I heart Rexburg

Whenever I start a blog post, I want to start it with the word 'sometimes.' I'm not sure why. Also when I start a blog post, it's usually not something I've planned on blogging about. It just comes out from my fingertips and sometimes makes sense. Probably more often than not y'all have no idea what I'm talking about or if there's even a point to any of this.

Well, I'm not keeping you here...

Sometimes I think I should just go sleep instead of trying to keep up with all of the crazy things going on in my life. Work, school, school, etc. Sometimes I think that sleep will be much better than a good grade in a class. Then I usually suck it up and go to class anyway. 

There really isn't a point to this post...just so you know. I just like to blog because it lets out the stress that's inside me. Sometimes my posts have a point. But today? ...not really. I'm just venting with my fingers. 

Rexburg is a wonderful place. There's plenty of snow, plenty of awesome people, but there's never enough oreos. At least...not lately. The first half of this semester my roommate and I would buy a few packages, and then go through them in a day or two. Lately...I've been using my money on other things, like...food that will actually keep me alive (I always said I could live off of oreos, but it's not really true, as much as I would like to believe it). Anyway...I think I might buy some today. 

The semester is almost over. I can't believe it's gone by so fast. And yet, it seems like forever ago that I moved out of the house. It's like it's been this way my whole life. Such a weird feeling. In two weeks I'll be back at home eating my parents' food and sleeping in their house. I'm excited to come home. :) 

I'm really going to miss Rexburg though. Maybe I'll get my mission call to Rexburg. Haha. That would be wonderful. :) It'll probably be more like...Nigeria or Greece. Who knows? There have been a few people that have said they think I'll go spanish speaking. I'm thinking that would be wonderful. But...I'm not going to count on it. 

Yesterday I got a TB test. That was the last thing that needed to happen for my papers to be finished. I just have to wait for the 17th of this month for my stake president to be able to turn them in. Aah! So exciting! I will probably have a mission call in less than a month. And then I can go to the temple, and start buying suits and other awesome mission stuff. Actually...then I can find a job and save every penny I earn for the mish. 

Then I'll serve for two years...and then I'll come home. I'll be an RM. Goodness. Life goes so fast. Then I'll get married and get old and then die. 

I'm excited for life. :) 

Bring it on!

So, anyway...have a nice day! I'm gonna go do the homework that I've been procrastinating by posting here. :p 

-Joey

P.S. I added this snow stuff...to make you feel like you're in Rexburg. It's magical, isn't it? :)

Home...

I live in Rexburg, Idaho. I live here because I go to school at BYU-Idaho, which is also in Rexburg. Sometimes I go home to Lindon, Utah, but then I come back home to Rexburg. So...where is home exactly?

Home is where the food is. Or...heart. I guess it's where the heart is. The only problem is that my heart is in two different places. Sometimes I feel like I really want to be in Utah, and other times I am in Utah, and I want to be here in Rexburg. Even when I come home to Lindon for good, I'm not sure I will really feel completely 'at home.'

This is kind of a useless rant...I just really don't want this semester to be over, but in some ways I really do. Bleh. I'm almost tempted to just stay another semester, but I don't have the money. I need to be earning mulah for the mish, not spending it on education. See, it's not the 'good/bad' decisions in life that are hard. It's the 'good/good' decisions. Getting an education is a really important thing. Our knowledge is the only thing we can take from this life when we die. On the other hand, earning money for a mission is probably more important. It's not about what's good and what's bad. It's about what's good and what's better, or even best.

I'm not going to stay another semester, though I really would like to. I'll come back in a few years to finish what I've started here. :)

This semester isn't even over. Everyone's talking like we're done learning for the year (except my teachers, of course), but really we have 3 more weeks. Maybe 2 and a half...

Anyway, I'll stop talking now. Y'all can go about your lives now.

Have a nice day...

-Moscas

Have a prayer....

Right now I'm listening to Rodrigo's "Concierto de Arunjuez", and it's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. It's honestly making me want to cry. But of course I'm not going to...I'm sitting in the front foyer of the Manwaring Student Center. If I weren't, I might just break down in to tears, it's so beautiful and full of emotion. I know...I'm kidding.

...kind of. :p

Am I a sap? I kind of feel like such a romantic sometimes. Then again...I think I am a romantic. In Mrs. Pierce's 10 grade English class we took the Romantic vs. Classical test thingy to see which one you were, and I was most definitely a romantic. 

Anyway...you should really listen to this song. It's amazing. 

Today is Tuesday. This means that tomorrow I have a music quiz in Humanities, two assignments due for Music, my test for Calculus opens, and I have 2 hours of work, 5 1-hour classes and a 1-hour group rehearsal for Men's Choir. That's kind of a lot. But I know that there are probably a lot of people out there that have even more on their plate for tomorrow, so this is for you. Those of you that are about to collapse under your load of work, I'm praying for you. :)

On www.englishdaily626.com it says that to "have a prayer" means "to have a realistic chance of something happening; to be able to do something." Example: "Eric doesn't have a prayer of passing the math exam today." Then it gives the etymology. It says "When something is very difficult, you might 'pray' for assistance. If something 'has a prayer', it might succeed if it gets a little bit of assistance from above. But if it 'doesn't have a prayer', not even divine intervention will help." 

So...in all of this craziness, just know that you really do have a prayer. Ask for that "little bit of assistance from above," and everything will turn out okay. :) Prayer really is the key to life. Especially when things get rough. Well...that and mint oreo's. ;)

Now, this doesn't mean that we only need to pray when life gets hard. Prayer shouldn't just be something that we turn to only in times of desperation. It should be an integral part of our life. We should pray when life is good as well as when it's bad. Even when life just seems kind of meh and nothing much is going on, Heavenly Father still wants to hear from us. 

Anyway...I'm feeling kinda preachy. Probably because I am preachy. This wasn't supposed to be a sunday school lesson...but I guess it kind of turned out that way. Anyway, this is for all of my awesome college friends, my awesome high school friends, and my amazing siblings, parents and other family members that might be going through some rough times. I love you, and I'm praying for you. :)

Have a nice day! :)

-Joey

(P.S. This is kind of random...but I guess that's kind of why it belongs on this blog. The song embedded below is one of my favorite songs ever! Enjoy.)

Rexburg: Home of the 8 foot snowmen.

Today it's about 34 degrees with some light snow falling. Perfect weather for just about anything. Unless you want to go wakeboarding. I'm not sure that would be very fun today. But for anything else, today is perfect. Like  drinking hot chocolate while sitting in front of the heater (we don't have a fireplace, or I would sit in front of that). You could also cuddle up in a blanket and read a good book (in front of the heater). If you're awesome, you'd go for a run, or build a snowman at the park. See? This weather is great for all kinds of things.

On Monday we got our first legit snowfall. It started snowing at around 7 in the morning, and it didn't stop until 10 at night. It was a wonderful day. :) Jaymes (my awesome roommate from Texas) and I went to Porter Park and started building a snowman. We were almost finished with the first snowball when Trevor showed up. Neither of us had ever met Trevor before, but he wanted to help out, so we let him. With the three of us pushing, we got the first snowball even bigger, and when we finally just couldn't push it any further, we made the unanimous decision that our snowman would go right there. The second snowball was almost as big as the first. We had a pretty hard time lifting it up onto the first one, but with a little grunting and some awesomeness and attractiveness, we got it up. After resting for a bit, Jaymes went to find some branches for the arms, and Trevor and I made the head. When Jaymes got back with the sticks and a random shirt that he had found in the snow, he helped us lift the head up onto the body. That's when Trevor realized that he had carrots back home, so he took off to get one. Jaymes and I went into the trees to find some pine cones for the rest of the face. Here's the finished product:

That's Jaymes standing next to Hosehead (that's what we decided to name him). If Jaymes if 6' 4", then this snowman has got to be at least 8 feet. Oh, and sorry about the bad picture quality...it was my lamesauce camera phone...

Rexburg is wonderful. I'm loving it. Biking in the snow isn't the coolest thing ever, but snow just adds such a magical feeling to life. It's the beginning of the Christmas season where everything is merry and bright. I need to stock up on hot chocolate and take lots of Vitamin C.

College is still lots of fun. I think I'm learning to budget my time a little better. I've been getting to bed semi-on-time, and I've been doing my homework. Life is great. :) Calculus is still painful, but we just started applications of integrals, which is really a pretty awesome subject. It gets harder as you get deeper into it, but for now, it's great!

Random story...yesterday I found out that Camille Saint-Saens is a guy. All my life I thought he was a girl. You can't really blame me though. I mean, with a name like Camille? How was I supposed to know that Camille was a guy? Anyway...that was random, but...it kind of just...threw my life off balance. Oh! I remember how I found this out. I was trying to find his third symphony, because it's on the movie Babe and I wanted to hear it. I think I happened upon a picture of the guy on Wikipedia or something. Anyway, you should listen to that song. It's great. :)

I should probably go get ready for class now. Humanities, here I come!

Have a nice day, eh?

Go build a snowman. Unless you don't have any snow. Then you can just sit at the front window and wish more than anything that you had as much snow as Rexburg does. ;)

I love you all,

-Moscas

Bears. Beets. BYU-Idaho.

It's been about a month since I moved out of the house. I feel so...self-sufficient. I got payed today, and that helped even more with that feeling. Other words that I would use to describe myself would be tired, tired, and...happy.

So college makes me tired. I'm sure I'm not the only one that gets tired from college.

On the other hand, college is a very happy experience. If you ever get the chance to come visit BYU-Idaho, I would strongly recommend it. There's just a special spirit here that you don't feel on any other campus. It's a spirit of togetherness. A spirit of purpose. A spirit of happiness. It's a wonderful thing.

Yesterday was an amazing day. Why, you ask, was it so amazing? FHE. Obviously. Our family consists of me and my three roommates, and 2 apartments from carriage house with six girls each. ...that's BYU-Idaho for ya. ;) Anyway, the guys had the lesson, so we taught about Captain Moroni's fortification of the cities and how we can apply that to our own lives. It was a pretty good lesson. Afterward we made ice cream sundaes off the balcony. So, one person lays on the ground with an ice cream cone in their mouth, and then we drop the ice cream, chocolate syrup, and sprinkles from the balcony and try to get it in the cone. It was way fun. But...it was a big mess. So, after we washed up with the hose, we played ultimate frisbee at the stadium. We met a guy named Ben that threw the frisbee really hard, which made it hard to catch because our fingers were freezing from the hose water...

When we got bored of the turf and stadium lights, we went to Porter Park to play frisbee in the dark. We taped a bunch of glow bracelets to it so we could see it, and then threw it back and forth in the dark. After we got bored of that, we started breaking them open (like the mature, responsible college students we are...) and spreading the glowy slime everywhere.

That's when the real fun began. ...kind of. We covered the frisbee with the glowing goop and then played catch for a little longer. We ended up breaking probably 40 of the 50 bracelets we had...covering ourselves and the ground and...pretty much everything in sight. haha. It was a blast. Until we got it in our eyes. That hurt like CRAZY!!! Also, if it got in our mouths. That was gross. It kind of burned too... I do have to say though, seeing someone's tongue and teeth glowing inside their mouth was pretty sweetawesome. :)

Afterward, we came back to our apartment and watched The Italian Job. So good! I love that movie. I've wanted a mini cooper ever since I watched that movie. But I think pretty much everyone that watches that movie ends up wanting one.

So that was yesterday. Today we washed all of out clothing that smelled like chocolate syrup and glow...stuff.  haha.

yup.

Have a nice day. :)

-joey

Random college metaphors...or something.

Sometimes when you have a TON of homework and you're really tired from walking 7 miles in one day it's a really good idea to buy some cheeseburger chips and Sunny D and just get yourself wired so you're more excited about being alive. Then maybe doing homework will actually be possible.

I had a funny thought earlier. It might have been yesterday. Anyway, I think that everyone that goes to college has a mullet. You know...business in the front, party in the back. That one. Well, I decided that some people's mullets are just longer than others. Some people party way more than anything else, and then there are those that care about the business part of college more. Their mullets are shorter. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "joey, you're a complete and total idiot!" Well...you're probably right. But chances are I'm more attractive than you anyway.

How long is your mullet?

If you're ever in Rexburg around September, go find the apple tree on 2nd north. It has some of the most amazingly delicious apples you will ever taste.

Also, the D.I. here gives out copies of the Book of Mormon for free. Just...if you ever need one. You know, to read or give to someone...they're all free.

I had another random metaphorical thought about college, but I can't remember what it was. That's disappointing. Well...I'm kind of dead from eating so much sugar a couple hours ago. So...don't judge.

Oh! I remembered. I think there should be a way to declare intellectual bankruptcy. I don't really...just when I  have piles and piles of homework...I think it would be nice to just say, 'nope, sorry. I can't do any more homework. I'm intellectually bankrupt. I don't have anything left to give.'

Yup.

Well, have a nice day, eh?

I need sleep...

-Moscas

Advice for college life:

Here's a list of ideas and advice for you if you're in college. It's just a start...I might add more to this list later.

1. Sleep.
2. It's okay to have a social life as long as you can fit it in with the 20+ hours of school, that many or more hours of homework, and church and other activities.
3. College is approximately 700% easier without a social life.
4. College is approximately 700% more fun with one.
5. Eat enough food to last you through ALL of your classes, not just the first one or two. And if you can't eat that much, pack some along with you.
6. Sleep!
7. Don't forget to read your scriptures. There's really nothing better for your spirit than a break every day from all the chaos of school and work and friends.
8. Call you're mother. Often. Not only does she greatly appreciate it, that's just pure spiritual brownie points. ;) (I guess this only applies if you've moved out. Oh well. It's still cellestial advice.)
9. Don't ever, EVER stay up until 2 am watching your roomates play Age of Empires. You'll just go to bed wondering what on earth you're doing with your life, and you'll wake up wondering why on earth you wasted a good night's sleep on that...
10. SLEEP!!! (are you getting the point yet?)

Well, I think that's all for now. Don't worry...college really is a party, you just have to party the right way. Only on the weekends after you've done all your homework and only for a little bit or you'll fall asleep in church the next day and everyone will laugh at you and you'll be really embarrassed.

Have a nice day!

I love you all. :)

-joey

End of week one, and going...strong?

I'm done.

With week one, that is. Only...14 weeks to go? Something like that.

Work is going well. It's two hours a day right before my Music 101 class. I've only been late to class once. But it was on the first day...so it was pretty embarrassing. Have I told this story already? Oh well. I'm starting to get the hang of things at the campus post office. I know, I know...I work at the post office. So, if you ever send a letter to someone at BYU-Idaho, including people in the dorms, it goes through me. I feel like I have so much power and control. Mua ha ha haaaaaaaaaa! Okay...not really. But it is kinda fun to look at all the different letters and packages and periodicals. Speaking of which...I never understood the spanish word 'periódico'. It confused me. But now...it makes sense. Blame it on the post office. It does things to you. Oh! Story time. Ready? Yesterday we got a box full of baby chicks in the mail.

Have you ever wondered what life would be like without homework? I have. And you know what I think it would be like? Pie heaven. It's like heaven, but tastier.

I went on my first legit college date! And people said that no one would pay attention to me because I'm a premie (is that how you spell that?). You hear that term a lot as a freshman. In case you didn't decipher the clever code of demeaning upper-classmen, it means that you haven't been on a mission yet. Like me. Everyone says that until you've been on a mission, the girls don't want anything to do with you.

...so much for that idea.

I once heard a song that I kinda liked. Then I went and found the music for it, and played it through a couple of times. I didn't really do much with it after that...it just filled up space in my music binder. Then one day I was talking with a girl that happened to like that song, and we were close to a piano, so I tried to play it.

I wish I had learned it better...

Did you know that there are sand dunes like 20 minutes north of Rexburg? I did. Well...since I moved here, that is. But I knew it before you, so HA!

Also, if anyone owns any ATV's or dirt bikes that they would be willing to donate to a good cause, I'd be very grateful.

You wanna know something cool? I'm still really super ADD even though I'm in college. Like, I do this thing where I'll be talking to someone (normally a girl...I know, I know. I talk to girls), and I'll get in this 'random question' mode where nothing that comes out of my mouth has anything to do with anything that we had been talking about. It's wonderful... And...in case you hadn't noticed, I blog that way too...

Also...I'm really not obsessed with girls or anything. I feel like I've been talking about girls a lot. There are a lot of girls at BYU-Idaho. So...I spend the majority of my time with one girl or another. Just...thought I'd let you know...? Um, yeah. Now we can get back to...ME!

I'm really disappointed that Rexburg doesn't have an In-N-Out Burger. I'll have to find somewhere else that sells strawberry shakes.

Well, my gargantuan pile of homework awaits. I'd better go take care of it before it eats someone...

Have a nice day! And remember to drink your Ovaltine!

-Joscann

I'm tired.

That is all.

The library. My new home.

So...yeah. I pretty much live here. Since I don't have my own computer, I spend all of my homework time here at the David O. McKay Library. It's wonderful. I get to use these wonderful campus computers...printers...chairs...desks...it's almost as if I own the place. Because...I would really want to own this place. :p

Actually, it's a pretty awesome place to be, I just...spend my ENTIRE LIFE here. Well, the last 2 days, anyway. But unless I buy a laptop, I don't really expect to switch things up a whole lot. What it is.

Also, I get to share these computers with the other 10,000 students here at BYU-Idaho. I know, I know. Your college has more students than that. Wanna know what I have to say to that?

Nothin.

But that's not the point. The point is...I have to come here either before any classes start, or after they're all over if I want to get a computer to use. Before is a little bit difficult, because I work at 8 every morning. So...after it is. I just finished two essays and read a talk by Elder Bednar (which was really good, btw. All about "learning by faith"). Pretty much my life exists as a part of this library, and my 4GB thumb drive. Anything else is irrelevant. Except my bike. That's a big part of my life too.

So, what's new? Not a whole lot. I was late to my first class today. It starts at 10:15, and I get off work at 10:00, but today I worked a little later than usual, so I got to have the incredibly awkward walk down to the front of the lecture hall to the only available seat left.

Other news, I got into Men's Choir! Yay. All I had to do was sing "If You Could Hie to Kolob" a capella, and then sing a few scales. The guy was really nice. He knew Mendy, so we chatted about PHS and their choir program for a bit, and then I was done. :) It was wonderful. Not awkward, not weird, not nerve racking. It was just chill. That's how every audition should be. :)

So...this is my life. I think I'm going to go home now and watch some Brian Regan with my roommates and some friends.

Have a nice day!

-Library-going, bike-riding, 4GB Tenor.

Checking in.

Class starts tomorrow, and I'll probably have a lot less time to be on here blogging. So... here I am, just checking in. I made it to Rexburg alive, and I'm doing well. My roommates are nice and not even very quirky. Except for the guy that microwaves his bananas before he eats them...ew.


Anyway, I'm doing well. I'm eating a lot. That's probably thanks to the miles and miles of bike riding and walking I've been doing. :) It's great mission prep, eh?

I love you all! Don't party too hard without me...

Oh, and...have a nice day, eh? :)

-Joey