Hymn Update

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am attempting to write and compose a hymn. I have completed my first draft. It was a lot harder to write tenor and bass than I thought it would be, but it makes sense. I have never song bass or tenor, so I don't pay nearly as close attention to those parts as to soprano and alto.

I was so excited to have finally gotten something down, and I wanted to take it to Church to see if any of my talented friends with piano skills would play it for me, but sad day. We have no ink in our printer. Isn't that tragic? We were going to buy more ink, but the semester is almost over, and we decided it was cheaper just to print on campus and wait to buy ink.

So. Excitement killed.

But progress has been made, and that's always good.

I did run into a few problems, due mostly to my inexperience. I don't know how to get Finale Notepad to allow for verses and to not say "Soprano" or "Bass" next to my staffs. So, haha. I did it the hard way. I turned my Notepad document into a PDF, opened it in Photoshop, cropped each staff separately to get rid of the S and B markings, saved them as Photoshop documents for future editing purposes, opened them in Photoshop again and saved them as jpgs, and then opened all the jpgs and dragged them into one document. Then I typed in the second and third verses in between the pasted jpgs of the staffs.

Oh my.

And after all that I found a mistake and can't even print it.

Oh well.

Today has been very nice. Jeff and I went to the grocery store, and then Jeffrey cleaned the stove, oven, and outside of the fridge. He even scrubbed the kitchen floor on his hands and knees and then mopped it. My kitchen looks amazing. I meanwhile made deviled eggs for a Group 1 and 4 (my ward is split into groups) BBQ. I made deviled eggs two years ago, but I boiled them wrong, and that's as far as it went. Since then I have made them at my mother-in-law's house, but it's hard to mess up when someone is telling you what to do. :) I haha almost messed up a few times, but with help from the internet, my mom, and my mother-in-law, I was successful. Jeff and I thought they tasted a bit off, but Jeff ate seven I think, and the ones we took to the BBQ disappeared quickly, so they couldn't have been too bad. If you're wondering how you can mess up deviled eggs, picture letting the water boil before adding the eggs and various other things that are so obvious to you that you would never do them. :)

Then I had another get together with friends from Indiana. I forgot to take pictures. :( For this, I provided leftover cupcakes from the ward BBQ (thank you, Christine!), fresh strawberries, juice, and pasta salad. I was going to buy a box pasta salad mix, but Jeff was all "why don't you just make it from scratch?" This intimidated me, but he's a persuasive man. So, I did, and it was almost entirely finished off, so I guess that worked too. Now I wonder why I ever bought the box mixes. It's not that hard, and this way I can put anything in it I want. I used Ranch, Spicy Ranch, corn, pepperoni, and cheddar cheese. Yummy stuff.

For my friends from Indiana who do read this blog, Suzy and Julia Boyce, their cousin Matthew, Robbie Bullough, Paul McGrew, Valerie Selvey, and David Zato were there. I think Zato is correct. He was from Ft. Wayne, not Muncie, so I did not know him very well, but others did, and it was fun to have him come, I'm just not sure if I got his last name right. Cough.

The evening was capped off with a men's volleyball victory of BYU over UCLA. We choked last night and lost, but we pulled through with a win tonight. It was pretty exciting. The teams were very evenly matched. I don't remember the exact scores, but the first three sets were all within two points of each other. Then in the fourth, we won with a margin of 4 or 5, so that was nice.

I never knew I enjoyed watching volleyball games until I married Jeff. So this is one of the things that was brought into my life through marriage and I am very appreciative of it. :) It's always good to think of the new things Jeff has brought me.

Speaking of Jeff, I feel like I don't mention enough how wonderful he is, so here is an example. Every time it has snowed in February and March, he has gone outside early and scraped the snow and ice off the car for me. :) This is really nice of him, because I leave the house 45 minutes later than him, so I actually have more time than he does, because we wake up at the same time, but I have shorter arms and I get cold easier, and he's just a sweetie, because he started doing it without being asked (without it even occurring to me to ask him) and has continued doing it.