BYU vs. Utah

Q: Why couldn't any elementary students in Utah county use the restroom at school today?

A: Because all the Hall passes were intercepted.

While we feel sad that BYU lost, it was pretty ridiculous.

Hey Stephen

Two of our favorite artists, David Archuleta and Taylor Swift, came out with new CDs this week. I was surprised when I looked at the list of songs on Taylor Swift's Fearless to find a song called "Hey Stephen"... and lucky for me it's not even a man hater song. :)

Today I took the Praxis test for Speech-Language Pathology in order to graduate/get certified. I've been studying for a couple of months and especially hard during the past 2 weeks so it was nice to get out of the way! The only down side: the score doesn't come for 4 weeks. The really good up side: Stephen surprised me and took me to Winger's afterwards where we had DELICIOUS sticky fingers got to watch some of the BYU vs. Air Force game!

Elections and Story

Elections

Just thought I'd post a little bit of a response to the election. I have high hopes for President-Elect Obama. My personal feeling is that every candidate, from either party, has something good to bring to the table. I feel like Obama will be a good leader that will be able to engage not only a good portion of the U.S. population, but also a great deal of the world.

He will no doubt make many mistakes (what president hasn't?), but I feel like he will do much good--the only way that won't happen is if those who don't agree with Obama just sit and look for every mistake he makes. Instead, I urge us to look for the good that is there and support it, and then be actively involved in our communities to resist or change the policies and ideas that we don't agree with. We have a lot of power to affect the success of the next 4 years.

It was disappointing, to me, to see that 95% of the officials elected in Utah officials were for one party. I see a lot of good in both parties, and I think that we would be benefitted from less homogeneity in the political system. One thing that really bugs me is that the Utah voting machines allow you to vote "Straight Party." What better way to let people ride on laziness and not even look at the issues or platforms? I personally I thought it was really fun to look at all of the different local officers running (the President isn't the only politician that affects our lives), and to decide which seemed to have a better platform. I'd encourage any readers to do the same--it feels good to get involved and know what's going on in your own backyard, and to examine the ideas of politicians (instead of just putting faith in the word Democrat or Republican).

Story

Probably very few of you out there know that I am interested in writing fiction. Now, I don't want to grow up and have writing be my career. I probably won't even mess with trying to get published. I just think it's a fun hobby. I'm in a creative writing class right now, and I'll be taking a class about writing fiction (particularly fantasy and science fiction) next semester from an author I really respect (Brandon Sanderson--some of you may know him as the author who will finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series after the passing of Mr. Jordan. Personally, I like his original stuff better than wheel of time--he reminds me of Orson Scott Card, but with Magic instead of Spaceships)

So I'm throwing myself out on a limb here--I'm going to make my first short story available. It's still a draft (the second draft, actually. The first one had a lame ending, and some relationships in the story were kind of weak. It's a lot different now), and is going through some revisions as we speak. But I thought I'd put it up, in case anybody was interested. Just so you know: it's 9 single spaced pages, and it's a fantasy. So if you're interested, go right ahead.

Here is the link: Light Show .

Feel free to leave comments on the blog if you happen to read it. I'd love to hear what you have to say (both good and bad).