Degas and Life

I love everything by Degas. The flashes of color and the amazing contrast between the floor and the white, as well as the blurs in the background just make my eyes go crazy. Pieces like his make me wish I had stuck with art lessons. The thing I love about art is the unsurety of it all. You can look at a picture and just sit and wonder: what was he thinking when he did this? You can come up with a bunch of theories. You can study them and be tested on them in school and write them in a professional-sounding book. You can do all of these things, but sometimes (most of the time), you'll still be totally wrong. Sometimes the picture is the work of a moment; something the artist can never explain because it's an experience, and not a thought. Everyone can have a different experience with a piece of art. Art is personal. You can look at the same painting many times, and you will always see it slightly differently. People tend to overanalyze everything, condense it down, and force feed it to whoever will listen. Art is different. You can't do that with art.

Snow!

Utah snow is very different from Virginia snow. Virginia snow is wet, and the air is bitterly cold. Utah snow is dry, and resembles chunks of styrofoam. It is easily brushed off your coat and it forms formidable snowballs.

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had
an earthquake lately."

Snow and adolescence are the only two problems that
disappear if you ignore them long enough.

-Earl Wilson

Westen's unsuspecting victims...

Her name is Sheila, and she is an expert at chasing snowballs.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go
to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another one quite different, and if
this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
-J.B. Priestley

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you
have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I'm going to snow
anyway."
-Maya Angelou

No more of parental rules!
We're heading for the snow!
Good riddance to
those grown up ghouls!
We're leaving! Yukon Ho!
-Bill Waterson

First we'll make snow angels for two hours, then we'll go ice
skating, then we'll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookie Dough as fast as we
can, and then we'll snuggle.

-Buddy the Elf

From left to right: Me, Gabrielle, Wade, Brandon, Josiah, Sarah,
Becca, Erick, and Kelly.

I feel like this picture describes my freshman ward perfectly.