With this being conference weekend, this was another busy weekend, but hopefully it should be the last busy one for a while. Last week was my field trip (and it was just in time, since the national parks are closed now) and the week before that was a trip home.
I was hoping that since I already have three credits out of the way, my semester would be easier, but it's still a lot of work. I had to do a lab writeup for Groundwater that took six or seven hours. And then I had to work on a project for my corpus linguistics class, which wasn't too hard, but it took me a long time to figure out what to do for my project. (I wanted to do 1960s TV, but that wasn't too interesting, so I switched to 1950s TV instead.)
Anyway, the weekend started busily Friday. I had a mission reunion in the evening. This reunion was with President Palmer, my second mission president. I always feel awkward at those reunions. I only had President Palmer for the last five months of my mission, and all that time I was in Lewiston, ID, which is one of the edges of the mission. I kind of feel that President Palmer remembers me more from reunions than he does from the mission. That's the impression I get when I talk to him. I really go to these reunions more to see other missionaries.
But that doesn't work too well either. Most of the missionaries at those reunions were after my time, or if they were from my time, I never served around them. I was able to visit with my former companion/roommate Derek Warren, but other than that there were few people I knew there. In fact, there were a few people there whom I knew outside the mission. One is my childhood friend Hillary Ulmer, who also served in the mission, and the other was a girl who used to be in my ward, who is dating someone who went to my mission. She has since unfriended me on Facebook, but that's OK, because one of the missionaries I did know at the reunion I have unfriended as well.
I couldn't stay long at the reunion (which was fine by me, since I didn't know many people, at least not many I cared to talk to) because my old horse friend Kristen was visiting. We went to the Rooftop Concert, but it had been moved inside the Marriott hotel because of the cold. I would have preferred it outside, because it was crowded and noisy, but at least it was warm. When we got there, we decided we didn't care to hear the act that was going on then, so we waited in a lobby until another horse, Carissa, met us there. We went inside to hear the Lower Lights. I love them. Their music is just so fun and meaningful. They're working on a new album, and I think that a lot of the songs they sang will be on the new album, since they weren't on their other albums. I think that was the eighth concert I'd been to this year, and six of them were free. I'm sad that the Rooftop Concert Series is over until May.
Then I drove home for conference. I haven't been home for conference for two years, when I lived at home.
Conference weekend is Holy Week for Mormons (even though Holy Week should be Holy Week), but BYU doesn't seem to care. I mean, they do close their buildings for conference, but we don't get any days off or any reprieves from homework. I think BYU cares most about Christmas. They start putting up Christmas decorations in October and we get time off for the holiday. After Christmas, I think they care most about Valentine's Day. That's the only other holiday for which I have seen significant campus decorations (both the Cougareat and the library). But the most religiously significant events they don't care about. We don't get any days off for conference or Easter, and in fact I think that Easter next year is right in the middle of finals week. What's up with that?
With midterms and projects coming up, this is going to be another busy week. But at least I don't have any weekend plans.
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