Saturday, January 10, 2009

Snow! Snow. I Don't Even Like the Sound of It!


What an interesting week it has been! I just finished my first week of winter semester 2009 and it seems like it is going to be a busy one. I actually enjoy each of my classes, but there are a lot of writing assignments required in each of my classes. By far the most interesting class I'm taking is English 318R which is basically an advanced creative writing course. What is interesting about it is that the teacher is a fairly famous fantasy writer named Brandon Sanderson. I went to the classroom for the first day of class about 10 minutes early and the class was completely full! There was absolutely nowhere to sit. Apparently Brandon Sanderson's class is very popular and most of these people were hoping to add the class. I was actually one of the lucky few that actually had signed up for the course. We ended up moving into a bigger room (without knowing if another class would come in). Brandon put everybody's add card in the trash can and drew out five lucky winners who would be able to become part of the class.

The class will involve me writing 2,000 words a week and to read that much from 4 other students in my writing group. I am really excited about this class because it will help me know if I want to pursue professional writing. The class will force me to work on my writing, which has been something I've been wanting to do for a long time now. I am really looking forward to doing this. Besides that, I have an advanced writing class in Psychology that seems like it is going to be a lot of work and a lot more writing. Then I have the ever hilarious Brother Fluhman for Church History, which I'm really excited about. I may put some humorous quotes of his on this blog from time to time just to lighten up the mood. So, all in all, it seems as if this is going to be a great semester.

Besides that, it has been a crazy week because of one thing: weather, particularly snow. I don't believe I've ever experienced such large amounts of snow in my life. It has been very scary to drive and walk this week. I have a funny story to accompany each of these forms of travel. In regards to walking, me and my best friend Kevin were walking out of the Devotional (which featured President and Sister Samuelson). We were talking and all of a sudden I slipped and fell hard! Not only did I fall, but I couldn't get back up because the ground was so slippery. I exclaimed in desperation, "I can't get up!" After much struggling and some concern from others around, I finally got up and we went on our way. As we were walking I heard a lot of people talking about their experiences falling down that day, so I guess I'm not alone.

In regards to my car, that same day I walked ridiculously slow to my car (afraid of slipping again) and got in and put the car in reverse. I pressed on the gas and my car was not going anywhere! I went around my car to inspect what was causing the car to not be able to move. I kicked some snow away from the car and got in and tried going in reverse again. I was unsuccessful, but got a little farther back this time. So, I repeated the process and kept kicking snow out of my way. I was finally able to get pretty much out of my parking space and just needed to go back a little further, but a car was coming and I didn't want to keep them, so I pulled back into the space and the car went ahead. This was a mistake, because now my car was stuck in the space and no matter how much snow I kicked around, it would not move. So, I decided to just leave the car there and walk home (once again ridiculously slow).

Well, that night when Kevin got home from work, he drove me out to my car with determination that we were getting that car out of the space and back to my apartment parking lot. So, I got in the drivers seat and he proceeded to get snow out of the way so that I could move back. What he discovered was that it was the front tires that were stuck and that they were on a patch of ice causing them to spin purposelessly. So, Kevin would scrape the ice behind my tires and then I would go in reverse a couple of inches. So, we repeated this process which was clearly causing exhaustion to set in on Kevin from continually scraping at the ice and pushing my car as I went in reverse. He even fell a few times on the ice trying to push the car back. After making considerable progress, we saw a guy in a truck waiting for us so he could get out of the parking lot. Well, this guy ended up being the hero of the night as he got out of the truck and helped us get my car unstuck. His brilliant idea was for me to go a little bit forward and then start going in reverse as they pushed me back. After doing this only two times, I was unstuck and able to drive out! It was quite a victory and I was careful to not park in that parking lot and instead park farther away from my work and walk (yes, you guessed it, ridiculously slow!)

So that was my excitement for the week. I can't think of anything else that can top the story of getting my car unstuck. I am going to start a tradition right now that I give a small music recommendation at the bottom of each of my posts. This could be an album or a song or even just a particular artist. Since music is something I am extremely passionate about, I figure I'd dedicate a measly paragraph of each post to what music is exciting me lately. So here you go!

Music Recommendation: The Garden by Unitopia

This is a brand new album I purchased on Itunes with gift cards I recieved for Christmas. It is a progressive rock masterpiece, two discs worth of Australian Prog. I specifically love the 20 minute title track and the song that starts the second disc, Journey's Friend. They manage to showcase their influence of classic Prog bands (Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd) whil sounding new and fresh. I urge you to check them out!

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