I'm Married

I suddenly got terrible at updating this thing. I was doing so well with the Sunday update thing, and then I left for Korea and Japan/got engaged and it all went downhill. Tons of new things to talk about!

First of all, I got married on August 28th, 2009 in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple to Steven Adam Morley. I am now Sarah Bruderer Morley and have most things changed to say that. It's still a hard question when people ask me what my name is, but it's getting better. :) I am definitely enjoying the married life. It was a little weird for the first month or so since it was really just us two. Two people in an apartment. No other roommates, no other distractions, just us. Not to mention that he's male! I'm used to living with girls and their perks, it's definitely different living with a guy, but I'm into the swing of things. His habits, my habits, and just our schedules. Now it feels pretty normal. :)

We finally got all of our wedding pictures as of today. It was annoying because our photographer said she would send us CDs of the pictures 5 weeks after the wedding for editing and whatnot. Alright, sounds good. Two months later, we have nothing. So I called, e-mailed, called again, etc. She wasn't very good at responding... anyway, we finally got our CDs about 10 weeks after our wedding to find out that about 5 of the pictures weren't written to the CDs correctly. So I called... nothing for about a week. I e-mailed, and then she responded in like an hour. It was quite unexpected. Anyway, we finally got them all. You can see almost all of them (except the 5 that didn't work) on facebook. This is a pretty good one:

What else? The semester has ended and the new one is starting tomorrow. I did slightly better than my GPA, so I guess being married hasn't been detrimental to my grades. :) I took CS 240 which was rather intimidating since it's known to be a very time consuming Computer Science class, but I ended up with an A! Yay!

For Christmas, Steve and I flew back to Texas and we actually got a white Christmas! That's absolutely insane! I've never had a white Christmas in Texas. The only times we had white Christmases was when we went to Utah for Christmas, which I think was only once. Maybe twice. I thought it was cool. Kind of interesting that the first Christmas Steve comes to Texas for Christmas, we happen to have a white Christmas. :P

I got some pretty awesome gifts as well. The biggest one was a palm pilot! I'm actually really excited about it, because then I should be more organized! I have my calendar all set up for my classes and such and hopefully I can just bring it with me and schedule things right when I hear about them, set it to remind me, and then I won't have to worry about remembering them! It's pretty awesome. I really like being organized.

This past week has been a lot of fun. We got back from Texas on the 29th and have had people over almost every day to play games and eat food. That's probably my favorite thing to do, just play games with friends and family. It was a little ironic that the only day we didn't have people over was on New Year's Eve since Steve wasn't feeling very well. We ended up just watching two movies and playing the game of Life. It's been a long time since I've played that game--a lot more luck is involved than I remembered. :P It was fun, though. Steve wasn't really up for a really intense strategic game anyway. It was just relaxing and fun.

So, happy 2010! I'll try to be better at updating this thing.

A New Start

So I kind of stopped posting in my blog for the past couple of weeks... I guess because I was home and in my head the people who would be reading this blog were with me or something. At any rate, here I am back at college and I figured I should finally update this thing. :)

So, Christmas was splendid. My big Christmas gift was a midi keyboard. It's so freakin' cool! I sent it to myself up here and just got it yesterday morning. It actually got here Friday night, but it was in the office, so I waited until Saturday morning to actually pick it up. Oh, I love it so much. I bought Finale Songwriter which lets me just play stuff with a metronome going with the keyboard hooked up to the computer via USB, and it actually transcribes what I play! It's so cool, man. I really like just sitting at the piano and playing stuff. Now I can actually play something and get it as music without having to write it out or remember what I put. I love it so much. That, and I just have a keyboard with me in my room. I don't have to go to another piano and play on it. Granted, I don't have a pedal thing and I have to either play it on the floor or in my lap, but it's awesome. It can play like 120 different sounds (piano, harpsichord, oboe, saxaphone, etc.) and is pressure sensative. So, it plays louder when I press harder on the keys. Man, I love it! :)

Along with the keyboard, I also got a new cell phone (which wasn't technically part of Christmas, but I got it on Christmas anyway). Along with that, I got a new number. E-mail me if you would like it. :) I purposely picked out a Samsung phone that slides. It's very very similar to the phones that they used in the Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions. :P I always said that when I got a cell phone, I'd get one that was either Samsung or Nokia (what they used in the first Matrix) and that slides up like they do in the movies. I totally have! It's wonderful. It's got so many more ringtones, free weekends and after 7 pm, receive texts for free, and I can take pictures with it! So many more features and overall cheaper to use. It's great.

I also bought myself a new camera as kind of a gift to myself. I was already going to buy myself another one (that I plan on keeping/using for more than a couple months...) and I figured I might as well wait a little longer and get it at Christmas. So, I did just that. :) I also got Guitar Hero III (w00t!), Sing Star (another version), and some CDs. Oh man, I got this special edition CD of the soundtrack to the first Matrix movie and it's so awesome. I love it so much!! It's got this description inside about the composer, Don Davis, and what he was thinking when he wrote stuff and whatnot. It's awesome. :) I also got some oboe CDs, and a Weird Al Yankovic CD.

That basically sums up the big things for Christmas. Overall a good one. I officially left my job at the movie theater as well. (!!) I just worked for the two weeks I was there and told them that I'm never coming back. One, because I just don't really like working there and it doesn't really make that good of money in the first place, and two because I'm staying up here for the summer. I've got an awesome job up here as a TA that I enjoy more and that I get paid more for, so I'll just stick with that. Walking away from concession (which I had to work quite a bit of... ugh) for what I knew was the last time, was an incredible feeling. It was kind of funny because on my last day, they gave me a write up for being over on my till on the last day I worked in front stand. They felt kind of bad about it, and kept telling me it was just part of the paperwork and they needed me to sign it. I honestly could care less. The only danger about those is if you get too much, you could be fired... yeah, don't care. :P Too bad I don't get to see free movies anymore. I'll get over it. :)

So, being back at school is going nicely so far. Missing the first two days of school didn't really matter too much, but I don't want to do it again. I didn't like going to classes and not knowing what I had missed or anything. Ugh. This weekend I could care less about practicing (which I should probably really get back into doing...) and I went out Friday night with my roommate and her friends. (Who are now my friends. :))  We went to IHOP and then to a 12:15 AM showing of Ghost Town. I overall liked it. I probably would've enjoyed it a bit more if I wasn't falling asleep during the first hour or so. :P I still got most of it, but I definitely missed some parts at the beginning. It was fun! Then, I actually planned a party for Saturday night for Music 276 people. I had missed them over the break and really wanted to just talk and have fun with them! So, I called everyone and we all met at David's place and had soup and bread for a dinner type thing, and then watched a movie. We also played some games. Aww, it was so much fun. I really do love college. :)

Okay, well I think that'll cover things for now. I'll get back into the habit of updating this thing on Sundays again. Yay!

I'll Be Home For Christmas

I've had that song stuck in my head for the past 2 or 3 weeks now. :P Every time I think about when I'm going to go home, I just launch off into singing it. Oh, it's so great. Things are really ending! At this point all I have left is my Music Ed final tomorrow morning at 8, Calculus at 2:30, and then my take home final for Music Theory. Right now I'm actually being pretty good and studying! I actually made a program where I put in the national standards for Music Education and type them all in order exactly as I listed them. When I finish I have a nice encouraging output of, "You'll ace the final tomorrow. :)" Oh man, I'm such a nerd. It's great, though! I've actually got them all down verbatim really well! I just keep doing the program and get it better and better ingrained. The exam is basically a bunch of short answers based off of pretty much everything we've covered. There's so much more to Music Education than you would think! So many things to think about when you're planning lessons and evaluating students and everything. It's pretty insane.

And then there's Calculus. I got an 84 on the last test. Not bad, definitely not bad at all. I feel like I should do well on the exam tomorrow. I just need to remember to look over everything. Umm... right. Everything. If I just do an example problem from every section we've ever covered I should be fine. Ugh. Okay, I'll try to get on that after this entry.

So the plan for this week is my two finals tomorrow and finish my Theory final either tonight or tomorrow night. Then I'm done! I'm freaking done! After that I plan on working as much as they allow me to on Tuesday and Wednesday to make some much needed money for the holidays. Then Thursday is off to Las Vegas for the bowl game! That should be fun... but I'm mostly looking forward to after the trip when I fly back home. Aww... home. Oh, speaking of home, I need to call the theater. Ugh. At least this'll be the last time I work there! Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay! That sounds so fantastic. Let's hope this time we have privileges so I can see movies for free.  Oh boy, fun times.

I had my jury on Friday, as well. I suppose that's something to note. I did well! I think it was probably my best jury so far. I had a good reed (well, it sounded good and was in tune, it just was closed and was killing me to play), and they stopped me before playing all of the hard runs. Yay! I played mostly slow stuff. The past two juries I've gotten an A-, this time I'm hoping for that A. I think I'll find out tomorrow how that went. Oh man, that's so awesome to be done with. It's funny because everyone else still has all these finals, but I'm so close to being done! That's the beauty of being a music major. Finals typically aren't too bad. Good times, indeed.

I guess I should go and attempt to study some more. A week from today I'll be home!! Excitement!