The guest artist of the evening was some crazy carnie with an electric harp. I won’t go into details because a) I don’t want to relive that experience again and b) I don’t want to spread the tortute via my blog. Needless to say, everything leading up to the final performance was a disgrace to the institute of music. The finale was sans harp, thank goodness. To end the evening, the Utah Symphone performed Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with real antique cannons. I think more songs should be performed with artillery — it definitely adds to the ambiance.

There was a baptism in our ward today, which was really awesome for two reasons (in addition to the whole entering into the kingdom of God aspect): First, in a BYU student ward, it’s extremely rare to ever have somewhere our age get baptized — either they are already a member of the Church when they enroll, or they’re strong in another denomination. Second, much of the baptismal service was in Spanish, and I could still understand everything! Yea for being bilingual!

For those who are unfamiliar with CVS and Subversion, they are version control systems. In other words, they are capable of tracking changes to file systems and their contents, which enables multiple people to work on the same document/project and then merge their collective modifications.

When I got home for lunch, I quickly finished the last few pages of Morningside Heights by Cheryl Mendelson. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I will read the sequel Love, Work, Children when I have the opportunity. I was mildly surprised when, perusing my Goodreads account, I discovered that I’ve had No God But God: the Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam on my to-read list for 14 months, so I will read that before any of the other books on my list. As a side project, I’m trying to get a ward book club organized, and our first meeting is set to be this coming Wednesday, which means that I might as well wait until then to decide which book to read next.

Midway through the afternoon, my boss dropped a bombshell on the office by announcing that he would be transitioning to working half-time so that he could devote more time to outside ventures. While I doubt that his decision indicates in any way the current status of the company, it’s weird to think that over the summer I might be putting in more hours than him. And as an intern, it does little to inspire me to take a full-time position with the company should one be offered me. (I mean, seriously, when your boss thinks there are more interesting projects elsewhere, what is that expected to do for morale?)

Lastly, I’ve stopped syndicating this blog to my Facebook profile. It seemed somewhat pointless to have the content duplicated there. Oh, and I’ll post the handouts from tonights’s Institute lesson sometime tomorrow.

The snow finally stopped late last night, giving way to a freezing drizzle. The trek up to campus is no less treacherous, but at least the roads should be better now. I just hope that it warms up enough in the next few days to melt the ice off of the sidewalks.