Alas... Summer term is over

Well all good things must end right? It seems that summer term has already ended, sadly enough as I really enjoyed studying the Book of Mormon so super often, and meeting and hanging out with all those wonderful people I met. Anyway, I guess I could go over my final week of summer term, since it was exceedingly interesting.

To start with though, I kinda want to talk about my last Sunday in my summer ward, which was certainly an experience. To start off my Sunday, I ended up having to get to church almost an hour early for choir practice, since we were performing. The interesting thing was after choir practice finished, I was asked to give the opening prayer, and then shortly after that they were short on people to help pass the sacrament so I ended up Praying, passing, singing, and bearing testimony. It was a super great meeting, which by the way was a 2 hour fast/testimony meeting with a choir performance after the first hour finished. Overall, the testimony meeting was super awesome, and we had 31 people bear their testimonies, and the choir number went amazingly well. After that awesome meeting, we had a semi-awesome Elder's quorum meeting, which was mostly awesome because we got to recognize our super incredible Elder's Quorum President, and sadly release him (though he was probably glad to be released)! After church, I went home and made a ton of cookies (7 dozen to be reasonably exact) for Break the Fast, which was super fun and tasty. We had a mac-and-cheese potluck, where people were given a box of mac & cheese and told to spice it up however they wanted. We had some very interesting things, such as Mac & Cheese with sauteed vegetables in it, and Mac & Cheese pizza (or at least, that's what it ended up being called). After that, I went and chilled in my apartment for a little while, until my next party was getting ready to start. Which next party happened to be a ward choir party, which we decided to have that morning since it was fast Sunday and our director was not supposed to give us treats that morning. So, we had donuts and cookie cake (I made the cookie cake) which were pretty tasty, and got to socialize with some awesome people who had been in the choir with me. Anyway, after that it was time to go to my next party, a movie party with about 10 other people. I again brought cookies to this (as I was trying to get rid of most of the ones I had in my apartment), and we watch "The Singles Ward" which I really enjoyed, even though it had a few spots where we had to wait for the movie to buffer. It was pretty fun, and we had some entertaining conversation which if I've learned anything here means it stays there.

So after the movie it was pretty much time for bed, which leads me to Monday, aka the last day of summer classes! The last day of classes was pretty intense, largely due to all the information given about the upcoming finals, and also because at the end of the day I realized that I had read the entire Book of Mormon in little more than 6 weeks! Anyway, after classes I didn't do much, finished my last math homework, and such.

But! Tuesday was much, much, much more exciting. Tuesday morning I woke up at the bright and early time of 7:45am (which for a day I don't have school is pretty early), and realized I got up about 20 minutes later than I wanted in order to try out this muffin recipe I have. So, I decided to make the muffins anyway, and they were super tasty, especially once I realized that since I hadn't put anything inside them (I didn't really have anything...) so I decided to put some frosting on them, which made them even more tasty (as before they were just plain muffins... kinda like eating a plain crepe but not as tasty). Anyway, so I took those over to a breakfast party a friend was hosting in order to get rid of a ton of food (which was all really good), and socialized a bit with them before and after eating. After that I went home and packed, because sadly Thursday is (was) moving day and I wanted to move most of my stuff Tuesday so that I wouldn't have to worry about it on Wednesday. Anyway, also on Tuesday I went to a review for my math final, which I didn't find very helpful as we spent the vast majority of our time on 6/30 sections, which isn't much considering the final is (was) cumulative. After that, I went to visit a super awesome friend from home to get a 4x6 index card (I was allowed to use one on my math final, but I didn't wanna buy a whole pack for just one card) and I gave her some brownies while I was there. That night, with the help of a friend I moved the vast majority of my things to my new apartment, and then went to bed nice and early in preparation for my super-long Wednesday.

Wednesday was finals day, which meant that I had to take all 3 of my finals in one day, which I would definitely not advise ever again. But, it had to be done because I didn't have time on thursday (the testing center was only open until 2pm thursday) to take them, so I had to push through. I've since then found out my scores on my Book of Mormon finals, (95% on BoM 1 and 100% on BoM 2) giving me reasonably high A's in those classes, but I don't know what I got yet in math, but it looks fairly certain I won't end up with less than a C- in the class (aka I passed) but I more than likely got anywhere from a C to a B (C, C+, B-, or B) depending on how I did on my final, which I have absolutely no idea about. So, I ended up finishing my finals around 2pm, and it happened to be my friend from home's birthday, and I had made a Cookie Cake for her Tuesday night (there's a picture at the end of the paragraph), so I took her that around 5pm. After I finished talking with her, I went home and chilled out since I was pretty much totally drained after 5 hours of straight testing, and about an hour of walking (I walked to and from campus twice...). So  I chilled for a little while, then went and finished packing most of my stuff.

Then came Thursday, aka moving day. On Thursday I pretty much had one goal - to get moved into my new place and out of the old. I did this reasonably quickly due to help from my super awesome roommate (who is sadly not my roommate anymore :( since I moved) and also managed to go shopping for a bit of food and other supplies that I lacked. Aside from that, thursday was not very interesting. Friday was... curious as I worked about a total of 10 hours, and also did a reasonable amount of sleeping. Then came Saturday where i didn't do much of note aside from work (again). 

Finally came today, where I went to combined church with some other ward, since my old ward is currently disbanded, and my new ward doesn't exist yet. Overall it was fairly routine church, except I got to sit in the same spot for most of the 3 hour block since we ended up having to return to the chapel against the original intention for Elder's Quorum due to the large number of people there. Then, pretty much right when I got home from church my new RA (Who's pretty awesome) invited me to go with him to his old Apartment place and hang out, eat, and socialize with his friends over there. So, I went and they are all pretty spectacular people, and it turns out that a couple of them are even from the same general area I am! We were there for about 6 hours, we first ate lunch, which was some super tasty spaghetti with a couple different sauces, then we played catch phrase for a little while (I eventually figured out what was going on and ended up being reasonably good at it). Then we went over to another friend's apartment and watched some super awesome church movies (one of his friends has the D&C/Church History DVD collection), notably the John Tanner Story, Only a StoneCutter, and Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. After this we went to visit one of his old roommate's who was having a couple of his mission children over to eat Brazilian food, which was super tasty. We had some kind of chicken Stroganhoff thing which you put on top of rice (which was delicious), we also had some Guarana Antarctica soda (super awesome brazilian soda, tasted a little like cherry fanta but was sooo much better), and some incredibly awesome dessert thing. The dessert thing was a layered creation that had some kind of buttermilk cookies as the layers (and sides), some form of cream in between the layers,  and a layer of super tasty chocolate on top (with various other things in it, but those are the main ingredients). Overall, it was a really tasty and delicious afternoon, filled with meeting tons of new people (I think I met a good 20 people that I spent a few hours with). After I got home, I spent a while skyping with my family, and then once most of them went to bed just with my incredibly strong and courageous little brother, who I really feel for and hope he just keeps doing well. 

And now I've reached this point in time, so I guess I'm done. I'm gonna go ahead and forecast the general layout of my week which is basically working 3:30-Midnight on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, and otherwise I've got nothing at all planned (seriously. this is the emptiest my calendar has ever been). So I doubt there will be another post until probably around the day before fall semester starts in like 2 weeks (so don't worry... I'll still be alive, just not doing much worth mentioning). 

Anyway,

'Til Next Time,

Jordan L. Nielson

P.S. I got a new address... check out my location if you wanna send me stuff!

It's been awhile...

Well, it's been awhile since I last blogged on here, so I guess an update is in order. I'm still working a lot, and for those of you who missed it I'm working at the front desk here at Wyview Park. It's super awesome, as I get to see a ton of people and sometimes get a little bit to work on homework. So aside from working a ton (which is good and bad), I pretty much just go to class and bake. I hang out with friends occasionally, but more often than not I'm either baking, at class, or working. There have been a few noteworthy things since my last blog, so I'll expound on those, but otherwise it's been exceedingly routine and not too exciting.

Of note since my last blog is a few things (my last blog was like 2 weeks ago so I hope I did at least one thing of note...). According to my calendar, which I try to keep exceedingly updated, I'll go in chronological order since my last blog post on the 18th of things I find noteworthy.

Anyway, first on the list of noteworthy things is my catching up of movies I haven't seen yet. The first movie I saw was Mirror, Mirror (at the dollar theater for $1.25 -> a steal!). It was reasonably good, and compared to Snow White and The Huntsman, which I saw in the actual theater shortly after it came out, I liked this one a ton more. That may have been because I'm kind of a Kristen Stewart hater (I just don't think she can act very well)... but mainly it was because this one was a heck of a lot less dark and morbid than the Huntsman. Overall, I'd consider it a $1.25 well spent for 2 hours of entertainment. Moving on, I recently got a netflix account and have proceeded to watch like 10 movies on there in the last month to catch up on ones I hadn't seen yet that looked good and also to rewatch some movies I really like. So, I've watched Thor, Forever Strong, Transformers: Dark Side of The Moon, A Wrinkle In Time, and The Tale of Despereaux. I really liked Thor, and would definitely watch it again, largely because I have already seen the Avengers (and Snow white and the Huntsman), and rather enjoyed the fight scenes in Thor combined with the reasonable story line. Forever Strong is one of my all-time favorite movies, largely because I admire those people who can play rugby with any skill and not get injured too early in life, and I find the story line almost equal to that of "The Blindside" which is another incredible movie. Transformers 3 wasn't that great, but I liked it more than many other movies I've seen, except the storyline was pretty weak and I still don't understand why they had a different lead female. A Wrinkle in Time was... interesting? From what I remember of the book it followed it about as well as most movie-book remakes, but it was definitely a curious way to play it out. The Tale of Despereaux was probably my favorite movie of the last three (Transformers, wrinkle, and it), due to it actually having a nice story line with different interwoven main characters. It was actually quite intriguing to think of a kingdom built around something, and the effect that making that something illegal might have on such a place.

Moving on from my unusually large amount of movie watching... I had my first BYU cleaning check since I last blogged. It was certainly an experience, made more interesting by the fact it was done by my roommate's boss (since he's the RA who would usually do it...) since he can't do it himself (that may be a tad biased...). Anyway, it was actually exceedingly short in actually checking the apartment being clean, since his boss mainly did a lot of talking with us (she had been on vacation for like a week and a half prior), and catching up on what she missed. The most interesting thing about it though is what they care about being clean... like the bathtub walls and the window track. I dunno, but it seems to me like most people don't actually care that the walls of the bathtub have absolutely no grime or cleaning residue on them, nor do people look in the window tracks.

Aside from that, I've been doing a ton of baking making many different kinds of cookies, from Oatmeal Butterscotch to Chocolate Chocolate chip to Snicker-doodles, to Cookie Cake, and even so far as to make some devil's food cake cookie sandwiches (with icing in between 2 cookies). Along with tons of baking, I've been doing some studying... and I recently discovered the awesomeness of Skype! So I've been able to kind of see my family back home, and talk to them a bit, and I've gotten to talk quite a bit with my awesome little brother who is just totally awesome.

Anyways, I would write about today... but I think I'll use that in it's own post since this one is about as long as I like them already.

And So,
'Til Next Time,
Jordan L. Nielson