A little bit of this and that

1) One of the videos I closed captioned today was about spiritual food storage. It was good. The speaker shared this poem by 

James Whitcomb Riley. 1853–1916

"When the Frost is on the Punkin"

WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;
But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin' of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo' lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin' sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!—
O, it sets my hart a-clickin' like the tickin' of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keep
Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
And your cider-makin's over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!...
I don't know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be
As the angels wantin' boardin', and they'd call around on me
I'd want to 'commodate 'em—all the whole-indurin' flock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock. I really like it, so I wanted to share. It reminds me of the joy and satisfaction from seeing what you can reap from hard work. I love feeling that I've worked hard and done my part. 2) Throughout the talk, several times there was reference to nutrients. And I was reminded of Nacho Libre, "It gave me no nutrients.... I wanna win!" And so I was giggling to myself a lot- in my own little corner on my own little chair- as I continued to work on the captioning. [post publishing note: David just read through this post and after reading this paragraph he laughed and said, "Yah, you do giggle to yourself a lot."] 3) As I was working there was an audio feed playing from one of the auditoriums on campus. I didn't pay too much attention to it, but several times I caught myself giving it an attentive ear and thinking, "Wow! This guy is really good!" And then later, "Who is this kid and the band??? No college group sounds this good." And then it hit me. Kris Allen, former American Idol winner (?)/contestant is in town this weekend for a concert, right here on campus. He's been rehearsing the last hour or so, and I've been listening to the live feed the whole time (because I work in the Audio/Video Productions department). mwahahah! After figuring that out, I paid a little more attention whilst finishing the video I was working on.  Here's the best pic I could get of the video feed running from the rehearsal. He's the one with a guitar on the right. I love my classes! I'm in the same building all day every day (except for the last required religion class) taking classes that relate to each other and are just plain fun. This week in Arboriculture we operated a Tree Spade   The thing is huge, and can you imagine that there are other spades MUCH bigger?!? Blowing my mind. The one we used is for trees with a trunk diameter of 4 inches max. We were practicing just on the parking lot asphalt, trying to maneuver it to pick up a big construction cone. By the time it was my turn, the anty was upped and the big orange construction cone was switched out for a small, soccer-like, cone. I'm pretty sure I got that cone picked up the fastest! Booyah! (It probably helped that I observed several other people before me and from watching them I had a good idea of what all the levers controlled by the time it was my turn.) We also played with an air spade: Lots of dirt everywhere on that one. The first 1.5 hours of class we're outside and then last 1.5 we're inside for lecture. It's a lot of fun.  Last week we started with harnessing in and climbing a huge tree on campus and zip lining down and out of it, and operating a bucket truck. We were up in the air as high as the Ricks Building's highest floor. Not sure what the heighth  is on that, but it was pretty high. It doesn't seem that high when you're on the ground looking up, but then you get in that bucket and wooee, my stomach might have flopped once or twice. I'm also in a landscape design class. Last week we worked on creating tree symbols and then learning how to color render. Wowza! Loving it. In junior high/high school I always thought myself as not creative and not artistic, and I never thought an art class was for me. The last few years however, I've been tapping into my creativity and discovered that there really is something there! I am loving playing with all the markers. It's also appealing to my architect desires of old- I used to draw up house plans on the CADD program on the home computer all the time. And I still draw up plans for our future dream home. Guilty pleasures, we all have them. This last week we drew up a design using our rulers and stencils and oh boy! Here's my first first attempt on some colored tree symbols. Yes, this was a homework assignment. Mama Nessie thinks they look like cupcakes....I guess I can see her point. And here is what we'll be doing at the end of the semester. Eek! Well, not exactly this very design, but creating and drawing out our own designs. Last week we finally made it to the Farmer's Market- loved it! We had dinner from one of the vendors, I bought a rosemary plant and two little basil plants from the BYU-I Horticulture booth, and then we splurged and got deep-fried oreas. Nom! We had a movie night with Jake and Kate downstairs, and thus needed to squish and roll and force our luv sac down and squeeze it through the door at the base of the stairs. Totally worth it. David's classes are tough this semester, poor guy. He originally was signed up for 17 credits, but we decided to drop one class so that he can do better in his other ones. He has all the classes at once that normally you spread out and just take one each semester with your general/foundational courses. Chemistry, Biology, Botany, Math, and the oh so fun required Book of Mormon. He'll survive. :) He's quite jealous of all the fun I seem to be having in my classes. I do have homework, quizes, tests too, but I am just really enjoying it all. Last Saturday we finally got the curtains up in our room. It looks great, I love it! We also painted an old dresser that Jean and Colin gave to us. We tried sanding the darn thing, but that plastic laminated surfaced just didn't want to come off. So instead we just used the leftover gray paint we had from the exterior house gables and shutters. I saw we, but David did the majority of all of this. I'll have to get a picture.... And now we've made it to another weekend! Crazy. The week flew by. We both have tests and quizes next week that we'll be preparing for, but hopefully we can get a project or two or three finished as well. Also, I can't remember if I mentioned this on here yet or not, David got a campus job!!! Such a blessing. So now we're almost making it to 40 hr/week between the both of us. He got the job he wanted- custodial services at 4:00 a.m. He said he wanted to just get work done and out of the way for the day. Ok, honey! It does have it's perks though- a little bit more pay, 3 days paid leave every semester, and he's right- it is nice to get work out of the way. However, he can only work 15 hr/week. My work schedule for the most part is just coming in whenever, and let me tell you- that's a hard way to get in 20 hrs for the week. One last thing- we found out what our credit scores are this morning. What in the what what what!? (house stuff) We've never had a credit report before, and we had no idea what ours looks like. Let's just say that we we're extremely happy campers as we journeyed to campus this morning. Cheers! It's the weekend!