Busy enjoying life! Pt. 2+

Continue from the last post:

Then that brings me to last Sunday, when I should have written this last blog post. I probably could have found time to write my blog, but I think I did do a lot of really good stuff as well. Me and Ben first made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for our home teachess (hint: be my home teachee and get baking goods.) After that we taught the guys, and then me and Sean chilled on the lawn singing hymns together while he strummed them on the guitar.

At night we went to a regional fireside, a fireside for which we were the only BYU ward that went. Our high councilor is cute, and had just happened to hear of this fireside, and so had us crash it :) It was actually really cool. It was a Navajo convert to the church. He told us of his conversion which included the fact of how he had heard the stories that are in the Book of Mormon from his medicine man father long before he had ever even heard of the Book of Mormon. It was really interesting to hear those stories told from in their Navajo story form. It was also a testimony to see such proof that the modern descendants of Lamanites knew of these stories still. It was cool.

That night I was introduced at ward prayer. It was hard to come up with interesting stories, but still it was fun. After that I played some games with people and then headed off to bed.

On Monday I made chicken enchiladas for dinner. It took longer than I wanted, but they actually turned out really well. That night we also played ultimate Frisbee for ward FHE. It was great to get out and play with the ward. It was also great to see that my workouts are most certainly helping my cardio. I was able to keep running the whole time and be a real participant, which was really fun.

Tuesday was a fun little morning. After getting done with swimming me and Ryan went back to my place and made pancakes. We ate them covered in raspberry yogurt and watched economics rap. It was so much fun.

That night I went to a speech club. It was really interesting, really formal, but still really cool. The night did turn a little weird at the end when this guy found out I was in CS. He started telling me all his “great” programs and ideas. He just kept going, even when I would shake his hand and start leaving he would just keep following me and talking to me. It was crazy.

To end the night Sean and I got together a bunch of people and played Apples to Apples. A great way to end the night!

Thursday and Friday were not the best days for work. I ended up only going to work about 2 hours between those two days. On Thursday I slept in till 11 AM, and then spent the rest of the morning installing some custom firmware on my router. Hopefully this will help the router be a little more stable.

That night I also went to the FLSR’s dinner. I have to admit that it is a bit hard for me to enjoy those kind of dances as it is mainly just dancing around. But still I went to support the RAs. Maybe if I knew how to dance Hip Hop it would be a little better, but unfortunately I do not. I was able to actually dance 2 songs, so that was at least good.

Friday was a pretty chill day. In the afternoon I went down to SLC to take my down out for lunch for his birthday. It was good to be able to spend a bit of time with him. At night we celebrated the birthday of my roommate Michael. One of my other roommates, Ben, made a really good banana cake, and then we sang and ate. We finished the night all watching the Bourne Supremacy together. It was really just a good day.

 

Saturday was the real highlight of the two weeks.  The day was just beautiful, and while I wasn’t raptured, it was still a great day.  As most wonderful days started this also started with time in the temple.  Sean and I then spent our time getting ready for out date that night.  We managed to finish getting all of the food and everything made and packed into the car just in time.

For our date I took out Kate Erekson.  It was a triple date.  We went up to Vivian park, where we had a picnic dinner.  While waiting for the third couple to come we played some Apples to Apples.  We then had a bow tie pasta salad that Sean and I made for dinner.  We also had sun chips and watermelon, very picnicy. 

After that we played some Frisbee, culminating in a game of 500.  It was really fun, even if it did degenerate into cheating to help our dates win each round, but I guess that is what makes things fun :)  After we got worn out from that we played a little Cranium.  Kate and I did a great job as a team, and won pretty handily.  It was a lot of fun.

After the game was over we packed up and headed back to Provo.  In Provo we make some frozen yogurt.  While waiting for it to freeze we played some Rock Band.  We then had yogurt, and just talked for a while.  After that I walked my date home.  Really quite a fun date, and a great way to spend a day in which I wasn’t raptured :)

 

So that is what I have been up to these last two weeks.  It has kept me really busy, but it has been fun every second.  I am so grateful that I am a grad student, and as such have the time to do all these things.  I truly do feel blessed at this time that I could do graduate school in Utah.

I hope that all of you area also enjoying your time wherever you are.  For all of my friends in China, I have missed seeing you blogs the last couple of days, I hope to see some cool new adventures before you all come home :)

Busy enjoying life! Pt. 1

Wow, two weeks have gone by since I last wrote my blog.  That seems like forever.  A lot happens in that time, especially when I look at what my friends in China post about their adventures in China.  It is funny to see them all anxious to come home, and me just wishing I was there with them all enjoying it.  Sigh… I guess I will just have to try extra hard to get an internship there next summer.

 

Mother’s day was a good day.  In the morning I was able to give a talk about mothers, which made me really happy.  I love the subject, and I love that I get to shout from the roofs just how important they are :)  In the afternoon we had a Mother’s day celebration at my older sisters house, and I was able to thank my mom for all she did.  It was also fun to help out the mom that was my sister by holding Kashe for about 2 hours to keep him from crying.  He is so cute though, so you don’t really mind holding him :)

 

On Monday in the lab we got a new toy.  I was able to convince Dr. Seamons to buy our lab a new 1080p projector, and spent most of Monday playing with it.  I really just love toys :)

Even with those distractions things at work have been going really well.  We have been getting all of our work done.  We even met the deadlines we set, which is a real surprise because we set them almost at random.  It is going so well our professor has decided that this next Friday will be a Wii and Curry party to celebrate.  I really love my job!

Other than that most of my life these days has consisted with just hanging out with Ryan and my friends, and trying to meet new people in the ward.  I am doing my best not to be introverted, and to spend as much as my time with other people.  It has actually gone really well.  It means I hardly have time to read or play video games, but there are worse things in life :)  It is actually cool that I know the names of nearly everyone in the ward.  While it is true the ward is only a 1/3 of its normal side, it still makes me happy.

On Friday I went Salsa dancing for the first time.  It was a bit hard for me, because the instruction was done the best, and I need to really understand the basics for me to enjoy the dance, but still it was a lot of fun to go out with everyone.

Saturday saw me helping Ryan start doing some work on a tuning app that we want to write.  I feel bad that I haven’t been able to give him more of my time, but still we made some good progress on Saturday.  We got our computers all setup to develop for android, and manage to put the projector at my office to some good use in the meantime. ( I will let you figure out what I mean by that. )

After that we went back up to Orem and made some Key Lime pie.  It actually turned out really good.  We then took the pie out the FLSR and had a movie night where we watched Castaway together.  We managed to convince the French house to come over, and so I finally got to meet that house, which was a lot of fun.

 

This post got long, so I will continue this weeks accounts in the next post.

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!

Life as a graduate student

Okay, well maybe I don’t really know what life as a graduate student is like.  I have it all nice and plushy at the current moment.  I just moved in, and haven’t had as much time to work as I will be working, but still it has been nice so far :)

 

On Sunday I attended the FLSR ward again, this time as an actual member of it.  It was really crazy, at first there were only about six of us even there.  I had never been in a meeting that small, heck even Nanjing was bigger.  In the end we probably had about 30 students show.  It was pretty cool to be in a ward so small.  The services were all really good and I enjoyed myself.

After that I headed back home for an Easter dinner.  It was really good to be able to spend the holiday with family.  One of the best things about living in Orem recently is that when ever family happened to come by I was there to see them.  I am going to miss that a bit.

 

Well, on Monday I finally started moving into my house.  I got a good deal of packing and shopping done.  Even though I did get a lot accomplished at the end of the day it still looked as if a bomb had gone off in both my room and the living room.  It was actually kind of funny.

Tuesday saw me spending more time getting the living room setup.  By the end of the day both the living room and my room were dwellable once again.  I did have to run one speaker wire all the way across the ceiling with blue painters tape, which I do admit looked pretty silly.

On Wednesday was my friend Justin Smith’s birthday.  At his birthday we played a bit of ultimate Frisbee and soccer.  I actually scored a goal and had an assist in soccer which made me feel pretty good.  It was fun to get outside and spend some time outside.

 

On Thursday I did another one of my projects in the house.  I took everything that was on a shelf or cupboard in the kitchen and moved it to the table.  From there I proceeded to organize the entire kitchen.  It is so much better than it used to be.  We will just have to see if it will stand the test of roommates, that is the hard one to know ;)  I actually really enjoy doing this kind of stuff.  What am I going to do when I have my own house and don’t create projects to do?

 

Friday was another project in that I rewired my entire entertainment center’s setup.  I did this because BYU came in an installed IPTV to the FLSR, and while we were getting it setup it brought to my attention just how bad the wiring was.  It also allowed me to install a longer wire to the rear right speaker in the room so that I didn’t have to run the cable across the ceiling.  It was once again a lot of fun to have one of these projects to do.

At the end of that all me and Sean played Portal 2 and beat the co-op.  We were so tired by the end, but that made it all the more fun.  We were doing and saying the most ridiculous things by the end :)

 

And that was my first week as a graduate student.  Not much to do with grad school I know, but one of the best parts of grad school is that I have time to do all of these home projects, and I just love it.  Below are some pictures from this and last weeks activities:

My current setup in the FLSR

 

Dinner Ryan and I cooked last week, all from scratch:

 

Cake Ryan and I made for Uncle Rob’s birthday.  (Brittany helped with the frosting)