Party Rockin' in the Summer

It's been a busy, busy summer!

First things first: THESIS = DONE! I finally defended it on June 11th and passed with a few revisions, which I completed and submitted not long afterward. Exciting! I celebrated with friends and family at the local Olive Garden and Coldstone. =) Now I'm done with my Master's Degree. :-o But I'm still trying to figure out what to do next (recall my previous blogpost)...any suggestions?

This last weekend my sister K, her daughter M, and I went down to my friend D's wedding and my cousin W's wedding receptions in southern California. We drove down Thursday and came back on Tuesday. I was a little apprehensive about the drive with my 15-month-old niece, but she was very good! Our sister C lent us her portable DVD player, which helped immensely. The wedding and wedding dinner/reception (delicious salmon!) for D were beautiful. I decided to give her a long-requested gift (D, if you haven't opened it yet you'll find out soon enough anyway) of a CD of myself playing the piano. 9 years ago for her high school graduation, she requested that I record myself playing Jon Schmidt's "Waterfall" on the piano for her, but I never did it...at first it was that I didn't really have a way to record it, then I hadn't played it for a few years and wasn't as good at it anymore, and then it was just left alone. But when her wedding date started to draw nearer I remembered how I had never done that and decided that I wanted to make it happen for her wedding. I recorded a whole CD for her, with "Waterfall" and 9 other tracks of me playing the piano (other pieces I like to play, one I wrote, and a few Disney kicks since she loves Disney so much). It certainly isn't perfect; I used my laptop's built-in microphone and the wonderful program Audacity to edit it, but I believe the final product would suit her original request. For my cousin W, I played their wedding song on the piano (Yurima's "River Flows In You") for their first dance. It was great to see lots of family there that I haven't seen in a while. She had an awesome set of songs for the dance party segment of the reception, including Michael Jackson, a bunch of swing stuff, "Zoot Suit Riot", and of course, it began with LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem". When "Party Rock Anthem" came on, I really wanted to dance to it, so my aunt's 60-something-year-old fiancé whom I'd just met told me to "go dance!" I said I didn't have anyone to dance with, so he immediately jumped up and went and danced with me for that song and a couple more fun ones. It was awesome. The rest of the trip was nice to just spend playing with Mom and Dad, seeing my brother D and his family, and a few friends, going swimming in my parents' pool, enjoying the beautiful California summer, and of course eating at some of our favorite restaurants from home that we miss.

Then, of course, yesterday was the Fourth of July. Happy Independence Day, everyone! My roommate T and I went to hang out with my sisters' families and our friend C, which involved the traditional games, barbecue, and fireworks. The latter may or may not have involved the purchasing of many, many fireworks ("emits showers of sparks!") with your standard sparklers, ground blooms, smoke balls, black cats (ouch, those hurt your ears!), and other more intense fountains and aerials with names such as "Spirit of Missouri" (C is from Missouri), "Magic Cube Fountain", "Blazing Rebel", "Devil's Delight", etc., and ending with "Full Metal Jacket 2". It was quite the display. My poor 4-year-old nephew had a great time but was completely exhausted when he finally went to bed 2 hours later than normal. Then we had to brave the horrendous post Stadium of Fire traffic to get back down to Provo. But it was worth it for a good holiday celebration with great people. God bless America!

In a few weeks we will have our first Burr family reunion with all the descendants of my parents! That means 2 parents, 5 kids, 4 spouses, and 8 grandchildren for a total of 19 people. It will be a lot of fun. Yay, family!

And it's raining today! I love the rain.

Life is good, if you couldn't tell from what I post here. I just need to figure out where to go next. I still feel like I should leave this general area, though I will definitely miss my sisters and their families. Utah Valley has been pretty good to me, but I don't feel that it holds anything for me as far as my future goes. So I am looking elsewhere. If you have any suggestions, again, I welcome them. Thanks for reading!

Update, shmupdate...life as I know it

After not writing for weeks and weeks..."It is time." (read in the way Rafiki says it as he realizes that Simba is still alive and is the rightful king)

These past weeks/months I've spent mostly working on my thesis, which is now just about done! My defense is scheduled and is in about 2 weeks, so I've just got to figure all that out, prepare my defense presentation, format the paper correctly...I meant to work on the format today, but of course the BYU website isn't working, so I can't look at the form requirements. Ah, well. Then I make any last minute changes, and then I will be finished with my Master's degree. Crazy! Well, not crazy, because I've put in the work necessary for it. Just a little "whoa!" because it's finally happening. Here's to hoping all goes well at the defense.

Last week I got to go visit my brother K and his family, which was really fun. K and S took their youngest daughter on a trip for four days while I took care of their other two children, D and A. D is old enough that he was in school, but A was still at home. She and I played lots of Pretty Pretty Princess and Candyland, watched movies, colored pictures, and more. D showed off his great piano-playing skills (he's going to be really good at it!), and we played more games and what not together. When K and S got back with their daughter K, I got to see how great K is at walking and how sweet she is when she talks (she says "peeeease???" or "please" in the cutest voice when she wants something). I'm very proud of all three of them. It was a good trip.

My other niece, S, turned 6 on Saturday...I missed it because she lives in another state, but I think it's so great that she chose to go to an art museum on her birthday. (What 5- turning 6-year-old wants to do that? She's awesome.) I have so many nieces and nephews (eight with one more on the way!) and I love them all very much. I wish I could see them all regularly, but with my four siblings living in three different states, it is difficult. As it is, I still get to spend a good amount of time with my sisters and their children, since they live close by. We do dinner together every Sunday and it is great to spend time with them. I'm going to miss them when I move away.

That brings me to my next "update"...which isn't really an update at all but more a report of my current state of being. This current state of being is that I have no idea what to do in a couple months. I will be done with school and for the first time in my life, I have no plans. When I graduated high school I applied to a few different schools but knew that if I got into BYU, I wanted to go there to study music. I got in and I came to BYU, but then I auditioned three times for the music program and couldn't seem to get in. I considered going to a different university for music, but felt that the Lord wanted me to stay at BYU, so I pursued a different field of study. Then when I was finishing my Bachelor's in sociology, I decided that an MS in sociology would help me get a better job than having just the BS, so I went for that degree. Now I'm finishing that and am wide open. I could always go for a PhD, but I think I'm really ready for a break from school. I never wanted a PhD, but I wouldn't say no to it; it's just not something I want to do right now. So now I'm trying to figure out, where do I go from here? There are so many career paths a person with an MS in sociology could pursue and I'm really not sure which one I want to do. As I've said before, I enjoy sociology well enough but am not passionate about it, so I do not necessarily want to fill my life with 40+ hours a week of pure sociology unless it is temporary. Ultimately, in the future I hope to be a full-time mom with a part time job in music or something sociology if necessary for financial reasons. Ideally for now I would like to get a good job with the skills I've developed through my sociology education, one with benefits that will pay well and help me pay off my student loans and save up for bigger life purchases like a car and a home. Unfortunately, I really can't picture myself very easily as a full-time data analyst, researcher, working at human resources, or in other jobs like those. I've always wanted to teach music and can easily see myself doing virtually any music career, but while I can jump right into music as long as I have a place to live and a piano with which to teach (another expensive purchase I'm not quite ready to make), starting out with music wouldn't pay me well for at least a few years. Furthermore, unless I were to work through a music company, I wouldn't have benefits. So it seems best that I procure a steady position with my skills as a sociologist so that I can pay off student loans and save up some money.

In addition to not knowing what I should do after the next few months, I don't know where I should do it. All I know is that I'm ready to leave Utah. One of the reasons I stayed here for my Master's was in hopes that I might find someone to marry. That might sound silly to some but is very normal for an LDS woman like me, now in my mid-20s with many LDS friends who are married with one or two children by the time they're my age. But of course, while many people have met their spouses in Provo, I have not. And while my dating life in Provo was certainly busy until I was 20, it has been pretty much nonexistent ever since then. My hopes of that improving over my 2-year Master's program went tragically unfulfilled. Therefore, I have determined that I should leave Utah, or at least Utah Valley, if I want to find my match. That said, I don't know where to go to find him. What's more is that I don't even know if I will find him. It's possible I won't be married for ten or fifteen years yet, or that I will never marry in this life. I certainly don't know, but of course I'm hoping that wherever I go from here will be the place where I meet him. Unfortunately, as I've been praying about it, I haven't felt any strong, clear promptings about going to a certain place, so apparently the Lord is telling me it isn't time yet or He is leaving it up to me to choose where to go. And with choosing for myself, I don't really have in mind a specific place where I would like to settle down to guide me in my search for where to live. I think I could be happy any number of places around the country. So it looks like I'm just going to have to choose something...any suggestions on where to go or what job to look for?

Well, there you have it: I am finally finishing my Master's degree, enjoying family, and trying to figure out where to go and what to do next. If you have any suggestions or advice for me, please share! Thanks for reading, and Happy Memorial Day. Remember those who have given their lives while serving our country.

THESIS PROSPECTUS DEFENDED.

Done and done.

Now to do the actual analysis...here's hoping all goes well!