What to do the first week of July in Riverside, California

Things to do when visiting family:
-Go to Disneyland for a day
-Ride Star Tours at least twice while there, along with Pirates and Thunder Mountain
-See Cars 2 with all the children
-Go out with old friends a few times
-Push the nieces on the swingset in the backyard
-Spend time with a german shepherd
-Talk about what's going on in Provo, Mesa, Nashville, or Riverside these days
-Go watch fireworks at a family friend's house
-Watch Mt Rubidoux catch on fire just a few minutes into the fireworks show
-Wait for a long time to see if the fireworks will start up again-- mostly wait for the fires to be under control
-Watch roman candles in the field close by catch the field on fire
-Get bitten by mosquitoes and have those bug bites swell up to ridiculous sizes
-Don't even open thesis related work
-Finish off that book almost a year after starting it
-Go to Costco
-Go to the Galleria at Tyler
-Go to Von's and Trader Joe's
-Eat lots
-Macerate some meyer lemons from the backyard
-Make shaker lemon pie
-Make world peace cookies (aka chocolate korova?)
-Bring a loaf of avocado pound cake in suitcase to share with family, while leaving a dozen muffins for the roommates
-Text people a lot when bored
-Watch Harry Potter 1 with the nephew who had just finished the book a few days earlier
-Play the piano, mostly when no one's home
-Eat thrifty's ice cream sandwiches
-Let a niece be entertained endlessly by emoticons on gchat (the blue crying face is the best)
-Play basketball with family or just solo
-Ride a bike with flat tires that are also completely deteriorating and think about buying new tires for it for the future, but never follow through on that
-Spend time with family, alone and together
-Sleep in most days
-Listen to awesome testimonies in church about how great and tall trees are

Holidays

What I Got for Christmas:
-Clothing
-Necklaces
-A cool new scarf
-A CD of soothing music, arranged by my uncle
-An awesome book about my grandparents
-Money
-A calendar
-Candy
-Post-it notes
-A flashlight
-Bobby pins
-CNN season three

Midsummer Check

Things Accomplished So Far This Summer:

-two road trips, both to California (one to Riverside, one to Santa Cruz)

-return back home (once)

-Manti temple pageant (the Mormon Miracle Pageant)

-found a job

-passed my comps

-go dancing (once)

-hiked Squaw Peak

-started Notre-Dame de Paris and gotten farther than all previous attempts

-some baking (and cooking, as well)

-watched World Cup games and NBA final games, too

-invented a crazy diet

-visited the beach

-taught a Sunday School lesson (actually, it's tomorrow, and it's the Preach My Gospel class, not Gospel Doctrine...)

The End of a Year

My Favorite Christmas Day 2008 Memories :
-CNN Season 1 on DVD (unedited and unexpurgated)
-Three of my nephews playing with a clone trooper helmet
-Reading Kafka and taking a long nap
-Roxy (the German Shepherd) hiding under the dining room table
-holiday txtmsgs
-My brother, who is 31, getting excited about getting a lightsaber for Christmas
-He also gave a bunch of Star Wars themed presents to my nephews, making it a Star Wars themed Christmas overall
-My oldest niece and nephew playing spies together, and labeling my brother and I as "two really really bad guys" who stole 62 pounds of diamonds the size of an adult's heart.

My Christmas Presents:
-clothes
-CNN season one on DVD (actually it was Columbo season 5, which I had to give back to my Mom)
-fondu set
-pink flamingo slippers
-jewelry
-money
-purse
-boots
-coco mix with 2 mugs
-Trivial Pursuit

Other Memorable Moments from Christmas Break So Far:
-Reading The Great Wall of China by Kafka to my nephew Charlie as a bedtime story
-Visiting target about three times in four days
-Dinner with high school friends I haven't seen in four years
-Seeing Valkyrie and Bolt
-Showing Mom that there are bathrooms in Borders
-The lack of cooperation between myself and my hair
-My niece Quinlan's birthday party dinner with the missionaries
-My nephew Braxton whispering that Quinlan was opening my present (psst... this one is yours..!) because I didn't know what I was giving
-txtmsging my brother-in-law in binary

Frustration

Classes I am enrolled in:
-Hist 301 (late middle ages)
-Hist 303 (the reformation)
-Hist 314 (eurofascism)
-Phil 202 (history of modern philosophy)
-Fren 322 (advanced composition)
-Rel C 355 (Judaism and the gospel)

Classes I have tests in in the next 10 days:
-Hist 301
-Phil 202

Classes I have stuff due in the next 5 days:
-Hist 314
-Hist 303
-Phil 202
-Fren 322

Classes I am majorly behind in:
-Hist 314
-Hist 303
-Fren 322
-Rel C 355

Things keeping me alive:
-facebook
-2 trips out of utah in November
-going home for thanksgiving
-tea