You mean, why is there silverware in the PANCAKE drawer? Weh-heugh.

This quote is from Scrubs, one of Christian's favorite shows. Here's the clip from Youtube; it's only 12 seconds long but he thoroughly enjoys it every time he sees it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb_mCm4zLuk

This week both Christian and I had to compose atonal music compositions for our Music Theory 4 class. It was interesting. We had to compose for whatever instruments were in the group we were assigned. Christian's group had tuba, French horn, and percussion (he used glockenspiel). My group had two violins, a string bass, and a piano. We had to either create a 12-tone composition where you use all 12 possible pitches (A, Bb, B, C, C#, etc) all throughout the piece so it doesn't sound like it's in a specific key, or a pitch-class-set composition where you use one or two chords like the 0167 chord (meaning the original note is 0, then play the note 1 half-step up from the original note, then the one 6 half-steps up from the original, then 7. For example, C, C#, F#, and G). But the pattern doesn't always have to start on the same note, which gives you more variety in your piece...

Anyway, sorry if that made your eyes glaze over. Christian did a 12-tone composition, and I did a pitch-class-set composition. Here are the links so you can download and listen to the midi files of them right now for a general idea of the sound of them, but don't judge them yet. Tomorrow and Wednesday when we perform them in class we will record them. Then we'll post them to next week's blog, so you can hear them as they are supposed to really sound. Then you can judge them.

Christian's 12-tone composition, "Moon Dream":

Moon Dream.MID

My pitch-class-set composition, "Cloud of Suspicion":

cloud of suspicion.MID

Christian's been really excited about his Photoshop training that he's doing for work. They were given some Photoshopping projects - pictures to fix up, and he was really pumped to do it. He did a great job, and they look nice. Here are some examples of his work:

For this one, they were supposed to fix up the picture by removing the background clutter on the floor and fireplace, fixing the red-eye, cleaning up the baby's face, change the carpet color to green, and making it look generally presentable.

Before:

After:

For this next one, they were supposed to change the field to be blue, and put the BYU cougar head in the center of the field, and make it look generally believable.

Before:

After:

Tonight, just now at midnight, was the starting sign-up date for spring/summer classes, and both Christian and I just finished signing up. In spring Christian will be taking Functional Piano Skills (if he doesn't test out of that, I'm going to shoot someone...), Instrumental Conducting, and Latin. He's really excited about the Latin, since he hasn't taken that since high school and really loves it. In the summer he's taking Economics, Book of Mormon, and Music Civilizations. I've already taken Music Civilizations so it's really fun that he gets to take it too. I actually enjoyed it.

In spring I'll be taking Basic Conducting (hopefully shouldn't be too stressful), the first half of Doctrine & Covenants, and Child Development Psychology. And in the summer I'm taking Abnormal Psychology (do you know HOW LONG I've been SO EXCITED to take this class??!!! You have NO idea!!!) and Public Speaking.... because I've determined that I am horrible at speaking in public. The only times where I'm not horrible at speaking to people face-to-face are 1) when I know them VERY well, and 2) when there's no pressure on me whatsoever. Whenever I try to explain a concept or idea to someone, or talk in front of a group, my mind completely blanks out and I can't even put together a proper sentence. This has been evidenced by multiple attempts at presenting for group projects and Powerpoints, Visiting Teaching, leaving voicemails, and giving talks in church. I have to write down every word of my talk or whatever I have to say. I can't just get up there with a few bullet points written down on an index card and go. My mind will not allow me to speak comprehensible English in those instances. So, this is a problem that I need to fix. Hence, the class in public speaking. It will be scary, but hopefully it will teach me some techniques as to how to get over this dreadful problem.

Christian went to the basketball game on Saturday night, the Y versus the U. He says it was very intense. Apparently, some guy from the U punched some guy from the Y in the face, and the U's coach kept getting onto the field, so they were both kicked out and had to watch the game from the locker room. Here's a youtube video of the insanity of the Utah coach, and the punch in the face (which happens around 1:12). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV40p-gFm60

Recipe for this week is Chicken Pasta Primavera. You can make it for $5, and it fed us twice. And we only used like half the vegetables it recommended, so if you added them all it would feed you even more. It was delicious! Just needed a little more salt is all.

http://www.5dollardinners.com/2009/09/Pasta-primavera-2.html

We love you guys! Tune in next week - same Bat time, same Bat channel. We know. We're batty. PUAHAHA, I'm so funny, I kill myself. XD

Brittany and Christian

"So gross motor would be like....slime."

Lol, this week's quote is from Brittany's work. She was doing some therapy yesterday with the brother of the boy she works with. They were going through some fine motor skill exercises, and he suggested that they play tug-of-war for fine motor skills. Brittany explained to him that that was more of a gross motor skill exercise. He asked what gross motor skills were and she explained somewhat to him what it was. Then he said, "Oh, so gross motor would be like....slime." *facepalm* Obviously none of the explanation sank in. Oh well...

Last Monday, we were invited over by Josh and Michelle for a southwest party in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. There was fried chicken, twice-baked mac and cheese, biscuits and gravy, fried okra, waffles (which were supposed to be eaten with the chicken and the gravy and turned out REALLY good), and lots and lots of cornbread. Our recipe (well Mama C's) was the hit of the party. Lots of raving and asking for the recipe. We ate, and enjoyed company, and at the end we watched the "I have a dream" speech. It was lots of fun.

We recently bought what's called a starving student card for each of us. It is chock full of sweet deals and free stuff. We went out to Carl's Jr. and got ourselves some $6 burgers. Frikin huge burgers and delicious, Brittany couldn't even finish hers off. It was a fun night. We also used our card for last night when Chris Williams decided he wanted to treat us to pizza, so we went and got some Papa Murphy's and took it home and played Monopoly with him and his home teacher. I won with about a bajillion dollars. :P We tried to make some chocolate crackle cookies for dessert, but were impatient and didn't wait for the dough to chill. We stuck it in the oven to try to cook them like bar cookies. It worked out...mostly. We also realized afterwards we only put in half the baking chocolate we needed to. Oops.

Friday we went and saw the movie Planet 51 at the dollar theater. It was a hoot. It's about an astronaut that visits an alien world that's basically Earth in the 50s, and gets stuck there trying to avoid being killed (kinda like a reverse E.T.). There were tons of references to other alien movies that I'm sure 75% of the kids in the audience didn't get. It's fun watching kid movies as an adult sometimes.

This week's recipe is the amazing Cline Cornbread. It's way simple and yummy too.

1 can of creamed corn

1 pint sour cream (it's ok to use light if you want a less-fattening recipe)

2 boxes of jiffy corn muffin mix

1 stick of butter, melted

Mix it all together and put it in a greased 9x13. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown on top.

See? Easy!

Ok I love you bye bye!

Chris and Brit

Kill da Wabbit, kill da wabbit!

Just kidding. :) We're not actually killing rabbits... (if ya know what we mean). Christian was just thinking about Elmer Fudd one day and was singing this song, and he suddenly realized what he was saying. We thought it was funny. Here's the clip in case you have no idea what we're talking about with "kill da wabbit". Hooray for "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxiv3CBMS4M

Anyways, we were pretty boring this week, so we don't have a whole lot for you, but we'll give you what we can.

Christian had his concerto finals this week! He wasn't too happy with his performance, and didn't end up being selected for the "night of concertos" in March, but I am still very proud of him for even making it to the finals! :)

For work, Christian had training in Photoshop. They didn't do a lot of photoshopping stuff, it was just the basics. The second half of the class is this week, and they'll be doing more of actual photoshop. He still enjoyed it though.

On Friday after I got home from work at around 7:15, we were going to go to the temple. We got ready, got dressed, ate dinner, and headed up there around 7:50. We thought there was an 8:20 session, so we thought we were okay, and if not we were planning on doing initiatories. Come to find out, we walked up to the temple and saw that it said "closed" by the recommend desk. Augh! So instead of just going back home, we decided we'd make the most of our trip up there, and we sat in the waiting room for a while. We were planning on it being just a ponderous time where we could think quietly. But there were some people in there who started talking to us. There was one man who offered Christian a job doing beta testing for a program that he designed. Christian wasn't interested, but the man insisted on giving him a business card and told him to call him. We probably won't. There was also a very precocious boy about 12 years old who talked like he was 16. It was kind of funny seeing it, actually. He'll be a businessman when he grows up. He was telling us all about how he was going to be a video game programmer. How many little boys want to do that when they grow up, and how many of them actually end up doing it? Oh well... let him have his dream, right?

Tonight we went to Karisa and Jim Clemens' apartment to play Catan. Karisa is very pregnant and due in a couple of weeks. We're so excited for them and their new addition to the family. It was fun to play with them and get a perspective of where we'll be someday (who knows?). Almost everyone I know my age is either pregnant or has a baby. It's so fun to be able to see all the cute little babies all the time! And the mommies about to pop.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I finally have a calling! I am the ward choir pianist. And Christian is the choir director (awww!). So we can do our callings at the same time! The only problem with this situation is that if I'm playing at the piano, I can't sing in the choir. And we don't have very many people in our choir. Sometimes I try to sing from the piano, but it takes a certain level of concentration and I'm not sure that I'm quite that coordinated. We have about 8 or 9 people consistently in our choir, which isn't bad I guess. About 2 per section, sometimes 3 in one.

Our recipe this week is Tater Tot Casserole. Stop judging. It's actually good. Try it.

TATER TOT CASSEROLE

1 lb ground beef

1 can cream of mushroom

1 lb frozen tater tots

1 cup cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Brown ground beef, drain, and spread in the bottom of a 9x9 baking dish. Spread the cream of mushroom over the ground beef, and cover the top with tater tots. Bake 30 min. Sprinkle cheese over the top, and bake until cheese is melted (not usually more than 5 min). It's pretty yummy, and kids will eat it. Usually.

Love you all!

Brit and Chris

Nerds back to school

Hi everyone. What a crazy week! We've had lots of fun as school has started and we've gotten back into the swing of things. The title is from our realization of how much we are nerds. Brittany constantly makes fun of me because one night we were over at my friend's, Chris Williams, house and we were looking up stuff about trans-neptunian objects. Those are the tiny, almost-planets such as Pluto and other such objects in our solar system. Brittany, though, is just as nerdy because we were talking and she randomly said, "So I was reading this psychology study..." How nerdy can ya get? And then both of us together will stay up late talking about music stuff; analysis, cool sounding progressions and whatnot. Good thing we found each other and can appreciate the nerdiness. :) :) :)

With my work week being rearranged, we now have Monday nights back to do family home evening. We've enjoyed having our evenings more open to have together. I still have 8:00 classes every day, while Brittany wised up and threw that idea out the window. So I still get up and go to school while she gets ready. Unfortunately it's not even classes that I could change. My MWF 8:00 class is only offered at that time. Hopefully I'll test out of my TTh one on my next class period where we're taking a challenge exam. That would give me another hour, as I have work at 9:00 on Tuesday, and horn lessons at 9:15 on Thursday with work after that. It's ok though. I should just get used to waking up that early anyway. Any job I get after college will require me to wake up at least that early, if not earlier.

Brittany and I have two classes together this semester. We're taking music theory 4 together, and Brittany is going to audit my Book of Mormon class instead of going to institute since she doesn't have a religion class this semester. It's been fun getting to go to class with her, and I think she'll be able to help me lots in theory this year. It's gonna be a toughy.

Our lovely home has had a little bit of a problem as they have tried to refurbish the apartment above ours. Apparently, when they were ripping up the floor, they found that there must have been some sort of fire in the building's history because they floor beams were all charred and burnt. So they've had to basically ransack the room and totally start from scratch. This has created quite a mess with dust and all that kind of stuff showering down on us, literally at some points. Not only that, but it's been quite loud with saws and hammers as they replace the floors. Anyway, our landlady has let us stay in the upstairs apartment for last night and tonight while they finish up with the floor and they're cleaning up the mess in our apartment as well. It was a nice surprise. We've viewed it as a kind of re-living of the honeymoon. It's huge compared to our apartment, and it's got a king size bed. Anyway, we've loved our little get-a-way for the weekend.

Thursday evening we took our test to see if we were "qualified" to be census takers. We both scored really well, and now we just wait to see if they need us. We'd basically just go around to houses around ask those people who didn't send in their census information into the office about their information. Anyway, it's just wait and see. We may or may not get called. Who knows.

This week has basically just been getting into the swing of things. Hope everyone is doing ok. We love you.

Christian and Brittany

This week's recipe is Whatever Soup. The recipe is HERE if you would like to try it. Brittany didn't particularly like it, but it kinda reminded me of mom's hungarian goulash. Just season it better than we did. We put in green beans, corn, and mixed veggies. Oh, and we used ground beef instead of stew meat. KBye

Too long, Clanky. Too LOOONG.

The quote from this week is from Strong Bad emails. CLICK HERE to go to the video. Funny stuff.

Anyway, the reason behind the quote is just that we've not written in a long time; too long in fact. So here we go.

The end of the semester was great! I (Brittany) was freaking out over my Statistics for Psychology exam because I accidentally slept in on apparently the most important day of that unit, and therefore didn't understand that material. So I stressed out and studied and didn't get it and studied some more and didn't get it and asked people for help who couldn't help me... etc so I spent all morning the last day of exams trying and trying to get it.... and finally it clicked. So I went and took my exam (I had calculated that all I needed on the exam was an 84 to get an A in the class, and my track record for other exams were around 95 average). And once I got in there everything made sense and I ended up with a 90 on the testing center screen! AND THEN later I got an email from my professor telling the whole class that the average grade for the exam was surprisingly low; 78 or something, and that the highest grade was a 90, and so he was going to go through the answer key and make sure nothing was keyed wrong or something. AND THEN about a day later I get another email saying that a bunch of questions were keyed wrong and so everyone that got all those questions right got 6 more points on the exam, and that the new average was 82ish and the highest grade was a 96. And I guess I got all those questions right, because I ended up with a 96 on the exam! WOOT!

Christian performed awesomely on his juries (a musical solo performance that is the equivalent of a final exam for a music major) and got an A from EVERY SINGLE judge. I was so proud of him, and I got to listen to it. AND THEN a few days later as we were going home we realized he'd forgotten his jacket in his horn teacher's office, and so we went back to get it, and posted on the horn teacher's door were the names of the semi-finalists for the brass concerto competition coming up this year in March. Christian was one of the four semi-finalists!!! Apparently his juries were also tryouts for the competition and he didn't even know! So he (along with the other 3 semi-finalists) gets to perform his solo again on January 13 for judges (only this time it has to be memorized), and if he wins over the other 3, he gets to play his solo accompanied by the BYU Philharmonic Orchestra at the "Night of Concertos" concert in March! There will also be a woodwind finalist, a string finalist, and we think a percussion finalist who will also be performing their solos that night at the same concert. We're crossing our fingers! I'm SOO proud of him!

On December 22 my sister Mary got married to Derek Mecham in the Rexburg Idaho temple! We're so excited for them! They got an apartment in Houston with FREE rent for 3 months while they are down there. Someone at my dad's work had it available and no one was living in it, so he gave it to them. Derek will be working doing an internship with my dad's company (3 months long). We're not sure what they are doing after that.

On Christmas we had our own little Christmas morning together at our apartment. Christian woke up before I did and came in the bedroom with all the presents and dumped them on the bed and woke me up, so we had Christmas in bed. It was way cute. After that, we ate breakfast and showered to get ready to go over to my aunt Nicole and uncle Tenn's house to see my family for Christmas. As we were getting ready, though, we got a phone call from Derek telling us that my grandma Cline (my dad's mom) had passed away. She had been in and out of the hospital for at least 10 years, so it wasn't a giant surprise, but it was definitely an unwanted Christmas present. My parents' phones were off, so apparently when they found out at my grandma's house in Houston, they tried to call them but it didn't work, and so they called the police in Idaho telling them to let Mary and Derek know. So the police called them, and they called us, and it was our responsibility to be the bearers of bad news. So we drove up and told everyone. A few hours later my dad was on a plane to Houston. My family was originally going to stay in Utah until January 4, but we were able to call the airline and change the tickets to go home the next day. Our parents were able to buy us each a ticket and we we got to fly home with my family.

The viewing and funeral were very nice, and it wasn't as hard to deal with as I thought it would be. Christian played "Amazing Grace" on his horn at the funeral and it was beautiful. My mom and I also sang "O My Father". We are glad that my grandma is not in pain anymore, and that she got to go home for her own Christmas family reunion. Even though it was a sad occasion that we went down to Houston, it was still a welcome visit. We were glad to be able to see our families and friends down there, and it was way fun. We spent most of the week with my parents, both since it was their year to have us for Christmas and because of the funeral. We hung out, played games, and on Wednesday we went out with Mary and Derek on a married double date to Carrabba's and to the mall for Coldstone ice cream. That was really fun and we got to tour their apartment. It is a lot bigger than ours and a lot free-er than ours, but that's okay. We're not jealous at all, or anything like that.... yeah.

So back to good news: Christian and I both got raises over Christmas break: mine about 5 1/2% of my salary and Christian's we think 6.2% of his! Apparently they gave him his training raise twice... we think it was accidental so we'll talk to them, but if it was on purpose then it'll be 8.3%. That was a very welcome change. :)

For New Years' we hung out at Mike and Alayne's house (Christian's brother and his wife) and all the women learned how to make the famous Mealey top-secret-family-recipe homemade cinnamon rolls. They are delicious, but they take like 4 hours to make so we really can't make them all the time. They are a Christmas morning tradition in the Mealey household... maybe we will make them next Christmas! :) We watched the ball drop at midnight and cheered and everything, then we had to go home and sleep because we had to get up early to catch our plane back to Utah the next morning. The flight went safely, and we arrived back home January 1st.

And now it's time for the start of the new semester. We start our new classes tomorrow. I am excited to take Music Theory 4 with Christian- I'm a music theory geek and it shows. I love learning about music theory and this semester will be all about post-modern music (an adjective which Christian thinks is oxymoronic). I'm way excited!!!! I'm also taking some core Psychology classes. One of them is a class for which the big project of the year is running your own psychological experiment and reporting on it. That one should be fun. Christian is taking about 300 classes.... well maybe that is a slight exaggeration but not much. He's taking 10 classes, adding up to a total of 15.5 credits... compared to my 5 classes that add up to 13 credits. Ridiculous. Being a music major eats up all your time. He is excited to take Careers in Music Education and his Brass Workshop class. This semester they will be studying the rest of the brass instruments like... French horn, and trumpet. It should be easy for him. This semester is also his last semester before he formally applies to the Music Education major (right now he is still Pre-Music). We're looking forward to when he is official!

No recipe this week. Sorry. We pretty much ate at other people's houses and/or ate recipes we've already posted and/or ate recipes not worthy of posting on the blog. We will try to do better about doing our blog weekly.

Some ants toot,

Clanky