She’s your life?!?

Well Casey and I received a calling today in our ward.  When we got married we both commented on how we really did not want to get called to be in Primary.  For those of you who are not Mormon, Primary is a Sunday School for children ages 3-11.  Each age as their own class.  Anyway, we were getting ready and I looked at my phone and realized I had a missed call and a voicemail.  I listened to the voicemail and it was from the first counselor in the bishopric asking if we could be at church 15 minutes early so he could meet wit us.  Yep, that’s right,  It was pretty much the death sentence.  We got to church and, sure enough, we are now teaching the CTR 5 primary class.

CTR 5 kids are five turning six sometime this year.  We have six kids in our class, and five of them where in attendance this Sunday.  They threw us into the fire too.  Normally, they call you and then you have a week or two before you start teaching.  Not us, we had to teach because the former teachers had already moved. So we took our little class to our classroom and asked them all their names and little get to know you questions.  After quickly memorizing their names we began to introduce ourselves.  I said, “My name is Brother Brough and this is my wife, Casey.”  One of the kids did not hear right and asked in a non-believing tone, “She’s your life?!?”  I turned to the little girl and said, “Yes, she is my wife, which does indeed make her my life.”  I gave her a big smile and she smiled back.  It was really cute.

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This is a clip of my little brother Caleb’s sweet touch pass in his basketball game this Friday.

Anti-Freeze and Shovels

Philosophy: Where Nothing Exists

In my philosophy class today we were talking about what arguments can be made to prove or disprove the existence of a creator.  Now, normally this would be a hot button issue, but it is an early class and there are laptops sitting in front of each student, making it difficult for the majority of the students to pay attention.  Well we were talking about how things have always been one way, or something along those lines, (I might have been using the laptop at this particular moment) when my professor used the analogy of a man buying bread at the grocery store.  The man picks up a loaf of bread and a passerby tells the man he should not be buying bread at the store.  The man asks the passerby why he should not be buying the bread at the store, and the man replies, “Because it could be poisoned.”  The professor then pointed out that is not sound reasoning for not buying bread at a store because, in all likelihood, that man had probably bought 1000’s of loaves of bread from the store previously in his life.  My professor was using the story to illustrate the point that just because something could happen does not mean it is very likely to happen.  He then started talking about how anything we buy could be poisoned.  He started talking about sugary drinks and then said something along the lines of, “You do not know that your diet coke is not poisoned, do you?  Someone could have put anti-freeze into your drink.  If you want to kill someone you can just pour anti-freeze into their drink and that will do the trick.  It’s a good way to kill someone.  It tastes awesome."

I could not help but raise my hand and ask if he had ever tasted anti-freeze because he seemed to know so much about the product.  He said he had not and asked me if I wanted him to go and try a glass of anti-freeze.  I told him no, that I did not want him dead, but that if I did he had just taught us “a good way to kill someone.”  We all had a laugh and he clarified that he meant that it was an effective means of murder, but that he did not mean to be advocating anti-freeze poisoning as an action in itself.  Anyway, a couple minutes later someone asked him a question and he used an analogy involving shovels.  Midway through the analogy he stopped and more or less said, “A shovel is another good way you could kill someone.”

It was the most lively philosophy class to date.

JB

School is Cool

I love the reaction you get when you say hi to someone and they cannot figure out who you are.

On the light rail today I noticed one of my professors hop on in in between one of my head bobs. (You know when you are dozing off and it feels like your head is falling off a cliff and right at the last second you shoot it up only to realize you were no where near a cliff, but just dozing off?)  I wanted to say hi but she chose a seat out of my line of sight.  To preface this next part I need to tell you that   on the first day of her class she told us that we could call her by her first name, professor, or doctor.  Well upon exiting the light rail I was walking next to her.  I looked over and said "Hello Kate.*"  She looked absolutely shocked!!!  She had that look on her face that said she was trying to remember from where she knew me.  Now, I'm not trying to be rude but just by the process of elimination it should not have taken her long to figure out I must be one of her new students.  Let's check out the facts:

I knew her first name.
We got off at the same stop which is right next to ASU.
I was carrying a backpack.
I was wearing an ASU hoodie.
We were both walking toward the campus when the interchange occurred.

Anyway, the look she gave me was priceless.  She literally was staring at me, trying to figure out who I was and how I knew her the rest of the walk to the campus.  It did not click that I was one of her students until I said, "I guess I'll see you in class.", as I entered the  building and headed for the stairs.  I'm sure she is sitting in her office trying to figure out who I am and which class I'm in as I type this post.

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A side note:

I do not know if any of you have seen Toy Story 3 but my Principles and History of Journalism professor sounds exactly like Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear.  He is not nearly a devious, (unless you count attempting to bore your students to death as evil) nor as cute.  The class in itself is interesting and vital to my education so I do my best to tough it out, but it has proven difficult.

JB

*names have been changed to protect the innocent.

King George VI meet Oscar

My favorite wedding gift so far might be our sandwich maker.  Now this is not your typical sandwich maker.  It makes a mean sandwich do not get me wrong, but it doubles as an omelet maker... I am not kidding you it makes omelets too.  My beautiful wife, Casey, used this feature this morning and my stomach was extremely grateful.

Gossip Girl fans put your hands up.  Yeah that's right Casey has got me hooked.  I know, I know turn in my man card.  Well guess what, I have not possessed said card since I started watching Gilmore Girls with my wonderful mother a few years back.  Shoot, any of you who know me well know my favorite show is Glee.  Anyway, back to my current guilty pleasure Blake Lively stirring up trouble in upper Manhattan.  It's great drama and a little humor all packed into a story about people with whom I can in no way relate.  Perfect right?

This weekend Casey and I were able to take one of my best friends, Cameron Tattersall, out to dinner and a movie for his birthday.  He blew out 25 candles on the 16th!! We had gotten married the day before so we were not able to do anything with him on that day.  Accompanying Cam was another childhood friend, Kellan Durrett, which was a great bonus.  We met up at Paradise Bakery and enjoyed a quick bite.  The King's Speech was Cameron's movie of choice.  Other than the occasional snore from Kellan, who lasted all of 20 minutes before counting sheep, I was riveted.  It was a GREAT movie that I would recommend to anyone who meets these qualifications:

a good nights rest at least two nights prior
a full stomach
at least a 32 oz. diet coke (caffeine included)
a midday nap prior to the viewing
insomnia

Okay so that might be a little dramatic but the movie moves very slowly.  I really did love the movie and I think that Colin Firth deserves the best actor Oscar for his performance as King George VI.  Geoffrey Rush deserves at least a nomination for best supporting actor, but I feel that Spidey (aka. Andrew Garfield) deserves to win that award for his performance in The Social Network.  Which is a must see for anyone who has ever heard of facebook.

JB



  

   

I need to write more because I'm a Journalism Major

So I started at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Broadcasting on Tuesday, and about an hour into my Psychology class I realized that being a journalist would undoubtably require me to write quite often.  I then took an inventory into all that I had written within the past week.  It totaled something like four facebook posts and three tweets...not exactly Pulitzer caliber writing.  I began to mentally list ways I could write more, and quickly realized I could start by writing down my ideas.  Sadly, I could not find my pen anywhere and no one was sitting next to me.  Rather than interrupt my professor, who at the time was making each and every kid in the class feel like idiots, I decided to jot the ideas down in my newly acquired MacBook Pro...I couldn't figure out how to bring up the Microsoft Notepad equivalent of Macintosh.  Thus I decided to table the idea until a later date.

Thursday I had completely forgotten about the need to write more until I was sitting in my Principles and History of Journalism class and my professor made some offhanded remark about how we students of journalism all better enjoy writing or find a new major.  I quickly asked myself if I did indeed enjoy writing...the answer was yes.  With that I started to decide how I could write more. At that exact moment my phone vibrated informing me I had received an email.  It was from the bookstore informing me that my OfficeMac would be shipped out Friday.  That in itself did not help me, but when I closed that email I saw the email my little brother Landon had sent me from his mission.  (He's serving in the Australia Sydney Mission.)  That email reminded me that my mother posted all of his emails to a blog (http://elderlandonbrough.blogspot.com/) that his friends could then read.  I felt a lightbulb illuminate above my head.  The idea had taken root.

I am not really sure what all I will write about, nor do I know who will actually read this, but I do intend to update it often.  I'm sure between riding the light rail twice a week, being a newlywed, attending a university full of young adults acting upon every urge and idea they have, and whatever other life experiences I have I will be able to find topics to dissect.  I hope you enjoy.