To practice or not to practice?

So yesterday was crazy! I woke up at like 5:30 and went non-stop all day. When classes ended at 5:30 Kristina and I decided to go to her apartment and make some dinner, after dinner we decided that we did not feel like practicing so we watched an episode of Chuck online. Still having not practiced, Kelly and Jaynee texted me (writing out the texting instead of txting took a lot of thought) saying that I should come to the pool and party with them, well that sounded like a lot more fun than listening to baroque music so I did. We got kicked out of the pool at like 9pm and I was exhausted! I went back to my apartment with the intent of rinsing off then climbing into bed; that did not happen. I was extremely hungry for some reason which was weird to me because I ate a lot at Kristina’s so I was looking in our very empty fridge, it’s the end of the week and we have pretty much eaten everything in our apartment, and said “Man there’s nothing to eat, we should just go to Denny’s.” I was totally joking, I had already made up my mind to eat some cereal when Katie jumps up and says “O.K!” She then convinced my other two roommates to go to Denny’s. We left our apartment at like 9:45ish to drive to Salina. We got home at around 12:30ish then we were hyper cause we had been up for so long so we didn’t go to bed right away. I had a class at 8 this morning that I barely made it to to find out that the teacher was not there and we would just be watching a movie. Grrrr! I was sooo mad I could have slept in and it wouldn’t have even mattered.


After class I was awake and there was no chance of me falling back to sleep so I went to make up all of the practice time that I missed. While walking into my practice room Dr. Smith, my cello teacher, saw me and was like I love it when I see people practicing. I thought to myself if he knew how tired I was and how unsuccessful this practice session is going to be he would not be saying that. I started to practice then found that it was not working so I decided to listen to my piece and see if I listen to it if it will get better. I have now listened to it like 5 times and should probably go back to practicing it.
After being awake and listening to it I remembered what I needed to do to make it sound right and what I learned at cello lessons on Tuesday. I learned that you always start on the high note when doing a trill. All these years I’ve been doing it wrong! I tried to practice this today and found that it took a lot of thought to start a trill from the note above it instead of the note I see on the page. I also realized that I talk about practicing in the practice rooms yet you have no clue what they look like. Pictures always make everything look bigger, these rooms are pretty small and you can hear the people next to you when you are practicing. Kind of annoying, but at the same time it sounds soo cool to walk into the music building front doors and hear silence, then you go through the sound barrier door and an explosion of sound hits you. They fit together in a weird way of not fitting together at all.

To practice or not to practice?

Here is my favorite room to practice in. It's usually taken but since I got here early today I got it. I took it by standing in the corner of the room all squished up. You have to position yourself just right so that you have enough room to use your whole bow but so that you can still use the piano to help check pitch.

I was playing through my song thinking this is not sounding right. I finally realized that I was not paying attention what clef I was  in.

Temple trip

Last night my roommate goes "Hey anyone want to go to the temple tomorrow?" I said "Yea what time are you going?" She said "It's with the ward," at which point I made a face and braced myself for her answer, "so it's at 6 am." I said "Well my first class isn't until 10:30 and I guess I can practice the cello later so I guess I can go." She then said "YES!" and jumped up and down.

While at the temple I read a story in one of the old issues of I think the New Era, it was about how a young lady had saved up her money so that she could go to the temple that was 2 days away. I was reading this and thinking, and I didn't want to wake up at 5:30 to make it to the temple by 6. Boy did that make me feel like an ungrateful idiot, but at the same time at least I had woken up and gone.

When we got back from the temple at like 8:15 me and my roommate were super awake and we were kinda making a lot of noise and one of our roommates was still asleep. She came out and looked like the Incredible Hulk, all scary and super angry that we were making lots of noise. I think it was a good learning experience for her, she always comes in late and makes lots of noise cause she doesn't have early classes.

Its really, really cold at 6 am in January in Utah and my roommate didn't want to roll down the window to take the picture as we were driving up, thats why there's little dots on it.

Things I have learned in college

Some things I have learned in college that do not help me pass a class in anyway but help in real life are:


1. You can melt a chocolate orange and peanut butter together and get almost the same result as peanut butter cups, only cheaper, and kinda orangey.

2. You can eat a meal with a butter knife.

3. Wonder bread lasts longer than almost every other brand of bread, kind of gross, but it saves you money.

4. Some people are allergic to turning off lights and need to be constantly reminded to do so.

5. You can have awesome I told you so moments like this: So last semester I kept telling my roommates that you can’t sleep with the windows open, lock the door and the windows before going to bed. They kept saying “It’s too hot to shut the windows, and besides it’s Ephraim, what’s going to happen?” Then this semester a nice police officer came over and said “There have been a lot of break ins and a man has been looking for girls walking alone, don’t walk alone and keep the dead bolt locked and all windows shut after dark or when home alone.” I then said “HA! I told you so!” and walked away.

6. Some teachers let you do it whatever way you want as long as you do it and some teachers are on a power trip.

7. Paying the extra money to live on the top of the apartment complex is well worth it.

8. You cannot live off of top-a-roman but you can live off of peanut butter sandwiches.

9. Sleep is not always optional. Some days you just need to say “BE QUIET AND GO TO SLEEP!”

10. And last thing I can think of while watching a really stupid show with my roommates is; sometimes you have to watch stupid shows so you can watch the show you want to the next day by saying well I watched your show yesterday.

What things did you learn while in college that don’t really have a use but you did them anyway?

Venting about English.

O.K. So I need to vent all of my frustrations of how stupid English class is. Why on earth do they even call it English 2010? You don’t learn about English it should be called “Writing Lots of Papers 2010.” That’s all you do. You write and write and write; then they say you can write on whatever you want, but their lying. You can’t really write on whatever you want, you have to write on what they think you should write on in the style they think you should write. Let me be ME! In math you do math in science you study science, then why on earth in English do they teach you how a library works, or how to research yet again? They don’t make you start with adding 1+1 in math 1050 so why on earth do you have to write a research paper in high school English and then again in English 1010 then again in 2010?! I think they should teach American, it’s not like anyone even speaks English anymore.


My teacher is a hypocrite! He said that he hated all the busy work he had to do in school and he almost dropped out of school and now his course is full of busy work! If you hate something don’t make others do it.

They get you all excited to go to college when you’re in high school by saying you only take classes that you need for what you like to do. WRONG you still have 2 years of someone saying no you have to take this class and that class and you have to do it my way, and they are adding classes for the incoming freshmen to take! Why don’t you just tell us what we need to become when we are born? What happened to freedom? I have not learned a thing at Snow College about English, I have learned how to cheat the system into thinking I’m learning things, but I learned all this in high school. Teach me something new or don’t make me take the same class with more busywork yet again. O.K. I’m done. If anyone is bored and wants to write lots of papers and be completely confused on how to turn in work, fell free to take Chris Riseley’s online English 2010 course. O.K. I’m really done now.

Fire is not a toy.

I watched the Hatfields and two of their friends on New Years eve overnight. The night started out like every other time; they made a mess of the kitchen, got snow all over the house, argued over the computer, normal kid stuff, THEN, Dallin, one of Hunters friends, told Hunter that if you held a lighter up to his can of axe and then sprayed it it would light on fire. They then decided to do this in the computer room, YES in the house! Maddy came and said “they are making cool fire in there.” I ran into the back room and saw them lighting the axe on fire. Hunter gave me the axe as soon as I walked through the door but Dallin decided to argue with me, I told him he was not allowed to have a lighter and that he needed to give it to me right away. He said “no, you’re not the boss of me!” I said “excuse me. I do believe that is what your parents pay me to be.” I got the lighter from him but they found another one! At that point I had had it! I broke down and called his parents, the FIRST time I have ever had to call the Hatfields while babysitting, and I’ve been watching them for like 5 years! Van was seconds from coming home and killing Hunter and Dallins parents just said “Dallin you shouldn’t do that be good for Brittney.” I was ready to kill Dallin by that point. The next day when the Hatfields got home and all the kids went with their parents Jeni said so did they get better after that? I had to tell her no and that I would no longer be watching Dallin, he talked back the whole time and cause trouble. Jeni said I was the last person who would watch Dallin, all the others had said they wouldn’t watch him anymore either. I said well that sucks for his parents I guess they aren’t going to be able to go out anymore. Van called them while I was still there and told them how bad he was and that he was no longer welcome to come over when I was sitting. The Hatfield kids were getting ready to go get pulled by my dad when their parents got home so we just left and went and had some fun.

If anyone knows any easy kids to watch that pay really good I’m in the market for some new kids to watch.


So I recently discovered that my mother does not know anything about my life, she never reads my blog, and doesn’t listen very well when I call I guess. I was telling a story that had friends from school in it and my dad was following right along but my mom would listen to parts of it then ask what are you talking about? Who is that? And finally I just said “Well you don’t LISTEN to me when I call and you NEVER read my blog AND I’m talking to dad anyway.”
She then got mad at me and dad said “well how come I know who she’s talking about?” That didn’t help at all. I bet that Nedra and Jeni know more about my life at school than my mom.

Great Christmas

So Christmas at the Lees in Utah was awesome! I got a ton of cool stuff and enough gum to last the year. The day after Christmas Dylan and Jordan were bored, yes bored, and convinced my dad that we should buy a Wii. well my dad decided that he was sick of hearing how we should buy a Wii (Dylan’s been talking about it since it came out last Christmas) so he gave Jordan and Dylan money and sent them to go buy their hearts desire. We had a grand time playing Wii Sports with everyone and New Super Mario Bros. Wii is really fun. Grandma says we should get Wii fit so we can play the hula-hoop game. Myia and Kenny both got Nintendo DS systems and some games so we played each other on them for a while. I think Kenny really likes his; he went from the DS to the Xbox back to DS on Christmas. Mason got a little car and he rode around on it like all day, he ran into stuff on purpose and laughed it was fun to watch. It was a great day here. Hope everyone had as fun of a day as we did!