you think my answer was? Of course I’d like to make a couple hundred bucks! The guy who wanted the editing done e-mailed me Monday, and I e-mailed him back yesterday asking a few questions, and he replied today and sent me the manuscript. I didn’t want to say anything until the deal was for sure. Now it is!

Basically, this guy is a Mormon Chaplain in the US Army, and has been serving in Afghanistan. While there, he wrote a book of musings on the writings of Paul. He wants to self-publish them, but he’d like them to be gone over a bit first. As of today he was on his way back to the middle east at any moment. He’s going to pay me $200 for a light edit, and doesn’t need it done right away, so it can wait until I graduate. And just like that, I have my first freelance editing job! $200 is actually quite a bit less than a professional editor would charge, but as I’m not a professional editor, I’d feel guilty asking for any more than that.

I got a 91 on my Pearl of Great Price test. I’m fully satisfied with that.

I’ve been blogging for more than a year now. I forgot to mention that earlier. It’s crazy to me that I’ve kept it up for that long, and even crazier that there’s actually people out there reading this darn thing. I still hope to import my old Virtual Parchment entries into this blog so they can all be in the same place, but it’ll probably have to wait until after graduation as well.

Sugar Quill accidentally posted someone else’s story in place of Jen’s new chapter. I e-mailed them, but no response yet. Maybe you should e-mail them again, Jen?

There’s absolutely nothing to do here (I’m at work) so maybe I’ll work on my story. Hey Jen, if you’re reading this, could you get on my computer and e-mail me my latest version of IFL2? It’s the HTML version, and it should be in the Look To Your Dreams directory. Don’t send it to my usual e-mail, though. I have a hard time downloading those on this computer. Send it to Hotmail. You’re a peach.

So today President Gordon B. Hinckley came and spoke at Devotional. I was kind of disappointed in that he didn’t really *speak* so much as he announced that BYU is getting a new president. Here at BYU, Presidents of the University are appointed by the First Presidency. President Bateman has been in office for 8 years, so it was about time for a change. Our new President will be Cecil Samuelson, who is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy– in other words, he’s one of the high-up leaders of the the Church. President Bateman was a member of the Seventy as well. I’ll be sad to see Pres. Bateman go, as he did a lot of wonderful things for campus, but I trust President Hinckley and our other leaders. I’m sure President Samuelson will do a wonderful job.

Although I don’t know why I care. I’m graduating!

It was kind of funny, though. After President Bateman and President Samuelson and their wives had spoken, President Hinckley got up again and said, “Well, as they say in England, ‘The King is dead. Long live the King!'” I’m sure Pres. Bateman appreciated that.

Pres. Hinckley is so funny.

I did absolutely nothing productive, really.

Friday night my sisters and my roommate Amber went to Murray for the weekend. Amber recently broke up with her boyfriend, and needed to get away. Unfortunately, she’s from San Diego, and we BYU students don’t get any kind of spring break, so going home wasn’t really feasible for her. So Lisa and Laura took her home with them. That left me and my roomie Jen with the apartment to ourselves for the weekend. We went to Panda Express for dinner, then dropped in on our Relief Society sleepover– we didn’t spend the night, but we did watch “Return to Me” with everyone.

The next day I watched “The Last Starfighter,” which Jen has been trying to get me to watch *forever*, while Jen cleaned the kitchen. She didn’t feel slighted, promise. Unless she was really really good at hiding her irritation at me not helping. Anyway, after the kitchen was clean (mostly, the floor still needs to be mopped) we went to the BYU class event at the Dancesport championships, to watch the couples from our class who were competing. Our class actually did rather well– all of the couples were called back to the next round, and one couple made it all the way to the semifinals, which were held that night. After that we went to the library and spent the next 3 hours trying to get my pictures from Preference and flower arrangements and stuff scanned. We got them scanned alright, but the stupid computer wouldn’t let us transfer them to a CD-R, or to a CD-RW, or e-mail them. We finally gave up and saved them on Jen’s U: drive (the space BYU provides for all their students). We’ll try again tomorrow.

By then we were starving, so we went to Pizza Factory. Then it was back to the apartment for about 40 minutes, then we went back to Dancesport to watch the semifinals, as well as the national championships in Amateur Latin and Professional Standard and Amateur Cabaret at all the other national events. It was great fun.

Sunday we went to Church, watched the Parent Trap, and fell asleep watching the extras on the second DVD. Our neighbor Katrina came over then, and we watched the A&E version of Emma with her, and ate the brownies that Kat attempted to make (she put chocolate chips and marshmallows in them as an experiment– we think they melted and made the middle not cook at all) straight from the pan. Then we made dinner, planned our Enrichment meeting, went to ward prayer. After ward prayer Lisa and Laura and Amber came home, bringing food with them. In order to make room for the food I cleaned out our half-size fridge.

So I guess I did do something productive after all! Wow!

Lucius Malfoy

Which Death Eater Are YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

The quiz results are funny enought, but look at the bottom of the graphic! LOL!

Today is cloudy, with a cold breeze and a chance of rain. And take a look at the forecast. I *knew* it wouldn’t last.

I don’t know what the weather’s like where *you* are, but here in Provo it’s absolutely gorgeous. The sky is blue and cloudless, it’s 70 degrees and wonderful. There are people sitting on every bench, stretched out on every lawn. Everyone’s wearing short sleeved shirts, knee-length shorts, capris, flood pants, and sandals.

Of course, it won’t last. This is Utah after all. We’re going to have at least 3 good snowstorms before May– probably the first weekend in April, because it’s General Conference and the weather’s always rotten during General Conference.

But I’m going to revel in it while it lasts.

I’ll take a picture of my floral design from today. It’s an everlasting design, which is a nice way of saying it’s fake. I’ve got light blue and dark blue hyacinths, yellow and white daffodils, and yellow tulips. I’m going to get some bear grass for it as well, but I couldn’t find any good stuff when I bought my original flowers. It’s all in a cute basket, and looks very springy.

Elizabeth Smart has been found, and she’s alive!

We don’t know any more details than are in the article, but. . .wow. I’ll definitely be watching this story develop.

Apparently there’s going to be a news conference soon.

The kid’s going to need some serious counseling, but it’s better than *I* had ever hoped for.

But instead I’m writing chapter 2 of I Found Love. The reviews so far on SQ have been encouraging– I’ve already got 5, which is much better than when LTYD was posted. And I got at least one LOL out of RJA before either she or I was kicked out of AIM last night (I can’t tell which), so that’s encougraging. Chapter 2 is going rather well so far. I hope to get at least a rough draft of it done before I have to go to work at 4. Here’s hoping!

Of my new fic is now up on Sugar Quill:

I Found Love.

Now I need to write chapter 2. . .