January's done

well, almost. It has been quite a fun week. Some highlights -

- Our basketball team beat San Jose on Thursday and then owned Hawaii on Saturday to get to 19-1 on the season, #1 in the WAC and ranked #27 in the nation. When I say 'owned,' I mean it. They only scored 19 points in the first half to our 36. We play Nevada this Thursday and it's going to be crazy. Aparantly the games only get better as the team gets higher in the rankings because the increased exposure equals more people at the game. We'll see.

- I rocked my sociology test. That felt pretty good.

- I took some pretty sweet pictures on Friday. Friday was the weirdest foggy day in the history of the world. You really couldn't see the other cars if it wasnt for the headlights, and you could only see the stoplights when you got within 10 feet of them. On the way back from Quantum of Solace, Janet saw a shopping cart in a little creek behind Wal Mart that was lit up pretty well by a street light. We went home to grab my camera, but got caught up in a movie instead. So, Jake, Brian and I went a little later. Here are the results.

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I took millions of pictures, but only like 15 turned out well. I do love the new camera, and I love that in all of the computer labs we have all the image editing software I could ever want. I'm still trying to learn about how to use it, but just knowing it's there is comforting.

17-1

Holy cow. So it turns out basketball games are the best things to ever happen to college. Let me explain the situation.

When we got there an hour early, there were already tons of students in line to get into the game. As soon as they opened the doors, it was a mad dash for seats. We got pretty close to the court, but it was amazing how quickly it filled up.

As soon as BSU hit the floor to start practicing, we started booing. There was one specific player, Anthony Thomas, who dropped the F-bomb repeatedly on the student section after their victory in the WAC tourny last year, so every time (seriously, every time) he touched the ball in the game - every one of the 10,000 people in attendance booed instantly. We owned him.

When we sat down, there was a BSU fan behind us wearing his orange shirt. As soon as he was spotted, everyone pointed at him and chanted "kick him out!" It was hilarious. He finally put on a blue shirt.

We owned BSU. It was amazing. I think the night was capped by this. We were ahead by seven when this happened, so we went into the half with a 10 point lead. The spectrum went crazy.

Thomas only made two shots all night.

The lead kind of fluctuated for a while, then with about a minute left, everyone in the spectrum pulled out their keys and started jangling them.

Amazing.

Here are a few pictures.

From 1-17-09

Just the guys warming up.

From 1-17-09

Super zoom. Notice the BSU shirt holding the cup of aggie icecream.

From 1-17-09

This is where it happens.

From 1-17-09

Stew preaching his gospel.



Other necessary links.

A sweet write up of the spectrum. Read it.

A sweet basketball movie guaranteed to make you want to visit the spectrum. (the one on the 7th of Feb's going to be sweet. Come one come all.)

Back to normal

After the first week of class - it's good to be able to say that everything is back to normal. Here's a little run down of what's going on.

-As far as classes go - Monday Wednesday Friday I start at 8:30 and get out at 12:20, Tuesdays I have a 7:30 recitation for Cheimstry and Thursday my earliest class is billiards at 9:30.

-Work is amazing this semester. I'm the supplies manager in the lab, which means a few things. First, I only have three scheduled shifts in the labs (which coincide pretty well with my schedule). That's way nice. That also means that I get to use the other half of my hours as I need in order to get everything else done. It's very nice and is quite conducive to more free time.

-My roommates rock. It's pretty much a party everytime we're all home together.

-My camera rocks. I went out on Saturday and took some pictures just playing around. Here are some of them.

From 1-10-09

Here is the front of Grandma and Grandpa Stone's headstone. Pretty sweet, I thought.

From 1-10-09

Here's the back.

From 1-10-09

I liked this one, too.

From 1-10-09

Here is some snow on the road where I stopped to take some pictures of the valley. I thought it was pretty sweet.

From 1-10-09

I liked this one lots. It's really not that clear, but it's not supposed to be.

From 1-10-09

Reason enough for anyone to live in Logan.

From 1-10-09

These horses were pretty excited to run up to the side of the road. He was easily the best looking.



More later, don't even worry.

It has been a while...

So, I just read my last post and realized that I said I was going to post when I was at home over break. Well, I didn't. It was a crazy couple weeks, here are the highlights -

- I worked at toys r us over the break. It rocked. I love those people and I love the fact that they love me enough to let me come and work for a few weeks. They run a tight ship and it was a good time to be able to save Christmas daily.

- My family rocks. I think that the three weeks I spent at home with them just kicking it rocked. Mom doesn't think twice about just doing everything possible to make sure everyone has the best time possible, and she does a bang up job.

- I got to see Janet 3 times. She came and surprised me the first week of break and then we traded visits the rest of the break. She rocks.

- My new camera - most of my Christmas was a contribution to my camera fund and I've had some fun taking some pictures. Here are a couple. It rocks.

From 122708

This is me saving Christmas by holding up the tree while it was getting fixed.

From 122708

One of my first pictures, I liked it lots.

From 1-6-09

Monday night's game against U of I. Notice the far basket and the people standing underneath.

From 1-6-09

Here are those people standing under the far basket, using the 20x zoom. It rocks.

Those are the only pictures I have so far from that camera, but here are a few other gems I found on my computer.

From 12-13-08

This is Jake all wrapped up for his big birthday dance for our neighbor Erica. It rocked.

From 12-13-08

Cousin Maragaret did us a huge solid and got us tickets to the Christmas concert in the conference center.



I no longer have a 2 am shift in the computer lab, so I probably won't be able to post quite as regularly. But, I'll do my best.

December is in full swing...

And with it finals. I'm pretty much hating it. I had a final this morning at 7:30 - the earliest possible final on the earliest possible day. Have to love that. I don't have a final until Wednesday now, so I have a little time to recover. The last one is on Thursday - then it's home free. Hopefully I can pull out some sweet A action. We'll just have to see how everything falls into place. Last Saturday, Janet, her roomies, and I went to Salt Lake to check out the lights. Here are the pictures.

From 12-06-08

Here's the tree in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was way fun to see - it's a little blurry because I had to take the picture way super fast as there were constantly people in the way.

From 12-06-08

A pretty sweet self-portrait.

From 12-06-08

I'm pretty much professional. Yeah right. I hate taking pictures of things at night with my camera - it really doesn't do well at all. All of my pictures end up being at a strange upward angle because I have to set my camera on something so it looks halfway decent.

From 12-06-08

Did I mention Im pro?

From 12-06-08

This is what Christmas looks like on acid.

From 12-06-08

None of them were really in focus - this was the best one that I took. I love the bright green light.

From 12-06-08

This was the first time in like 30 years that I got to go visit the statue of Christ. Loved it. There were approximately 45,000 sister missionaries lining the ramp up to the upper level and it took all I had not to give in to them and watch the Christmas movie with an uplifting message about Christ.


It was a good day - and we finished it off going to Provo to Brittney's birthday party and getting to hang out with Scott, Kevin, and Devin. Good people.

It was a sad day, as well, because of our loss to the cougars. Read this. It's a pretty good run down of the game. It was way super intense in the last few minutes when Cummard (their star guard) fouled out of the game with only 6 points. They kept missing foul shots and we kept not capitalizing. But, my favorite part of the whole ordeal is in that article when Cummard makes the most blatantly rediculous statement (and I quote)' "Both fans are crazy," said Cummard. "Their fans are crazy; our fans are better. I'm glad we got the victory. Their fans have a lot of mean things to say and our team didn't let it bother us today." ' Maybe the rest of the team didn't let it bother them, but his six points (after scoring 30 points a few nights before) says something a little different.

The next post will be from home. That sounds nice. No homework, no stress, no finals. Until then...

So - this has turned out to be one of the craziest weeks ever. It all started last week with a sweet visit to Idaho, then one day of classes, followed by a drive down to Clearfield to go to dinner with Mer and Cory and crew, and catching the 9:45 flight out of SLC to get to AZ at 11:45. We got picked up just a few minutes later by a shuttle driver who had good intentions and a super thick accent. We dropped off the lady who was riding with us, and he turned to us and asked, "You know where you live, right?" His GPS wasn't updated and he had no idea where we were going. Mom was pretty sure she was going to get hate-crimed, and had a look of sheer terror on her face for the ensuing 30 minutes until we arrived safely at Louisa's house at around 1:30 am. We had a really fun time there - lots of time to play with the kids and a really amazingly delicious thanksgiving dinner. I'm glad I got to go. Thanks again Louisa! And happy Birthday! I didn't get to call her today because of how crazy life got between FHE and work - so I hope a sick blog shoutout will make up for it. :) Here are my pictures from the trip

From 11-27-08 This is one of the flowers that was growing in Louisa's neighborhood that I snapped while we were on a walk. From 11-27-08 Here's the Thanksgiving Day spread. Delicious. From 11-27-08 Here's Tyler at dinner after he had gotten enough food on his shirt to merit taking it off. Not to mention the sick hair-do... From 11-27-08 Tyler putting the last touches on the nativity scene. It was way fun to get to put up Christmas while the temperature outside merited the use of the AC inside. From 11-27-08 The Fontanini nativity. From AZ From Mom Found this on mom's camera. Knew it needed to be on the blog. He didn't come to AZ with us, but this picture did. From 11-28-08 Another picture of the nativity. From 11-28-08 More of the lights. From 11-28-08 The temple at night. From 11-28-08 I couldn't get any good pictures of the floating lights themselves, so here they are just included in the picture instead of being the focus. Pretty cool, I thought.

From 11-27-08 These represent about half of the rolls that we made. The best thing ever. From 11-27-08 Little Kara enjoying her dinner. From 11-27-08 Tyler again. He was rocking some sweet hair all week. From 11-27-08 Kara wasn't too sure what to think of me. From 11-27-08 Audrey's newest pet. From 11-28-08 We got to go to the initial igniting of the Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple. This was part of the nativity there. From 11-28-08 The lights around the temple. From 11-28-08 View across the reflection pond towards the visitors center. From 11-28-08 More lights.

The trip was way relaxing - just the thing I needed before hitting "dead week" here at school and the impending doom that next week's three finals hold for me. Prayers are welcome. And money. And love. Good luck to all in the same boat.