Musicals are like life!

I thoroughly enjoy musicals. I like both listening to the music and watching the theatrical performance. I've heard people criticize musicals with phrases such as 'People never suddenly burst out into song in real life!' Well, whoever says that hasn't been around my family for long enough!! We do just randomly burst into song and dance, choreographed and everything! So maybe it's not the best of quality, but it's really funny to see.

However, besides the exception of my family, I realized something else: there's almost always a soundtrack to movies, but no one ever seems to complain that 'There's never a full orchestra following you around in real life!' But really, besides walking around with an iPod, you don't have music emanating as you go to narrarate your activities.

That's something that I have kind of always wanted. My own theme music.

And usually I have it...

Even if there aren't symphonies or speakers following me around, I can hear music in my head. Everyone can reply music they've heard in their head, so I just pick music that matches my mood or task. Or sometimes, if I'm feeling particularly creative, I'll just make up my own.

With musicals, I feel like the songs they sing and dance are the ones that we would in those circumstances if we could come up with it on the spot. Unfortunately, we usually can't. But music has a way of expressing emotion that words alone cannot. A song from a musical can represent my thought or current state better than an essay on the subject. The combination of words and music are what makes musicals so great and moving.

So bring them on, with their over the top expressiveness and elaborate schemes! Bring on the impromtu song and dance! Sure we'll look goofy, but it'll be tons of fun!

What's a cubit?

If you haven't heard Bill Cosby's standup skit about Noah, you are missing out.Truly a fine piece of comedy.

I had my first day at Sandia yesterday. The first few days are full of training, mostly stuff like ethics, safety, and procedural things. But, now, I'm on to some real work. This summer, I'll be learning Python (a programming language, for those unfamiliar) and using it to run some tests etc on the program. The program I work on is called Cubit (though if you lined it up 300 long, 50 wide, and 30 high, I don't think it'd be comprable to an ark). It is written in C++ and Python. I learned some C++ last year, but not much. Between then, I took a class on Java, which was very helpful to solidify programming concepts, but now I have to start translating syntax. Joy.

Computer programming is very cool stuff. Very logical, methodical, you can do many amazing things with it. When you finally get something to work that you have programmed is a cool feeling. A feeling of creation, almost. You have created this program out of nothing that does what you want it to do. (Now if only we, God's creations, did exactly what he wanted us to do! see Helaman 12, starting in verse 7.) Programming is very useful in the world and a valuable skill to have.

But I don't enjoy it.

I like it enough to do and learn, but I don't think I could do it for a career or job when I know other opportunities are available to me. Now, I think I'll enjoy a fair amount of learning Python and being able to work around the code and know what I'm doing, but after the initial fun is done, I'll be left to myself to continue plugging through. Often I can get in "the zone" and work or code for hours without realizing the time that is passing. But not always.

So, here's to hoping that things remain interesting at work for the whole summer. I am certainly grateful for the employment and experience. But perhaps a little Bill Cosby could freshen things up. :)

Waiting

Lately, I've been waiting for a lot of things. As I've been waiting, I've had a bit more spare time. I have so many things that i could be doing, but I find it so hard to actually do them when I'm waiting for something else to happen! So I find myself sitting around doing not much of anything, just waiting...

I find a similar thing happens when I'm not busy. It seems when I'm super busy, I can get more things done because I know my time is limited, so I just go go go doing as much as I can. When I'm not as busy, the same urgency isn't there, so even though I have more spare time, I can't get myself going at as high a pace.

I'm usually in high gear. I like accomplishing a lot, and there is a whole lot in life that I want to do and accomplish. So it seems that I have two apparent solutions. One, I could give myself more committments such as class, work, volunteering, etc, or two, I could learn to be proactive in doing many non-scheduled things. Either way, I need to overcome the anxiety of waiting. That is, I need to learn to let things happen when they will, and get doing something productive in the meantime.

Beginning to think

Much in life is worth recording, while much else is not. I am not sure exactly what I will do with this blog, but I plan to share somewhat of the goings on of life and my contemplations thereon. I've been meaning to start a blog for a while, but I've been putting it off because I have deeper things to think about and say that I would like to prepare. Those things will be saved for another blog, which I will continue to procrastinate starting. But this blog will suffice, and get me in the habit of writing and sharing some thoughts for thinking.