Old English Calligraphy

I have now determined that I never want to go back in time to the Middle Ages and become a writer. For one of my English classes, we had to do something medieval in a medieval way, so I decided to write out a short poem in Old English, called "Cædmon's Hymn", in Old English calligraphy. It seemed like a really good idea at the time, but it was ridiculous. I decided to do a rough draft first, just so I could familiarize myself with the letter formations. After about three and a half hours, I finally finished my rough draft, although it had quite a few places where I'd tried to change letters to hide places where I'd accidentally misspelled something and places where I needed to cross out a poorly formed letter. The result:


Then I had to do the final version. I think that this one took about four hours, but I finally managed to get a final product, and then I decided to age the paper just a little bit (partly to take out my frustration with the pain in my hand and the four hours that I'd just spent writing out a nine-line poem; wrinkling paper is kind of fun) So here is the final result:

But that is finished now, so I guess I can move on to studying for the three tests I have coming up. Yay! At least we get a three day weekend this weekend. That is definitely how I'm getting through this crazy week.

FHE and Single Awareness Day

Okay, I haven't really blogged in a few weeks, so I thought it was about time to update. I decided to categorize this blog post, so I can keep things somewhat organized.
I guess I'll start with FHE. My current home evening group is amazing. I'm kind of sad that we'll probably get a new group in just another week or so. But we decided to have our activity for the week on Sunday instead of holding an activity on Valentine's Day. So our home evening mom's family decided to invite us to have dinner at their house up in Alpine. It was awesome. We had roast, mashed potatoes, corn, salad, rolls, pretzel salad, and cookies for dessert. It was great, and it was also very festive; they added pink food coloring to most of the food in celebration of Valentine's Day, and served pink drinks (Cherry 7-Up, pink lemonade, fruit punch, etc.). It was awesome. And the drive up there was really pretty, so I just had to get some pictures, even though I only had my phone, and the pictures were taken while driving by. It was a beautiful day, and I really noticed how pretty the mountains are.

We also drove right by the Mount Timpanogos Temple, which is absolutely gorgeous.

Then the road curved around the temple, so we got an even better view.

Overall, it was a great day, and one of my favorite home evening activities of the year.
Now for the next category: Single Awareness Day (more commonly known as Valentine's Day. February 14 is one of my least favorite days of the year, for a variety of reasons that would take way more than one blog post to cover. This Valentines Day, however, hasn't been that bad. I started the day with a free facial, and then went to my first class (which also happens to be my favorite class). The professor brought Valentine's Day cookies, which were awesome. They were all heart shaped sugar cookies with little messages like the ones on SweetHearts candy, but the messages all related to love and the Middle Ages (since it's a Medieval Literature class). The person who decorated the cookies was quite obviously in a rather anti-Valentine's Day mood when she decorated the cookies, which made them hilarious to read. I think my favorite was "Love Sucketh." It was awesome. Then I had my next class, which was also pretty good. After all of my classes were over, I talked to my amazing Mom (who is awesome, by the way), and then I baked cookies. I almost immediately started on dinner, which turned out pretty decently, to my surprise (it was the first time I'd tried this recipe). The rest of my plans consist of watching chick flicks and eating cookies (which definitely contain chocolate; it was a busy day, so I forgot to buy myself some chocolate). So overall, this has been a much better Valentine's Day than I expected.

Random Thoughts

So today I discovered a lot of fun things that I can add to my blog . . . pictures, lists, etc. I'm sure I probably knew about all of these once upon a time, when my mom was showing me how to set up a blog, but I kept things simple for the time. Today, probably partly because of sleep deprivation, I felt like adding some stuff and writing a random post about all of the crazy things going on in my life. So here goes . . .
I have been in the mood to cook for the past few days. I made Swedish pancakes yesterday, enchiladas tonight, and probably cookies, if I get around to it tonight. My wonderful cooking skills usually consist of microwaving some ravioli, so this is different.
In other unrelated thoughts, why are so many things not compatible with Mac computers? So many people use Macs, you'd think that they would have more stuff compatible with Mac. For my family history class, for example, we need this one program that's not compatible with Mac. So I have to walk all the way up to campus to do my homework, which is kind of a pain. But it's either that or paying $90 to get Windows on my computer. As I am not a huge fan of Windows, I think I'd prefer to just waste at least an extra forty minutes every once in a while to do my homework. At least some of the assignments don't use this program.
Next on my list: earbuds. I know they tend to be rather short-lived, but I think that ceasing to work after less than a month is a little too short-lived. At least I could still take them back.
I have a really awesome home evening group right now. We had an ice skating activity last night, which was a little scary for me, as I don't know how to ice skate and I have an extreme fear of falling (combined with ridiculous amounts of clumsiness). But it turned out to be really fun. The people in my group were really great about helping me out with the whole skating thing, and one guy even tried to teach me, which was nice. So it turned out to be way fun.
My classes are going great this semester. Even political science is turning out to be more entertaining than I thought it would. But I love my English classes, and my French class is basically just another literature class, but in French, so that's good. I'm learning a ton. Family history is interesting as well. I was fascinated with my family tree on New FamilySearch, and I've spent way too much time looking at that just to see who all my ancestors are. The main frustration with that class is just the computer program thing, but I guess I should get over that. That's what I get for buying a Mac (but overall, I love my Mac; I'd never go back to the other kind of computer again).
This semester is also a lot less stressful than last semester. It's still a lot of work, but it's not overkill like it was last semester. I'm not begging for mercy yet, so we'll see how it goes. But I feel a lot less overwhelmed so far, and my schedule doesn't look like it's going to be as bad. My worst week includes two tests and a paper, I think, so it's definitely doable.
Speaking of tests, I had my first one of the semester today. It wasn't that bad, so maybe I did well.
Anyway, I know it's an odd mix of stuff that's not remotely related, but I thought I'd give an update of how I'm doing.