July So Far

July has been good so far. We had a crazy heat wave, with temperatures in the triple digits for about a week or so.

I think this was the hottest that I saw on my phone. The average temperature during the day, though, was about 108 degrees. It was crazy. That lasted through the Fourth of July, which was fun. On July 3, we got to go see Grandpa's band, which was a lot of fun. It was good to hang out with family and see

Grandpa play in his band.

After that, we watched the fireworks with the family, which was a lot of fun.

Then, on the Fourth of July, we mostly relaxed at home. Brinkley is terrified of fireworks, so he was hiding behind us when we went outside to see the fireworks over the trees. Then we went inside and watched more fireworks on TV. It was really casual and relaxed, but it was a lot of fun.

Beach

For anyone who somehow doesn't know this yet, I love the beach. There's just something about walking on the beach and feeling the sand between my toes, smelling the salty ocean air, hearing the soothing sounds of the waves beating against the shore, and seeing the ocean stretch out before me that just relaxes me. So, needless to say, I was thrilled when we got to go spend some time on the beach as a family. And it definitely lived up to my expectations.

This was the beautiful view we got. The weather was really nice most of the time we were there. It was warm, but not too hot, and it was sunny, except for the last day, when the clouds came in.

Overall, though, the weather was great. We got to go in the water and let the waves pick us up and put us back down, which is one of the most relaxing things ever, and I got to read on the beach. It was great, and we had a lot of fun!

Finals, Birthday, and Home

Okay, so here's for the update on my life for pretty much the entire month of April.  I had the most stress-free finals week that I've ever had. For three of my classes, we just had to present on things that we had finished before finals week. For another one, we had an open-book, open-note, take-home final, which was way easy. And for French, there was absolutely no way to study for the final. So I had a finals week of no studying. So instead, I got to actually work on packing, which I finished on time, for once, even with my parents coming in a day earlier than I had originally expected.

So my Mom and Dad came and helped me move out of my apartment (a few days before I had to be out, which was nice), and we got to relax. Thank you, Mom and Dad! We went out to relax by going out to eat with Carrie and Nathan and their girls, which was lots of fun. And then we went back to the hotel.

So now for my birthday. It was really low-key. We woke up, got dressed, and then I got one of my birthday presents, a Kindle Touch to replace the Kindle that died on me. I was pretty excited about that. Then we went to go hang out with Carrie for a little while. It was good to get to see her one more time before heading back home for the summer. Then we headed to the airport, where our flight was delayed due to a malfunctioning airplane. We finally did get to fly out, though, and we headed home. Once I got home, I got to have some cheesecake, and Zachary had a surprise for me.

He got me a mockingjay pin, from The Hunger Games (which I wore when we went to go see the movie again as a family). 

It's good to be home. Savannah and Zachary are as entertaining as ever. I particularly enjoyed the fake mustaches that they got to wear at William's birthday party.

I am glad to be home, and I'm looking forward to a great summer!

Kindle

So my poor Kindle has decided to die on me. See, there's this dictionary that I really wanted (yes, I know, that's a bit nerdy, but it was the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, which is a particularly cool dictionary), and I found the Kindle version, so I had to buy it. And then I pulled out my trusty Kindle to play around with my new dictionary. I turned it on, and this is what I got:

Yes, I know that this is not what the Kindle screen is supposed to look like. Usually, when I turn it on, I get pretty words that make up poetry, or novels, or dictionaries, not this. This looks like some kind of abstract art that I would really rather not see.
So I tried going to the Kindle troubleshooting site, and reset it just the way I was supposed to. I tried charging it. None of that worked. I emailed Amazon customer service to ask them how to fix my Kindle. Based on what I said, they said that the only option was to replace the poor thing. My Kindle, which isn't even quite three years old, is dead, and it has no hope of resurrection. I can't even turn it off. So I called Amazon about replacing it, and it turns out that it would be almost as expensive to get a refurbished replacement as it would be to just get a new Kindle. So I guess that I'll just get a new Kindle. It's still kind of sad that my old one had to die, but oh well. C'est la vie.

The Joys of Modern Technology

I am realizing today how amazing modern technology is. See, for our ward FHE tonight, we watched one of the old "Disney Sing-Along Songs" on VHS. It had some of the songs from "The Lion King" on it. So one of my roommates and I decided that we wanted to watch "The Lion King," since I have that one. I have that one on Blu-Ray, and it was really eye-opening to get to compare the Blu-Ray version to the old VHS version. I could really appreciate how clear the pictures were and how much better the color was. Technology has come such a long way even since I was young. It was just a cool experience to get to make that comparison.

Classes

So I'll really try not to sound like the teachers on Charlie Brown this time. I just thought I'd write about my classes. Overall, they're going well, but this is a semester of absolutes. I have my absolute favorite class that I've had so far, and I also have two classes that are probably some of my least favorites.
I guess I can start with the least favorites. I have one class that's Masterpieces of World Literature. It's for a general requirement, and the professor teaches in a way that's the exact opposite of my learning style. Also, I've already studied half the stuff that we're studying, so it's kind of boring. My way of learning is usually to quietly analyze the literature (by myself) and come up with a really cool response to it in papers. In this class, we're expected to get into groups and discuss our feelings about the literature. There's almost no analysis involved. It drives me crazy.
The other least favorite is my French class, Advanced French Composition. I would like the subject, but yet again, I don't really like the way the professor teaches. She gives a lot of really repetitive work that I would consider to be busy work. It uses just enough of the brain that I can't really do anything else, but not enough of the brain for me to actually learn what we're supposed to be learning. So I've decided that for the rest of the semester, I'm just going to do the busy work, since she gets mad when we don't, but then after that go back and devise my own lesson that actually will allow me to learn. I'll probably write little paragraphs or really short stories that use the vocabulary words and rules that we're learning, and that kind of thing. I'm hoping that that will help.
Then there's British Literature from 1950 to the Present. That class is pretty good. It's mostly just the typical English class, but I like it. It's interesting and keeps my attention, for the most part.
I'm also taking Mission Prep, and I'm learning a lot from that class. I'm mostly taking it because the professor is known throughout campus as being the best, and I'm glad that I took the class.
And now for the all-time favorite class - Creative Writing. This class is perfect for me. It pushes me to write and it allows me to do one of my favorite hobbies and call it homework. It's great.
So those are the classes that I'm taking this semester. I just hope that it goes well!

Computers and Web Browsers

I'll apologize in advance if I go way too in-depth about my computer. My roommates commonly think that I'm speaking a foreign language when I talk about my computers, so I know that I have a tendency to not make any sense. But oh well . . . Over Christmas, I got to upgrade my computer to the most up-to-date operating system (software) for Mac (commonly known as Lion). It was a long and painful process (which was my own fault) and we had to erase my entire hard drive to get to that point (also my fault), but I was really excited about it, because I was using really old, out-of-date software.
There are certain things that I like about Lion, compared to Leopard, which was the software that I had before, but there are also certain things that are a pain. For example, my computer runs really slowly on Lion - a problem that I didn't have before. I'm almost positive that I know exactly what the problem is, but it would cost a lot of money to fix it. So that's a little bit annoying. And I've also been playing a game of trying to figure out the best web browser to use, since those behave differently now than they did before. I started with just Safari (the web browser that comes with Mac), but every time I open Safari, I get the rainbow beach ball (the equivalent of the hourglass, for any Windows/PC people). And the rainbow beach ball has to be there for at least 10 seconds before I can do anything. And then I get it every time I have to go to a different page, or open a new tab, etc. It's really slow.
So I decided to try Google Chrome instead, since I like Google Earth, and Chrome comes with Google Earth. Chrome runs a lot faster, usually without the rainbow beach ball. However, it uses up pretty much all of the CPU on my computer and heats the whole thing up. And then my fans start running really fast, and it can get kind of loud. One of my roommates has even commented that it sounds like my computer is dying. I've checked to see what the problem is, and I'm about 100% sure that Chrome is the problem. Everything goes back to normal and my computer gets quiet again when I quit Chrome. Also, Chrome refuses to open my Yahoo email, which is kind of annoying. I have to run that through Safari.
So today I decided that I would try Firefox and see if that's any better. I just reached this decision about five minutes ago, so we'll see how the results are. So far, though, there haven't been any rainbow beach balls, and my computer is fairly quiet. It also opens my Yahoo email, which is a plus. We'll see if that lasts. If it does, then I'll probably get rid of Chrome and just make Firefox my default browser so that I don't have to deal with the annoyances of the other two. So I'm hoping that Firefox will work better.