Out with a Bang! (It's About Time Right?)

This last week was so stinking amazing, and it was so hard to wait until today to post because I have so much to say and I was worried that if I posted earlier, then I wouldn't have enough for today. I guess I shouldn't have worried because each day was filled with many adventures that I will never forget. Anyways, one of the best things? Well, this little surprise that I found on my garage door yesterday might explain it a little bit.

In Case you can't tell what the faint writing says on the paper, School's out! I was going out to get in my car and drive to work yesterday when I saw this piece of art. I thought it was hilarious, true, and quite characteristic of my sister. It was obvious to me at least that Julia was the mastermind behind this all, so I guess I can applaud her on letting the world know how she is feeling in some way other that screaming "ow" when she stubs her toe about every five minutes. But for real, we are all so excited that summer is here. It has been long awaited at our house and now is warmly welcomed by the Jensen children.

So, I guess this will be the last school update for a while. I know it's kind of crazy, but I will just have to find crazier things to do this summer that will make up for it. So remember how much I HATE chemistry with a burning passion unlike anything that you have ever seen before? Well, I got just a high enough grade on the final to keep my A-. A few days before the final, my teacher handed us a paper that had our grade as it was then, the best case scenario from the final, and the worst case scenario from the final. I was at a 92.3 or something along the lines of a 92, and had the best case scenario of a 93-point-something and a worst case scenario of 78.8%. I was nervous going into that final to say the least. All I wanted was to keep the A-, which I barely was able to do. And what was my final grade in the class? 90.1%. I barely slid by on that one. Thank heaven for prayers and note cards! Now I'm just abnormally excited to burn every single paper from that class!

All my other classes? Normal for the most part. The story of Don Quixote was as interesting as ever in Spanish, the yearbook final presentation went basically as planned, and my US history final was a piece of cake. In seminary we were told last Tuesday that if we came to class on Friday that, "the doors might be locked, the lights may be off, and if you bang on the door, I might not answer" by our seminary teacher. So basically my last day of school consisted of going to advisory for 15 minutes, then going home for the summer because the only final I would have had on Friday was seminary. So I got home from school before Emilee and Sam even left for school! That was weird.

So now for the only class that I haven't mentioned yet: Jewelry. I basically finished my crazy "HLJ" ring on Thursday after school. I took a while, but it is temporarily done. Why only temporarily? I will show you, or at least try to.

Look where the lovely arrow is pointing. It is really hard to see in this picture, but there is no prong there. While we were setting the stone, that prong broke, so there is a little bit of epoxy stabilizing it until I can replace the prong cup. But that's not all that exciting, I will just have to break out the stone, cut off the prongs, and sand out the prong cup from inside the shank (that is the band of the ring by the way, not a weapon) before I can replace the prong cup. I am so excited to have it done though! Here are some more pictures and pics of my other ring:


Here is a decent shot of what the wire work looks like

Sorry, I'm not that good of a hand model. Just deal with it!

Kind of look like an engagement ring right? At least my sisters think so.

Here is the other ring. This one is the copper one with the custom bezel and lots of symbolism.

Here is a pretty good view of the Greek eternal life symbol that is cut out of the band on each side of the stone.

Top view-just so you can see how huge the stone is on my hand.

This is the "good side" of the ring as far as the bezel goes.

Front view-the stone is pretty abnormally shaped if you ask me. It was "so much fun" to sand this stone until it was flat. Not!

I know that it looks like this picture didn't focus. I promise you that it did. It just didn't focus where you originally expect it to. It is focused on the stamping inside the band that says "we will ever stand". I promised you I wasn't crazy!

So basically, life is good in the jewelry world. Yesterday I learned how to do laser welding. It was so scary at first, but it ended up being so much fun! I mean come on, how many teenagers can say that they have done that? I took me a few times of shooting the laser to be comfortable with it, but it is so cool! So basically, You hold the metal under a microscope, and set it on your fingers to steady it, center it under the laser, and shoot. So you are basically shooting a laser at your hand and hoping that you don't move, otherwise you will shoot your hand. I think that I only shot my hand once, so I guess I did pretty well for my first time.

I also was able to go to the grad party of my wonderful friend Ashleigh. She is so stinking amazing, and I'm very glad that she is staying here to go to school for two years before leaving home and going to school out of state. This ensures another wonderful year with her that I will have to take full advantage of before I go off to school.

All in all, life is pretty good right now, and I am definitely looking forward to an amazing summer before my senior year of high school.

One more week...

Now I'm starting to wonder if the end of the school year is a good thing. It feels like every single one of my friends graduated yesterday. Okay, so maybe that's a lie, but so many of my friends did graduate, and now all of my classes at school, especially seminary and yearbook, feel so weird. The part that scares me the most though, is that I will be in their situation in a year! Okay, I', done with that. It's just a scary truth that we will all have to face someday.

Okay, so my life in the jewelry world is going great! I had another good day at work yesterday, and I am so close to being done with my "HLJ" ring! That's my crazy ring with the faceted stone and crazy wirework. But anyways, all I have to do is set the stone! I notched the prongs on Friday, so it is all set and ready to go. I am definitely cutting is close as far as time restraints go, but I think that it is totally possible for me to do.

So back to the subject of graduation and the like. Seminary graduation is tonight, and I am so excited to be in the choir for the third year in a row. The songs are as beautiful as ever, and I hope that I can really help the choir do them justice tonight. We are going to sing: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (the same arrangement we have sang for seminary choir for about forever), How Great Thou Art, and These are the Days. It should be pretty amazing, and well worth every one's time.

Oh, last night was another stake dance. It was the best dance in a long time for sure. It was so stinking fun to see friends like Kaden, Parker, and Dallas that I don't get to see as often as I would like, especially Kaden since he moved to Coeur d'Alene. The dance was supposed to be the outdoor jeans dance at Mirabeau Park, but then it was moved to the Demars' house, well actually their barn, to be a barn dance. However the dance moved locations AGAIN a few days before the dance to the stake center, but thankfully it remained a jeans dance! I was crazy though, and wore heels with my jeans: white skinny jeans with white stilettos. Yup, it was totally worth having my feet hurt a little by the end of the night. But like I said, it was so much stinking fun, and totally worth my time at the end of my busy day that included a temple trip and work as well.

On top of it all though, this week I had to "run a house" while my parents were at the Great Wolf Lodge for some business thing of my dad's. But that whole adventure wasn't really all that exciting. It was just the way that it was for most of this past week. I didn't burn down the house or anything, and there were no crazy parties while they were gone. They had a good time, no one died, and the house is still intact, so I think all in all that it was a success.

The End is Near! (of School that Is)

So I kind of feel that my life is ridiculously busy since the school year is coming to a close. With finals in two weeks, I am kind of freaking out, since this means that I have to look back on an entire semester of chemistry and basically re-learn all of the information that I learned. I have a review packet that we have been "working on in class", but needless to say, it might not be quite finished yet.

This also means that I have to finish my two rings in jewelry. That will be an absolutely ridiculous endeavor, but if I can finish these two rings then I will have at least some kind of accomplished feeling because they both had some crazy thing involved with making them. I have all of the soldering procedures done on the copper ring with the custom bezel, which is super exciting because I could finish that ring in one day with no problem at all. The other extremely complicated ring might take me a little longer since I have to do a lot more work with the prongs before it can be completed. That ring however, has solder on the ring right now with the first stage of sweat soldering done. This means that the solder is melted to the band, but the other piece of metal hasn't been put on yet. The other metal (the wire work) is actually sitting in the band where it will go right now, and I will remelt the solder to complete the sweat soldering process tomorrow in class. After this is done, all of the soldering processes will be done for that ring. Once this is done, I will have to carefully bend the prongs to the correct distances from each other and notch them so that the stone will fit. I also will have to do some basic filing and sanding to clean up the ring a little bit, but no more huge things need to be done besides the prongs. Once the two rings are all cleaned up, I will hand buff them with the flexible shaft and set the stones. Then I will have two rings that I can say I put a whole lot of effort into making two beautiful pieces of artwork. Pictures will be posted of the final products, don't worry too much about that!

So, I know that after my rant above, you are all probably really tired of hearing about jewelry. But guess what, I'm not done with that subject yet. I just have a different viewpoint this time: my new job. Yes, I got the job working at Tracy Jewelers which I started yesterday. I worked from nine thirty in the morning until about five ten in the evening. It was loads of fun, and everyone there is great. I am basically the "jack of all trades" in there, so I do any odd job that they need me for. I will get to do a little bit of jewelry work back in the lab, answer phones and greet people as they come into the store, clean jewelry, file "jobs", and any other random jobs that they have for me to do. I really do enjoy it so far though, and it should be a great situation to be in for a while.

Along with the new job, I now have six piano students and might have up to five more potential students! I know for sure that I should have one more girl starting because she won the "month of piano lessons" from the silent auction that was part of the fundraiser for camp this year. Her little sister asked their mom if the lessons were for her, and she said no, but that she might be able to work something out. So there are two potential students, plus a friend of mine just had her teacher dropped her. She told me that she would like to have me teach her, but I doubt that it will ever happen. And on top of it all, a few of my mom's co-workers were interested in having me teach their kids lessons. I guess I will have to wait and find out though, but it looks like I might have one busy summer!

Idiosyncrasy (CV Yearbook 2012)

The yearbooks came in this last week! It was so ridiculously exciting, and the whole yearbook room smelled very strongly of the ink. You could smell it from down the hall, but the longer you spent in the room, the less noticeable the stench was. This was really a unique experience for me because I have never been behind the scenes before on something like this. To see a large publication like this from from pretty much the first day of it's existence to distributing the final product, it was so worth it! One of the best parts was seeing every one's excitement as we handed them their book. That was such an accomplishment to feel like you basically made someone's day, or really their school year since they could look back on all of the wonderful memories. There weren't that many huge mistakes this year, for which we are all very grateful. Most of the mistakes are only things that the yearbook staff will notice, so it's not really that big of a deal. So now all I have to do in that class is finish my final (potential theme for next year's book). Then I get to go to camp over the summer and participate in one more year of yearbook before I miss it so much that I have a mini freak out, but that's okay and inevitable I guess.

I also had two "field trips" in a row this last week, which is crazy because I hadn't had a single one since 8th grade. The first field trip really was a field trip, and was quite an adventure sorting it all out. All of the third year spanish students at CV went to Rancho Viejo for lunch this last Wednesday. It was lots of fun, but as mentioned earlier, a hassle to get figured out the day of none less. Our trip was originally planned to be during third period, which was no problem and had been set up about a month previous to the trip. Our teacher realized the day of the trip however, that the restaurant wasn't open yet at that time of the day. So we had to re-plan everything to go during fifth period that day instead. All of the students had to run all over the school to get our teachers to sign off on the permission slip that we could miss fifth period. All day at school then, I spent hiding out in the spanish room with the other students, or for about half an hour, I was in my chem classroom taking a test that I was suddenly going to miss due to the change of plans. On top of that all, I had to stay after school that day to prepare to distribute the yearbooks the following day. This involved looking through every page of every book that we ordered, then alphabetizing all of the engraved books, and then setting up the desks and the rest of the room for distribution. Yes, you could say that it was quite the day for me!

The following day I had another "field trip". It wasn't really though because I was at school all day. In order to distribute the yearbooks, we took a day long trip to the yearbook room. This was crazy and involved a lot more yelling than many people realize. That's not a bad thing, but it is fairly frantic when you are finding the book for a person who has an engraved book. The insanity of the day was worth it though, especially since all of us "yearbookers" are good friends, or at least have a love-hate relationship at times.

The results of Musicfest? I was just two points shy of a superior with a 95 as my score. I didn't win my class, but it was such a wonderful learning experience for me. Spending a whole year learning a six page song is a lot more work than I would generally spend. I really did learn so much from learning the song, and competing/listening to the other musicians and the adjudicator. The Saturday after the competition, I had the opportunity to play my piece in a recital on a nine foot Baldwin concert grand with the three Ross boys. I felt a little bit like a tag-a-long to the three brother act, but it was still a good experience that I don't regret.

As far as my rings go, I finished my bezel cup and started the band on my copper ring. There is still no further progress on the HJL ring, but it will get done, I can assure you of that. I just need to get a move on it. And guess what, I understand chemistry right now! I also understand the information that I was so previously confused about, but just watch me post next week that I hate chemistry. I it bound to happen, I can feel it. So all in all, I have absolutely no complaints about school right now and my life is pretty great!

Prom 2012

So I have had an exciting last few weeks. They have been extremely stressful for so many reasons.

1. Prom
2. Yearbook (getting it finished)
3. My rings (yes, now I am making two)
4. Chemistry (as always)
5. Spanish college final review
6. Musicfest

So as you can see, my life has been crazy. First, prom. We had a fun group that we joined at the last minute that made the night fun. We took pictures, went to dinner at Tomato Street, walked around Riverfront Park, then went to the dance. After that we went to CV to play tennis, but we couldn't get the lights to turn on on the courts. We ditched that plan, so we were going to go to U-High and use their tennis courts, but we just went to Austin's house for root beer floats instead. While there, we had a good time talking, laughing, and watching crazy YouTube videos. Here are some pics that we took:


The Group

So as you can see, prom was pretty fun, and the group really was amazing! (sorry, I had pictures of just the girls and just the boys, but the girl's wouldn't load, so I took both of them off)
Okay, next order of business. The yearbook is basically done! I am so excited for distribution. I really hope that the pages I worked on will turn out because I worked pretty hard on them. We just have to make the prom page tomorrow, then we will be all done making it! Making the book has been a process that I will never forget, and I am excited to repeat the stressful process again next year! I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.

Now onto my rings. I am still working on that crazy one that I talked about a few posts ago. I only have one more soldering procedure left, then I just have to make sure everything is filed and sanded perfectly so I can set the stone and buff the ring. It took me about two and a half hours last week to get the prong cup soldered into the band. The first time that I tried to solder it, it definitely soldered. The problem was, the prong cup slipped at the same moment that it soldered, so I had to reheat it and try again. I set up to solder again, which took me a while, and I began to solder it back into place. However, right as the prong cup soldered to the band, the steel tweezers on the third arm that were holding the prong cup in place broke off two of the four prongs! I was so mad! First off, the prong cup was silver, so that was a bummer, and it was the only prong cup that was pre-notched for the stone that we had, so I had to get a whole new prong cup ready. This involved sawing off the end of an un-notched prong cup, filing and sanding it until it was evenly flat, and refitting the band to hold a different prong cup. Once this was all done, I finally got it soldered on. I was sooooooooooooo excited! I also started another ring. It is a ring with a custom bezel for a stone that I found on the ground in the dirt while on trek last summer. Yes, I am making a ring with a random rock that I found on the ground. The only problem is that I have to make it into a cabochon. This is basically a stone that has a completely flat back. Sounds like no big deal right? I mean, we have so many tools in the jewelry room that it has to be quite easy. Well, it would be if our lapidary wheel was working, or if we had the compounds to make it work. Since I can't use that lovely piece of machinery, I had to sand the stone flat by hand with 100 grit sand paper. Yes, it was a pain and took a few days to do, but I finally got it flat enough to do. Now I have to make the band and the bezel cup. Luckily, I have already prepped the bezel wire, so it is all ready to solder to the bezel plate once that is done. Both of the rings should be pieces that I love when they are all done. I hope all of my work is worth it. It should be since I spent so long planning them. They both have some kind of symbolic meaning as well that many people will never understand. I am excited to see the final products someday though!

As far as chemistry goes, I still hate it and don't really understand it. Not much has changed there. It is still the worst part of every day for me.

So in spanish class, we are getting ready to take the college final! Ahhhh, I am nervous! This will be the first grade that I ever get on a college transcript, so I want it to be good. Hopefully I will do well on the final, and keep my grade up above 90%. That is my goal right now. I think I can do it.

¡Me esperas suerte! (Wish me luck!)

One of the most stressful things by far has been preparing for musicfest tomorrow. I will compete with three other students in the Mozart/Haydn Sonata section. I will be playing the first movement of Haydn's Sonata in D Major. I have truly been working on this song on the piano for atleast a year now, and I am so ready to be done with it. I won't really be done with it until saturday though. I have to play in a recital with my the three other students of my teacher that are competing in musicfest this week. Once that is over though, I might actually still have to keep the song aroung. My teacher wants me to play it in a joint recital with another one of her students, Josh, later next year I think. She wants me to play the whole sonata though, so I still have to learn two movements. Hopefully I won't want to burn the book that the song is in by the time I'm done. However, I can definitely say that I have learned sooooo much from this song and the time that I have spent with my teacher preparing it.

ps. Hopefully I will get my other blog up and running soon. I finally have picture evidence of the first thing to be crossed off my senior bucket list, so I should be able to start soon. The blog is called "My Silly Senior Story". There is a link to it on the top right of this blog.