I'd like to thank my sponsors

Thanks to my good friend Amber. Thanks Amber for having an amazing camera. Thanks Megan for your super counting skills and talents at making a U. Thanks to me for the cool ideas. Thanks to Milin and Judy for taking the time all those years ago to make 3 Amigos costumes. Who knew I would need it some 6 years later? Thanks to the state of Wyoming for selling fireworks year round and for not reporting people who buy them and smuggle them across the border to Utah.

I had to take some pictures for my homework using different kinds of flash photography. Here is what we did.

So this is actually done all in the same shot. What you do is put the camera in a dark room. Amber's camera has a setting where the shutter will stay open for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, or 60 seconds. With the camera in the dark room, your subject stands in one position (that's me on the left) and you shine a light on the subject. Because the shutter is open for 15 seconds, it records what flashes in the light. We then turned the light off, and I moved to the middle and Amber flashed the light on again. Etcetera, etcetera. Megan has wicked good counting skills and was able to help Amber time it just right.

This is done with sparklers. Yes, I did use a whole lot of matches to get them started because the wind kept blowing them out, but I finally got it done. I thought it was kind of cool.

Here we were just playing around. Sparklers and cameras are so fun! Who knew the things you could do? Thanks to whoever invented the digital camera and for Amber for buying a good digital camera that does what I need it to do.

Sorry Grandma, domestication is not for me

So my grandma is convinced that if I will be domesticated, I will get married. I have heard many times that if I learn to sew some guy will fall madly in love with me and I will find my Mr. Right. I try time and time again to tell her that it's not economically smart anymore to sew like it was back in the day. Material costs money, it takes a lot of time, and it just is a pain in the butt. Now the reason I was inspired to write this blog is because I decided it would be nice to make a baby blanket for my friend who is having her 3rd child. I went and found this super cute flannel material and decided that I would tie it with yarn. Sounds easy, right? Well, it ended up taking about 4 1/2 hours just to tie the dumb thing! Of course it was my first blanket ever, but it was a pain to do. I still have to finish the edges, and who knows how long that will take? I really don't believe domestication is my thing. If it means that I'm going to be single for the rest of my life, so be it.

Picture-taking adventures

So I'm in this digital photography class. Sounds sweet, right? Well, I'm sure it would be way sweet if I had an SLR or anything but my point and shoot camera. But I don't, so I go to class and listen to the teacher talking about adjusting your aperture, ISO, F-Stop, and many other terms that I don't know what the heck she is saying. It's seriously probably the longest 6 hours of my week. But the good news is that it only lasts 6 weeks, so I'm sticking with it. Yesterday we actually got some tips on how to position your picture, so that will be exciting to practice with that. Anyway, so here is a sample of some pictures I took last weekend. Pretty much I'm not very original and have just copied my good friend's ideas. She's very creative. But I thought the pictures were kind of cool. My next assignment for the class is to take a picture of the same thing twice, telling two different stories. I am going camping in Moab this weekend and want to hike to Delicate Arch. My idea for the picture telling two different stories it to take a picture of just the top part of the arch from this part of the hike where you climb over a little shelf-like thing. After you climb over the shelf-like thing, you see the arch. It's like when you are going somewhere exciting and you get over the last hill and can see everything. So I'm going to do one shot from this shelf-like thing, and then take the second picture of the whole arch. What do you think? Does that tell a story? Maybe? I'm thinking one story could be that there's just this little arch, and then the second story will be this breath-taking arch that is really cool looking. Hopefully...I've only hiked to Delicate Arch at 11:00 at night, so I don't really know what it would really look like. But I'm sure you'll see.

Where did the term "mormonja" come from?

So some of you might be wondering where I got the word mormonja. Or some of you might not be wondering too, but I figured I might as well catch anybody up who may not know. Back in the days when I was on my mission, we would have to explain to certain men that we could not date because that was just the way it was. Well these certain men just didn't seem to understand, so we decided to use a word that they might be more familiar with-nun. We decided to start saying that we are like the nuns of the Catholic church and that we can't date. Well, since I served my mission in Spanish, that word was "monja." So me and a companion decided to combine the words "mormon" and "monja" and called ourselves mormonjas. I really like the name and decided to make it my email address, and now my blog title.
Now do I really plan on being a monja? No, it has not been in my plans to be single this long. In high school, I thought that if I wasn't married by the time I was 20 then I would just give up hope. Well, now that I am 26, I have still not given up hope. Even thought I have been through an interesting dating experience that I won't ever mention in detail on my blog, I still have hope that one day I will have a good relationship with somebody and that I will be able to love. It really is in my plans. Until that time though, I will continue to be mormonja.

Blogging and my exciting life.

So my friend got me to finally start my own blog. I'm pretty sure she's the only one that will even read it, but hey, who cares? Maybe one day word will get out. So here goes to my blogging...

On Friday night my roommate and I went bowling. It was way fun. I remember when I used to be good at bowling and always got over 120. I miss those days. I'm now lucky if I break 100. Saturday I tried to take pictures for my photography class but wasn't able to get the right shots that I need, so I gave up and just sat outside because the weather was so nice. Saturday night I went to the Living Traditions festival in Salt Lake. I think it's the only place in SLC where you will see so much diversity. There were all sorts of interesting people there.

Today I went to my friend's son's mission farewell. Yes, I have a friend that is old enough to have a son that is going on a mission. It's always fun to hear a premie give a going away talk and then see how much they change after their mission. They had Italian food at the party afterwards. It was by far the most amazing mission farewell food I've ever had. My friend's husband makes lasagna with some veggie sauce that has carrotts, celery, onions, and red peppers. It was amazing. I now have something that I would like to experiment and try.

Well, that's probably boring enough for now. Hopefully life will be more exciting and I will actually be able to write something that will be interesting for people to read.