Speaking of Christmas lights, this year you will be able to find a wide array of LED lighting available.  These LED lights are less likely to burn out and will use a lot less electricity.  They also will cost 5-15 times more money.  For something that is used only seasonally, I don’t think there will be masses of people to buy LED lights.  I do think that LED lights could sell quite well if they were made available in new colors, shapes, and brightnesses.

I’m not really sure what sort of lights I may want to buy.  If I decide to have a small 20 inch tall fake tree in my office, I may decide to use LED lights on it.  For my tree at home, I’m still carefully looking at all the different light options.

(photo source)

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Today I visited Google Docs to upload a document with a sugar cookie recipe, and I found that they’ve gone pink for the day. I did’t know the Google Docs folks were so into Valentines Day, but it looks like they’ve got pleanty of love to share.

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In my sleep, I heard noises, but I didn’t readily recognize them–they weren’t a lawn mower or a garbage truck. Then, as I was waking, I realized that they were from the burner of a hot air balloon. I jumped out of bed, only to see my apartment building being buzzed by a such a balloon, and the sky all around me being filled with various hot air balloons, flying as part of Provo’s freedom festival.

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I made my pie, and I’ve eaten most of it. I’m not generally a calorie counter, but I figure as long as I don’t eat more than half of the pie in a day, I’ll live.

I accidentally fell asleep early last night. I was going to take a quick nap before the eight o’clock television hour, but I ended up sleeping through until midnight. So what do you do when you wake up at midnight? I read some blogs and went back to bed, although I didn’t sleep very well, but it didn’t bother me. For most of the night I felt like I was just kind of floating on day dreams, but during the night. That didn’t make sense, but oh, well, swallow. Sad thing is that I slept in this morning too.

Jennifer once told me that punctuation is an art and something to be passionate about. I’m not sure if I’m passionate about it, but I do think it is an art. Following the metaphor, my punctuation is like throwing cans of paint at a wall.

Why do all bombs on the TV shows have wires where if you cut the right colored wire it disarms the device? I bet that in real life it doesn’t work that way.

Is spirit matter? It doesn’t seem to be a solid, liquid, or gas. Maybe the type of matter of which spirit is composed exists in an alternate dimension, meaning, not height, width, nor depth, but spirit. Scientists claim there are at least 11 dimensions, maybe spirit is one of them.

Having been reading many blogs recently, I think I observe a trend of frustration and stress. I think this might be due to the fact that many are working hard at school in a stretch of hard work right before the Thanksgiving holiday. I’m kind of stressed out too. But I think that if we all spend a moment to think of one or two of the things we enjoy, and then do those things, then we can see a reprieve in the rains and storms that come out ways.

Someone told me they loved me the other day. Well, actually, they just wrote it and I read it. I’m pretty sure they were meaning the kind of friendly platonic sort of love, but it felt good anyway.

Change is a funny thing. I mean, sometimes we grow up in life expecting things to be a certain way when we are a certain age. And then we reach that age, and it isn’t what we thought it would be like. Do we give up our dream and follow some more practical ideology, or do we continue to follow our dreams trusting that we will someday grasp them?

Ah, my heart doth ache for that which doth not disappoint.

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I think perhaps the best theme for a Halloween dance is: Halloween. You can have pumpkins, spider webs, costumes, fake or real ghosts, and other creepy Halloween oriented things.

Of course, I am not a fan of Halloween dances, mostly because people wear costumes and costumes make it difficult to meet new people. My advice is don’t plan a Halloween dance, plan an October or November dance, without costumes. I’m afraid, however, that you are on your own for finding a theme for such dance.

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Today is Oregon’s birthday. I already have my oregon flag hanging from the wall, more proud than a Texas flag. 147 years ago, Oregon became a state, but not without some controversy. In 1859, the balance of power in the United States was carefully balanced between those opposing or supporting slavery. While the Compromise of 1850 dictated that Oregon would be a free state, its two newly elected senators were proslavery Democrats. However, congress finally acted and on February 14, 1859, President Buchanan signed the bill, causing Oregon to be the 33rd state.

I thought I would share some ideas about how to celebrate this very special day:

• Think about all the things you like about Oregon
• Bake an Oregon birthday cake
• Fly the Oregon flag. If you don’t have an Oregon flag, print a picture of one off of the Internet and proudly display it
• Hate Utah drinking water
• Hug a tree
• Recycle
• Ride your bike to work or school
• Use an computer powered by an Intel processor
• Make Oregon cards and give them to all of your friends
• Kiss someone romantically under some Oregon grape.
• Purchase or consume some Western Family food products
• Adopt a salmon
• Convince someone else to pump your gas for you
• Sing the Happy Oregon Day song.
• Read blogs of Oregonians

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University Villa  tried having a valentines dance tonight.   As far as setup, it wasn’t that bad, except for a little hyperactive fog machine.  There were only 7 people there; I feel kind of bad about that.  I didn’t stay any longer than I needed to grab a cookie, but I might had stayed longer if there were more people.

Honestly though, I’m not surprised.  Besides the fact that it is a weekday night and everyone has class tomorrow, I don’t imagine that valentines dances could succeed more than any other dance.   I would guess that Valentines Day isn’t  exactly everyone’s favorite holiday, so why would a valentines dance be predestined to success?  Those who are looking forward to celebrating valentines day, probably have a significant other, and thus don’t need a dance as an excuse to dance.  Those who don’t have significant others, probably aren’t so excited about the whole valentines thing anyway, and consequently are not the most likely to be excited about a valentines dance.

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Things are a little bit more stressful that usual. I actually have friends to play with. This is a change over last year when most of my friends were married, but then I made some more friends. My sister is getting married in two days. That is causing a lot of stress around the house.

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Actually, its not the fact that a Halloween dance is bad, but its when there are generally only two stake dances every year and one of them is a Halloween dance. I’m unhappy because about half the the stake dances that I’ve ever been to at BYU have been Halloween dances.

Halloween dances can be fun, but I just think that the Halloween theme is so often done (every year) that there are other fun themes for dances which never happen.

If you ask people about why there are dances, you might get a variety of answers. Some might say that its for the free food, free fun, or the exercise. I suppose many people will say that it provides an unique environment to socialize with friends. If these were the only reasons, then perhaps a ward Halloween dance would be appropriate. But I’m talking about stake dances here, which have an additional couple of purposes. I think one of the biggest reasons to have a stake dance is to be able to meet new people in the stake that they would not normally have a chance to meet. Of course part of this is meeting new people of the opposite gender that you might want to get to know better.

So if one of the major purpose of a stake dance is to meet new people, then let me ask, does having everyone disguised in costumes promote this purpose? It seems like with Halloween, people dress up and look (and often act) different than they really are. I don’t think that having people look and act differently than they normally do makes it easier to meet and get to know new people to make friends with.

How is it suppose to be easier to meet some cute girl that I’ve never met before if she has makeup and whatever that makes it look like she has an axe coming out of her back or something?

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