goals

Every Sunday night, I conduct a personal planning session, involving evaluation of my workload for classes and other to-do's. This is how I plan on conquering this week:

:: Get to work on time every morning. It has become increasingly difficult to resist the lure of jumping back into my bed after my alarm rings, but I'm going to fight it. I only allowed myself one snooze this morning. When time was up, I made myself say a prayer, put on some music, and walk out of my room and into the bathroom. As always, I felt fine once I got going, and I even had time to eat some off-brand Cheerios before leaving for work. (I clocked into work at 7:57! Success!) I won the battle today. Tomorrow, I will conquer again.

:: Maximize my time available for homework. I have a busy couple of weekends and some big tests and assignments coming up, which means that my weeknights must be maximized. My strategy: minimize mealtimes, focus when I do have time for homework, and put up my blinders when passing by my yarn and needles. And I'm also going to work on making myself super-human, thus impervious to fatigue and beyond the need for sleep.

:: Continue the reading-while-walking experiment. This is proving to be very effective, helping me to get through readings for class, notes for tests, and my "for fun" library book. I haven't even hit anything yet while reading and walking! Oh, the possibilities.

:: Remember this quote from Elder Kevin W. Pearson:
"We get what we focus on consistently."
When I first read this, I mistakenly interpreted "consistently" to mean "constantly." However, over my Cheerios this morning, I realized that I don't have to always be studying and thinking about accounting to do well in the class. I don't have to put hours each day into scripture study to understand the gospel. I don't have to knit constantly to gain satisfaction from working on my projects. The challenge in this life is that time is limited, and we don't have unlimited time to dedicate to these worthy pursuits. "Consistently" doesn't relate to the hours we allocate to various activities. It relates to which activities we focus on during the hours we do have each day. If we develop good habits, than we will receive positive things from them. I love this promise!

*What are your goals for the week?
*What do you think about this quote?
*How is your Monday so far?

flexible schedule

Plan A: For most of the week, I decided to keep my Saturday free of social obligations here in Provo so that I could head up to spend Saturday at Michelle's house.

Plan B: My studying today did not commence until later than I planned, so I thought that I would stick around my apartment and get stuff done. Also, Jordin is in town for the first weekend in a while, and we thought it would be fun to make dinner together, and then I would teach her the purl stitch. (She learned casting on and the knit stitch last night.) Since I decided to stick around here, I never did text Dan to see if I could use his car.

Plan C: Jordin and I returned from the library around 6 to find that our roommates bought "My Sister's Keeper," and planned on watching it. I'm not a Jodi Piccoult fan, especially when my roommates have been talking all week about how much the movie made them cry and will anyone else with a heart do the same. I do have a heart, but I prefer for it not to be manipulated by Abigail Breslin's irritating acting. Feeling that Jordin and I could at least hang out after the movie, I grabbed my knitting and endured the "I'm important too!"s coming from the tv.

Plan D: Michelle called about 30 minutes into the movie, seeing if I was still coming over. The prospect of "Project Runway" with her family was too much to pass up, and it was only 7:15, so I decided to find a way up to Orem.

Plan E: Dan was out of his apartment and understandably unable to respond to my last-minute request to borrow his car, so I watched another 20 minutes of the movie before giving up and turning to my computer for some blogging. I am now sitting on my couch, in my wolf shirt, about to read for anthropology because Jordin got tired of knitting and went to a dance party.

Bright side: I'll get ahead on my reading for next week, and I may even have time to repaint my nails and write some Good Mail. Also, I can probably make it to Michelle's tomorrow after my Relief Society dinner for some family time.

ladies of the library

The campus library has a new exhibit honoring Florence Nightingale's life. However, I don't how how being represented by a mannequin like this qualifies as an honor.

She's wearing shimmery gold eye shadow, which I do not consider to be in accordance with her time period. I think it likely that the library got this mannequin as a cast-off from a department store and stuck it in an old dress.

I received a couple of funny looks from people as I was conducting Miss Nightingale's photo shoot.

Oh, and this library portrait is indeed a woman. Go figure. Her name is Anne Kristina Morrison Smoot, mother of Reed Smoot. May we all be grateful for the gender-distinguishing hair styles and clothing of today.

study buddies

Study nights are made especially tolerable when spent with Jordin and accompanied by warm biscuits, fresh from the oven. Ever since I made Mom's Baking Powder Biscuits at the beginning of last semester, they have become a source of great happiness for me and Jordin. Tonight, after eating some pasta that a friend brought over for dinner, I looked over at Jordin and said, "It's biscuit time!" "Really?!" she said, before hurrying to help me gather the few ingredients needed to produce warm, buttery, flaky goodness. Within 20 minutes, I was carrying two plates of them into our room, and we sighed contentedly as we settled down to our various academic pursuits.

I am now going to share this beloved biscuit recipe with you. I think that I will forever love these, and I hope that you love them too.

Baking Powder Biscuits:

Mix together:
2 cups cake flour OR 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

Cut in:
6 Tbsp butter until mixture is the consistency of coarse corn meal

Add 3/4 cup milk

Stir with a fork until just mixed.
Knead lightly on a floured board
Cut biscuits; place on cookie sheet

Bake for 9-10 minutes at 450 degrees

Note: My Mom always spreads out the dough and uses round cutters to cut the biscuits. From lack of counter space and for simplicity's sake, I just pull pieces of dough from the bowl and shape in my hands. Mine bake up more like mounds, but I actually prefer them this way. Try both, though, and see which way you like best!

I hope that these bring simple happiness to your evening as well.

this is why i am an accounting major

I had to finish a long paper for anthropology last night. Let me say that I would study for a test and punch a calculator over writing a paper any day. Writing this paper was one of those times when I was just spewing words, constantly checking the word count, longing to see the number hit the target of "2332 words of beauty and truth." (Yes, that is what the assignment actually says.) In my late-night fatigue, while being held prisoner to the word count, I took this series of lovely self portraits to convey my pain.


This seemed to do the trick, and I was able to shake off the paper hate. I decided to stop whining, hunker down, and finish. Though not my finest work, it is complete and safely submitted to my t.a.

In other news, we switched out our Valentine's/President's Day decor (yes, have I mentioned that we put up both sets of decorations?) for St. Patricks yesterday at work. The Oriental Trading Co., though cheap, does not always promote the best values. To solve this problem, I got to take a Sharpie to this lovely leprechaun contortionist.

I'm happy for any excuse to use an ultrafine Sharpie, but really?

*Would you rather write a paper or take a test?
*Do you feel better knowing that all decorations in the
Physics Department comply with the honor code?