Spencer Vaughn Fields

It occurred to me that some of you are probably interested to learn more about Spencer.
So, here's a little quiz to see how much you know about Spencer.

True or False:

1.  Like me, Spencer loves carrots

2.  Spencer taught me how to tie balloon animals

3.  Our first date was to a play at BYU

4.  Spencer's hero is Spiderman.  When he was little, he dressed up as Spiderman every day for at least a year.

5.  I am #2 in Spencer's life.

6.  Spencer hopes we'll have twins.

7.  Spencer works at Helaman halls and we are living in the dorms

8.  Spencer talks in his sleep.

9.  Spencer loves teaching/giving talks in church

10.  Spencer does not like yogurt


11.  Spencer loves history

12.  Spencer enjoys watching chick flicks

13.  Spencer was afraid to ask me out, so I had to make the first move

14.  Spencer loves photography

15.  Spencer can drive our new car

Update

Paulo-- the student I mentioned in my previous post-- now has enough money to stay at BYU.  Thanks to all of you that helped out!  I'm sure he's very grateful!

Looking for a way to serve?

I just found out from my cousin, Sydnee, that her friend from Brazil is going to be deported if he doesn't earn enough money to pay his schooling debts.  He has been struggling with some health problems and had to withdraw from classes.  As a result, he has a hold on his record and can't add classes until he can pay the fines-- but as an international student he can only work on campus and BYU won't let him work on campus unless he's signed up for classes in the fall.  You can see how he's stuck in a downward spiral.

So, I'd encourage all of you to donate to his cause, even if it's just $10.  I know I'd want someone to do the same for me if I were in that situation.  Go to www.savepaulo.blogspot.com to find out more and to donate.


God does notice us and he watches over us.  But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs.  Therefore, it is vital that we serve each other in the kingdom."
--Spencer W. Kimball

Pampered Chef

If you had $40 to spend on anything from Pampered Chef, what would you get?

Triumph of the Year(s)

(I discovered this post from 2007 that I forgot to ever publish and I decided it was worth publishing now!)

Sunday night was a momentous occasion for me. I did miss my bedtime goal, but I figured it was justified because I finally finished the Old Testament! It probably should have topped my list of goals that stay on every list I have. This acheivement reflects over 2 years worth of work, including suffering through Songs of Solomon (which the elders in my MTC district quickly proclaimed to be scriptural pornography. If you find that surprising, just try a few chapters and see what you think.) and slogging (or snoring?) through chapter upon chapter of "Joseph begat Solomon. Solomon begat Hezekiah. Hezekiah begat Joel. Joel begat . . ." -- but at long last it's done. It was an intense challenge, but it was definitely worth the effort. Now, I'm left with a new question to ponder on: what do I read next?

My New Favorite Word

If I could describe myself in one word, it would be:

Sesquipedalian!

(Runners-up would include bibliophile, pulchritudinous, pragmatic, bijou, rococo.)

I love words!

Someone has too much time on his hands???

 One of my co-workers found this on Craigslist.  I think someone has too much time on his hands.


I have a stack of moving boxes I am willing to give to the needy. They are free, they are brown. They used to have my stuff in them. Some are small, good for books. Others are large, good for hiding when your mother-in-law knocks on the door of your new place. The pile includes two wardrobe boxes - before I had these two boxes, I didn't really feel like I had a wardrobe; I just felt like I had clothes - you too will feel special if you come take these. These boxes come from a smoke and pet free home - we had a pet before we moved, but now we can't find him. I am just heartbroken about it. I would feel somewhat better if I had more room in my garage, so you will really be helping me if you come take these boxes. All of these boxes have experience; I got them off Craigslist from a lady who moved here from Ohio. It's kind of exciting using Craigslist boxes; after you move, you get to open the box and discover whether the green marker that says "Christmas Snow Globes - Bathroom" is correct or whether the red marker that says "Office Books" is correct. I am a bit of an optimist - I was exhausted when we finished moving, but I saw the "Christmas Snow Globes - Bathroom" box on my way to bed that night and could hardly sleep. The next morning, I rushed down to the garage to see if I somehow scored an entire box of Christmas Snow Globes that I could use to decorate the throne room. Unfortunately, I guess I will just have to start collecting my own bathroom Christmas snow globes because the box just contained office books. An added bonus is that you get to write stuff on the sides of the boxes after you unpack and before you put the boxes back up on Craigslist - seriously, you should have seen how hard I was laughing when I wrote "Grandpa's tonsils" on the side of one these boxes and envisioned your wife reading that when she is packing up your place. Nearly all of these boxes have flaps and are corrugated. You may want to hold onto the boxes; you may need a place to live in a few months if you bit off more than you can chew when you bought your new home. I am sorry if I misled anyone by putting the words Magic and Goats in my posting title in a shameless attempt to have more people see this posting for free boxes. If you agree to come get the boxes and I find a magic goat in my new place before you get here, you can have the magic goat. Please don't call tonight. To entertain my neighbors at a barbecue once, I hypnotized one of my boys and told him that every time he heard a cell phone ring, he would cluck like a chicken and try to run people over. It was a huge hit at the barbecue, but I couldn't bring him back out of the hypnosis and if someone calls my house this late at night, it is very disruptive for the boy that was hypnotized and his little brother who ends up getting a bit trampled in his sleep. Tomorrow morning, call 375-3550. Ask for Elvis. That number is my wife's cell phone. Her name isn't Elvis, but I believe that every transaction on Craigslist is just a bit sweeter when the King plays a small role. Did I mention the boxes are free and have flaps?

An Updated Look

We've been working hard on the apartment.  Here's an updated look:

Much improved, eh?

How's the Organizing Going?

Back to Blogging

Mom, close your eyes.  And keep them shut!

Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, want to see why I haven't been blogging lately:

In case you couldn't make out this picture, I'll explain.  I'm a newlywed.  With a super messy apartment.

Translation:  If you come to visit in during the next week or so, be prepared to help me organize!  (Or to be shuffled off to the lobby where you can't see the disaster area.)

Believe it or not, this picture was actually taken after several days of hard work organizing and cleaning.  And it will be followed by many more days of organizing and cleaning.

Oh well.  At least we decided which of the three glasses sets we wanted.  

Now if we can just figure out which of the six pyrex sets to keep . . .

Once and For All

This is the paper you wanted to write
Well tonight is the night that you can
Just get this done and by dawn's early light
you can finish the fight you began

This time I'm in it to stay!
Think about seizing the day!
Think about Micah who's longing for me to come play.
Tell him I'm on my way!

Jeff if you're still counting pages
Wake up and read 'em and weep
You got your deadlines and papers and grades
Yeah, but I've got a bed-- I need sleep!

Once and for all something tells me the tide will be turning!
Once and for all there's a fire inside me that won't stop burning
Now that the choice is so clear
Now that tomorrow is here
Watch how the mighty will fall
For once . . . once and for all!

This is to even the score
This ain't 490 no more
This ain't just me with some pie in the sky
This is do it or die!  This is war!

Once and for all I will finish this dumb hist'ry paper
Once and for all I'll be ending this Alcott themed caper
Five thousand pages to write.
Five thousand reasons to try.
Better to die than to crawl
Either I stand or I fall
For once . . . once and for all!!!

Countdown

Only 18 days until we get married!!!
(But who's counting?)

Announcing . . . Kim's Kin!

I am pleased to announce that I have just launched my first ever website!

Kim's Kin is my attempt to share family history and connect with other relatives though the internet.
It's still a work in progress, but I hope you enjoy it! Eventually I'm hoping to create a personal website as well.  We'll see what time allow for . . .

https://sites.google.com/site/kaw229/

Feel free to leave comments or suggestions-- I'm anxious to improve the website!

The Silver Lining

I've heard that every storm cloud has its silver lining. Today was no exception!

The day started out very gray.  Depressing, flat, wet, steely gray.  And it was snowing.
Not only that, but I had to work at 8am.  At least if I had to be at work so ridiculously early, I should have the consolation of seeing a beautiful morning on my way to work!

Not today.

After work I went to class and was so tired that I (gasp) fell asleep in class.  (Shhhh!  Don't tell Mom!  It was worth it to go see Les Miserables last night!)


After class and lunch I walked to the bookstore to return a movie I had rented.  As I was passing through the upper level of the store, I noticed a sign that mentioned that this month is National Poetry Month!
And, since it's National Poetry month, anyone can go to the bookstore and recite a poem at the General Book or Children's Book Reference Desk.  If you do recite a poem, you'll be entered for a drawing for a free poetry book of your choice!  (The limit is one poem per person per day.)  So, I promptly recited Jabberwocky for the lady at the desk.  She liked it (and she entered me in the drawing).

You can guess what I'm going to be doing every day for the rest of the month!

Now I just have to figure out what poems to recite each day.  I thought about it and these are the ones I thought of off the top of my head that I already know:

Jabberwocky (recited today)
Be Strong by Lord Maltbie Davencourt Babcock
Pie Problem by Shel Silverstein
Eletelephony by ?
My Little Sister Likes to Eat (not sure what the title is, but that's the first line)
A Poem in Your Pocket
They Drew a Circle and Cut Him Out (also not sure if that's the title)
The Ride of Paul Revere by Washington Irving
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
Vice (title?) by Alexander Pope

I probably have more poems memorized but those were the ones I could think of for sure.  I probably won't use the Ride of Paul Revere or the Raven because I doubt the people at the desk really want to hear 3 pages of poetry.  Without those, I have approximately seven poems to start with.  I'd better start memorizing more!

Poetic urges

All this intense paper writing and stress has found an outlet.
Unfortunately it's not in writing my paper . . .

Today the poetic urge struck me and all my pent-up stress released itself into the written word. 

I still haven't finished the poem I just started, but when I went to save it, I discovered a poem I had forgotten I had written.  Ironically, it's from the end of a term last summer when I was spewing out another paper.  It has been sitting in my computer file unnamed and unnoticed for the last nine months.

Until now.

Without further ado, I present a silly, but fun poem about that awful time of semester-- when deadlines are looming and your mind just goes blank.

Writer's Block

My brain is fried

My thoughts are limp

Like noodles overcooked

and left to drip into the drain

I cannot sit another hour

My thoughts will not behave

they wriggle and wiggle and

slither right off of the page

I will never get finished

I’ll stay here forever

My eyes will cloud over

My rear will harden

I’ll be stuck in a chair

Full of despair

And everyone walking by

Simply will stare

At the statue before them

A struggling girl

Stuck with her brain

in a never-ending whirl

Oh the cramps!

The misery!

The endless agony

The . . .

I’ve got it!

An idea for my paper!

Here goes!

Self-image

Lately I have been struggling a little with my self-image.  Especially since I have put on a little weight with all the yummy meals Spencer has been treating me to at the Cannon center.  Wedding dress shopping didn't help either-- I swear 99% of the wedding dresses out there are made for skeletons, not people!  Grrr!
And then, just to top it off I realized this week that most (if not all) of the pregnant girls in my water aerobics class are skinner than me (minus the little bump in the tummy)!  Ouch.

So, I was feeling pretty discouraged and I decided to come up with this list of all of the reasons I'm glad I'm not skinnier:

1. I don't have to agonize over gaining a pound and thereby wrecking my "perfect" figure.
2. I don't look like a walking corpse.
3.  I have a fiancee who loves me, even if I'm not anorexically thin!
4.  People enjoy my cooking (after all, who can trust a thin cook?)
5.  My nieces and nephews still think I'm great!
6.  Didn't Anne of Green Gables always envy Diana for being "plump" and rosy?
7.  I don't necessarily have to be thin to acheive any of my life's goals.
8.  Micah is still fatter than me (ha!)
9.  It gives me an excuse to buy women's clothes instead of girls' clothes.
10.  Have any great women in history been ultra-thin?  Possibly, but I can't remember any off the top of my head.
11.  Isaiah 55:2
12.  It won't be such a shock to start gaining weight when I first get pregnant
13.  I Samuel 16: 7
14.  Thinness is not required for eternal salvation
15.  I have motivation to go walk down and visit Becca, Suz, and other family members/friends more often!
16.  Two words:  DARK CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!
17.  I'm alive.
18.  I have a body!  Which is a lot more than Satan has (ha!  take that Lucifer!!!)
19.  More excuse to take long walks with Spencer!
20.  I am a child of God and He loves me just the way I am.

"I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenage girls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]” And in the kingdom of God, the real you is “more precious than rubies."
--Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "To Young Women," Ensign, November 2005.

Goodreads.com

I just discovered Goodreads.com-- a web site where you can mark books that you have read, review them, and view reviews by your friends.

I think I've died and gone to heaven!

Oh, and speaking of books, Shannon Hale is coming for a book signing Thursday, March 25 at the Orem Barnes & Noble.  She is a Utah author who wrote books such as Princess Academy, the Goose Girl (and sequels), the Book of a Thousand days and Austenland.  I'm super excited to buy Princess Academy (definitely my favorite Shannon Hale book) and get it signed by her!!!

Engagement Pictures!

We need some help deciding which engagement picture to use for our announcement!

Please leave a comment with your vote as to which picture you like best!

Picture #1

Picture #2

Picture #3

Picture #4

Picture #5

Picture #6

Picture #7

Picture #8

Picture #9

Sounds like fun!

I just discovered a cool new tool (thanks to my Computers and Family History program).

It's called Audacity.

For those of you that don't know, it's a program that allows you to create sound files and edit them yourself.

Check out what I made:

Powered by Podbean.com

It's a duet between me and myself!  Pretty sweet, huh?
(I admit, I've always wanted to sing a duet with myself.  That's one dream to check off my list!)

Anyway, I hope this post works (I haven't tried embedding a sound file in my post before, so hopefully it works alright).  And I encourage you to try out Audacity (you can Google it and download it for free if you want) to have some fun with audio recordings.

Yippee!

Epiphany

I just had a break-through on my writing assignment (wahoo!)

I owe my inspiration to my co-worker, Lucy, who gave me the idea.

This week I have still been dragging my feet on my 20 page paper.  The topic is new to me, I'm having a hard time knowing where to start, and I've been feeling majorly overwhelmed.

Until my epiphany yesterday afternoon.

I was working at the library.  My co-worker, Lucy, is also in my 490 class (aka. the class of DEATH!), for which the 20 page paper is due.  When she came in to work, of course she asked how my paper was going, and I sheepishly admitted that I still have barely worked on it.  That was when Lucy provided the spark that set me aflame with new hope.  She mentioned that she was having trouble finding enough sources, and that she was thinking of expanding on her paper from her History 200 class (a beginning history writing class that requires a 10 page paper) to become her 490 paper.

About then I started hearing heavenly choruses singing.  At least, I felt like I did.

Of course my history 200 paper!  For my history 200 class (it's required for all history majors) I wrote about Louisa May Alcott.  It was a fun topic for me, except that I procrastinated it too much and spent too many late nights in the library spewing out ideas right before it was due.  But, I could easily expand it and make it the basis for my 490 paper!  Genius!  I pulled it up and it is already 11 pages.  That cuts my writing load about in half.

So, I'm feeling much better about my paper.  In a few minutes I'll be hitting the stacks to snatch up as many Louisa May Alcott books as possible.

It looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel after all!

Writer's Block

Have you ever had a big assignment to do, but every time you tried to sit down and work on it, you just didn't seem to get anywhere?

I have this stupid 20 page paper that I'm supposed to be working on for my capstone history class.  It's already halfway through the semester and I've barely started on it.  Obviously I'm not being super productive today, since I'm channeling my writing into my blog instead of my paper.

What do you do when you just can't seem to get going on a research paper?  I'm struggling to weed through all the primary sources to figure out the historiography (for you non-history majors, that's the history that has already been written by other people).  I feel like I don't know very much about this topic (and neither does my teacher, so he can only help me so much) and I'm feeling overwhelmed just trying to get started.  I'm still not totally sure what I'm even looking for.

Not to mention, I'm getting tired of sitting here.  Physically, I mean.  Have you ever sat in one place so long that you get sore and can't handle sitting any more.  I think I'm getting to that point.

Well, I'm going to go walk around and try to refresh myself.  If anyone has any ideas, HELP!!!!!

Taking Family History to New Heights

I just thought I'd announce that I recently created a new genealogy blog.

Riste Family History is my attempt to share what I am learning about my Riste ancestors. 
The blog is still under construction, but please feel free to share your ideas about the Ristes, or to contribute what you know about their family.  I'm excited to see how this project pans out!

P.S.  Just in case you have problems with the link, the blog url is:
www.ristefamilyhistory.blogspot.com

Lackadaisical Locker Leasing

Lackadaiscal Locker Leasing is right. Or maybe Lousy Locker Leasing would be a better description. Regardless, this post is not actually about alliteration (although that would be a delightfully diverting post to write)-- this post is about lockers. And fiascos. And BYU.

I know what you're thinking. . . BYU? Do anything wrong? Never!!!!

Alas, BYU is not the pinnacle of perfection (despite the plethora of "proofs" dutifully supplied to the Daily Universe letters to the editor by overeager zealots). As evidenced by debacle that ensued when I tried to rent a locker Wednesday evening.

I signed up for two P.E. classes this semester, Water Aerobics and Weight Training. So, I paid for a locker and then dutifully tramped over to the RB women's locker room to get my locker assignment. The girl at the desk handed me my locker assignment, rattled off the rules, and then sent me on my way.

There was just one problem.

There was already a lock on my locker.

I trudged back to the desk and explained the situation to the girl at the desk. She grabbed a massive pair of lock clippers (which looked something like this ) and cheerfully trotted over to cut the lock for me.

To our great surprise, once the lock was clipped and the locker was open, we discovered that the locker had already been assigned to another student.  The student employee apologized and assigned me another locker.

The second locker had a lock on it, too.

I went back to the desk, yet again, and the employee assigned me a totally random locker on the same row.  I checked it out and thankfully, it did not have a lock on it (although it did have a towel left in it-- odd).  So, I locked it up, glad to have that fiasco out of the way.  Or so I thought.

The next morning I woke up and discovered that I had missed a couple of phone calls.  Upon listening to my voicemails, I was appalled to hear an all-too-familiar voice say:

"This is [insert name here] from the Richards' Building women's locker room.  It appears that we accidentally assigned you a locker that was already assigned to someone.  Please come by the locker room and talk to us to get a new locker assignment."

I have got to be the only student in BYU history to have been assigned four lockers in only two days!  The girl that helped me originally insisted that she had never EVER heard of anyone before me getting assigned to a locker that had already been assigned.  But, here I am-- living proof that BYU's locker assignment program desperately needs some revamping.

I guess I should be more grateful.  After all, I did finally get an unoccupied locker.

And hey, at least they weren't in charge of issuing my social security number!