another little gem

I found this masterpiece tucked in with all the Newsies fan-fiction, and I thought I'd share (I've retained the original spelling and punctuation for your entertainment):

The Ring
by Jesse and Hannah Bringhurst

There once was a ring that was evil
you'd think it was made by the devil
in fact it was made by a moron
none other than the wicked Sauron
he put in it some of his power
it made all his enimies cower
he lost it in war with Isildur
the ring soon maliciously killed her
(oops I mean him)

in water the ring remained hidden
then Smeagol did the forbiddon
he strangeled his cousin Deagol
because he had found the ring of gold
Smeagol became very nasty
and noone would give him a pasty
he went to live under a mountain
and years passed till he could not count them

carrying the banner

I was sorting through my old things today and I came across a bunch of notebooks full of Newsies fan-fiction that I wrote when I was 14 or so. Hilarious. I was so melodramatic. And I always had to invent girl characters who were cooler than David's sister, Sarah. And they always had crushes on Spot or Mush.

what's for dinner?

Lately I am always looking for new ideas of things to make for dinner.

Some of our most recent dishes have been:

Sweet and sour chicken (except I didn't deep fry it because I don't like the mess)
Monte Cristo sandwiches
Stuffed-crust Hawaiian pizza (I stuffed the crust with pineapple)
Vegetable chowder in bread bowls
Split pea soup in bread bowls (the bread bowls were quite a hit)
Pasta with (sort of) homemade sauce (I just greatly improved the canned sauce)
Potato enchiladas (which I discovered are even more delicious than the chicken kind)

Anyway, any other ideas would be appreciated. We love recipes that don't require a lot of ingredients, as when they do require a lot of ingredients, we end up leaving half of them out because we don't have them.

In other news... Tim and I are pretty much completely moved into our new apartment, which is really nice. I will try to do some pictures later, and you are all welcome to come up to Logan and visit anytime and see it. We even have an air mattress for guests... although we're still sleeping on it for the time being, because we're still waiting for our real mattress to come. But... we have a reclining loveseat too!

they call this a university?

So, I was under the impression that academic writing was one of the things that you were supposed to learn in your college courses. That's not how things roll here, I guess.

I just discovered that in the three semesters since his mission, my husband has never had to cite anything! It's not like he's been doing only math and engineering courses either. He's been finishing up his GE requirements and never had to cite anything! He's even in an advanced English class right now, and his teacher has apparently never made them cite anything all semester.

He went and looked up the syllabus, and apparently it says to use MLA, but I still can't quite forgive her for not making them do it at all.

Was I too hard on my GAP students at the ELC? And they were ESL!

I'm seriously not impressed with USU right now if they don't even make their students write as academically as I made my ESL students write. It's not that hard! You just have to do it.

On the bright side, it's forcing me to brush up on my MLA so I can help him with his.

As a sidenote, when I was taking my senior seminar class last semester, my professor had this bizarre style that he made us use. It was called LACUS, and I'm not sure if it was just some weird linguistics style or something he had come up with on his own, or a little bit of both. It's most peculier feature was the margins, which were 1.8 inches on each side - almost twice as big as normal. We all rather enjoyed it, however, as it was much easier to reach the required page count. I also remember that it required the use of all-caps in some areas and small-caps in others. And I use OpenOffice, so my TA thought that my small-caps weren't right because they didn't look quite like everybody else's.

My professor also gave us each a hard-boiled egg on the day of our final so that we would know that he thought we were all good eggs. He also wrote everybody's name's on their eggs so that he would know who had ditched the final by whose eggs were still left. He also once gave us each a package of ramen noodles so that we could never say that we never got a free lunch. He was odd. But in an entertaining way.

i said yes

One year ago today, my darling man asked me to marry him. And it was adorable.

Luckily, by the time we got around to the wedding I'd grown patient enough to wait for him to put my ring on.

Being engaged was fun, but being married is a thousand times better.

happenings

As you might know, St. David's Day was last Thursday, and I made us a delicious Welsh feast of Rarebit, Glamorgan Sausages, and Welsh Cakes.

The Glamorgan Sausages and Welsh cakes were delicious. I think I'd have liked the Rarebit better if we'd used a cheese that was a bit stronger than Muenster. I told Tim I'd make him corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, but he said he's not a huge fan of corned beef, so it looks like St. David's Day is our holiday.

Tonight for family home evening we went to a gymnastics meet, because BYU came up. It was pretty fun, especially since so many people up here are such BYU-haters. I cannot tell a lie - it was pretty satisfying to see them get beaten by us, and in their very own little Spectrum. Perhaps it's a bad thing that I take pleasure in their defeat, but... I'm going to take pleasure in it today anyway.

We also found a popcorn popper on KSL for $5, so now popcorn is pretty much our favourite snack.

something worth blogging about

We have an apartment in Logan! Not that I have anything against Smithfield (except that there is nothing here), but if we're going to be driving down to Logan every day, I think we might as well just live in Logan.

It's a cute little apartment, and it's really close to campus, and we got a really good deal.

The shower needs a little work to make it nice, but we weren't going to let that one little flaw turn us off of a deal this good. Oh yeah, and did I mention that utilities are included? I love that.

We signed the contract today, so it's officially ours at the beginning of the month.

I really can't wait to get out of Smithfield. No offense intended. It was awfully nice of Tim's grandparents to let us watch their house while they were gone, but I'm really looking forward to having our own place.

P.S. Did I mention that it has new carpet? I can go barefoot in my apartment and not feel gross!

comparisons

Having lived up here for two months now, I've finally decided to give my impressions of the place. Actually, comparisons really, since I've spent the past several years of my life in Provo and at BYU, I've seen now how Logan and USU compare.

Logan itself is a lot like Provo only it smells like cows. And Main Street is pretty much the only street in town. But it really has exactly the same things to do that Provo has. Just a lot less of them. Take frozen yogurt, for example. In Provo you can get frozen yogurt on every corner, but in Logan there's just one spot. Actually, it's techncially in Providence, so I guess Logan doesn't really have any, so that was a bad example. Anyway...

Summary: Logan = smaller and smells like cows

Aggie Ice Cream: I guess it's supposedly famous, like the BYU Ice Cream (only I had never heard of it before). It's really sweet. Really sweet. It's supposedly really creamy, but I have never really noticed because really sweet things gross me out a bit. So far the chocolate flavours are the best ones that I've had because they're not as sweet. It's also more expensive than BYU Ice Cream.

Summary: Aggie Ice Cream = For the hardcore sweet tooth and kind of a rip-off

The campus: It seems a lot more spread out than BYU. Tim likes that, because there's lots of room to play around on campus and people can ride their bikes between classes and stuff. I don't like it so much because it means more walking around in the cold. The grounds and buildings are also slightly less well maintained/cleaned. And wow, I thought some of the buildings we were in at BYU were old, but they are nothing compared to some of the ones here. Perhaps a little trimming of their men's basketball couch's salary could go towards updating some buildings a bit. Oh yeah, and I think it is funny that the ballroom in the student center here is carpeted! Who wants to dance ballroom on carpet?! Then again, I get the sense that there is not much of a dance program here, at least not as far as ballroom is concerned, because you never see anybody practicing it around campus. I don't think I could get lost in the library if I tried. The campus bookstore is also very small here. Or maybe BYU's is just really big. I don't think I've ever really been to another one. Really the only other college campus I've ever hung out on much is UC Davis.

Summary: USU campus = More spread out and older

The students: Well, college students are pretty much the same everywhere, and due to the large percentage of LDS ones here (not as large a percentage as at BYU, but still large), they're much the same as the ones at BYU. Slightly more foul-mouthed (I think I've heard twice as much profanity from students here in two months than I did in all my time at BYU), and sometimes smoke on campus. That's about the only difference. Apparently most of the students here actually consider BYU to be their school's big rival, which was news to me. I don't think I'd ever given a thought to USU until I started dating my husband, except for when they sent me postcards trying to get me to come here and the one time when Divine Comedy made fun of them a little as the place where people go when they don't want to follow the Honor Code anymore but can't get into the U of U. But yeah, apparently when BYU comes here to play the place sells out and students camp out to get into the game, just like when we play the U. I also read once at my work that when BYU and USU play football, there's this old wagon wheel that goes to whichever team wins, suggesting that perhaps once upon a time the rivalry wasn't so one-sided as it is now. Then again, I asked Tim about the wagon wheel, and he knew nothing about it. I guess I'm getting a little ahead of myself though.

Summary: USU students = Mostly the same but slightly less clean cut and fewer Polynesians

Athletics: So, I guess the crowd in the Spectrum is supposedly famous for being loud and rowdy, but I must say I have not been all that impressed. They're not really any different. Granted, having been spoiled by growing up in the Marriott Center, the first time I went to a basketball game here, I felt like I was just playing at going to a basketball game in a toy arena. It is kind of fun that the student section is a much larger percentage of the total crowd here than it is at BYU, just because the Spectrum is so much smaller and not as many people from the community come. So the students aren't so vastly outnumbered by old people. I love it when they sing the Scotsman song. It makes me laugh every time, to see everybody waving their arms around and singing about how much they love the sagebrush. It's cute. I don't really like their other school song though, and nobody else seems to like it nearly as much as the Scotsman song either. It just doesn't have nearly as catchy a tune. But anyway, I didn't find the crowd particularly loud or mean. Some of the things they say/do are definitely not very classy (I guess I'm just more into cheering for my own team than mocking the other team), but I wasn't blown away by the loudness or anything. Tim and I could talk to each other during the game and hear just fine. But the last game we went to wasn't even close to full, and the Spectrum only holds like 10,000, so how much volume can you expect? I imagine it's probably louder when the team's better. I like that the athletic events are included in the student fees here, so you don't have to buy an all-sports pass (granted, it just makes fees higher, but it saves you the trouble of deciding whether or not it's worth it to cash out a little more for sports, and probably helps fill up the sporting events a lot too). We've been to a couple gymnastics meets too, which are pretty fun.

Summary: USU athletics: Not as loud as the reputation, but fun and smaller than expected

I don't think I have much else to compare. I go work out at the gym on campus a couple times a week, but considering I never once went and worked out at BYU, I can't really compare that.

In conclusion, there's no way it would ever have really occurred to me to live here if my husband weren't going to school here. Then again, there's no way it would ever have really occurred to me to live in Provo if I hadn't been going to school there, so not much difference in that respect.

But look at this guy.

I'd follow him anywhere.