Renewed Resolve

This semester I'm taking a Children's Publishing class from a published picture book writer, Rick Walton. It's a fantastic class, especially for keeping me excited about getting published. On Tuesday we had a panel of authors to answer our questions about their experience, etc. One of them was Carol Lynch Williams, who I had a class from last semester. (She's also published middle grade novels and has a book coming out in May that you should get really excited about :) Anyway...

So I started a novel in her class that has fallen by the wayside since then. It's a fantasy novel about a girl who hikes up Stone Mountain, meets a boy named Coda, and gets transported to the world of Melisma where magic is done through music. Not to mention the fact that I have very little time to write this semester, I also think I got stuck and discouraged that this story was no good.

But on Tuesday night I got to talk to Carol, and she said a few times that it was a very good story and she hopes I keep writing it. I didn't know I needed the boost until I got it...Amazing what encouragement from a published author will do for your self-esteem. :)

Now I have a goal. I'm going to the BYU Young Readers and Illustrators Conference this summer; it's a week-long conference with writer's groups in the mornings and seminars in the afternoons. By then I WILL be finished with my novel. Done. Completed. Whew. And now it's official because I put it in writing.

So if ever you think of it, ask me how my book is going. Because then if I'm slacking, I'll feel really guilty. :)

Sleep, eat and research

There are probably more things in my day than sleeping, eating, and researching, but right now I can't think of anything. Today, Saturday, Karen was super nice and came down to campus early with me. We grabbed a quick breakfast in the Cougareat (bagels and super good BYU creamery chocolate milk), then it was off to the Clyde building to do some research. Five hours later I had a lot accomplished. I'm studying a large gong BYU's School of Music recently bought. It has some unique acoustic properties that aren't well understood. The project is intriguing. As soon as my advisor and I get close to an answer, more questions pop up. We're currently writing a paper we hope to submit to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America; and we've submitted an abstract to present at the ASA national convention at Portland in May. This picture's not the most glamorous in the world, but it shows the gong all right. So I spend most of my time researching this gong, doing school, and being with Karen, though I don't do nearly as much of the latter as I would like.
I've been applying to graduate schools: BYU, PennState, GeorgiaTech, Purdue, and UT-Austin. They've all got great acoustics programs. It's hard to say which is my top pick, and I'm excited to hear back from them.
I'm also anxious to hear back from The Boeing Company. I had an internship up there this past summer and there may be a job offer in the works.
That's about it. Here's to my inaugural post on our blog. Thanks for reading.

Long Weekend--Long Haul

Well, we have officially had our last day off for the rest of the semester. Sigh.

But on the bright side, we had a nice weekend. For Valentine's Day we went to dinner on Friday night to a restaurant called The Chef's Table. It was probably the most posh place I'd ever eaten in. The waiter had a very affected "upper-class" voice that made us laugh at first. We felt a little uncomfortable for the first 15 minutes or so, just because it was so nice. The hostess helped us put our napkins in our laps for heaven's sake. But the food was delicious and it didn't put to huge of a hole in our pocket. It was a lovely night out.

We had a Krueger Family V-day dinner on Sunday. It's always fun having everyone come over. Believe it or not, I love how loud the house gets. :)

Now we're back in school and we'll be at it until the end of April without a break. Whew. (I'm thinking Chariot of Fire theme music here. :)

Last week our niece Emmy was blessed at church. We had a fun lunch afterwards. This is David & the beautiful girl--she's got red hair! :) And David made that blanket. That's right, made it. (We learned to crochet over the summer. :)

David & Karen Are Gonna Blog!

As our first official entry, my goal is to actually post to this little blog of ours. :)

And as an update about what's going on with us....

We both graduate in August. Yay for being almost done with school!

David is almost finished applying to graduate schools--BYU, Penn State, Purdue, UT-Austin, & Georgia Tech. Boeing might also be an option. At this point, we have NO CLUE where we'll be in a year. Kinda scary, kinda exciting.

I am not planning on grad school. Actually, I'm hoping that I can skip the whole "real job" thing and be a children's/ young adult writer. Who knows? Maybe I'm famous in the future. :)

Our daily life isn't much to report on...we sleep, work, study, repeat. :) But we have fun.

I'm hoping this blog will encourage more picture taking, because we are horribly bad at taking pictures. And blogs are horribly boring without pictures. And if you get bored with no pictures, well, scold us so we'll stop being bums.

*Disclaimer: I'm extremely bored while writing this post. So please excuse how quirky it may or may not sound. :)