Guess what I did!

Okay, our seminary director guy (I can't remember what the exact title is) gave us a deal about a month ago. He said that if we memorized all 25 of our scripture masteries we could go to a pizza party.

We only had to memorize one at a time and then either get our seminary teacher or one of our legal gaurdians to sign off the card saying that we had memorized the scripture.

I (like pretty much everybody else who was confronted with this deal) just kinda shrugged it off and didn't see much of point in trying. It'd be easier to just go to Little Ceasar's Pizza at lunch and just buy a pizza, so for the first three and a half weeks I didn't do much to memoriz all of the scripture masteries.

Then my friend (my somewhat agressive friend) finished all of hers the day before the dealine and didn't want to go alone so she encouraged/threatened me to get all of mine finished. Then the guy who sits behind me shared his opinion that I wouldn't be able to do it.

Now there are two things you should know about me. #1, I never abandon a friend as long as I can help it and #2, I always do the exact opposite of what everybody thinks I'm going to do (I think it's called teenage rebellion) so I pounded my fist on my desk and said "I'll do it,". I realized that this meant memorizing seventeen scripture masteries in one night, but hey, the sky's the limit right?

So yeah, I pulled it off and I was one of the six or seven people in our entire seminary building to go to that pizza party. Of course two of them didn't show up because they "forgot", but showing up was probably just as vital a step in getting pizza as the memorizing of the scripture masteries.


oh yeah, and another unexpected thing I did recently was screaming in the middle of an important performance on a mini-tour our school band went on this weekend. I think I should probably mention that I was supposed to. It was kind of unexpectedly pounced on me by the conductor. The peice is called 'The Phantom Train" and it's about a train that derailed in 1890 or something, and apparently people still hear the screams of the people who died in the train wreck. So at the part where everybody begins their chromatic decline to symbolize the train going off the tracks somebody was supposed to scream. It wasn't in the music, but about a month earlier our conductor had an epiphany (that word always makes me laugh now because of the Simpson Movie) which instructed him to instruct one of us to scream. Originally it was another flute player and she did it for a couple of performances, but she didn't go on this trip. Everybody had completely forgotten that she wasn't coming and didn't remember her absence until we were playing the peice in front of a guy who was giving us a workshop. During our rests we (the flutes) hurriedly discussed who should do the scream and I ended up agreeing to it. So yeah, I screamed and everybody agreed that I should do it for the performance so I did. Apparently it was better than the original girl's scream. I didn't think so, my voice cracked when I started trailing off at the end (because I was surprisingly nervous) but apparently that made it more realistic.

I think it's the mixture of being a swimmer and a fluotist (flute player) that's built up my lungs to the capacity that allows me to scream louder than what's normal. I don't think anybody in their right mind would try to kidnap me because you could probably hear me scream from several blocks away if I really tried to scream as loud as I could.

Another interesting thing I did (a month ago, but I just remembered it) was that I rode a donkey. It was awesomeness undefinable by the english language, which is part of the reason I'm considering trying to teach myself some latin.

My sister Heidi unexpectedly acquired a donkey and I was the first grown person to ride him. His name is Melvin and he really likes to lick me. Just me. He rarely ever licks anybody else. He also bit me and unexpectedly jumped over a low, broken fence which caused me to fall off. It kinda hurt, but over all I was pleased to say that I had ridden and fell off a donkey.


Scripture masteries - These are scriptures that the General Authorities of the church decided we needed to know, so they put them on little cards and strongly sugested that ever seminary student memorize them.


Rests - (in the musical sense) just means when you're not playing but other people in the band are. If nobody's playing it's called a 'Grand pause', one of the few non-italian terms used in music.