Bit of Ivory

Today has just been absolutely crazy. I work from 8-12, then have class
from 1-5:30, then work again from 6-10. Although, I’m going to drop my
1:00 class. Not that I don’t think I’d like it; I would like it. It’s
The English Novel, and the course is focusing on Gothic novels. It
would have been really cool; the only problem is, I don’t think I’ll
have time for it. I’m taking Shakespeare and Living With Plants and
Computers and the Humanities already (we’re learning Quark XPress and
Photoshop), and today I added a class to replace the one I dropped
yesterday. There’s only one problem. The class I dropped yesterday was
only .5 credit hours. The class I added today was 3 credit hours. That
put me at 15.5 credit hours, and that’s not counting the editing
internship I was planning on doing with the Collegiate Post. This class
is so cool though. It’s an Honors Program class, and even though I’m
not in the Honors Program, I really want to take it. It’s a literature
class, focusing on the poets of the Great War (or World War I, as it’s
now called). It’s being taught by Robert Means, who is the English and
American Literature librarian here. I work rather closely with him,
since I’m an English Major, and he’s an awesome guy and will do a great
job with the class. And this is the only semester it’s being offered,
while the English Novel is offered every semester (although not
necessarily with the same books and teacher; but I would love that
class no matter what books we read as long as there’s at least one
Austen in it ). So if I’m going to drop a class, it’s going to be
that one.
So I think I’m going to do it. What with working 18 hours a week and
all the reading I’m going to have to do for my various English classes,
I’d go crazy with that schedule. And having the extra hour at lunch
will help me get my homework done.
Not to mention the fact that the textbooks for the new class cost me
another $100. If I return all my novels, I’ll be able to afford it.
Hopefully.

Well, for a first day of school, today sure seemed a lot like summer
vacation.
You see, I only have two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and I’m
dropping one of them, more later); one at 2:00 and one at 3:00. I work
starting at 8:00. So it seemed like just another day waking up early
and going to work. It was weird.
There were a few differences today, though. I work from 8-10, then have
an hour break, then is the University Devotional (we have them once a
week), then I work again from noon until 1. I have another hour break,
then class. Weird enough on normal days, but since today was the first
day of class, there was no devotional. Now, there are no classes
scheduled during the devotional, and usually all the services on campus
(library, bookstore, food court, everything) shut down during the
devotional. Since there wasn’t one today, everything stayed open. And
the entire student body converged on the Wilkinson Center (the student
union). Do you know what it’s like to have 29,000 students hanging
around campus with nothing to do? It’s crazy.
So with so many breaks, and no homework I’ve put off doing, I was at a
loss about what to do. I finally checked another Perry Mason book out
of the library and read. I’m going to like my first class on Tuesdays
and Thursdays: Social Dance. I like to waltz, swing, cha-cha, etc., but
this will be the first time I’ve taken an actual class in it (unless
you count the 1-hour foxtrot class I took at the Murray Arts Center).
Most of the guys are freshman, but I’m not in it to meet guys, anyway.
My second class, however, I think I’m going to drop. It’s not that it’s
going to be a hard class or anything, in fact, it’s almost comically
simple: Flexibility. The teacher said that all we have to do to get an
“A” is go to a women’s basketball game (she’s an assistant coach; she
actually played for the Utah Starzz for two seasons) and bring in an
inspirational quote from someone we look up to. Easy, right? There’s
just one problem: you have to dress in BYU-issue P.E. clothing. Now,
this is the paradox of the century, but true nonetheless: remember how
I said that LDS garments go all the way to your knees? BYU issue shorts
don’t. They’re not mini-shorts by any means, but they’re not really
long, either. There’s been a lot of complaining about that, I
can assure you. Anyway, I would have to change out of my garments,
which is not something I really want to do in a public locker room. So
I think I’m going to drop the class. I’ll take bowling next year
instead.
So when I got home from class, my sisters and I went swimming. That was
fun. I haven’t been swimming in over two years, for two reasons: 1) I
look awful in a swimsuit (I still don’t look great, but I look better
than I did two years ago, by virtue of losing 15 lbs.) and 2) I can’t
see worth beans. I am so nearsighted that without my contacts in or
glasses on, I can’t see more than a few inches from my face. I hate not
being able to see. I can’t wear my contacts in the pool–I have rigid
gas-permeable lenses), and goggles leak anyway. Swimming’s just no fun
when you can’t even tell who the person next to you is. So I just
haven’t gone swimming for a while. Today I got around the contacts
issue by just not getting my face wet. It worked quite well; although I
couldn’t do any real serious swimming, but since that wasn’t the point,
I didn’t mind. I think I’ll go swimming as often as I can; until the
weather gets to cold and my complex empties it out and covers it up.
Long entry. Oh, well. It was a long day.
Oh, and Elizabeth: you can’t quit. ‘Nuff said.

Of all the things I planned on doing Labor Day weekend, spending the
whole time assembling complicated electronic machinery was not one of
them.
See, my dad is an electrical engineer (audio is his specialty), and for
the past 4 years he’s been working on this giganitc project. It’s a
translation system for the Conference Center, the new gigantic (20,000
seating capacity) meeting hall for my church. 10 years ago, he designed
the translation system for the Salt Lake Tabernacle, but with the
announcement of the new building, they decided to update the
technology. Well, the building was finished 2 years ago, but dad’s
still working on getting the system done. It’s almost there– it needs
to be installed and working by the first weekend of October, which is
our next General Conference. So this weekend we assembled one component
of the system, the ATM-2000s (Atomatic Translation Mixer).
I’ve attached front panels to chassis; then put front panel circuit
boards in the panels; installed fans, volume controls and headphone
jacks; and attached the front panel to the main chassis. My fingers are
raw from screws and nuts and ribbon cable. And we’re only delivering 32
of the 66 they ordered. After Conference, they’ll be 34 more to put
together. Not to mention the OACs (On-Air Controllers) and the Booth
Module (remote access for the translators).
Now I know why I’m an English major.

I can’t think of a thing to blog, so I’ll do the Friday Five:

1. What’s your favorite piece of clothing that you currently own?

Umm, that would probably be my new skirt. It’s actually in style. *gasp!*

2. What piece of clothing do you most want to acquire?

Do shoes count? ‘Cause if they do, then it’s a new pair of sandals exactly like my old ones. I’ve had that pair for 4 years, and before that, I bought the same style every year– I’ve only had this last pair so long because I couldn’t find them any more! Some are really close, like a pair I found at Payless– but none are exactly what I want. It’s really frustrating, because you used to see this same style everywhere. Now, it’s gone, and I’m very, very sad– because my old ones broke. *cries*

I used to want a leather jacket, but I got one for Christmas last year.

3. What piece of clothing can you not bring yourself to get rid of? Why?

Well, there’s this dress–actually, there’s two of them. I went to a dance my junior year, and bought a beautiful dress. The next year, my Madrigal choir picked the exact same dress as their uniform. I took mine in to see if it would match closely enough– but it didn’t. It was a slightly more purple tint of blue, and the pattern–it was kind of a brocade– was reverse on mine. It would have looked terrible. So I had to buy the other dress. I like the original one better, so I don’t want to get rid of it, but I can’t bring myself to just throw out my Madrigal dress– so they’re both still hanging in my closet. I don’t fit into either of them anymore, but I’m getting closer.

4. What piece of clothing do you look your best in?

Umm, that would probably be either my new skirt or another one of my dresses– this one is a brownish-green (I know, it sounds ugly, but it’s perfect on my coloring). Only problem is, I can’t wear it right now because a) It’s got a couple of rips that need to be repaired and b) The sleeves are sheer, and since I went through the temple, my garments show through. But I will get that dress fixed. ‘Cause I look dang good in it. It also helps that I paid about $10 for it.

5. What has been your biggest fashion accident?

Umm– the entire decade of the ’80’s. And early ’90s. I can’t think of a single outfit that I wore in elementary school pictures that was anything less than disastrous. I did like the dress that I wore as a flower girl for my aunt’s wedding, but I only got to wear it about 3 times– I accidentally spilled nail polish on it. Oh, well.

As for a fashion accident that really wasn’t my fault, I’d say my Maid of Honor dress from my best friend’s wedding. I helped pick the pattern out– empire waist, of course. It was going to be a lovely lilac satin with a lilac organza overskirt. I was excited. Then my friend changed her mind– silver crepe-backed satin with a peacock blue organza overskirt. It was a nightmare. After the wedding was over, I made a silver chiffon overskirt instead, and now it’s a pretty nice dress– but I never look at pictures of myself in that dress in its original incarnation if I can help it. *shudders*

So how do you like my attempt at school spirit? Since I’ve now moved
back to Provo (school starts Tuesday), and we just won our first
football game (42-21), and I needed to play around with the colors
anyway, I thought I’d show a bit of loyalty. So there you have it,
folks: a BYU blog. Navy blue, “caramel”, and white. I’m quite pleased
with it, myself.
I got back from the game about an hour ago. We played the University of
Syracuse, and it was awesome. I love football. I won’t say that it was
born in me, but it was definitely bred in me. We’ve had season tickets
to the BYU games for 15 years now (I was 7)–we started out with two,
now we have five (there are six in our family, mom usually stays home).
At first, I admit, I was more interested in the Sno-Cones and hotdogs
than I was in the game, but as I got older I really started to enjoy
it. Now, you might call me a total freak. We have to sign up for
Saturdays at the library, and I pulled up the schedule to make sure I
didn’t sign up for any days with a home game. November was tough, since
there are home games on the 2nd, 9th, and 16th; then on the 23rd is the
annual BYU-University of Utah game–our biggest rival. I can’t miss that.
Luckily, there’s one more Saturday in November (the 30th), I was able
to fill my quota of one Saturday a month. There was one thing at the
game that was extremely funny, though. The name of the Syracuse
quaterback was awfully familiar: R.J. Anderson. As there was more
than one Anderson on the field, they had to say his whole name almost
everytime they refer to him on the radio; and as he’s the quarteback,
he got referred to a lot. I giggled everytime they said the name.
So, Rebecca, are you really a big African-American guy?

Okay, this
is just way too funny.
All the HP spoof posters on that site are good, but I must say that the
“Planet of the Snapes” one has got to be the very best. Unless it’s the
“Lord of the Snitch” one. . .

You will notice that my template has reverted to the original one. That
is because #@(*% Blogger lost every single link, color, etc. from my
template. I went in there to make a minor change, didn’t notice that
all the HTML tags looked weird, and stupidly clicked on “save changes”.
When I went to “view web page” the page was completely white. No links.
No colors. No anything but text. So I’ve spent the last hour or so just
getting my blog back to this point. I had to re-input all the code for
YACCS, and Sitemeter, and imood, not to mention redoing every link I
had. I’m saving a copy of the template in notepad, so that just in case
when I come back tomorrow to change the colors, etc., they’ve lost it
all again, I’ll be able to start from here, at least.
I was thinking it was time to change to colors anyway, but sheesh, I
wasn’t thinking this.
Maybe I should just can the whole thing and get a cooler template. I
really like what Trisha (I’ll be adding a link soon!) and Teri have
done to their blogs.
Or maybe I’ll just keep it like this until I find out if I can move it
to Ben’s server or not.
Now, I’m going to bed.

My brother came home with a copy of Mozilla
1.1 today (actually, I guess that would be yesterday). I’ve been
getting really sick of having my Netscape 4.7 crash on me. Dad has a
copy of Netscape 6 that I could have loaded, but I have it on my laptop
and am so far relatively unimpressed. I’ve been wanting to try Mozilla,
but figured I could wait until I move down to school (which supposedly
will be today), where I have a nice high-speed connection. Of course,
when Ben came home with a copy, I pounced on it.
So far, I love it. It transferred my Netscape profile over seamlessly,
complete with e-mail, cookies, bookmarks, and everything. It looks just
about like Netscape, so it’s not too jarring. But the best part is the
tab feature. Instead of opening links in new windows, you can open them
in new tabs withing the browser. I currently have about 10 tabs open.
It’s so cool!
Of course, I haven’t been able to try it out until now, which is why
I’m Blogging at one in the morning. My brother, dad, and two of my
uncles just bought a server to host their various websites– such as younglds.com, johnbytheway.com (don’t blame
him, he’s a writer, not a designer, and he did it himself ), and
quite a few others. Anyway, he’s been working all night to get DNS
running on it so he can transfer all the domain names. So I was just
barely able to come online.
I’m now thinking of buying a (small) share in the server so I can host
this blog myself. Now I just need a domain name. Hmm. . .*checks
another tab*. http://www.coqueenofprocrastination.com is availiable.

Well, it’s official. Over at the Sugar Quill message boards, the
Professors give out titles. I requested one, and it was granted.
I am now the Co-Queen of Procrastination.
Heehee.

I’m about to enter the Palm Generation.
I’ve actually been thinking about it for quite some time; ever since my
brother upgraded from his Palm IIIe to a Sharp Zaurus (runs on
Linux–my brother is a geek) back in April. He offered to sell me his
old one–for $80. Now, Ben’s Palm included a keyboard and lots of
software, but only has 4MB of RAM, and besides, it was 2 years old. I
could have gotten the same thing on e-Bay for $40 (complete with
keyboard), and I can get a brand-new Palm m105 for $100 that has 8MB.
So I told Ben to go jump in a lake.
I still wanted a Palm though–this next semester is going to be
extremely busy. I need something to organize my life; the problem is,
that I hate big, bulky Franklin Covey type planners. I’d just leave it
home half the time, plus I’d need all new insides for mine (I haven’t
used it in 2 years), so it would cost me upwards of $50 to use one
anyway. Mom suggested a little planner, but I’ve tried those, and they
don’t have enough room to write down everything I need to. So, it
looked like a PDA of some kind was the best option.
I’ve been researching all summer, and finally decided that my ultimate
Palm would be the Palm m500. I don’t need color, since I won’t be
playing video games or anything like that, and I don’t want a pocket PC
(I just bought a laptop, for heaven’s sake!), but I do want some pretty
good bang for my buck, and I’d like something small. I looked at other
companies, but wasn’t too impressed with the Sonys, or the Handsprings,
or anything else I saw. Plus, my dad owns an m500, and he really likes
it. The drawback: retail price, $199. Ouch. I don’t have that
much money.
So I started doing some price comparisons. Bizrate.com helped me out. They
pointed me to a place called Returnbuy
Direct, which sells open-box returns and refurbished items at
substantially lower prices. I ordered a factory-refurbished Palm m500
for the low, low price of only $129.95 (plus shipping and handling) on
Saturday. I just got the e-mail saying that it had been shipped.
To add to the convenience, I got a leather wallet case from eBay.
There’s room for my palm, credit cards, bills, and change, as well as 4
expansion cards. That set me back an extra $24.99 (including shipping).
Which means I’m still about $40 ahead of where I’d have been if I
bought it new.
I love shopping on the internet.