Campus rush hour: tips for rushing faster than your neighbors

You're on the southwest side of campus. Your next class is inconveniently located at the far northeast end of BYU, and you only have ten minutes to get there. What do you do?

Here's what I do:

1. If possible, find a path to your class that isn't typical of most students or has more walking room.


2. Lengthen your stride until you're walking almost twice as fast as everyone else rushing to class.


3. Choose other fastwalkers to follow. This is my favorite thing to do. You make the other person part the sea while you coast along in their wake. When your Leader turns from the route you need to take, find another one (Leader, not footpath). There are always plenty of fastwalkers out there.


4. Keep an eye out for Sticks-in-the-Mud (people who randomly stop to talk in the middle of the sidewalk, showing little concern for their personal health in the process). Try not to collide with any.


5. Watch out for congested areas of traffic where everyone is walking slow. Adjust your pace just enough to keep you from running somebody over and use the gaps between walkers to muscle your way forward.

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This tip sheet brought to you by a native Utah driver and walker.

A weekend of parties

It started with a French toast party on Friday night. Mara and Josh started planning it two weeks ago. (Mara is pretty much the only truly spontaneous person in the entire ward, so she had to plan in advance.) "I thought if I invited thirty people, fifteen would show up," Mara said afterward, but that ratio is only true with her usual 'Hey, want to have a party tonight?' routine.

At least forty people came. We went through a lot of French toast, whipped cream, and syrup.

There was a ward activity Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, it was not as well attended as French Toast with Mara. Part of that was confusion about what time the thing really started and part of it was nobody wanted to drive to the church. Saturday afternoons are notorious for being lazy.

The weekend culminated in a giant birthday celebration for Heather, the Relief Society president. She invited the entire ward to a 1920s party in the lounge Saturday night. The place was really decked out to look like a club, jazz music and all. A lot of people came dressed up; Kelly and Holly spent a long time perfecting their looks. :) Sara spent some time teaching me basic swing dance steps, I spent some time devouring the homemade root beer, and Jennifer and I spent a lot of time playing Crack the Case. (A thinking game that's very similar to our Mind-whatever-it's-called game that Graig has memorized at home.) We liked it so much I even begged Heather to let us borrow it so we could play it again last night.

City Hunter Couch Potato Day

Today, Jennifer taught me how to make homemade taquitos and chips.

Looks pretty tasty if I do say so myself.

After our cleaning check, Jennifer mentioned that Sara told her I love taquitos and offered to teach me how to make them. I liked that idea. We went to the store and got chicken, corn tortillas and stuff to make Jello Cake. I declared it City Hunter Coach Potato Day.

City Hunter is the name of a Korean drama Jennifer got me addicted to. It has lots of action and an intense storyline. After today, we only have about 4 hours left of the entire series (which only consists of 20 hour-long episodes, but still...). Jennifer tried to get Sara addicted to it as well, but Sara being Sara, she had to look up the show on Wikipedia to get the whole story. It's true it's faster that way, but personally I prefer watching the show for the story... haha. She went home this morning. When she found out Jennifer and I were watching City Hunter, she kept wanting to know what part I was at. I teased poor Sara mercilessly, refusing to give her any hint of what was happening. I hope she can forgive me when I see her at church tomorrow. :)

The first day, and such

First day of school=Wednesday=good.

I'm most excited for University Band. I'll be playing my alto sax. :)

My journalism classes will probably be the most work, although World Music Cultures will also require effort. (Amazing, I know. Classes that require effort? Inconceivable.)

Our new roommate, Jennifer, is really nice. She's from California and we were both born in the same year. (She's two months older.)

I got myself invited to another Space Center mission, this one with a bunch of people from my major. I'm still not quite sure how I managed it; I can barely remember all their names but somehow amidst my eternal confusion they've gotten to know me enough to like me. Pulling my head out of the clouds long enough to talk to the people around me is my biggest challenge, but I'm working on it.

I stole another person's article again, accidentally. This time it was a feature by Matt Livingston when the Daily Universe got mixed up and gave me credit for it. Life is anything but dull, eh? Who'd've thought I'd be an accidental plaigarist two times over?

I hope you're not tired of Space Center posts

As you can see from my past three posts, I've been wanting to go on another Space Center mission for a while. Today, I got my wish.

Graig and I booked the USS Phoenix for a 5-hour mission kind of on a whim just over a week ago. We got Tyler and Melanie on board (thanks to some Christmas money they were able to pay their shares - or in Mel's case, most of it) and two brothers whose family is one of our family friends: Brock and Taylor.

Our mission was to escort the diplomatic vessel USS Lexington to a solar system near Romulan space called Lecia. The Lecians had recently broken off from the Romulan empire in the confusion following the destruction of the Romulan homeworld Romulus. (Apparently Romulus' destruction is mentioned in the recent Star Trek movie.) Lecia had managed to stay independent from the Romulans and another solar system formerly under Romulan control (Bac-something) and had even expressed an interest in joining the United Federation of Planets. Hence the Federation ambassador aboard the Lexington. We were supposed to keep the Lexington and her crew safe during the negotiations.

We made it to Lecia, no problem. But after we got there, the military decided to overthrow the government and kidnap our ambassador. They launched a few ships to keep us busy, took control of the Lexington and used their army to control the Lecians on the planet's surface. We tried to fight back, but it soon became apparent there was nothing we could do but inform Starfleet what went wrong and flee. Pilot Tyler guided us through a nearby asteroid belt to throw off our pursuers and we received new orders from Starfleet soon after: 1)Determine whether the coop was justified or not, 2)Free the Lecians if the coop was proven to be unjustified, and 3)Rescue the Lexington if possible and retrieve the kidnapped ambassador.

Operations Officer Brock intercepted a message from the Lecian general captain (or was it captain general?) to the Romulans thanking them for their help in overthrowing the elected government that helped us decide the coop was unjustified. Using our top secret cloaking device (a prototype only the Phoenix is authorized to have), we snuck over to the Romulan/Lecian border and beamed aboard the command ship, where all six officers were promptly captured by a pair of indignant Romulan officers. First Officer Graig and Engineer Melanie really annoyed them during the following interrogation with numerous smart alecky comments until the Romulan captain finally "stunned" Graig with his gun to get him to stop talking. We were able to escape when the officers went off in the corner to discuss what to do with us, carelessly leaving one of their weapons within my reach. We stunned them both, made a copy of their computer files, and beamed back aboard the Phoenix without further incident.

The files proved the Romulans provided arms to the Lecian military, cementing our belief that the coop was illegal, and included a bonus: a transmission from General Captain Lucius to the Romulans stating he was prepared to take over Bac-something, the neighboring solar system, as well. The Romulans had knocked out all long range satellites, so we had to travel to the other solar system to warn them. This was slightly problematic because they'd closed off their borders to all groups after slipping out from under Romulan control, but once they were convinced the intercepted transmission was real, they were so grateful they sent a fleet of ships to help us recapture the Lexington and free Lecia.

That was a fun part for me as the captain; the Phoenix was put in total command of the battle. Starfleet sent five ships as well, and with advice from Graig and Brock, I directed the fleet and the battle. We recaptured Lecia, found the ambassador still on the planet safe and sound, and took General Captain Lucius prisoner. He caused some problems when he escaped from the brig, but we were able to subdue him and even get him to tell us where he'd sent the Lexington- a Romulan starbase called Constantinople.

We chased the Lexington to Constantinople and again used our cloaking device to sneak in unnoticed. When we were close enough, Brock transported the Federation crew to the Phoenix and then transported a bomb to the warp core of the Lexington. We zoomed away as the Lexington exploded, barely clearing the destructive range in time. There were other Romulan ships with the Lexington that didn't make it. They were caught by surprise.

However, not all of them were destroyed. As we made for the Romulan/Federation border, several ships were able to detect us and set off in hot pursuit. We barely made it past the border before they caught up, and they chose not to follow us into Federation space.

In all respects and definitions, we were victorious. Our flight director, Mr. Daymont, gave us a 9 out of 10 on the mission. (We died three times.) Tactical Officer Taylor proved to be very adept at destroying enemy ships - especially during the battle to free Lecia. Melanie proved to be easily distracted, which wasn't too good in an engineer but she was able to fix things when it counted. Brock, who thought he was signing up for an easy job as operations officer, was invaluable running the transporter and communications. Tyler did well at helm, especially going through the asteroid field. As first officer, Graig was just as calm and quick-thinking as a real officer from the television series.

I will fall asleep happy tonight.