HAPPY

This song makes me want to dance down the street just like the people in the music video. I loved it in Despicable Me 2 but totally forgot about it until I heard it on the radio a couple weeks ago and now I really really love it. 

Mom, you mentioned you liked this song too! So if by chance you usually skip videos, watch this one. Or at least listen. 

happyhappyhappyhappy

Monday, Monday

(I hope you sang that title.)

Today is another strange Monday. I've had a whole bunch of those lately, not sure why, and I'm sincerely hoping it's not chronic. But today is strange because I am recovering from a bout of food poisoning, woo! I feel like I get food poisoning more than the average human, but today I realized it must be because in almost all other realms of life, I am super lucky! So I can handle the occasional weekend of diarrhea (TMI?). This one has been particularly long and drawn out, so I'm rather annoyed. 

And it was from a Caesar salad! You know, the yummiest kind? Totally turned off to those now, dagnabbit. Oh well...win some, lose some, as I always say.



Just for fun, a brief list of foods with which I have negative connotations due to situations such as these:
-Caesar salads
-barbeque sauce
-tuna
-nuts of any kind, not including peanuts

Foods with which I do not have negative connotations, despite similar situations:
-cookie dough

The moral of the story: Eat cookie dough, kids! That food poisoning was the least of them all, 

and cookie dough is dang good stuff. 

This post is all over the map again, but I'm leaving it like that. I'm off to make blueberry pancakes and lava cakes for dinner and dessert with Joe, after which we will probably watch and read a conference talk for FHE. Can't wait! 

Have a great week, folks.

Raising the bar

So I guess it was obvious that my last post was a little fragmented at the end? I was trying to finish it up before I left work that day (and therefore lost wifi for the rest of the day), but I had such thoughts! Anyways, sorry if I'm sometimes hard to understand. This is why I am a math major instead of an English major.

But today I want to continue with more wedding shtuff! Really just a couple pictures that crack me up:

Do you notice a trend? I promise we weren't doing this on purpose. But our wedding should have been an AT&T ad, probably. 





And the math nerd inside me is all, Oh linear functions and exponential functions! and trying to figure out if that means anything. I don't think it does, but it's kind of fun to think about.

Love day

I have recently learned about myself that I get excited to love stuff. 

I get excited to love a new project.
I get excited to love a new friend.
I get excited to love a new goal.
I get excited to love my future children.
I get excited to love a refined Pandora station.
I get excited to love a new class. Or even a new topic within a class.
I get excited to love a new recipe.
I get excited to love a new plant.
And, like, lots more.

All of these happen before I even try stuff! So my excitement is not because I suddenly love a new thing, but because the possibility of loving this new thing is about to present itself. The excitement is greater while I'm reading the ingredients than when I actually taste the first bite. It comes at the moment when I meet someone, not after we've already become friends. The excitement is more fun than the actual love, usually. Sometimes I'm, like, knocked over by how much I love stuff, but usually I'm more mellow than that. The excitement really is what gets me. 

Anyway, one of the things I am constantly excited about is the chance to love my husband more than I currently do. When he left on his mission, I thought I loved him a lot. When he came home, I knew I loved him more. When he proposed, I loved him even more. Our wedding day felt like the apex of all love ever loved. And now I love him more than I did that day. Heck, I love him more than I did yesterday. This is an exciting idea to me, in a similar way to my excitement for future loves. 

I think this is because in the moment that I love him more, I don't always notice it right away. I see that increase when I look back more than when I'm right in it. But I can feel the excitement of the future almost always! Exciting. 

So mostly why I bring this up today is, well, because it's Valentine's Day. And I always was SO EXCITED to have an actual valentine for Valentine's Day in all my past years. This is my first valentine year! I mean, Joe and I liked each other in high school and stuff, but hello--high school. Valentine-iness was not happening in our quick!-pretend-we're-not-dating! relationship. 

So anyway, since about junior high school, I've been working up a healthy excitement for the year when I would have my own valentine. And it's been a blast, man. I have fond Valentine's memories from past years where, even though I had nobody to celebrate with in a couple-y way, I just basked in the excitement of the day when I would have that person. 

And now I have that person! We're married and everything! And it is wonderful. But I daresay the excitement was just as wonderful. Valentine's Day calms down considerably when you're all married and settled and stuff. So it's fun, but it's in a different way.

So! Where am I even going with all of this. I dunno. But if you are reading this and you are feeling sad that you don't have a valentine, you don't have to! Just be excited that someday you will have a valentine, and they'll love you so much, and it'll be great. Your current situation is probably great, too, though, so focus on that for now. Bask in the excitement! Excitement is fun. 

I want to say that I really admire people who don't get all grumpy about Valentine's Day. I feel like the older I get, the more I see these people in my social media and whatnot, and I totally appreciate it. I enjoy celebrating love because love is positive and happy and applicable to more than just romantic relationships, and it takes lots of effort on my part to not get grumpy at grumpy people. I think this idea is part of why I feel that way. </tangent>

And also: happy Valentine's Day to all y'alls. I love you and you and you...


And also: enjoy these and these and these, found and sent to me by Jenna.

Music and missionaries

I have 77 drafts of posts for this blog. SEVENTY-SEVEN. Sometimes I feel ridiculous for not just posting one of those 77 other ideas I had at some point in time, and today was one of those times. I decided to just go choose one and post it, as is. However, they're all pretty short, so here are a couple unrelated ones.

"Their music all sounds the same"

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This is an argument I've never understood: 

"Their music all sounds the same."

Well yeah, isn't that the idea? If you want to be an artist, you've got to develop something that's your own. Only by making everything sound similar can you ensure that those who hear your music will know it's really you. 

Plus also, if you want variety, you are welcome to listen to, like, different artists and stuff.

And apparently that's all I really have to say on the subject.

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"The nice thing"

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Well you see, 
the nice thing about waiting for a missionary
is letting them go.
It's that they change while they're gone.
They change to be something so much greater:
more humble, 
teachable, 
open,
welcoming,
charitable.
And you watch them. And you fall even more in love. 
Because now, they have even more good stuff to love.
And you loved them before they left,
and you thought you couldn't let go in that one last hug,
but you did.
Because it was the good, better, and best choice, all in one.

And then they come back. 
And you love them so much more.
And when you hug them, you think you might never let go.
But that's the nice thing about waiting for a missionary: 
eventually, 
you don't have to let go.

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Hey look, now I'm down to 75. That's a nice round number. This was fun, maybe I'll do it again sometime. 

Rainy days and Mondays

I hope you sang that title. 



Today I have had a severe case of "the Mondays."
I felt fine when I woke up, but then I lost all motivation when I walked out the door. 
It was very strange to walk more slowly to class and to not take notes. 
(She puts the PowerPoints online, no worries.)
I enjoyed my class with Joseph at 11:00, of course, but then for my next class I was a few minutes late. 
And at work I just haven't been as productive as I needed to be. 
Lazy lazy lazy.
Sigh.

I never have this problem! I think it's because our weekend was wonderful and I didn't want it to end. Most of our weekends are equally wonderful, but for some reason, today was just full of that don't-make-me-go-back feeling. 

Probably because it rained. Rainy days and Mondays. You understand. 
(If you don't understand, click that link at the beginning of this post.)

In any case, I found this cute graphic of umbrellas!

Yay, bright colors! No more lazy for me.

Now I get to go to FHE with my husband, and that will probably turn everything around.

I love FHE.

Have a happy Monday, e'rybody!

Homework

IP&T 202, online discussion board. Informal weekly writing on the topic of LEARNING.

Prompt 3: Leonardo da Vinci wrote, “Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind...The natural desire of good men is knowledge” (p. 49).  Do you agree or disagree with Leonardo’s statement?

I agree with Leonardo’s statement, and I especially like that he calls knowledge a “natural desire.” We know from fairly recent research that exercising our minds is important, but most of us would probably exercise them even if scientists did not tell us we need to. People in all times and ages have desired to learn, regardless of their knowledge or lack of knowledge of the benefits of doing so for their future brain coherence. When I reflect on my own learning, I find joy in the moments I can recall that I suddenly understood something more deeply or differently. I think we are simply wired to enjoy those moments.

However, I am not sure why we enjoy these. Why did a new discovery cause Archimedes to run through the streets naked exclaiming, “Eureka! I have found it!”? Why have scientists in different eras and different countries dedicated their lives to discovering new elements, formulas, and species, and then explaining their thoughts on those things to the general public? Why do I tell my husband every little thing I learn in school every day? Perhaps the key here is growth. We are wired to survive so that we can grow physically; therefore, maybe we are also wired to learn so that we can grow mentally.

Another possibility is this: We learn from modern revelation that “the glory of God is intelligence” (D&C 93:36). If His glory comes from what he has learned, and we want to be like God, we too are going to have to learn. We might as well enjoy it!

School is cool.

Wait! While I'm here, let me tell you my favorite story about Archimedes because, surprisingly, it is not the eureka one. I learned this one last semester in Math History.

Archimedes was a nut job about his mathematical works. He was constantly working out problems in his head, and sometimes he would go for days without eating, bathing, or otherwise taking care of himself. When others would make him participate in normal life activities, he would still draw his calculations in whatever nearby medium he could find (e.g. his mashed potatoes, oils on his skin, the dirt on the ground). 

When Roman soldiers attacked his city, they were told to bring Archimedes back alive. He was a valuable resource since he had a talent for inventing war machines. One Roman soldier found Archimedes drawing a geometry problem in the sand, completely oblivious to everything happening around him, and commanded him to come along. Archimedes simply said, "Don't touch my circles." (I picture him saying this like a moody teenager.)

The Roman soldier was mad about that response, so he killed Archimedes. The end.

Ok I'm sorry about that ending, but I just love how cray-cray that Archimedes was. So much focus, so little time! If only I could do so well at focusing on my homework...