Today I saw

A really big desert.

Lots of sage brush.

Roadkill (I'm pretty sure it was a fox)

A hare -- it jumped out of a bush two feet away from me and hopped off

More flies than I care to count

Several lizards

Some very fancy equipment made to measure ultra-high energy particles coming from outer space.

And a bazillion butterflies. Sadly, I killed most of them with my windshield.

More stream of consciousness

I know I've complained too much in the past months, but life is really good these days. Plans seem to be materializing, things seem clearer.

I love my classes--without exception, and it's crazy that it would take until my final semester at BYU. I love reporting, I love anchoring (we're finally going on air this week! Watch at noon on KBYU channel 11 or catch it later on the ElevenNEWS website) and I love my international media systems class and my world religions class (I highly recommend taking them concurrently by the way. Random how that worked out) and I even like my advanced writing class, which I was kind of dragging my feet about. Crazy! And somehow, even though I'm ridiculously busy, I don't feel overwhelmed. (Yet.)

Also, I went for a nice sunset drive tonight and picked flowers and did plenty of homework this weekend and... lots of good stuff.

Oh, and did I mention I found a navy blue blazer that looks great and cost only $21? Yup, you read right. For all of you fellow broadcasters, check out Forever21 for a crazy selection of blazers all the colors of the rainbow for under $30. It's broadcast heaven. And new mascara is nice too. Isn't it sad that you only get to appreciate a new mascara wand once though?

Ha ha

Seriously. Life is good. And since it's Sunday, here is my latest favorite thing from the Round Table. It's a great podcast in general, you should definitely check it out. And here's my new favorite mormon message--this guy is too sweet!

Hit the ground running

There you have it. My first news story of the semester. I was pretty dang proud of my camera work, and while there are a few things I'd like to tweak I'm quite happy with this. This is what we call a "feature" story, which means it's not necessarily the most newsworthy thing out there but more of a community snapshot/funny story/entertaining story. But it was great to get back into the swing of things, and to practice technical aspects.



I have so many awesome projects in the works for this semester. I am SO happy to be back in the newsroom, and anchoring (which is so much fun. I feel like things are going really well). We won't be on air for another week so I really have a lot of time to get comfortable too, although it's feeling pretty good so far. My coanchor is another girl, Jenné, which is actually awesome. I think our whole team works real nicely together already. I really appreciate that our directors decided to go on a merit base rather than strictly adhering to the boy/girl ratio and the... well, gender discrimination that implies. Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but I'm grateful for the opportunities they're giving us.

I'm just thrilled for all the opportunities to grow this semester. Great stuff. And what an awesome semester to end on! PS: Look out for my first interview for the Mormon Women Project next week!

Awesome

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.