Ducks

First I just want to give a shout out to my mother, who is the reason in many ways I am what I am.  Because of her I was provided with the opportunities that have allowed me to do rather well in life.  Thank you mom!

 

Well, as for what I have been doing, on Sunday I started learning the guitar.  Really I just listened to Sean talk about it, but that was the start of me learning.  On Monday night I finally was able to track down, with the help of my cousin Brittany, what had happened to Chris’s old guitar, and I got it so that I could start practicing.  Since then I have practice at least 45 minutes a day.  My fingers are dying!!!  Even as I am writing this they hurt just a little bit.  What is the strangest thing is that they no longer hurt while I am playing, but they feel funny and will hurt at random times throughout the day.  I can’t wait until I have enough calluses so that this stops happening!

Other than that things have gone pretty smoothly at work.  We are actually looking light we might be able to make the deadlines we set, which is almost unheard of in software development.  At the rate we are going we could have this whole system up and running in another two weeks, and then I could focus time on my own research, which is something I am really looking forward to this summer.

 

So this Thursday was my birthday.  Thanks to all of you that wrote on my wall, and even those of you that were a day late, I don’t mind at all, it was great just to get the message :)  For my birthday Ryan, Sean, Song Laoshi, Brittany, Jason, and I went to go watch the “Adjustment Bureau”.  I enjoyed watching it, and even more so because I was able to watch it with all of my family.  After that we went back and we had an ice cream cake that Song Laoshi bought me.  I am really excited to have him as my roommate this next semester in the FLSR.

As kind-of an extension of my birthday the next day Ryan and I went to his house and made tacos.  We then watched the mentalist and began scheming for business apps.  I might actually get to writing some desktop and mobile apps soon.  Maybe I can get myself out of poverty again :)

 

Saturday was another awesome day.  In the early afternoon me and Sean went around the FLSR and gathered some people up and we went to go feed the ducks.  The ducks at the first pond were not that interested in our food, so we went to the smaller duck pond.  Those ducks get less attention, and were more than happy to eat the bread that we threw them.  We also had some mini water fights where we splashed each other with the freezing pond water.  It was a lot of fun.

Later that day I did my first real long term guitar practice session with Sean.  He taught me a couple new pick patterns, and I started to get a lot better at switching between chords.  I am still pretty terrible, but I think I am doing okay for having only been doing this for a week.

Lastly at night Sean and I once again got everyone together for a game night.  We ended up getting together 9 people, and we played Balderdash.  It was a lot of fun.  I ended up tying for first place because for the movie “Higher and Higher'” I put that it was the story of a prostitutes rise up the social ladder of New York City.  No one believed that any BYU student would write such a thing, and so a bunch of people voted for it.  I guess people don’t know me well enough yet =p

 

And that was my week.  Wow, being a grad student is just amazing.  It means that I have time for all of these adventures.  I just love it!  I hope that all of you are having great adventures, even if they are taking place in monsoon season!