Technically, I didn't get this finished in time.

I have twenty-five minutes to write this post. I made some new guidelines for myself this week.

You know the playlist I blogged about several weeks ago (which, by the way, has undergone some alterations)? Well, it gets me into trouble. I really like listening to it. What's going to come up next? A weird song or a normal song? A mediocre song I'm tired of or a song I think is fantastic? A Halloween [or insert other holiday here] song or a year-round song? I love the element of surprise. So I like listening to it to see what I get. To the point that I do things just so that I can listen.

On Monday this week, I stayed up late, surfing the internet and listening to my playlist. Which meant I got to bed late and I was really tired Tuesday morning. So I decided--no more computer after 9:00 p.m. when I have work the next day. So if you like talking to me on Facebook late at night--well, I'm sorry, that'll have to wait until weekends.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, knowing that I couldn't be on the computer after 9:00, I wasted an afternoon surfing the net, listening to my playlist, and ignoring my sister. Then I went to institute. One of our teachers is Sister Nelson, wife of Russell M. (The other one happens to be Sheri Dew.) She was talking about how she was at the Nissan dealership and there was a continual drum beat (meaning the radio was on), and the TV was on. She talked about how easy Satan has it to influence us, and how can we receive inspiration with all the noise going on around us?

This hit me, because I listen to music too much, and I've become bad at justifying. Well, this lyric can be interpreted a few different ways or if they wanted this to mean something bad, they would make it obvious. Once I would not support musicians at all if they had inappropriate songs or albums; now I have three Lady Gaga songs, and she is hardly a poster child for virtue. She may be on posters, but not for modesty.

That said, I still am selective about what I listen to; you wouldn't find Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" on my playlist if you paid me. So I'm not worried so much about what music I listen to, but how much.

I've decided I can listen to music if I am doing something productive, and especially if it encourages me to do something productive. So if I'm driving, cleaning, cooking, etc., music is great.

But I've made a drastic change in that I can't listen to music just to surf the internet. If I want music on, I'll do something productive. If I want to surf the net, that's fine, but I can't listen to music. This will encourage me not to waste so much time.

Which means that for the first time, I'm not listening to music on my computer while I write this.

Oh, and do you remember my Halloween memory post? I remembered some details about my 2008 Halloween. I added them to the original post, but I'll put them here:

We were walking home and a woman in a nun's habit drove by. I can't remember if I saw her or if Elder Love just told me he did. He waved at her, and started laughing hysterically because he said she waved back and then got a really weird look on her face. We wondered if she was a real nun or in a costume....On the way out of Ritzville we saw another nun-clad woman, and we figured it was unlikely for us to see two nuns in one day, so at least one of them had to have been a costume, and probably both of them were....The closing hymn was #121, "I'm a Pilgrim, I'm a Stranger." Sister Lyman said she didn't really know it, and she didn't play it very well, so we only sang the first verse. Too bad that only the third verse of that song actually has any uplifting message....On our way back, Elder Colton talked about how hard it was to sing that "pilgrim song," and asked who picked it. I didn't say anything, but he figured out it was me.