Well, I decided to change the background to fit the season. I think it's cute :p You'll also notice a pic in my header. Laws has that been obnoxious! Even though I'd try and try to upload a pic to my header, it would NEVER show! So finally, thanks to The Cutest Blog on the Block and Tips for New Bloggers - I was able to bypass this issue by being able to add gadgets WITHIN the header (ex. a picture!) So not as cool as having the title ON the picture, point is, I was able to put a picture in the header. :) Now my cute fall-esque header was made with a digital scrapbook kit downloaded from Shabby Princess. I know there's a white background on it, but you'll have to deal with it. That's just the nature of the beast methinks. Perhaps I'll try editing it some more to make it more pretty :)

So it's finally to the point where the semester seems bearable (10 more weeks plus finals!). In 1.5 weeks, it's Fall Break! Wahoo! (And also Jason and Camile's wedding :) You'll get pics, I'm sure.) Then it's about 5 weeks before Thanksgiving! and then only 2 weeks til finals. YAY! Then one last full semester, a summer off, and a couple classes (I'll only need the one, but if I go half time, I can get more financial aid and have one more semester before I have to pay on my student loan :)) - THEN - I'll be gradumatated! Huzzah! It really is that exciting. My bachelor's degree is in sight. There *is* a light at the end of the tunnel. The trick is staying enough in the here-and-now to not fail any classes :) I need a C- or better in all my classes left in order to graduate. Should be doable - just more papers. I hate papers.

So that's what's going on. Not a whole lot exciting. Bhuvan is still losing feathers constantly. He has two growing in on his tail that we can see - and his head is as spiky as ever!

Well, I should do some more of that homework stuff so as to not fail.

School and work have kept me busy! Hence no post lately. That, and there hasn't really been anything exciting happening. Bhuvan hasn't tried to break any feathers, though he keeps leaving them EVERYWHERE! However, some new ones are managing to grow in.

Here, you can see two new ones, one on each wing. On the left, he has a rather long gray one, and the white one on the bottom of his right wing is new too.

In this one, I was trying to show off his spiky head. (He's got quite a few new ones coming in on top too.) However, you can't really tell the difference between the pins and the feathers. I'm including it because I noticed one eye is half shut, and I thought it was funny.

Anyway, today, Jason's fiancee, Camile, received her endowment at the Manti temple. *Funny side note (at least to me): I received my endowment at Provo and got married in Manti. Camile received her endowment in Manti and is getting married in Provo.* It was really good to go down with her. I've wanted to go down since we got married because I knew they did live sessions. It was so cool! Definitely helps you stay awake :) It's so pretty in the endowment rooms too. Anyway, it was a good experience to go back a little over a year since we initially were sealed there. I had Matt's mom take a few pictures of us outside the temple afterward. Here they are!

We had a bit of a scare last night. Bhuvan has began to molt. He's losing feathers all the time, and new ones are growing in. Well, last night, the little bugger broke another blood feather. Why he does this at 9pm, I don't know. Anyway, Matt runs to get floss to tie the feather off and wants me to take him in the morning. We had to locate the feather to do that anyway, and I knew the doctor would just pluck it. We watched last time, and Dr. Ipsen told us best how to pluck it. So I told Matt we should just do that. (I have class, and he has class, and even non-after-hours visits are more money than I'd like to spend.) So I grab a towel and get up enough courage to restrain the poor little thing, and Matt's wearing his motorcycle gloves (mostly so Bhuvan could bite him and it wouldn't hurt - I can't restrain his head very well). Then Matt finds the feather and plucks it - so fast! (Dr. Ipsen suggests slow pressure until it releases.) Either way, the feather was removed and Matt applied pressure to the wing. I'm happy to report that Bhuvan is still alive 11 hours later. We were worried about him (Matt especially) because he was in shock for a while. After maybe an hour or so, he finally started to move around his cage and ate a bit. I think he'll be fine. I'm glad we decided to do it at home. I think we'll be a lot more confident next time (as long as we're both home!).

Well the last entry wasn't so positive. I just want to let you all know that the paper got done and the debate went relatively well. And we got out like 15 - 20 minutes early from group. Group was also pretty fun :) It's true - I just stress way easy - and then break down :) Prepare for more of that. I have a response paper to an article about Freud due Tuesday, and our first paper in Individual therapy due the week after that. Oh! and a test this weekend in social psych! Yay for the semester getting underway (13 more weeks, plus finals - if anyone is interested...). Hmm - that is all, for now. mwah ha ha .... ;)

I sit here at school in kind of a daze. There was about 2 hours worth of work today. Why is it that Wednesdays are always dead? Doesn't work know that I have a class at 4, so it's not very economical for me to drive home and back again? I planned ahead today, though. I packed my laptop, power cord, and binder for a class I didn't have today - all so I could sit here before class and work on the stupid paper that accompanies my debate tomorrow. I got more done, but it's not all done.

Anyway, I was sufficiently side-tracked for a while. I played on facebook and chatted with Dusty, in between sort of working on paper. I checked all the blogs I read. However, at some point, I just had to get something done. So I worked more focused on my paper. Then I stopped caring. I'm staring off in the distance and watching the few people who walk by. I thought, maybe I'll take a break and read some for the class I have in 40 minutes, since we have a quiz and all. Didn't work. I'm still in a daze. I'm ready to go home. Unfortunately, I have 2.5 hours of group. I think it will go: 2 quizzes (we're behind a week in that regard), group for an hour or so, break (huzzah!), and then we'll have our first lecture. Unfortunately again, I'm pretty sure this week we'll stay until 6:30.

Did I mention the weather is crappy too? Well this is starting to sound depressive, isn't it? Sorry - I'm not depressed. I just wish I could go to class and learn, but not write papers :) Reading textbooks is iffy too. Too bad it doesn't work that way. Anyway - I'd best finish so I can clean up, go to class for hours on end, then go home and work on stupid paper more. (Class is at 8:30am) bleh.

While blog-hopping - I found the cutest widget! Shelfari! It's a virtual bookshelf. (duh, you can see that much on the right of this blog!) Anyway - I love books. Books are my friends. So you can browse through my shelf via the arrows on the bottom to see what books I've enjoyed. You'll probably see a pattern. I'm big on sci-fi and mystery. :) Books are one way I can escape from the real world - especially when it sucks. I figure suicide isn't a good option, so how else can I leave what's going on? By transferring myself to another time and place of course!

I'm sure my love of reading comes from my mom. She was such the bookworm! She'd finish books in days easily. She'd practically read anything and everything. This made her a great teammate for Trivial Pursuit. She soaked up random tidbits like a sponge.

Anyway, I think I'll give you an overview of some of my all-time favorites.

Dune

Laws, do I love Frank Herbert! Dune is seriously epic. Some call it the Lord of the Rings of sci-fi. And it is. The end. :) Only MORE epic. Dune alone has so many "plots within plots." The main theme is a messiah story, however you get ecology, sociology, religion, etc. :D I'm a Dune-nut, it's true. Of course, that means I don't only love Dune - but the whole lot of the series. Allow me to break it down for you, should you decide to take on the monolith.

Written by Frank Herbert:

Dune

Dune Messiah

Children of Dune

God Emperor of Dune

Heretics of Dune

Chapterhouse: Dune

Written by Brian Herbert (Frank's son) and Kevin J. Anderson:

(prequel trilogy 1):

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

Dune: The Machine Crusade

Dune: The Battle of Corrin

(prequel trilogy 2):

Dune: House Atreides

Dune: House Harkonnen

Dune: House Corrino

(Dune book 7):

Hunters of Dune

Sandworms of Dune

(Random):

The Road to Dune

Paul of Dune

Note - I, myself, have not read ALL of these. I got stuck on Road to Dune. I don't want to go on without finishing, though I probably will. I'm sort of re-reading Chapterhouse in order to read Hunters and Sandworms. Eventually anyway :) Regardless, I highly encourage everyone to at least try Dune.

The Cat Who... series

Well, it's pretty obvious I stole this pic from Amazon. However, considering I just gave them credit - it's not exactly stealing, is it? Anyway..

The Cat Who... series is written by Lilan Jackson Braun. Super easy read - and short too! I enjoy this when I want something light. They can be read out of context very easily - so you don't have to look at it like a series if you don't want to. I'm currently going through and reading them as a series, however. You do see some progressions that are kind of interesting when you do that.

Anyway - there are a lot, and they're kind of predictable, but they're still entertaining. The first (if anyone wants to go the series route) is The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. I'm currently on book five, The Cat Who Played Brahms. Good books - and she's still alive, so occassionally a new one shows up.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

K, I stole this from Amazon too - but I got smart and found the cover *without* the "search inside" business. I'll conclude my list with this - considering this post is HUGE! Anyway - Douglas Adams is a funny, funny man. There is no definite Hitchhiker's Guide. It has mutated in all its forms (BBC radio broadcast, TV series, books, recordings, and, of course, the movie).

I show you the picture of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in paperback, mostly because this is the one we bought, so this is what I've read. It contains all five books and the short story that comprise the "trilogy." (That's right, 5 books, one story = trilogy.) If you opt for this route - you NEED to read the forward stuff. Douglas Adams is funny always - not just when writing novels ;)

Alright - I'll be done. Kudos to anyone who makes it this far. Check out my shelf - and get your own at http://www.shelfari.com/

Ok, I'm pretty tired, so I probably shouldn't be trying to write something that's posted for the world to see. Oh well :) So today was, overall, a bad day. Even though I woke up on time (amazingly), Bhuvan decided to fly off and smack his wings against things right before I want to leave. He did this yesterday too - so I worry that he'll break another blood feather. So I left late. Grr. Then there was a train (fortunately, it was pretty short). Then - there's no bloody parking at school, so I have to park way far away and walk in. I was somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes late for class, which upsets me.

However! Yay for Dr. Matt's class. I love that class. It made me happy. So then I was good, for a minute. Then I went to work. I figured I'd have at least 300 surveys in ASB Teller since there was no way for me to get through it all yesterday. Wrong! Someone must have finished cleaning them because the data was sent, and they were already working on getting this month's survey up. So I was at work for 1.4 hours. It's especially upsetting to have no work on Wednesdays because I have another class at 4. Last week there was virtually no work too. Grr. So I went home for 3 hours. I got most my reading done for class, and I practiced bagpipes. However, I had to play on my small pipes because my practice chanter is MIA.

So then, I had to drive BACK to Orem - park far away (because class has no student parking near it - 'cept institute, but I'm not taking a class there, so I don't get to park there), then walk like a half mile to class. I had plenty of time for this, though. I got to the room about 15 minutes early. I finished the chapter and started the next one. Anyway, we got out like 75 minutes early cuz Jack had to go home and finish getting ready for his trip tomorrow.

Group went alright. I'm curious to see how it ends up since we're students learning how to conduct groups. Typically groups are focused around some issue - sexually offending, drug or alcohol abuse, rape survivors, etcetera. We did learn some interesting things about some people though.

After group, I came home. Matt was home already and practicing drums before making his videos to send to Andrew for lessons. However, to send videos - he needs my computer. I was already kinda meh from the day, even though group wasn't horrible. My computer and the camera were not getting along. It wouldn't recognize the camcorder. And I was starting to get hungry. Anyway - I couldn't handle the stress that had been building, so I eventually left. I sat under a tree at the art museum for a while, until my spot got shady and cold. Then I walked around the block and picked up info papers for houses that are for sale - even though we won't buy them. We won't even move to a different apartment. Dumb money. I then decided to go home.

Garth and Sarah were over, and Matt and I took the bike while they followed around town. They're looking for an apartment (preferrable in the same town) for the semester. Eventually we went to Provo to Fazoli's for dinner. I ate too much, but oh well. I haven't really studied for my peo (point earning opportunity - aka quiz) tomorrow in phys psych, and now I'm much too tired to do anything. I also didn't get to finish my journal entry for group because of the stupid video issue.

Anyway - lots of stuff and I'm tired. We'll think of this as a cathartic entry. Oh, and Matt thinks giving an impression of the semester is dumb because it just started. So you probably won't get that.