This year, I did not do very much for Halloween. In fact, this year, I practically did nothing for Halloween. I attended no parties. I had no costume. I didn't even post "Happy Halloween" on my Facebook status. The one Halloweenish thing I did was went to a haunted corn maze with some friends a couple weeks ago. Honestly, that was all I needed. I did have plans to attend some parties as you may remember, but opted instead to go down to Provo for the weekend for the Real Salt Lake game. I guess I just wasn't in the Halloween mood...though the Halloween episode of Psych was great!

I realized today that I really need a piano, or rather, I need to play a piano. Playing the piano was always a really good release for me and always made me feel good. I haven't played in months and I am noticing it. Maybe this Sunday I'll stick around after church and find a room I can use.

This week I'm setting a goal to try to get out and do more. Whether it's just going out and taking pictures, or doing something more meaningful, lately I've cooped myself up too much and it's taking it's toll. Fatigue sets in quick when I coop up and do not eat right or sleep enough and recently I have not been taking as good care of myself as I need to. I think it is time that I for serious find a couple small hobbies.

And for those of you who do not watch the sing off, I wanted to share a video of my favorite group, Vocal Point, singing some great Elvis. I loved their performance tonight.

I decided to hold off posting until the excitement of the weekend had concluded. I can now give a full report on the events of Friday and Saturday.

I had a feeling I had to be on the lookout for idiot drivers when I left Logan Friday morning. Thank goodness I was alert, because I had to swerve very quickly to avoid an accident in Salt Lake. Traffic was flowing smoothly but at one little section on the far end of the Salt Lake Valley, there was some sort of maintenance vehicle working on the left side, slowing traffic a little. We slowed to about 40 as we went through the short area being maintained. This one guy had been zipping in and out of lanes thinking he and his sleek little car could get through quicker if he did some good maneuvering. As I was directly next to him, he decided he wanted to be where I was. Without checking, he started zipping over into my lane. I saw it in the nick of time and managed to swerve enough out of the way while laying on my horn to avoid both a collision with him and a collision with the next lane over. The idiot got pretty freaked out, because when traffic sped right back up moments later, he moved to the middle lane and went much slower than he had been going earlier. I just shook my head, grateful to have avoided an accident for the second time in the past couple months.

One other traffic story, this one more funny. As Mike and I were leaving his place, we were on the road waiting to turn right. I had my blinker on and people were lined up behind us waiting their turn. Then some idiot, oblivious to all of us, pulled up on my right, also wanting to turn right. I moved in his way, honked my horn, gave him a confused look, then made my turn. He came to his senses, realized what a dumb move he made, and that was the last we saw of him. We laughed the whole way to Evan's place where we were setting up to watch the BYU-TCU football game.

The football game was not a highlight of my weekend. BYU made way too many mistakes and gave the game up in the end. Easily could have taken that game, but just did not play smart.

Saturday we headed to the final home game for the BYU women's soccer team. That also was not a highlight, with a tough 1-0 loss. That game also could have gone our way, but we just struggled to get a goal.

The big highlight of the weekend, apart from hanging out with Mike and some friends all weekend, was going to the Real Salt Lake playoff game vs. Seattle. We had great seats, got free scarves and bags in the pre-game party outside the stadium, and the game was AMAZING! Real Salt Lake dominated throughout, finishing with a shut-out 3-0 victory! RSL will play Seattle again Wednesday and will likely advance in the playoffs. What was really a sight to see Saturday was Mike and I wearing red! The only red we own are soccer jerseys. Mike has his from Korea, I have mine from Germany. We wore our red proudly and cheered RSL to a great victory!

Sunday will be restful. Church in the morning, drive back in the afternoon, take it easy in Logan before working again Monday.

Since you will all be reading this Sunday, our song of the day will be Sunday appropriate.

This week was ideal. After working Monday-Saturday last week, I had Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off this week. My weekend has already begun!

As soon as I got my schedule for the week, I made plans to take a little fun break. I'm spending another sport-filled weekend down in Provo with Mike. Tonight (Friday), I'm setting up the projector at Evan's and we're having a BYU football party. We'll watch the BYU-TCU game on ESPN on the big, big screen. Then, Saturday at 1 pm we're hitting up the last women's soccer game. After that, Mike and I are heading up to Salt Lake to Rio Tinto Stadium to go to our first pro soccer game. Real Salt Lake is taking on Seattle in a playoff match. Sunday, I'll go to church with Mike then head back to Logan to resume work Monday. I'm looking forward to a really fun weekend just chillin' with my friends down south.

I only have one other thing to share today. As I was making a quick stop at Wal-Mart this evening to grab a couple things, I had a chuckle-to-myself moment. I was standing in line and had put my items on the belt. I placed them far enough behind the person in front's stuff so that the cashier could differentiate our things. They have those dividers you can put between your stuff if you want, but I usually see no need to use them. As my stuff moved forward, the couple behind me put their things on the belt. The wife placed their things behind enough to differentiate, but after a moment, the husband looked and grabbed the divider with a bit of gusto and placed it between our stuff. I laughed to myself because it appeared that he was insecure with the idea of nothing physically separating the two groups of items, which were easily a foot and a half apart or more, as if maybe his items would get rung up with mine and nothing could be done to fix it. It just got me thinking about how many things like that there are that we get too used to. I think we can all be a little bit more relaxed and not worry about those little things! I really think that man would have been distraught if that little piece of plastic had not been there to separate my groceries from theirs. Here's to me being a rebel and not using those silly little barriers.

Oh, and how can I forget, I picked up another follower! Welcome to the blog my recently married sister Amelia and her husband Max.

There are 2 Songs of the Day and they are all about how I feel about the upcoming weekend!

I take a bus to work every day. Utah State has a shuttle service that provides transportation to and from campus that service parking areas and other spots where many students would walk from. When it was warmer out, after work I would always drag my tired body on the bus ride back to my car. However, recently, with the onset of cooler fall weather, I have found myself walking the mile to my car each day. The walk down the hill is fantastic. As you go down, a panorama of the north end of the valley comes into view, each little city visible, ending as the gentle hills build back up into the mountains that surround us here. Somewhere in that area, one state ends and another begins, but as you look across, mother nature makes no matter of who is governing what. To her, the land belongs to all.

I have always enjoyed taking time to notice the beauty of the world around me, though in recent years I regret that I was too caught up in life to look. I remember once last year while walking to work at Seven Peaks there was a flowering shrub that I could always smell from the other side of the street as I passed by. One day, I was approaching from the shrub's side of the road and I stopped. Thinking about all the times people have said to stop and smell the roses, I reached out, gently pulled a branch towards me, and lightly drew in the sweet smell.  As I walked down my hill today, orange and yellow leaves crunching beneath me, and crisp, cool air surrounding me, I was grateful to once again enjoy my surroundings. I hope you all take the time to enjoy your surroundings as well.

Since yesterday's post, I gained an unprecedented 3 new followers! Welcome, Thomas Owens from back in Kentucky, lil' sis Camilla up in Rexburg, and a special welcome to my awesome friend Jolene Findlay tuning in from out in Thatcher, Arizona! I hope you all enjoy reading my posts.

I looked and looked and looked for a good song of the day. I chose at least 5 different ones ranging from John Denver to Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Ultimately, I liked the mood of this song I had never heard before and happened upon by mistake. It is "Autumn Leaves" sung by Eva Cassidy.

I know that my blog has been difficult at times to follow. It started in 2008 and failed, or rather, I failed. Then in 2009 there were 2 posts. Then in 2010 when I turned my life around, I posted frequently. The second half of last year I posted almost every day. Then the posts dropped in number to about every other day. Looking at the history, I realize why my posts have been so scattered. During times of struggle, I do not post much, if anything. During times where I am doing well and life is great on all fronts, I post frequently. It is an interesting thing I do with my emotions. When I am doing well, I am much more social, friendly and optimistic. When I am not doing so well, I become reclusive, antagonistic and a brutal pessimist. As you can tell by my lack of posts during very strenuous times in my life, I do not like talking about my problems. Though, if things are going well, I am more open to talking about my problems. Ultimately, I think this makes me a confusing person. I think my conundrum in dealing with my problems is that same one I have in dealing with others' problems. I simply do not know how to react well to emotions, both emotions conveyed and emotions received. Inside, I am actually pretty sensitive to emotion. I feel much more emotion than I show, and at times I wish I would simply not feel so much emotion so I would not have to struggle in my efforts to respond to it.

Whew...look at me go talking about emotions. I admit that was an interesting train of thought. I was just trying to detail how far my blog has come over the past couple years and ended up doing some soul searching. Normally I would go erase all this talk of emotion, but I think it is fitting that since my blog and blog support have come so far, I would be taking a step back by not sharing this post.

A little on the less exciting side, I added a weather widget. It shows the weather here in Logan, but you can type in your city and it will take you to your weather. Who knows, maybe one day you'll be reading my blog and for whatever reason you'll need to know what the weather will be like where you are. Now it is conveniently located for you right on my blog!

I also picked up another official follower, which is exciting for me. Welcome to the blog Sarah Knowlton.

Hopefully you listened to the cello music yesterday so you will better appreciate today's song of the day. The song today is the vocal arrangement that yesterday's cello video was based on. The cello version was amazing and if you did not listen, you should scroll on down and hear it now!

Greetings and salutations from the land of Logan. It has been quite some time since I last posted. I have been pretty lazy recently. I go to work, then I come home and basically sit around. The past month or so has been very unproductive, so today I began productivity again. I mailed Annie's check today, took some dry cleaning in to the cleaners, got the rock chip fixed in my window and almost finished outfitting my closet for winter. I'm on a tight budget, so I have been looking around for low prices on long sleeves. I found them at Old Navy today. I got 2 long sleeve shirts, one with BYU stuff on it from Old Navy's new collegiate line and a light hoodie. All I really lack is a pair of khakis or corduroy pants. I have my one pair of jeans for the year, but I need more than one pair of pants and this year I am opting for khakis. It's only fitting since almost all of my clothes are blue. This year there has been a new blue offered in lots of clothes and I love it. It's like a charcoal blue, I'd have to show you pictures, but I've bought up a lot in that color. Anyway, khakis would look great with my blue and be good for church, so I gotta find some at the right price. My problem is that pants today are all "loose" and I'm too darn skinny to fill em' out. The one pair that would have worked today in my price range did not come in my waist size. So the search continues. All I need to be set for winter is this one pair of pants and some driving gloves. I sent mine home cuz I knew you all would like them, so I'll likely just get a pair from wal-mart.

I really got on here to share some music with you all today. If you recall, back on September 11th, I had some moving music for the songs of the day. One of those was a great rendition of "Till We Meet Again" by a fellow named Steven Sharp Nelson. After I found that song and put it on for that day, I never looked into him or anything like that. Then, today, I was on YouTube looking for some Vocal Point music and came across this cello player who had recorded an arrangement of "Nearer My God to Thee" that a Vocal Point alumnist had arranged. With that song being one of my favorite hymns and that arrangement being particularly favored by me, I clicked. For the next hour or so, I watched and listened to several amazing performances by this fellow, whose name is Steven Sharp Nelson. The videos were both moving and inspiring and Nelson plays often with Jon Schmidt on piano. But to make a long story short (TOO LATE!), this evening I was playlist.com searching for this Nelson fellow and came across that "Till We Meet Again" song and as I was listening, it hit me that I had heard this guy before! There is a group of guys who make these videos called The Piano Guys and they make great stuff. Anywho, I wanted to share some of the moving and inspiring music I heard today. Hopefully you find the performances as fun to watch and the music as calming to hear as I did.