Caps, crowds, and chocolate cake

Something rather exciting happened this week, if you would believe it. I got a cake! It was a delicious, moist chocolate cake and there is still a little bit in my fridge. Please appreciate the awesomeness of my cake.

Pure awesomeness. And some chocolate.

I like cake. I could eat it on a train. I could eat it in a plane. I could eat it in Bahrain. I also like crowds. Especially when the people in the crowd are my fans. See my fans.

Fans of my awesomeness.

It was a packed house, that's for certain. Why? For me, of course! Don't you think I'm awesome in this BYU-blue frock and constricting cap? I think that I look especially awesome and angelic in the afternoon sunlight.

Visual representation of my awesomeness.

All of this pomp and circumstance was for the arrival of my new best friend, D. Gree. D is helping me look like a real adult--all queens should have a friend like D. Gree. He's even pushing me to befriend his superior, one that he calls Master. We'll see if I can do it. In the meantime, I will just enjoy being awesome.

Coming soon to a blog post near you: my other new friends, Apollo the Champion and Clipper.

A Real Gold Medal

Yesterday I went to the closing social at the Freshman Academy/Freshman Mentoring office. It was depressing, unfortunate, calamitous--because this is The End! I brought home my beautiful gold nametag. Sad day.

The Nametag.

The staff gave all the leaving mentors a gold medal. It says
Freshman Mentoring
Learn
Grow
Change
Toni Pilcher
Peer Mentor
2010
Freshman Academy

Here it is, fitting in perfectly with my room.

Psychedelic picture of me wearing the medal.

One more gold medal, but a bitter-sweet win. Now I need to take its advice: Learn. Grow. Change. I was talking to my mom the other day about trials. They stretch us, push us to grow. Growth is generally associated with springtime. So, trials indicate a time for renewal and sunshine? Good enough for me!

Might one, to thy succor, endeavor to fly

The president of Poland, his wife, and several military officials died in a plane crash this morning. No one on the plane survived. They were traveling to Russia for the 70th anniversary of the massacre of Polish prisoners of war during World War II. In 1940, the Russians were trying to eliminate an entire class of Polish people. In 2010, the highest officials in Poland were lost. Read this article for more information on the ramifications of the accident.

Ignacy Krasicki, an 18th century Polish patriot, wrote these words about his homeland:
O sacred love of the beloved Country,
Only good and true minds can experience you!
For thee, virulent poisons are savory;
For thee, chains and fetters are not an abuse.
Thou embellish cripples with scars of glory;
In the mind, thou dost nestle pleasures most true.
Might one, to thy succor, endeavor to fly,
'Twere nothing to live poor, 'twere nothing to die.

You might wonder what this is doing on my blog. If I'm Polish, I don't know it. However, I am interested in all things regarding World War II, especially the aftershocks that we still feel around the globe. It's amazing what seventy years can and cannot do to a planet.

9 o'clock songbird

It is springtime.

Visual.

The days are almost 12 hours long. Life is in balance at the same time as it is renewing itself. What a great time of year! (Now, my bosom-buddy season is actually Winter, but Winter is the kind of bosom buddy that you can only tolerate for so long.) (Don't tell Winter that I just told you that.) As part of this season, the songbirds are officially out and about. As I am also out and about, I have learned that these songbirds have certain schedules.

Every day at 9am, I walk through the doors of the Jesse Knight Building (JKB). And every day at 9am, there is a fat robin perched on the highest branch of the tree just outside the doors of the JKB. I can hear him singing all the way across the courtyard (which constitutes a five minute walk). He is loud and he is proud and I worry that he is going to snap that little branch one of these days. But until he does, he will be my 9 o'clock songbird, heralding my entrance to the JKB.

You know what else is great about spring besides the occasional avian herald? Graduation. I have five classes left. Total. And Elder D. Todd Christofferson will be speaking at my commencement ceremony. And I will receive my degree two weeks from today. That is what is great about spring.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the Provo City Library to pick up the one thing that will make this spring even better: the Anne of Green Gables DVD.

Thus:

True love, Gilbert Blythe.

New Job

One of the benefits of being a graduate student at BYU is the availability of on-campus jobs. Unfortunately, my most-beloved job as a peer mentor at Freshman Academy, now called Freshman Mentoring, is only for undergraduates. I will be very very sad to say good-bye to Old FA. However, I recently got hired to work--as a graduate student--in this beautiful campus building:

Is purdy.

But if you don't know what building this is, mayhaps this will help:

Whaaa! The Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum!

You may be asking yourself, Isn't Toni a graduate student in the English program? The answer is Yes. But isn't the life science museum for life science and not English? The answer to that is also Yes.

So, what do I propose is the obvious solution?

I am an editorial assistant for the Western North American Naturalist, an academic biology journal with an office in the Bean Museum. Make sense? Basically, I'll be working with fantastic people like this:

Shasta the Liger

And this:

AKA Pumbaa

How great is that? I will likely be working with WNAN for the entirety of my graduate career. So, all both of the years I have left.

Yay!