Summer Term... Is absolute madness.

Hello! So I actually had time today to sit down and write some posts, so I finished up my last post and decided to go ahead and write the next one up through today. But, I actually didn't finish it until a day after starting it anyway as I talked with my new roommate instead. It turns out that I actually rather like the Day by Day format, as it helps me keep track of what I've written and what I haven't, and I hope it's fairly simple to keep up with reading wise and that I don't jump around too much... Anyway, back to my super awesome second day working (Wednesday July 11th). After going through all my classes with no real stress, I went home and chilled out for a couple hours. Then, around 3pm I went into work and worked until Midnight with only a half hour break near the middle! It was super fun, and actually exceedingly productive as I learned a ton and got some homework done.

Then came thursday, which was a very interesting day indeed. I took my Book of Mormon 1 Midterm, and got an 86% on the multiple choice portion which was about 66% of the whole test, so it wasn't too bad. After I finished classes, I went home and made a batch of cookies, Oatmeal butterscotch if I recall correctly. Then once those finished I headed off to work for a few hours and learned even more than the past couple days since my boss was there and able to teach me herself. Anyway, at about 5:40 I left work for my first ever Intramural Frisbee game. It happened to be the last one of the regular season, but the past games I had been occupied or didn't yet know what ultimate even was. So, I was gearing up and ready to play with my roommate's team for the last game, and it turned out that about half the team was out of town so even with me playing we still only had 6 players, while the other team had 7 on the field and a sub. So I would recount the game, but it's a bit fuzzy and I don't want my roommate to get mad when I mess something up that's important. The important thing is that we somehow pulled through and won the game 11-9 (or 10... not sure). So after I went back home and showered I headed back to work until midnight, finishing out a super entertaining day (at least for me... if y'all had been at the game you would know what I'm talking about).

Finally it was at last Friday, meaning the weekend was in view, and what a weekend it looked to be. And so I went up to math class super stocked that it was finally the weekend and that once I finished my homework assignment, I would finally be able to go to work and chill out and do some crossword puzzles instead of working on math homework. Well, it turned out that my super nice professor decided that since we had an exam starting Monday there would be no homework turned in until Wednesday after the exam. Subsequently, after class I went straight home and got ready for work. I worked until about 9pm doing various things, then came home and took a nap (yes a nap...). After I napped for a couple hours, I spent some time hanging out with my roommate playing video games and such since I didn't have any homework that needed to be done. We actually ended up staying awake until about 4am, which for most isn't very unusual but was way weird for me since I usually go to sleep by midnight. So, because of this my Saturday didn't actually start until noon...

So around noon Saturday I woke up and ate some brunch which was good because I hadn't eaten anything substantial in many hours. shortly after that it came time to get ready for the ward activity up at Canyon Glen Park that was starting in about 2 hours. So after showering and getting ready for the day, I went up to the Wyview Multipurpose Building and consulted with my co-worker at the desk regarding checking out a volleyball, and possibly the volleyball net. It was decided that if I could get the net down and up without any issue I could take it to the park for the activity, which being the good Boy Scout I am turned out to be a trivial question. So, with the Wyview volleyball net and ball in tow, I went with my other committee members up to the park at the appointed time of 2pm. Well, it turned out that about half the committee didn't have a ride so we didn't actually start doing any set up until about 2:30... and then it decided to pour rain to try and cancel the activity. But, my church leaders being the optimistic people they are, decided that it would  be fun to play in the rain a while (which it totally was) and they had faith that afterward it would be a nice day (which it was a beautiful day once the rain stopped). So I ended up having a blast playing volleyball in the rain, and then some Big Ball Soccer on a recently aerated lawn that was super wet as it was still raining when we started. This resulted in plenty of sliding, slipping, wind, and muddy backs for just about everyone playing , and it was SOOO much fun!!  Anyway, after that it was time for dinner, but before that it was decided we should do one of the most dreadfully embarrassing things possible - sing happy birthday to those whose birthday it was that day (there was one) and we also threw in the person having a birthday the next day. So, after that ordeal it was finally time to eat and just about everyone was starving, which was a really good thing as there were only about 130 people there but we had food for about 240 people. So, after most of the ladies had gotten in line and were getting served their food I proceeded to get in line for Sloppy Joes, Baked Beans, Watermelon, carrots, and home-made root beer (basically one of my favorite meals... like ever.) which was all super tasty. But before I was able to sit down and begin enjoying my food, after I put my plate down my friends decided that since I hadn't yet made up my mind if I was going to the dance later or not that I was, and had even picked out someone for me to ask. So I went and asked her, and thankfully she said yes even though I was totally awkward while asking. After that super embarrassing sequence, I went and ate my super tasty food. Shortly after that I went and took down the volleyball net in preparation for our speaker to get there and talk to us a bit. It turned out he was actually a super awesome speaker like the bishopric had said, and I was super glad I had stayed to hear him. Anyway, after that I went home and got ready for the dance, which was a very interesting experience... that I don't particularly wish to relive in order to describe it to you. But, after the dance my group and I went back to the apartments and watched some hilarious videos in the "Kid History" saga, but after only getting to watch like 4 of them the guys had to leave as it was midnight and therefore visiting hours were over.

Then came Sunday, which was a pretty typical Sunday, at least by my standards. I went to church, then came home and cleaned a bit. After that it was pretty much time for choir, so I headed off to that and we worked some more on our pieces, which are "Come, Come Ye Saints" (singing this Sunday the 22) and "For The Beauty of The Earth" (performing on the 5th of August). Anyway after that I had to go back and make more cookies in anticipation of the upcoming building meeting. Which, sadly was not very exciting as it was mainly about cleaning checks which are this week for most people. Ours isn't actually until the 26th of this month, since I live with the RA and his boss has to check us. So anyway, after that we all went to what I think might be the shortest ward prayer ever... it lasted a grand total of 8 minutes, most of which was due to the talent taking up about 3 of them (which was someone playing a trombone, so it was sweet). After that exceptionally short ward prayer I socialized with some friends and chilled out for a little while. Then I went home and stumbled upon my roommate and his girlfriend watching "The Other Side of Heaven" which is one of my favorite church movies, so I pulled my chair over and watched with them.

That pretty much ended Sunday, as it was like 10:40 when that movie ended, so let's move onto Monday. This was certainly a good day, as I got to go to all my wonderful classes today and learn about such various things as Christ's ministry in the Americas, Zenos' Allegory of the Olive Tree (which somehow lead to a discussion over revealed knowledge and human knowledge), and Transformations using matrices which is super exciting. So, after all that wonderfulness I went to the library and studied for a while in preparation to take my math test which opened in the Testing center today. After studying with a pal of mine, I went and took the test, which took about an hour, and got 9/12 on the multiple choice half with a totally unknown score on the free response half of the test. Then it was time to go home and do laundry, which was way over-due, as my clothing drawers were literally empty except a pair of black dress socks and a long-sleeved shirt. Shortly after my laundry was done it was time to go to FHE, which turned out to be a werewolf game on steroids. We literally had almost 30 people playing one game of werewolf (like mafia... discussed a bit in my last post). So our first and only game we played took about an hour, which meant all of our FHE time. This for me was sad, as we could have easily split into 2 or almost 3 separate groups and played with faster games and more variation, which I find to be more entertaining. Anyway, another issue I had was on the 3rd night they decided to double the number of people killed... but I was the seer and still only got to know about 1 person each night, so when there's more than 20 people I couldn't do much. But, shortly after the first few people died, they realized they probably wouldn't get to play another game and they went and got out Apples to Apples, which even though I'm terrible at it I thoroughly enjoy it. After FHE, I went home expecting to just chill out for the rest of the night and do a bit of homework and play some games. Well, it turned out that was not at all what happened. What actually happened was I had to rush and clean my room up... because I had a new roommate! He walked in around 9:40pm, and he's super awesome. He's actually a lot like my other roommate, but I don't know if they've noticed yet, so I won't tell them. Anyway, after cleaning my room up and talking for a while we headed to sleep, which was odd since I wasn't able to use what is now his bed to climb up to mine anymore.

Tuesday was pretty routine, I went to class, then came home and chilled for bit before going to work for a few hours. The only noteworthy thing that happened Tuesday, aside from work being super awesome, was that after my Book of Mormon 2 class, I talked with my professor and found out that my argumentative email had worked and I got 4 points back on my exam. During work, there was actually a lot of things going on. There was a relief society activity, some RA interviews, lots of people using practice rooms, tons of shredding (which was actually a good way to pass the time... just turn on some music and have at it). After that I came home and played some games and did some homework until my roommates returned and we chatted for a bit. Finally it was Wednesday (Today) and I again went to classes. But, after classes I went and took my second Book of Mormon 2 "midterm" and got a 96 on it, which was what I should have gotten on the first one (and that's what my score is now according to gradebook). Anyway, after that I turned in some math homework and headed home on the Ryde. After my other roommates had gotten home we all piled into my new roommate's car and went up to Buy-Low which was super awesome as I finally have most of the stuff to make another lasagna! Anyway, that puts me pretty much at this current moment, and since I don't have any plans for tonight there probably won't be another entry talking about today.

So, 'Til Next Time,
- Jordan Nielson

P.S. If you want my address it's located at the bottom of this post. \/

A Crazy week...

Well, It's been a little over a week (yikes!) since my last post on here, but it's definitely been for a great reason! No... seriously, I've actually been having fun and enjoying myself! Seriously, baseball bowling, big ball soccer, church, family home evening, work, tennis, and even classes have been incredibly enjoyable this past week! So I guess I'll go back to my last entry, which ended (actually started...) with Independence day, which leaves me starting with last Thursday the 5th of July. So on Thursday I had my religion classes again, which after having a day off was super awesome, because my professors were basically as tired and excited as we were that it was the weekend (at least for those classes) and that we hadn't had class the day before that we actually got a lot done in those classes. So after those classes I did some math homework, which was more fun than usual as we're getting to the cool stuff of making coordinate systems from nothing and being able to work in whatever dimension we want (which is usually 3 dimensional space)! Then came Friday... (DAD stop reading here and skip to the next paragraph) where I did the thing i'll probably never do again this term... I skipped math class, like the total rebel I am. I ended up instead sleeping in until 9:30, then hung out with my roommate until noon, doing various super fun things. Then I made some super delicious M&M/Chocolate Chip cookies (recipe courtesy of my aunt) which were a total hit among my friends. After that I went and took a nap for a few hours.

After my nap, I went and hit the tennis ball for a while with a friend from the building next door who happens to be in my Family home evening group. We had a super fun time which involved climbing fences, hitting our neighbors, and just having a blast playing a bit of tennis. Then once I got back home my roommate, his girlfriend, her roommate, and my roommate's twin brother and I went and played baseball bowling. Now since I doubt many of you know what that is, basically you take some bottles, (we used glass, but I would probably recommend plastic ones) about 12-20 if using glass should be sufficient, a baseball, a camera, and a broom and dustpan (if using glass bottles to clean up should one break). Then you set them up just like bowling pins, establish a line to bowl from, and bowl! It's a blast, especially once the first bottle breaks and you clean it up, since you're always on edge expecting another one to (which by the way we only broke 1 bottle). After that we watched a musical (on dvd) called seven brides for seven brothers, an old western type musical which was pretty entertaining. Anyway, after that I went to sleep to begin a slightly less exciting Saturday.

Although the vast majority of Saturday wasn't too exciting or eventful, I did do something pretty sweet. For an upcoming ward activity one of my neighbors had gotten a few of those exercise balls (the big bouncy ones), and on Saturday night we went and played soccer with one of them until we got kicked off the field by the maintenance people who were locking it up. But, that was super fun while it lasted and was a pretty sweet appetizer for the ward activity coming up.

Sunday was as usual one of my busier days, this sunday more so than the past couple. On this Sunday (July 8th), I woke up early in the morning, like 7am which considering church isn't until noon is pretty early, and made Lasagna which is basically my like favorite food. So once I had finished with that, I went and got ready for church because it was about 11am, and the ward choir (which i'm in) was performing that day. So, by 11:30am I was up at church ready for choir practice to start before sacrament meeting, and lo and behold there were actually a reasonable amount of people there! So much so, that we finally had more girls than guys, when at most of the practices it's been the other way around. So we practiced (and sounded pretty awesome if I do say so myself), and went and sat in the congregation waiting anxiously to perform our number which was an arrangement of "O My Father" (hymn 292 for those LDS people who want to know what it says). So after our performance church was pretty standard so I'mm going to skip to right after church when I went home and at some of my super tasty lasagna. Then at 4pm I went back to church for choir practice in order to prepare for our performance coming up on the 22 where we're singing an arrangement of "Come, Come, Ye Saints" in honor of Pioneer Day which is supposedly a pretty big holiday around here. Later that evening, we had a super fun building meeting where my awesome roommate had arranged for a few girls to come in and answer our questions about dating. It ended up that we just barely had enough time for the questions to be answered, and overall it was a pretty big success, which meant my cookie stash had been destroyed again. After that we went over to ward prayer, which was fairly quick and painless, much to my dismay as I had heard it was supposed to be a chance to socialize but it usually is not.

Then Monday came around which meant it was time for class... again. I think my most exciting class on this day was Book of Mormon 1, as we were preparing for our upcoming midterm as fast and efficiently as possible, trying to get through all the Isaiah parts of second Nephi that would be on the test. After classes I had a meeting with my peer mentor, who's pretty cool and helpful. Then, later that night at family home evening we actually had both our "parents" there, and it turned out our dad is pretty cool even though he'd missed the first couple evenings. He brought a pretty sweet game over for us to play called "Werewolves" which is kinda like Mafia, but he had special cards made specifically for it that included tons of special roles not played with in Mafia that spiced up the game. One set of cards we played with, which he promised would be super fast, was that everyone turned out to be a werewolf and so we all won on the first night. It was a great way to end the night!

Then comes Tuesday slowly dragging along, as classes are unusually boring this day due to Isaiah in Book of Mormon 1 and Helaman in Book of Mormon 2 not being as exciting as they could be. But, after I got home from classes I found an email from the person at the front desk saying that I could start working there THIS week. I had already applied and been interviewed earlier in the summer, but hadn't actually found out when I was starting. So, after I finished the laundry list of things I needed to do before I could start working, which included watching a FERPA video and going back up to campus and filling out some forms, I was able to go in for a few hours that night. It turns out it's a lot more entertaining than I had originally planned, and I'm even able to do some homework if there's nobody there needing help and I've finished my tasks for the shift. So, the first day was of course a huge learning curve with finding out everything I was supposed to know and trying to remember as much of it as I could. So the super awesome thing was I was basically told to come in whenever I could for this week until I picked up some shifts because during the summer there's no limit on how many hours I am able to work each week.


And so, my excuse for this post taking so long to finish is that I was working a ton this past week... like 26 hours, plus classes and homework leaving little to no time for blogging :P

Anyway, Till next time,
- Jordan Nielson

Independence Day... is a week long?!?

Hello there! I just discovered that there are people who celebrate American Independence for the entire week... shooting off fireworks every single night of that week. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah well anyway, This week has so far been a total blast! I'm gonna start with yesterday (Independence Day (July 4th)) and work back from there, because these past few days have just been super incredible!

So yesterday was ridiculously fun, starting from the hour I awoke to the hour I went to sleep, which was actually a respectable time unlike many people, regardless of the fact there were still classes today. So to start off my day we had a building game of ultimate, which was awesome! I learned that it's super fun to play ultimate... and my favorite part is definitely defense (as it seems with most sports I play...). I just find some sort of enjoyment in knocking down the other team's pass and making it difficult for them to advance, though I may be just strange... who knows? So after spending over an hour playing Ultimate I went home and proceeded to relax and chill... ya know catch up on that Book of Mormon reading I've been slacking on, since now in Book of Mormon 1 we're in the heat of the Isaiah portion of second Nephi. Anyway, after that at around 4:30 I went to a super sweet barbecue party where we had a 3v3 soccer game (which actually ended up a 4v4 later) going while they food was being grilled. The food was absolutely delicious, which I found impressive since most of the cooking was done by freshman. Then after we had all eaten we went and played volleyball in the sand pit for a couple hours, which was totally fun. Sadly the pit was only large enough for the teams to be 6 people each, so we ended up rotating teams often and only playing to 11. After Volleyball we had to do, as one person pointed out, our adult responsibility of cleaning up after ourselves, which involved cleaning up the food and moving all the tables and chairs back to their respective apartments, one of which was on the 3rd story (great idea right?). After all that the group dispersed, some going up to the Y to watch the upcoming fireworks that occur due to stadium of fire and just general jubilee throughout the valley, but I chose to stay behind and ended up showering then going to play some basketball for a couple hours, watching whatever fireworks I could see from the stadium across the street, which were super intense.  Then, unlike a great deal of college kids on a day they don't have school, I went to sleep at the incredible time of 11:30pm, since ya know... I had classes today starting at 9 (which I still barely got up for... it was tough).

Moving backwards to Tuesday, a day filled with not much going on, though I did get some stuff accomplished. I went on my first bike ride in at least a year, to a fabulous place for college kids to shop: Big Lots. I got me some super awesome flashlights for a few bucks, and some batteries for about a tenth the price they would have cost at the creamery. Aside from that though, I don't recall doing much on Tuesday... just the typical homework and basketball.

Then there was Monday, where all my classes were super awesome as it was the start of a week with a holiday in the middle. Then later that day I had my first ever experience in the BYU testing center. Which for those of you who don't know is this building next to the Joseph Smith Building, where basically half the second level is a huge room with a ton of desks for students to take their tests at. There is no time limit on tests there (so far as I'm aware), and it's basically open around 8 hours each day, so if you wanted or were able you could potentially take up to 8 hours on a test, though I'm not sure how that's even possible. My first test of the day I decided would be my Book of Mormon 2 test on the second half of Alma, chapters 30 through 63. I ended up getting a 92% on the test, which means I missed 4 questions, 3 of which I think I know what they were (accursed True/false) but the other I have no idea which it was. Then after taking a break for a little while to eat a sandwich (peanut butter and honey for those who wish to know) and refresh myself a bit on the material I went to take my ELA test, which didn't have as promising of an outcome. I got a 32/48 on the multiple choice portion, but one of the questions I had an issue with so I'm going to discuss that with the professor tomorrow. Anyway, what was really killer was the short answer part. It took a good hour and fifteen minutes to do a mere 5 problems, none of which were very easy. In addition to the already difficult part of that was that one of the proofs we had to do involved a concept briefly covered in class that's actually from like the last chapter of the book which we are nowhere near studying yet, and as such I totally forgot about. So in total it looks like I missed 16 points on the multiple choice, and 8 points I know I missed on the problem solving, putting me at a 76%, so I rather hope there's a curve of some sort, even a few points would be nice. Luckily though there's still 2 more tests and the final in this term, though I guess not so lucky since there's only a month left in the term, Yikes! After finishing those crazy tests I headed home to get some reading and homework done before FHE, which was super fun. We had a surprise party for one of our family members, who I think is the most hilarious person in our family, she's super awesome. Anyway, we had some tasty cake, and we played apples to apples which was a total riot with some of the things my family put down for green cards such as "pure"... yeah it got a tad strange!

I guess I can't fail to mention what happened at building meeting this past Sunday either though, as that was pretty important stuff that I need to get done before Saturday (oh no!). So at building meeting my wonderful RA roommate announced that he had a challenge for all of us in attendance, to go on at least one date by Saturday... which I didn't take too kindly, as I didn't exactly come out here to go on dates (at least not seriously) since I'm leaving for 2 years after winter semester. But, aside from that it was just a short little building meeting.

And so That's my week so far, not as exciting as some, but definitely exciting for me.

'Til Next Time,
- Jordan L. Nielson

The Lazy Week

So this past week has been pretty exciting, well not really, but still it's been fun! Monday morning rolled around, so I had classes again starting with Book of Mormon 1. In BoM1 we actually got into the text, and were off to a running (not literally, but we did go through exceedingly quickly) start and we've pretty much finished 1st Nephi (we're actually supposed to finish it tomorrow) at this point. Then came Elementary Linear Algebra, and we also dashed through the last chapter and a half of material so that the test that opens tomorrow in the testing center would be on things we covered, at least briefly. After that I had Book of Mormon 2, in which we have steadily dropped behind the schedule the teacher gave us, we're now about a day and a half behind. So theoretically we're supposed to be about halfway through Helaman by now, but we haven't actually finished talking about the last couple chapters of Alma yet, even though the test on the second half of Alma opens tomorrow. That was pretty much my classes for the week... rush through things in order to get ready for our first tests that start this week. Wonderful right? Well now we can talk about the exciting part, what I did after classes throughout the week! Well... it was exciting for me. I don't actually care too much how exciting you find it though, because I don't think you have much influence on what I do.

So, after classes Monday I went home and started on some homework, the homework due Friday... since ya know I had already finished the stuff due Wednesday for math, so I figured I would just keep working. Well it also turns out that since we're behind in Book of Mormon 2, and I still like to read it daily, I'm just getting ahead in that class as well. So basically, this past week was a week where I worked just enough to stay ahead, and other than that was pretty lazy (hence the title of the post). I did things such as nap, bake cookies, watch movies on netflix, and watch sports.

This past week I made 3 batches of cookies... one Peanut Butter, one Chocolate Chocolate Chip (like the cookie was chocolate and it had chocolate chips in it), and a batch of Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip. Of the 3, my favorite were the Chocolate Chocolate Chip, which were basically a chocoholic's dream cookie. It would put up a picture of one... but I forgot to take one and there's no more left :(
But, I do have a picture of what the peanut butter chocolate chip ones kinda looked like, so check it out:

Anyway, aside from baking cookies I had a blast watching sports and movies on this big TV that my roommate's old roommate from the Dominican Republic left here while he went back to the DR to do stuff. I watched Nadal lose (very tragic by the way), Federer avoid an upset the next night, and Roddick sadly losing. I also watched Thor (the movie), The Princess Bride (best movie ever.), and Back to the Future.



Moving on, today was fast Sunday, which means since church doesn't start until noon, I basically slept in until 10 in order to avoid feeling too hungry before my first ever Break-The-Fast (which I had never been to one before). So this morning rushed by, then during church we had a mere 15 people have time to bear their testimonies, including the bishopric member who started. Considering there was a good 35+ minutes allocated for testimonies, I would try and find someone to blame it on for taking way, way, way too long. So, since the bishop had everyone say their name when they started, I actually am going to put the blame on a visitor who shared their testimony, because he was up there for literally a good 8 minutes.  Seriously. 8 minutes? He made it sound like he was giving a talk... and he was a visitor. Oh well, so after church I had a wonderfully short committee meeting planning our Canyon Bash in a couple weeks, where we basically just touched base to make sure everyone knew what their assignments were. Then I went and had a super awesome time at ward choir practice, which is good considering we're singing in Sacrament meeting next week. Then after that I help set up chairs and tables for our ward's Break the fast, which consisted of ward prayer, where someone shared a short story they wrote and we ya know... prayed as a ward, and some super tasty food, my favorites being the lasagna and the rainbow cookies someone brought since it was a potluck, which by the way I'm going to learn how to make some rainbow cookies... they were tasty.

And now I'm gonna close, even though tonight isn't over as we still have building meeting (ward prayer was combined with break the fast) and go call my dad, since I haven't talked to him in like a week (I'm such a bad son...).

Anyway, 'Til next time,
- Jordan L. Nielson