HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Today, October 31, 2010, is Halloween!  So, I wish all of my followers a very happy Halloween and hope that tomorrow finds you alive and well.  For this post, I am going to talk about the many different things I dressed up as.  Chronologically, we'll start with a Wednesday night party that we had with some Spanish wards in Provo.  For this, I didn't have much time to come up with an elaborate costume, but was able to dress up as a Swedish soccer player.  I simply wore a soccer jersey from Sweden.  Along with the jersey I wore a headband, long socks, shorts, and I did my hair into a European mohawk.  The next party was on Friday.  I had the great pleasure of attending the Cougarette Halloween Party.  One of the Cougarettes, Bailee, asked me to be her date for the party.  The challenge was to dress up as something with your date.  Bailee had a tiger costume, so I decided to dress up as a caddy.  So, the idea was that she would be a tiger symbolizing Tiger Woods and that I would be Steve Williams AKA Tiger Wood's caddy.  For this, I wore a newsies cap, a polo, a vest, khaki pants, and a golf glove.  I also carried around a bag of golf clubs.  I enjoyed this costume.  On Saturday, we had another date party.  My date, Karlee, and I dressed up as Russian Sailors.  Karlee's grandma had a bunch of costumes that we were able to borrow.  And, we chose the sailors.  I attended some fun parties over the weekend.  Today, however, I don't have any plans of dressing up, unfortunately.

Fall is in the Air

Fall was definitely in the air this past week in Provo.  In fact, it still is in the air.  As I write this post, the smell of baking, seasoned pumpkin seeds awaken the ever so small, but numerous chemoreceptors in my nose.  The time doesn't seem to be going by fast enough.  I would like to eat them now.  These seeds came as a result of carving pumpkins.  On Friday, I had the great pleasure of carving pumpkins with some friends.  We each had our own pumpkin and carved our own designs into the front face of our respective pumpkins.  I happened to carve a happy face which ended up looking like an overly happy clown's face.  There were other faces, graveyards, and haunted houses carved as well.  As I looked into the bowl of pumpkin pulp and seeds, I decided I wanted to keep the seeds to bake.  So, I dug my hands deep down into the orange mush to rescue every single seed.  The process was long and messy, but well worth it.  Well, I guess that remains to be seen.  We will see how they actually taste once they're done baking.  The next night, I was able to go to two different halloween parties/dances.  I, along with some of my friends, dressed up as gangsters.  We sported the flat-brimmed caps, gang bandannas, XXL jerseys, baggy pants, and fresh kicks.  We danced as gangster-like as possible doing dances like the jerk, the reject, the dougie, and the spongebob.  It was a fun night.  There is also a story about a drunk girl that happened to show up at the more sketchy party.  That story is for another time, however.  Obviously, we didn't stay long at the sketchy party.  Well, we'll see how long the fall lasts.  The colorful leaves have been beautiful, but I have a feeling that snow will shortly arrive to the city of Provo.    

Another Week Gone By

I can't believe that another week has gone by.  The time seems to be flying by this semester.  As I was thinking about it today, I realized that we are at the half-way point of this semester.  This means that we are getting close to Christmas which gets me excited.  Well, the BYU football team experienced another sad loss to the hands of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth yesterday.  Our defense played pretty well, but our offense wasn't able to do much against their defense.  We are now at 2-5 and have five more games left.  Three of the remaining games are home games against mediocre opponents.  So, we should win all of those games.  Of the two remaining road games, we'll hopefully win one of the two so that our final record is 6-6.  This would make us bowl eligible.  Hopefully, if we obtain that record, that we get invited to play in a bowl game.  In other news this week, school went well.  I didn't have any tests this week which made it nice, but I did have a lot of Physics homework.  Physics homework takes a lot of time and thinking.  So, I spent a lot of last week's time in the physics lab doing my homework under the close supervision of physics TA's.  On Friday, one of my buddies got his mission call.  He has been called to serve in the Finland Helsinki mission.  I am really excited for him because I served in the Sweden Stockholm mission which is right next door.  I learned some Finnish while I was there, so I've been trying to teach him a little.  Well, that's all for this week's entry.  Hopefully this next week goes as fast as the previous week.

Candy Bar to a Stranger

As stated by Shayne Clarke himself, "this weekend's assignment is to buy a coke for a stranger and then to write about it in your blogs."  Well, here I am.  And, I am proud to report that it was a success.  After we were assigned this homework, I immediately began looking for opportunities to complete the task at hand.  Initially, I found myself fairly busy and didn't really stumble upon any positive-looking situations.  Also, there seems to be a limited supply of Coca-Cola on BYU's campus which didn't help things at all.  The time went by and seemed to speed up as the week went on.  Eventually, Saturday night came and I still hadn't accomplished my goal.  I found myself at a BYU women's soccer that night when I remembered what I was supposed to do.  Todd was with me and he hadn't done it yet either.  So, he ran down to the concession stand, but they were closed.  Sunday came which made it harder to purchase anything.  Luckily, I found a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup candy bar in the kitchen and immediately knew that that was what I was going to give to the stranger.  Sunday night rolled around and I went to the apartment next door for a 10/10/10 at 10:10 p.m. party.  It was there that I met her.  She was a lovely young lady with blonde hair.  I started talking with her and told her that I wanted to give her a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.  Without hesitating, she accepted.  Success!  She thanked me and let me know that that is her favorite candy bar.  We continued to talk and realized that we both know Breck Laing, one of my good buddies.  Apparently, her roommate dated him for a time.  It is definitely a small world, especially on this BYU campus.

Conference and Exams

For this post, I am going to write about the weekend, and I am also going to write about the exams I have coming up.  To start, let me tell you about the great weekend I had.  The reason why it was so great is because we had General Conference.  For my followers that aren't members of the LDS faith, let me explain.  Basically, General Conference is a conference for the the entire body of the Church.  The Prophet, Apostles, and other leaders of the Church speak during several different sessions of the conference.  They receive guidance from our Heavenly Father on what to speak about and convey the message in a way that all can understand.  It is a very happy and spiritually uplifting time for those that watch.  I was especially excited when Per Malm spoke in the last session of the conference.  He is a church leader and he is from Sweden!  He gave a great talk and spoke very good English.  I was able to watch this conference at my parent's home on their TV.  This weekend was one to remember for a long time.  Also, I need to write about the exams I have coming up.  Of course, I have the grammar test for this MCOM class. I will probably take that tomorrow after some last minute studying.  And then, on Wednesday, I am going to take my Physics test that I have to take.  I am not very excited about this one.  It is my first Physics exam at BYU, so I am a little nervous about it.  Hopefully it goes well.  This is all I am going to write about for this week.  Until next time!