Swingin' Good Time

I'm sure everyone's heard, but I just thought I'd blog the fact that I'm now on the BYU Swing Dance Team!   I tried out a week ago, and found out the results on Tuesday.  As you can imagine, I'm SUPER excited about it.  On Tuesday when I found out, I was bouncing up and down and had this ridiculously huge smile on my face all night.   

I'm not exactly sure what team does, though.  I know I have team practice Tuesday and Thrusday nights, and there is a dance every Saturday night.  I think that we do both competitions and performances, but I really don't know.  I guess I'll find out sometime, right?  As it is, I'm looking forward to improving my swing dancing a LOT. 

As a kind of related, kind of not, topic, I've started exercising a lot more this week.  While watching two hours of training videos for the Tree Crew, I realized that I'm going to need a lot more arm and core muscle than I currently have.  Also, my roommate Kayla is talking about her eating/exercise diet, and that's helped motivate me as well.   Lisa and I went to water aerobics last night at the Provo City Rec Center, and it was so much fun!  In a painful, muscle-fatiguing sort of way.  So I think I'll be doing Water Aerobics Monday and Wednesday nights, Swing Dance Tuesday and Thursday nights, and some combnation of them and/or other activities on Saturdays.  It'll be so good for me!  And don't we all just love the feel of sore muscles?  I'm just excited for spring when I can do more out of doors! 

Day of Happiness

Today I've been very happy at many little things.  It rained this morning! I got to use my cute plaid umbrella for the first time.  My French test was easy.  In French class, we watched part of the movie that my entire UofU 1010/1020 course was based on.  It brought back some fun memories.  It was such nice weather at work!  I was working in my t-shirt, and normal leather gloves instead of my insulated ones.  I actually got to work on some trees today, which was exciting, since I really didn't know what I was doing, and no one else was there for the first half hour.  I texted Lindsay all during work, which made things so much better.  I walked home barefoot!  This was amazingly happy.  It was such beautiful 45 or higher degree weather, with sun and everything.  And it's Friday!  I get to watch movies tonight with Jerin (she got her wisdom teeth out today).  Over all, just a great, happy day!

And this is me at work.  I wear my sunglasses the whole time - eye protection, you know. 

Ok, I need some feedback.  Do you guys like my short posts, or should I save it for when I actually have something to write?

Moving on!

I just had to post a short blog about the new happiness in my life.  We, the Tree Crew of BYU, have finished taking down Christmas lights!!!!  That's all I've done since I transferred crews, so I'm pretty excited to be moving on.  We even did a couple of hours of pruning today.  I'm just so excited to be trained for tree climbing and bucket riding and chain sawing.  Real tree stuff.  I also just had to love the Danger! sign on our trailer.  I love the weird, random signs like this.

What a day!

    Today has been a long, busy, rather productive sort of day.  I realized last night that I had utterly failed to use the holiday to do homework, and that I had a ton to do today.  Yay for me, I managed to get done everything that I needed to!  Mostly because I only went to work for one hour instead of 3 or 4 like i normally would on Tuesdays.  

    Tonight was Swing Club!...and Swing Team try outs!  It was really fun!  I was a bit nervous, just because I'm not very experienced.  We did handstands against the wall (one of the lifts involves the girls doing handstands), which I rocked at - yay tumbling and gymnastics!  I didn't do so hot on the jazz choreographied part, but not terrible.  Then we did partner dancing, with switching partners every couple of minutes (which was good, since there were a lot more girls than guys).  I've never done blues swing before, but I did ok, even if it was awkwardly NO personal bubble.  And a lift, which turned out pretty well.  After the jazz circle (think, people showing off at a stake dance, in the big circle...yeah. like that), which i went into once.  I did a round-off back-handspring, just to see if I could.  I could, if i did a step out.  I think that earned me points.  All in all, pretty good, I think.  I'll know if I made the team on Saturday night or Monday sometime.  I'll let you know!

    Also, just as a side note, I was a sadly unpatriotic person today.  I didn't watch any of the inaugeration.  In my defense, I was on campus for about 14 hours.  I'll watch some coverage of it sometime. :)

En Francaise!

Today was pretty happy.  I went to the French speaking lab, which is pretty much just practicing speaking one on one with a native French speaker.  The happy part is that I actually felt pretty good about it - I could explain things like my parents and little sister living in Holland, both my brother and my sister are getting married, and I'm studying landscaping.  Sometimes I couldn't exactly tell what she said, but I understood the gist of the questions, which was a good thing.  I'm improving!

   Work today was pretty good.  It wasn't too cold, maybe in the forties when you were in the sun (Which I made sure I was, all the time!).  We got a lot of trees done, with all the lights off them.  It helps when we actually have the truck with the hydraulic lift bucket.  So maybe on Tuesday we'll be doing something else!  I was up in a ladder unwrapping lights off branches for most of the four hours, which is a big improvement than standing in the snow and wrapping the lights up, like I mostly have been.  It's interesting at work, because there's a broad spectrum of work ethics in this crew.  There's some people that work hard and don't goof off, look for stuff to do, etc.  And then there're some people who do a lot of standing around or driving the van around.  Of course, when they do work, they get a lot done, but that's kinda beside the point.  I'm definitely trying hard to be one of the hard working ones, mostly because then it's not so boring or cold.  We didn't have that much of a range in my last crew.  So, yeah, work's going pretty well so far.   

      And now it's the weekend!!!

Short and sweet!

   I think, from now on, I'm going to write little shorter blogs more often.  That way I can write when i don't have something monumental to say.   

    Last Saturday I went to a Wyview "Dance through the Decades" Dance.  It was kinda fun, but mostly I really liked my outfit.  It was that dress I found at the DI when I went with Mindy Hall after Christmas.  I don't know what decade I was dressed as though.

    For work this past week, I've been working with my new crew.  It's an interesting collection of individuals.  I think pretty much everyone on the crew is a Landscape Management major, and most of them are emphasizing on Arboriculture.   I was a little scared of some of the crew members at first, but I think it will be a fun crew to be on.  I even got to be up in a tree the other day.  We're taking down Christmas lights right now, which is a pain, because 1) it's really cold, and 2) the lights are done Temple Square style, which means there's about thirty strands to a medium sized tree (medium is about a foot diameter trunk).   It'll take forever!

Blessed are the easily amused...

I have finished my first week of the semester (14-ish left!).  Now that I've been to each of my classes at least once, except the one I missed on Tuesday evening (oops!), I kind of have a feeling for what this semester will be like.  And I'm excited for it.  As a general forecast, I'm going to predict an increase in socializing and exercise, with a chance of a lot of early mornings.

Honors Book of Mormon - I'm thinking I'll really learn a lot in this class. It's a much larger and interactive class than my BofM class last semester (not that it's too surprising, since that one was at 7am, and now it's at 9am).  Prof. Williams told us to be sure and bring our Books of Mormon to class.  I had to struggle with an internal giggle about "BookS of Mormon."  The good - I'll be learning more about the Book of Mormon and we get to sing a hymn to start the class.  The bad - I don't have any friends in that class. Yet. 

 

French 201 - It looks easier than last semester's 102.  Maybe because we're just going into depth on things I have already learned twice.  The good - really nice girls in my class; the bad - no boys at all in my class.  Except the 24 year old RM teaching us.  

Introduction to Soil Science - Kind of boring, because the professor lectures without much class interaction, but I find the subject not too bad, so that helps.  The good - a lot of people from my Living with Plants class plus new people like Jessica, and Zach. The bad - I'm going to be falling asleep a lot in this class.  I can tell.

Intro to Soils Lab - The professor and TA are really funny and helpful.  It will be fun.  The good - I'll probably do the labs with a girl who was in my Living with Plants class.  I hadn't really talked to her until the Lab on Wednesdy, but I can tell she'll be fun.  The bad - the professor told us to expect to be there the full three hours every week.

Accounting 200 - The one class I'm not looking forward to.  The good - I don't have to go to this 8am class very often, and Heidi from work is in the class with me.  The bad - the professor, even in his media presentations, talks forever about a lot of trivial stuff.  

Residential Landscape Design - I'm worried i'm not artistic or creative enough for this class.  Also, I missed the first day of class, and I have an assignment due this week.  Stupid TA didn't show up to help me. :(  The good - this class will help determine whether or not I actually want to do design.  The bad - it's on the very farthest side of campus, down the big hill. 

And work.  But since I'm transfering crews tomorrow, I'll wait to talk about that.

Snow, snow, snow!

My opening days at BYU in 2009 have been covered with a snowy white blanket.  As much as I have thus far enjoyed my classes this semester (it looks like it will be pretty fun), I would say that the snow is much more memorable.   It started snowing pretty heavily Monday afternoon, at which point I was happily not called into work, because I hadn't yet contacted my new foreman, Max.  By Monday evening, I figured I really probably ought to help my crew and get some work hours in.  I learned via text messages that our crew (the pruning crew) was meeting at 2 am Tuesday morning!  yikes!  So I went to bed right away.  

    Despite the earliness, I enjoyed the first four hours of snow removal.  We work on the stairs, so I got a very good leg and arm workout.  I was in a very interesting mood, laughing at everything.  Sometimes I would just think of something random, and start laughing.  Like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  One of my favorites was when Sam Braden asked Dave, "Can you turn the rear heater from "hot as Hell" to "burning sun"?" It was hilarious.  I also enjoyed knocking snow off the branches overhead onto my friend Heidi.  Heidi told me that of the last 20 hours, she's been shovelling snow for 11 of them!  It's crazy here!  

  I'm planning on taking a nap before my 4 o'clock class, and to go to bed early so I can repeat this funness tomorrow morning.  Yay.