YouTube Recitals

I was able to watch my niece's and nephew's piano recital this past week thanks to YouTube. They live in Las Vegas, so I'm not able to see things like that. It was awesome!! Thank you YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpvshAWCsIM

When the media goes awry...

I can hardly stand it!! Whether its my i-pod, phone, the DVD player, or the internet, I always get so frustrated! This time it's a broken website link. I'm trying to look at beatifullymodest.com and I can't get to it for the life of me. Why does this happen? Why am I so dependent on the media that it gets to my emotions? And I don't mean I'm like...crying or anything over it. But I do feel frustrated! It's crazy how dependent on the media we can become!

General Conference!

Can I just say I am SO excited for General Conference in a couple of weeks? I hadn't really thought about it much, but then there was a talk in church on how to prepare for General Conference. They stressed that we need to prepare in at least 3 different ways: Temporally, Mentally, and Spiritually.

For the temporal aspect, we need to make sure we have adequate sleep. We should prepare meals either before or after so we don't distract ourselves. And finally we need to dress appropriately to set the tone for the meetings. Examples that were given were mostly focused on the Savior. If the Savior were talking to us, would we fall asleep during his council? Would we leave the room to prepare meals? Would we be in our pj's? In reality, the Lord IS speaking to us, through the voice of His servants!

Mentally, we should get in the mindset that we will take action. Listening to the talks is great, but if we can't take anything from them and apply those principles to our life, why make the effort to sit and listen to talks for 8 hours? We should come to conference with questions we need answers for, and listen intently for those answers.

Finally, we should spiritually prepare ourselves for General Conference. By taking time for the Lord through daily habits (such as scripture study, prayer, etc.) we will be more receptive of the Spirit. This will help us to receive personal revelations.

I hope I can continue to prepare for conference, and I hope this post may help some of you better prepare as well. Happy conference viewing!

The Power of Advertisements

They got me again...I was walking home to my apartment and I saw the stand for Girl Scout cookies by J Dawgs. That was it! I told my roommates, and we went to Macey's and got cash. Conveniently enough, there is also a stand right outside of Macey's for Girl Scout cookies! So what kind did I buy? The one and only...Samoa's! Mmmmmmm so good. I just barely ate them with my Samoa ice-cream. Thank you advertisement.

Wonderland

I LOVED Alice in Wonderland!! I went and saw it in 3D with a couple of my friends. I loved how this felt like it had more of a plot line than the original. Maybe it was about the same..but I understood it much better. Johnny Depp played an excellent mad hatter. I would totally recommend this!

Sexual Content in the Media

In The Office, there were many references to sex. These included the following: sexual remarks about body parts, Dwight requesting Angela have sex with him, and other casual references to sex. In Bones, there weren’t any sexual comments made in this particular episode. Although Psych did not have as direct sexually comments, there were more innuendos than in the other television shows. Overall, I was pretty surprised that the television show I most often watch (The Office) is the one with the most sexual content. It's made me reconsider my viewing habits!!

The Hunger Games

A couple of days ago, my roommate started telling me about The Hunger Games. She bought the book, and suggested I give it a go....So last night, I did! I started reading at about 9:00, and finally finished this morning around 3:00! This book was amazing. And horrifying. And intense! And romantic (Why can't she just love Peeta??). It's about a young girl, Katniss, who lives in a world governed by The Capitol. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual reality TV show where the Capitol randomly selects one boy and one girl from each of the twelve districts. The children (ages 12-18) are then set loose against each other in a game of survival and forced to kill until only one remains. Intruiging or what??

My roommate bought the 2nd book yesterday, so I plan to read that one next week. If you've ever thought about reading this book but haven't gotten around to it...I suggest now is the time! If you haven't thought about reading this book, again, I suggest now it the time! :)

Washington Mutual Commercial

My teacher for SFL 351 showed this to us in class. It is hilarious!! Our teacher was showing us what benign attributional bias would really look like. We had a discussion in class how to teach our children to have this sort of attitude, to always give people the benefit of the doubt. Because of this particular lecture, I'm working on having a more positive attitude now!

(I'm not sure how to put the actual video on my page, so click on the link to watch it)

Hunger Banquet at BYU

I saw this advertised, and looked more into it! I'm planning to go this Saturday and I'm WAY excited!! The Hunger Banquet is basically where you go, not knowing if you'll get Brick Oven, hot dogs, or rice (it's divided into the upper, middle, and lower classes). There will be entertainment and a motivational speaker about world hunger. If you'd like more information, click here.