It Happened...a while ago...

You can tell how excited I am to tell all of you about one of my first big achievements, which happened about a month ago. The reason I waited so long was to keep you all in suspense of when I was going to post about it. Well, wait no longer because here it is!

My car did make it to 200,000 miles! It didn't croak a few miles before it was supposed to happen. It happened right after the afternoon session of LDS General Conference (check it out if you missed it. Amazing!). It happened at the perfect time as well.

I knew that it was going to roll over soon, so after conference, Kristin, Josh and I all got in my car and drove around for a few minutes until it finally ticked over. As soon as it hit 199,999, we all got really excited because we knew that it would soon tick over. But when was it going to do that? The suspense was killing us.

When's it going to change?

We were driving along 500 West, turned right on to Bulldog Boulevard and waited until it ticked over. As I was driving, the light ahead of me turned red and I thought, "wouldn't it be awesome if it ticked over as soon as I stopped?" As soon as I thought this, we came to a stop and sure enough, when I crept to a stop, it ticked over. 200,000 miles! [insert celebration here. See celebratory pictures below] This was also perfect timing because I could easily pull out the camera and snap a couple of shots of the odometer.

200,000! Woot!

                                                (excited!)                                       (excited!)

(mission accomplished! yes!)

Way to go Corolla. Keep going strong. I'll see you at 300,000.

Major Event Coming Forth

So, from the title, you may think that this is some major event of epic proportions. Well, you thought right.

I drive a 1999 Toyota Corolla. She's a trooper. In fact, she's about to pass a huge milestone.

200,000 miles!

At this moment, I'm about 150 miles short of that. I'm pretty sure this is my last tank of gas before she roles over. Just to get an idea of how far 200,000 miles is, I've put this together for you.

Distance from my house to my Grandparents (in Utah) :: 1 mile

I've traveled to my grandparents house and back home 100,000 times!

Distance from my house to my other Grandparents (in Colorado) :: 500 miles

I've been to my Grandparents house and back 200 times.

Distance across the country (California to Maryland) :: about 3000 miles

My car has been across the country almost 67 times.

Diameter of the earth :: 7,926 miles

My car has traveled to the other side of the earth through its core 25 times (12.5 times there and back. I've still got a ways to go to get back home)

Circumference of the earth (around the equator) :: 24,901 miles

My car has traveled 8 times around the earth.

Distance from earth to moon (from core to core) :: 238, 875 miles
My next destination. Better pull out my set of moon tires. I'll finally get to use them! Good thing I brought my iPod, too.

New Olympic Event: Chair Stacking

I work a custodial job while going to school. Despite the common conception of custodial jobs, I actually love doing it. I don't love it because of the things that I have to do (such as clean up a backed up sewer mess. Eww!), but my supervisor and coworkers make my job interesting. The reason for writing this post comes from my experimentation to make carpet cleaning fun and interesting. I'm going to share with you a little on how to make something dull and boring a little more interesting and worthwhile.

Carpet cleaning by nature is nothing special and very monotonous. Basically, you move the furniture out of the way, vacuum, spray down the soap, then extract it. I have been experimenting with making the first step interesting: moving furniture.

Most of the carpet I clean is found in classrooms and there are a lot of desks to move. When I first started, I would just push the desks to one side. Then I experimented with stacking. The trick with this is to stack them so that they don't fall and severely injure the person in the morning that has to move all of them back. I also see it as a way to make the morning person's job interesting. It's like a puzzle that they have to take apart just right so that it doesn't come crashing down. For example, this is my latest stack.

This is by far my most complex stacking job to date. I'm always looking for ways to make the stacks higher and more complex. It keeps my brain working while doing mindless tasks.

Coming soon...

Hey everyone! I'm attempting to put recordings of my music up from my senior recital. Sorry if you all get disappointed every time you check my blog, but these past few weeks have been super crazy. I just finished my senior composition recital on Feb. 3 and it feels really good to have it over with. It went so well and I hope that you enjoy the music when it gets posted. Come back soon!

What is Philosophy?

Inspiration for this post has not come from a profound answer that I happened to stumble upon during my nightly, deep ponderings of life (by nightly I mean rare to none. The latter actually), but from a hilarious joke and presentation from my philosophy professor of what philosophy is not. Here's how it went.

Our first assignment for the class was to ask three people "what is philosophy?" and we would discuss the answers in class. In our class, a common answer came up, which was that philosophy is the love of wisdom. Our professor then began a 30-minute lecture, as if he had been hoping and praying that this answer would come up in class, about how "love of wisdom" is not what philosophy is and that it in fact tells us nothing about philosophy. Now for the best part.

He began to break down why people would think that philosophy means "love of wisdom." It came down to this. If we look at the word philosophy from its Greek origins, we see that phil(o) = love and sophy = wisdom/knowledge. Sometimes, this kind of breakdown of a word from its origin helps us to understand and get a good grasp of what it might mean, but not in this case. Then came the best example I have heard in my life.

He presented us with this scenario: He needed a babysitter for the night while he and his wife enjoyed a nice dinner together. They were discussing who they should hire for the job. "Hey! The perfect guy for the job is Steve, from down the street. He's a pedophile" (ped = child/kid, phil = love, thus a kid lover or person who loves kids). Perfect, right? ... Wrong!

Awesome.

Reflections on a First Week

This is my last semester of my bachelors at BYU and the first week has been an interesting one. Here's how it went:

Monday :: Longest day. Ever.

I start the day at 10am with a philosophy class. What is philosophy? Who knows. I guess that's why I'm taking the class. Then I was off to Form and Analysis at 11. Another music class. Should be a good one. Then a little break before a rigorous rehearsal of Mahler 5 at 1pm. Yeah, Mahler is kicking my butt. It's going to take a lot of practice to play that piece. After rehearsal, which ends at 3, I just sat around waiting for horn class to start at 5. Then work at 6. This isn't as bad as my Mondays last semester, but it will be a close second. We'll see how it goes.

Tuesday :: Worst day. Ever.

I started off the day with a horn lesson. That wasn't the bad part. What comes next really made my day awesome. After horn lessons, I was not feeling well at all. Thanks to a beautiful friend, Kristin, I was able to get home so that I could get some rest. Didn't get much rest though. I spent the remainder of my afternoon getting to know my toilet really well. A little too well. Because of this, I missed my composition class and work as well. Kristin also came down with a huge migraine, which was also no fun.

Wednesday :: Things are looking up!

I turned in my first assignments. I was playing awesome in orchestra. Learned that philosophy does NOT mean love of wisdom. Still don't know what it is, though. Turned in my program and packet for my senior composition recital. I'm excited for it (I'm still scrambling for some players, which is kind of scary!). Went to a fun art store with Kristin where she bought a ton of acrylic paints for this semester (can't wait to see her new projects!). I worked that night and got bored, tried to find some stuff to do and eventually left for home.

Thursday :: Not too shabby

The morning was a little rough because my stomach was not cooperating. Everything settled down by class time (I don't start classes until 3pm! First time ever!) I spent most of the morning practicing, which felt really good. I haven't had that much time to just sit down and practice for a long time. I may actually get good at the horn this semester!

Friday :: Great day!

Found out that my philosophy teacher is hilarious. Ate some Pier 49 pizza. Absolutely fantastic. Got completely embarrassed in front of one person. No one else in the world saw what happened, but I turned red and was quite embarrassed anyway. Learned a ton about 20th century orchestration in just two hours from one piece by Mahler. Cool! Then, the day ended with a game of operation and building a fort. How cool is that?

Though things started out a little rough and dismal, things only got better. If my semester reflects anything from this first week, it is going to be an amazing semester.

Chocolate Milk

So, I got up this morning and decided that I wanted some chocolate milk. I got upstairs, poored a glass of milk, grabbed some Nesquik and was more than ready and excited for my cool, refreshing glass of liquid chocolate paradise. I opened the chocolate to find that it hadn't been used in a little while and was a little compressed and hard. So, my natural inclination was to put the top back on and give it a little shake to loosen it up (because everyone knows that this makes your chocolate milk fluffier and lighter. Duh!).

As I'm doing this, I'm watching a little Sportscenter, listening to analysts talk about the Saints and Colts perfect season, Tiger Woods, BCS hopefuls, etc... when all the sudden, I see chocolate powder come flying out of the canister. I look down and found Choco Mountain.

I didn't realize that the cap wasn't on all the way. All I did was look and laugh at myself. Then I grabbed my camera and thought, "This would be a fun blog post!" So here it is. Just thought some of you might have wanted to share this little moment with me.