First Day of Work

Yesterday was my first full day of work. I got up fine and was even fine coming home. I almost crashed before dinner but I knew that I needed to stay awake so that I could actually sleep that night. I was pacing around the kitchen to stay awake. I slept really good. I am glad that my day can actually be filled with something now. I was started to get really irritated. lol. I think I am going to like this job. They got a new system and we are all somewhat trying to figure it out. Eventually, everyone will know what they're doing and it will be less chaotic. lol. Oh, and I got a name tag today. You know the kind that sit on your desk? It is silver which is cool. I never really liked the brown ones. Dad came in this morning, don't ask me why because I have no idea, I think he was going to lunch. I showed him my name plate thing and it almost slid off the holder. That was funny.

Movies and Me

I went and saw The Dark Knight this afternoon. I thought that it was scarily good. lol. Does that make sense? Heath Ledger did a brilliant job as The Joker. I nominate him for that Oscar that he is rumored to get. Overall, I thought the movie had a darker tone than Batman Begins. I guess that is what they were going for. I like it. Christopher Nolan did a great job on the first Batman movie and was glad to hear that he was back for The Dark Knight. Hopefully, he stays with Batman for a long time. One thing I did not like about the movie was the fact that the actor was changed from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight ... or in this case actress. In the first movie Rachel Dawes was played by Katie Holmes and in The Dark Knight the role was played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. It would have been fine except for the fact that I kept forgetting she was even Rachel. So the record setting million-dollar movie has a minor flaw ... big deal. I still loved it. Maybe in the next movie Bruce Wayne will have his house built and we can see the Bat Cave in its final format.

And on a personal note, I have been looking for a job for a few months now. I had a couple of interviews with the University of Utah. I have been waiting to hear back from them and as I was walking out of the movie theater I got a call . I got the job. They will pay me close to $12 an hour. I have never worked for that much so I hope that I don't disappoint them. I am going to be working in the Materials Department as an Associate Accountant. I start on Monday and I'm excited.

Great Jacket

I LOVE this jacket! I don't know where Josh got it but I am glad he did. It is so cool. These pictures were taken in May at Bryant Park for the GMA Summer Concert Series kick-off. Josh Groban was the first one. Sadly, I couldn't go to New York and see Josh perform. After stumbling across these photos last week I really wish I had splurged and gone for the concert. lol.

A World Without Color

A world without color. That would be strange. While I was reading The Giver this morning I was outside and I was looking at the mountains. To not be able see blue or red or black, well I guess you can see black, to see in black and white would be weird. You wouldn’t be able to see color or shades of color. You wouldn’t see the trees and the orange construction signs, which are everywhere in Utah. You wouldn’t really have the American flag; it wouldn’t be red, white, and blue. You wouldn’t see brown or green or I don’t know it’s just different. A world without color would be odd, one-dimensional. I like color and to even imagine a world without color is sad. It makes me sad.

post script

I was doing so good at the beginning of Project Black. I knew I couldn't get to the Internet often enough. At least I tried, right. lol. And this project was more difficult than Project Blue. I had a fun, hard time finding interesting shots of black.

Project Black #10

View through the bench.

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Project Black #9

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Project Black #8

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Josh posted!

Josh Groban posted his first video on his blog. I like when he shows the view he has from his hotel room. And he realizes that it is to dark outside so it doesn't really work. And I love the part where he says "Okay, I was told this would happen. I am rambling on my video blog." He was so rambling from the beginning. I love it. Keep talking, Josh, because we'll listen. lol.

games and music

The All Star game was last night. I watched the whole thing. All 4 hours and 50 minutes. Of course my favorite part was when Josh was on. He looked and sounded amazing. He sang 'God Bless America' and, like some other Grobanites, I never really liked this song to begin with. But Josh's version was awesome! The game was fun to watch. I don't really like baseball, or understand it, but I watched this game the whole way through. I don't really know why. It was close to midnight here by the time the game ended.

I really want my David Foster songbook to progress but I can't find what I need. I realize that I have been blogging about this a lot but I really, really, REALLY love David Foster's music. He is how I came to know Josh Groban, Michael Buble, William Joseph, and Renee Olstead. I had heard of Josh before but I didn't pay attention to him until I realized he was one of David's artists. lol. And now Josh Groban is my favorite artist! lol. I want David to make a CD. He has some CDs out. But I want to him to make a new one because (1) those CDs are hard to come by, (2) they were made in the 70s, and (3) there is so much more music he could do. And I want him also to make a CD where he plays the piano, because he amazing at the piano, but one where he also sings. He says he has a voice that helps him get his point about the song across to the artist but not one to contend with them. lol. I agree but I also think he has a lovely voice. I love 'The Best of Me' because David sings.

Josh Groban at 2008 All Star Game

Josh was amazing! He looked great as always.

Project Black #7

Let's play some music.

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Project Black #6

Books on a shelf.

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Project Black #5

I was taking pictures of The Best Fake Ever which is a songbook. I was taking pictures of the cover which is black with red lettering when I had an idea to open the book and take pictures of the black music notes. Guess what song I turned to first? 'Hard To Say I'm Sorry' written by David Foster! I really, really like this shot. lol. I love David Foster!

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Be One With Your Camera!

I was looking at random photo blogs and I came across one that had a tutorial on how to change your color photo into black and white using Photoshop. That really irked me. For a while I have tried to hold my thoughts in about Photoshop but right now I need to tell you how I feel. Although I can see how Photoshoping your photo can make them "perfect" I feel like that takes away the feel of TRUE photography. I have always liked photography due to the fact that you can capture moments in time IN THEIR TRUE FORM. I feel that people who use Photoshop (or other "photo fixing" software) are just insecure with how to USE their camera. It took me many weeks to be comfortable with my camera. And I am still learning about the different features that it is capable of. I love the way that I can edit my shots directly on the camera and don't take anything out of my shots. If I don't want something to be in a shot I try and find a different angle. For example, when I was in San Diego at some flower gardens I took a picture of a water lily. Near the water lily was a blue bottle cap. That is not natural and not what I wanted in the photo. So I moved the shot to the left. The bottle cap was no longer in the shot and I think I actually got a cooler shot than the one before. By the way, I can make my photos black and white by putting my camera on Manuel mode, going to My Colors and pushing B/W. It is that simple.

I am sorry if anyone is offended by this post. I would like to know how you feel about Photoshop. If you feel the need to rant to me about it (or this post) and would not care to publicly comment feel free to send me an email at fast.times.now@gmail.com.

Project Black #4

Would anyone like to play Foosball? lol.

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Project Black #3

I went downtown today and I rode Trax. As I was coming back to my car I saw this sign and knew I had to use it for Project Black today.

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Top 100 Books

I got this off of Sara's blog. Her blog says that The National Endowment for the Arts estimated that the average adult has read only six of the books listed below. I glanced through the list and think that I have read more than six. Some I have read this year. Let's see how I do... Okay, I have read 23 (which is way more than six. lol.). I have seen 26. And I intend to read 11 of them. I thought it was strange that they had both The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I guess some people only get through book one. I really liked the whole series. Next time I read them I am going to read them in the order they were intended too be read in. Some of the ones I intend to read are ones I have read but am going to read again, like The Chronicles of Narnia and the whole Harry Potter series (that one I am going to read after I read the Twilight series, which I am going to read this month).

1. Bold -- have read
2. Italicize -- intend to read
3. [Bracket] -- viewed via movie, TV or theatre

1. [Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen]
2. [The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien]
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. [Harry Potter series - JK Rowling]
5. [To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee]
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. [Little Women - Louisa M Alcott]
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. [The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams]
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. [Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck]
29. [Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll]
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. [Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis]
34. [Emma - Jane Austen]
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. [The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis]
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. [Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne]
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. [The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown]
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. [Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery]
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. [Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen]
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. [Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck]
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. [Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas]
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. [Moby Dick - Herman Melville]
71. [Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens]
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. [The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett]
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. [A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens]
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. [Charlotte’s Web - EB White]
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. [Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. [The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas]
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. [Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl]
100. [Les Miserables - Victor Hugo]

Project Black #2

I was trying to find something I could take a picture of today and I realized that the keys on my computer are black. lol. So I took some pictures of them.

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Project Black #1

This is one of the horses out behind our house.

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Compiling Thoughts

So I have finally gotten around to typing out my hand-written journal as well as compiling all of my journals together. Therefore, I have been reading my thoughts on stuff. I have noticed that when I am upset I tend to write in short sentences. And I realized that I started keeping a journal at the same time that I started keeping my scrapbook. Well, almost. My journals start in August of 2001 and my scrapbooks start Christmas of 1999. I guess that when I was twelve I wanted to document my life more than I had been. lol. But really, I think it is because I noticed that when I write things down I am not as stressed and things get sorted out while I’m writing. I like how that works sometimes. When I have a frustration I’ll sit and write everything I am feeling and thinking about and not think about what I am writing. Sometimes I’ll come up with a solution to work toward solving my dilemma. There is a writing term for that but I can’t think of what it is right off. Something else I noticed while typing my journal is that my vocabulary has grown. I don’t know if that’s because I started writing or just time. I use bigger words and I have more ways of saying something. And I like using therefore and words like that. Last week I actually used albeit instead of although. I stopped and laughed at myself and then kept writing whatever I was writing. lol. I also noticed how much I have changed throughout the years. My mind is growing and I didn’t really realize it. lol.

Starburst Music

It is always fun to hear Josh Groban on the radio unexpectedly, but last night I screamed I was so excited. Awake was on the radio! That is the first time I have heard the Awake single on the radio. It was so much fun. I had a huge grin on my face the whole time.

I don't know why but a while ago I started making a starburst chain. I didn't want it to be one color then another and another so I made it three pinks, two oranges, two reds, and one yellow, repeated. To date, the chain is one inch shy of six feet. I ran out of pink wrappers and was bored so I made a bracelet. It's yellow with a red and orange center. I am actually wearing it right now. It is really fun to play with.

I reworked my music player. I really like it now. I added songs I don't have but really like. And there are a lot less songs. There are still a lot, mind you, but less than the other playlist. I added some songs today and they automatically get added to the play list here. I thought that was really cool. I was thinking that I would have to re-add the music player.

P.S. If you like Rascal Flatts, listen to Skin. It is about halfway down the playlist. And if you can't find the playlist and just think that music is randomly playing on your computer, push end (aka: scroll down).

Produce Blog =)

These photos are inspired by Rick Lee's blog. (And don't worry I won't steal your idea.) Mom was slicing up the watermelon and I snagged some shots in between her cutting. lol.

Happy Independence Day!

My day was eventful only in the morning.

Eric went and ran a 10k and got first in his age group. He was happy about that.

At 8:30am Mom and Dad's ward had a parade for the kids to be in. It was nothing like the ones I remember at White Rock. Those were community events and lots of fun. They were also longer than six houses long. But when your six or seven I suppose that being in a parade is fun no matter how long it is. I thought it was cool that there was a fire truck and a paramedics truck there. They were in the back following the kids. At the house the parade ended at we had breakfast.

After dinner we went outside and jumped on the trampoline. I was having fun playing with my camera and taking pictures. Then we went in the front and played with sparklers and then watched fireworks from the back porch.

There is a whole bunch of pictures, so go to my photo site to see them all.

Road Trip ...

After looking through different photography blogs and setting up my photo site I really want to go on a road trip. lol. I know it's a crazy train of thought but it's there. I want to start on the east coast and make my way to the west coast. I have always wanted to go on Route 66 in a red convertible. I think that would be fun. But that road doesn't start until Chicago. Someday this trip will become a reality but not anytime soon.

Another place I want to go is Europe. I want to go to Venice and see all the gondolas and old buildings. Paris, London, Madrid, Tuscany, Rome ... all places I want to visit and take pictures of. France and Italy are where I would spend most of my time, probably. I would be out in the countryside with the sunsets and the grasses of Tuscany and the forests of southern France.

Photography Site

I got all my photos on the site. I had to figure out how I wanted to format them. I like how the album turned out. Now it should be simple to upkeep. All I have to do is add the photos and name them and I'm done. I even have photos for July already. lol.

I also played around with the sidebar. So things aren't where they have been.