Sweet Madness

Last night went downtown to the Energy Solutions Arena (home of the Utah Jazz) to watch NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 games with some buddies from high school. A year ago, one of them suggested we all put in for the lottery to buy tickets for this weekend's games that would be in Salt Lake. One of us was lucky enough to win an opportunity to buy, and then we all bought tickets from him. Who would have guessed it would turn out to be such an exciting set of games?

The first game (#1 Syracuse vs. #5 Butler) started just after 5, so I left work around 4 and figured it would take me a bit of time to find a parking spot and walk to the arena. However, as I was driving down by the stadium, I lucked into a spectacular free curbside parallel parking spot that I 8-point-turned my way into. Almost took a photo to capture the moment forever. Mr. Mohler, my drivers ed teacher, would have been so proud. I was literally half a block from the arena, right outside a pay lot that was charging $10 a car. In any case, I made it there with plenty of time to spare.

Which meant I got plenty of time to watch Syracuse and Butler warm up.


And also check out my surroundings. For instance, these Syracuse fans were on the row right in front of me:


And this old guy came and sat down right next to me:


We found out later he was in the wrong section, but he was definitely an interesting one. He had a scorebook where he was tracking the game, binoculars, and the radio you can see in the photo. When it turned out he was in one of our seats, he asked if he could please wait for a break in the action before moving, so that he wouldn't have to miss any of the game.

In addition to the interesting people, it was interesting to see the changes they made in the arena for the games. The most obvious was the entirely new floor that was brought in. However, in addition, all Jazz paraphernalia inside the actual arena (as opposed to the concourse area) was taken down or covered up. The division and conference championship banners were gone. Retired jersey, also gone. The plaques commemorating Stockton's assists and steals records were covered up. No "Bear Cave" or "Boozer's Buddies" banners. Nothing. The LED ring at midlevel, that usually shows ads during Jazz games only had some simple NCAA branding. I assume it's all part of what you agree to when you agree to host (and officially this event was hosted by the University of Utah, even though it wasn't in their home arena).

Anyway, then it was time for the National Anthem,


and then it was time to get things going.


Butler jumped out to a quick lead, leading by 10 or so for much of the first half, while getting 9 steals and keeping Syracuse from getting anything going. Butler didn't shoot so hot either and probably squandered chances to increase their lead. The half ended with Butler up 10. In the 2nd half, Syracuse battled back and made a game of things, taking the lead a couple times late.
I didn't take a lot of pictures during this game, but here one from early in the 2nd half.



In the end, Butler made some huge shots down the stretch, including an amazing 3-pointer that was in-and-out-and-way-up-on-the-backboard-and-in-again that pretty much sealed the deal. Final score: Butler 63, Syracuse 59. Down goes another top seed.

We then had 30 minutes until the start of the 2nd half of the night's doubleheader, #2 Kansas State against #6 Xavier.


This game started out looking like it was going to be a blowout. K-State jumped on Xavier early and was up 19-4 when I decided it would be a fantastic time to go find some Papa John's pizza for dinner.

*Tangent Alert*: At Energy Solutions Arena, among many other concessions, they sell personal-sized Papa John's pizza. And when you buy your pizza for $6.50, they also offer a choice of beverages, including sodas and bottled water, for $3.25 each. But if you want to go for the "Double Team" combo, you can get pizza and a soda for $8.75, saving yourself $1 over the cost of buying them separately. However, if you want pizza and a bottled water, it's still $9.75. Even though soda and bottled water sell for exactly the same price. ($3.25) You can only get the discount if you get a soda. What kind of madness is this? I ran into this at a Jazz game earlier this season and was equally stumped. I was hoping last night that I'd figure out a way to get around it. For instance, could I buy a pizza, soda, and water for $12, then decide I didn't want the soda and get $3.25 refunded? I feel like if the individual retail prices of soda and bottled water are identical there's got to be some way that I could get the $1 discount with bottled water instead of soda. So far, I'm at a loss. I'm sorry that I don't want to drink your Coke Zero, ESA.

*Tangent Over*

Anyway, by the time I returned with my pizza and water, Xavier was starting to turn things around, and managed to close within 1 by halftime. The 2nd half turned out to be spectacularly thrilling, close all the way. Kansas State led most of the time but never by much, and Xavier just kept hanging around. I remembered to take more pictures this time around:











Of all the teams' fan groups, Kansas State's was the most boisterous, standing for long portions of the game, and doing some loud, coordinated cheers several times


Even early in the game, it became clear that Xavier's players were not afraid to chuck up 3-pointers from way outside the arc, and though many of them missed, if you take enough eventually some are going to drop.


Kansas State was not shy about throwing up the treys, either.


The two teams combined to shoot 47 3's. And make 20 of them. Which wasn't spectacular, but for teams that only managed 65% and 76% from the free throw line, it was pretty impressive.

Coming down the final stretch, Kansas State appeared to have the momentum and had a 3 point lead with 10 seconds left. But Xavier's Terrell Holloway managed to get fouled while shooting a 3 with 5 seconds left and then proceeded to make all 3 free throws to force overtime.


Overtime was a flurry of excitement with both teams scoring 15 points a piece in only 5 minutes of action. Both teams continued to toss up deep threes with reckless abandon and we were joking that Xavier's coach was telling his players to shoot from further out.






Again it looked like Kansas State might have it wrapped up, leading by 3 with 19 seconds to play. But then this happened:


Jordan Crawford (who you might remember hearing about from his dunk over LeBron last summer at a Nike camp) pulls up from 35 feet away (practically from the "We Support the Troops" ribbon) and drills a huge 3 to force double overtime. Ridiculous.

Well, the excitement had to end sometime, and in the end Kansas State pulled away (well compared to the rest of the night, a 5 point lead was pretty big), on more strong play from Pullen and Clemente.


All in all, it was a fantastic night. Saturday's game between Butler and Kansas State will be hard-pressed to provide an encore of equal excitement. But who knows?

Laughing at Illiteracy #3: Take it ease-y

From a (distant) friend's Facebook status:

..favorite past time #2.. Ease dropping on others convo's

From one doctor to another

"I wish all my patients were doing as well as you."

That was my doctor's assessment this morning at my diabetes follow-up appointment. It's been almost exactly a year since I was first diagnosed with Type II diabetes, and, in the short term, it would appear to be one of the best things that's happened to me health-wise. :) Obviously the potential for complications down the road is probably something that I'll always need to be wary of, but for now, things are good. In the last year, I've lost about 45 pounds, lowered my HbA1c (an aggregate measure of average blood sugar over the previous several months) from 7.5 to 5.9 (up a smidge from the 5.8 it was last time, but certainly still very good), and in the last 4 months since starting to take a super-cheap generic statin, my cholesterol has dropped dramatically from 188 to 128, while at the same time my good cholesterol (HDL) has gone up a tad.

Coupled with so many other great things going on in my life, I continue to feel really blessed.

Old Book, New Book #17: Shen of the Sea -> A Wrinkle in Time

Finally got "Shen of the Sea" finished. Took about a month. Not to say it wasn't mildly entertaining and enjoyable. But I think because of the nature of what it was -- a bunch of short stories -- it never really gained any momentum to make me want to push through to the end. Just 5-8 pages of a story, the end, the beginning of the next one. Anyway, it was alright. And if you were buying this book in 1926 (the year that it won the Newbery Medal, you'd probably be pleased to get so many stories for the price of one book. You could pace yourself and have enough stories to last you for a good, long while. Now in the age of libraries packed full of books that you can read for free, maybe the quality of the individual stories would need to be a little better. Or maybe it just wasn't my cup of (Oo loong) tea.

In any case, I've moved on to another Newbery book, "A Wrinkle in Time". It wasn't my intention to read another Newbery back-to-back like this, but I've been wanting to re-read the whole series for a while, and I can never find this, the first in the series, at the library when I'm browsing. And then I end up taking home Pet Sematary even though I'm not super excited about it. So when a friend mentioned this book recently, it reminded me to put a hold request in for it.

After a couple weeks of waiting (high demand? low supply? both?) it showed up last week to my local branch. Now that I've got it, I figure I better get through it before it has to go back to the next person who puts a hold on it. Also, because late fines are getting steeper. Used to be 5 cents a day. Now it's 10 or 15.

As I was saying, my original plan was to read at least one non-Newbery book in between each medal winner, but I'm setting that aside for now to focus on this one. As I mentioned, this is actually a book I've read before. At least 2 or 3 times. But I can't seem to remember many of the details. And I always remember that I really liked the 3rd book in the series ("A Swiftly Tilting Planet") a lot, and would like to read it again (which means I'll probably also want to read "A Wind in the Door" again, which I remember approximately nothing about. And now there's a 5th book in the series. I know, right? Since when could authors keep writing more books in a series, after you thought you'd read them all?

Anyway, this series could move to the forefront of my reading list for the next little bit. But maybe I'll still try to mix in some other things. I've got at least one more book that I already checked out and am interested in reading.

Sign Language

I know I don't blog much about my work, and that probably won't change much in the future either, but today I'm going to share with you something that, while unrelated to the actual work that I do, did take place at my place of employment.

My office is in the basement of the hospital, and every day I go up 2 flights of stairs to the 2nd floor to get breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria and then come back down. In the stairwell there are handy signs to mark which floor you've arrived at. Like these:





But at some point, the sign marking the 1st floor disappeared. Don't know if it was broken, or taken down or what. In any case, every day when I'd be going up, I'd get to the 1st floor where there was no sign, and somedays I'd wonder "Is this the 1st or 2nd floor?" Sometimes I get distracted while I'm going up the stairs, ok? There was just a blank spot on the wall. For a long time. A few months at least.

Finally, one day, I decided that the 1st floor needed a sign, too. So I made one. On a post-it note. And put tape on the sides so that it wouldn't just fall down when the post-it's stickyness wore out. And put it up in the blank space where the sign used to be. And several months later, it's still there. :)

Party like a (Sham)Rock Star!

A year ago, we had planned on having a St. Patrick's Day Party at the amazing new house that my roommate-to-be was buying, but with some delays in the paperwork for closing, we had just barely moved in and the house just wasn't ready. So we moved the party to his parents' house and had a great time there instead (Thanks, Bart and Sue!) Anyway, fast-forward to this year and we decided that the house still needed a good St. Patty's Party. So we had an organizing meeting over pizza, invited friends, and got the double shot set up for the first time since the basement's been finished. Good times ensued!


Some of the few people who ventured up to the Eagle's Landing


Losing to my roommate (who went on to win the tournament) at double shot. Seemed unfair that I had to play him in the first round. He would have been so disappointed if I'd beat him.


Ladies' ping-pong


General sense of fun in the basement


The kitchen squad




Lots of socializing going on on the main floor

Definitely a good time. I'm lucky to live in such an awesome place with awesome roommates and awesome friends.

Follow-up on Yesterday's Visit to Grandma's House

So last night after taco dinner at the Harden's, and lots of fun times with the grandkids, we finally made it up to Grandma and Grandpa's to start looking through what is there. And believe me there was a lot there. Probably a lot of stuff that no one wants, mixed in with some nicer odds and ends. In reality, it's kind of a surreal experience to be looking at someone's stuff and realizing that a) they're gone and not coming back, and b) we can (and in many cases should) take this stuff for ourselves. Weird, I know.

In any case, I went through the games closet and picked out Rummikub (one of at least 3 that we found there), Boggle, Pit, a box of dominos (again, multiple sets were seen), and a backgammon set. I looked for the cuckoo clock but didn't find it. There are still a few more rooms and closets to dig through, so it may still turn up. If it does, apparently I get to have it. Didn't see the Zorba yet either.

I grabbed a couple books that looked interesting (including a 1922 edition of Jesus the Christ that was a little beat up). Oh, and there are a couple sets of luggage that I guess I'll get one of. To be honest, there's nothing that I feel a lot of emotional attachment to now, though I suspect that in time as these things become all that we have left of my grandparents, I'll probably appreciate them more.

I imagine that I might make another trip up there at some point and just take a little more time looking through stuff and see if any of it would be useful in a purely utilitarian sense (kitchen stuff, toolbox stuff, etc). It's just weird to think about it all in this way.

On a less weird note, I had tons of fun with the grandkids and am jealous of everyone who gets to have their nephews and nieces living nearby.

I don't just read books all day, you know?

Lest you think that all I do these days is read award winning children's literature, I figured I better sit down and write some kind of post about something other than what books I've been reading lately.

The question really is, what should I write about? Well one thing I wanted to share was a photo of my grandpa who just passed away, together with my grandma who passed away about a year ago. I had forgotten that I had it, and then was looking through my photos in Picasa the other day and found it.



I'm happy that they are together again without the constraints of illness that hampered them quite a bit over the last 10 years.

Tonight, we're going up to their house with my uncle's family to look through their belongings and decide what things people are going to keep and what things will get sold as part of an estate sale. I've been trying to think what, if any, things I'd want of theirs. If my grandpa's old Zorba computer was still around I might want that, as it is identical to the one he gave us that was the first computer we had at home (not counting our TI home computer). Maybe some games (Rummikub, Funny Bones). I imagine the cuckoo clock on their stairs is already spoken for, but that's something I always liked. Used to make them change the time, so it would chime and the cuckoo would come out. :) I don't know what else. Guess when I get up there I'll see.

Old Book, New Book #16: Pet Sematary -> Shen of the Sea

I finished Pet Sematary in a relatively short amount of time. Of course after reading Atlas Shrugged for 9+ months last year, every book I read seems like a quick read. :) But, honestly, it was kind of nice to get into a book that kept me coming back to see what would happen next. Thinking I need to mix a few more of those in with some of the others I've been reading lately.

On the whole, I thought Pet Sematary was good but not great. A lot of it deal with the idea of death and coping with death, which perhaps struck me a little more deeply since my grandfather passed away last week in the midst of my reading it. In any case, I liked the first two-thirds of it a lot, but thought the ending was a tad week. Would have liked a little more resolution. Not my favorite by King ("It", "The Dark Tower" series), but not my least favorite either.

Up next is Shen of the Sea, Newbery award winner from 1926. I read it in snatches while I was already reading Pet Sematary. It's a collection of mythological-sounding short stories from China. I haven't looked into the background enough to know if they are original stories by the author (Arthur Bowie Chrisman) or if he just collected them. In any case, they tend to be humorous for the most part and easy reading. I suspect I'll have this one finished before too long.

Presidential Dreamin' (On such a winters day...)

Strangely enough, on the night before President's Day, who should appear in my dream? Pres. Barack Obama. That's right. At the casino where I'd been moments before playing $2 blackjack with Stayner at a table using heart-shaped chips (So many holidays combining in one dream, I know!), suddenly a group of my friends were all eating lunch. Actually eating lunch at the blackjack table. Even our dealer was taking a lunch break with us. And that's when the Commander-in-Chief showed up. To eat lunch with us. And the first lady (almost called her Sister Obama). And what was the president eating, you might ask? A Subway sandwich. "$5 Footlong?", we inquired. No. Apparently in Las Vegas they charge more than $5 (at least in my dream version of Las Vegas), like DC/NY/Alaska that are always in the fine print on those ads. He was pretty upset about it.

I so wanted to get him with a good zinger, like "Maybe it's time for sandwich reform", or something, but at the time I drew a complete blank. Dang it. Even now, I haven't been able to come up with anything I really like. Oh well, maybe I'll have one ready for next year's dream.

Old Book, New Book #15: The Dark Frigate -> Pet Sematary

Finally got around to finishing "The Dark Frigate". A brief review is here. Wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to read next and when I ended up at the library I had a few ideas of things that turned out not to be available at that library. Next time I should probably do some planning in advance and made put in some hold requests. Any suggestions?

In the end, I picked up "Pet Sematary", an old Stephen King novel that I haven't read before. We'll see how it goes. I suspect it will be quicker reading than "The Dark Frigate".

Newbery Foray #3: The Dark Frigate

As I work through this vast list of Newbery Medal winners, my method of choosing which to read next has been to simply look at the list and choose the oldest one I haven't read yet that is available at the library I happen to be in, the exception of course being the first one I read, "Dear Mr. Henshaw". The one I just finished, "The Dark Frigate", won the Newbery Medal in 1924, which really isn't that far off from being 100 years ago. I suspect that may explain some of the strange words used in it. Or maybe that's just a product of the book being set in 17th century England. Not sure.

In brief synopsis this is the story of an orphaned boy who ends up on a ship that is then captured by pirates and he has a brief adventure. Strangely though, he doesn't end up on the ship for maybe 80 of the 250 pages. And even then the story moves pretty slowly. I nearly gave this book up many times, but stuck with it out of principle. Thankfully, the plot picked up a bit toward the end, and the last third was fairly enjoyable.

Not sure I'd recommend it, but in the end I didn't hate it. :)

The Jazz are making it happen!

...taking their chances as they come. The Jazz are making it happen! Working their way to number one!

Sometimes I feel like I have to have big news to be worth a blog post, but I guess maybe that's not the case. In any case, last night I went to the Jazz game against the Suns and had a lot of fun. My buddy Eric suggested a few weeks ago that we ought to go catch a game sometime, and as he is a traitorous Suns fan, he really wanted to go to this game. Turns out the Jazz had a "Family Night" special going on, where we were able to get 6 LOWER BOWL tickets for $180. That's $30 each for tickets with a face value of ~$95. Oh, and a free hot dog. Can't forget that. Though for some reason they made me hike upstairs to get my free hot dog. Apparently the classy lower bowl folks don't want us economically-minded folks getting in the way of their concession time.

Anyway, we rounded up 4 more friends (*No family required for "Family Night") and gathered from various parts of the valley to the EnergySolutions Arena. We enjoyed watching Steve Nash make pretty much every shot he took in warm-ups, but once the game started, it was all Jazz for the first few minutes. They jumped out to an early 12 point lead, only to squander it by the end of the quarter. The 2nd quarter was all Suns as they built up an 11 point lead on some scorching shooting by one Goran Dragic, who finished the half with 24 points. Every one of his 3-pointers had Eric giggling with glee. (Jerk!)

The 2nd half looked to be more of the same as the Suns extended their lead to 17 with just a few minutes left in the 3rd. The only other game I've attended this year was a loss to the T-wolves, one of the worst teams in the league. At this point I was wondering if my presence was bad luck for the Jazz and seriously questioning my plans to attend at least one more game this season.

Then the Jazz inexplicably went on a big run to close the quarter and cut the lead to just 5. Their momentum continued into the 4th quarter as they closed the gap and finally took the lead in the final minutes and then pulled away for a 9 point win.

Good times.

What's Wrong with Our Income Tax #1: Yarr!

Just got my W-2 at work, and was taking a minute to dig into the tax code to try to figure out if I was going to get much of a refund or not. I know (or at least have heard) that charitable donations are deductible, but was trying to find that in the tax code, so I went to a section on "Charitable Donations", where I was bemused and a little frustrated at this section that was just thrown in there in the middle of a list of things that were deductible:

Expenses of Whaling Captains

You may be able to deduct as a charitable contribution the reasonable and necessary whaling expenses paid during the year in carrying out sanctioned whaling activities. The deduction is limited to $10,000 a year. To claim the deduction, you must be recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as a whaling captain charged with the responsibility of maintaining and carrying out sanctioned whaling activities.

Sanctioned whaling activities are subsistence bowhead whale hunting activities conducted under the management plan of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

Whaling expenses include expenses for:

• Acquiring and maintaining whaling boats, weapons, and gear used in sanctioned whaling activities,

• Supplying food for the crew and other provisions for carrying out these activities, and

• Storing and distributing the catch from these activities.

Glad to know that whaling activities are specially mentioned and explicitly deductible (assuming you have the blessing of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission). Not sure why this falls under charitable donations, though.

The Big Digital Goes to the Opera

Long-time readers may recall that a few years ago in the monthly discussion group I attend, we had a discussion about Opera. Finally, a year and a half later, I actually have gone to see an opera. And I have to say that for the most part I really enjoyed it. A friend who works with the Utah Opera and Symphony invited me to join her last night for a performance of "Carmen" at the Capitol Theatre here in Salt Lake. I said, "Why not?" and last night showed up in my Sunday best ready to get me somma dat culture stuff. :)

Turns out that working for the opera has its perks. We sat on the first row in the balcony. Amazing seats! I could see everything perfectly, including the orchestra and conductor who were definitely interesting to watch. My favorite was the guy who spent most of his time playing the tambourine. Do you have to practice to play the tambourine?

In addition to great seats, we also were able to go to a VIP reception at intermission where they had free food, including caviar on tiny potato skin things. So I figured I should at least try some since I'd never had any. The funny thing is that maybe I ate it wrong or something, but all I could taste was the potato. Huh. Anyway, this reception was deep in the bowels of the theater. I swear we went down 4 flights of stairs to get to it. I asked Melissa if we were going to a secret underground lake.

I seemed to remember that Carmen might have been one of the operas that our presenter that night suggested as being good for first-time opera goers. If so, he was right. As soon as the music started, I recognized two super famous pieces. I didn't know their names (do opera songs have names?), but one was a tune that I mostly commonly associate with the "Bad News Bears"
and the other was a tune that I commonly think of as "Neither a borrower nor a lender be". Some quick Googling indicates that I think that because there was an episode of Gilligan's Island in which the castaways performed a musical version of Hamlet set to music from Carmen. Okay....

Anyway, here's the prelude from YouTube, I suspect you'll recognize the music:


The first part of the prelude shows up again briefly in the final Act, but I don't know what it's called. The "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" tune is called Toreador and here's the scene from Act II (its 7 minutes long, so don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing):


In the first act, you also get this famous tune (apparently called "La Habanera"):


Finally a thought on the plot of the opera. **SPOILER ALERT** Carmen is this hot chick who messes up a guy's life (gets him sent to jail and then to desert the army) and then dumps him for the next hot thing that comes along. He kills her out of jealousy, one of those "If I can't have you, no one can, kind of things". So, I guess the take home lesson is, ladies, 1) don't date psychos, and 2) if you make the guy psycho, I guess it's partly your fault when he stabs you to death. :)

Laughing at Illiteracy #2: Can't forget about bocce!

From a random Facebook photo I was looking at today:

"Playing a little bit of Bocce Ball...That's definitely an entertaining game...Kept us memorized for hours!"

Adam Sandler's a Light Weight

50 First Dates! Ha! Small potatoes! :)

Last night, I went on a (mostly) blind date with a girl who was, assuming my records are accurate, the 100th girl that I've been out with. I don't bring this up to brag. In fact, you'd think that after 100 different girls I would have either a) found someone by now, or b) given up. :) There's a demotivator poster that says "Quitters Never Win, Winners Never Quit, but those who Never Win and Never Quit are Idiots". Clearly I fall into the last category. :) But somehow I have managed to keep enjoying dating and meeting girls that I am sufficiently interested in to keep taking out on dates.

An old roommate once said that he'd heard from a bishop that a good goal was to date 100 different girls before you get married because then you'd have a good idea of what you like and what you don't like. I thought that was an interesting (and astronomically high) goal to have, so it's never been a goal of mine to reach 100, but it is what inspired me to think back on how many girls I'd been out with up to that point (that's where any likely inaccuracy in my records would stem from) and start keeping track going forward.

Lastly, before I sign off, I just want to emphasize that I am not in dating for the numbers. That while there are 100 girls I can count that I've been on dates with, not once have I asked someone out just for the statistical glory of it. My keeping track of it is really just a form of journal keeping and self-evaluation. Just wanted to make that clear.

(Floating) Bullets on (Butterfly) Wings

I've had a lot of thoughts running through my head the last week or so and most of them aren't really congealing into anything that seems like it wants to be a cohesive idea that merits publishing.

A few of the (slightly) less ephemeral:

• Saw "Savior of the World" on Friday night, and the main thought that came home with me was, "Wow, there are a lot of these "miraculous" things surrounding the birth and resurrection of the Savior that are outside the scope of what I would consider "normal" life. Mostly the whole angelic messengers part, but also resurrection itself. Stuff that the scientist in me has a hard time wrapping my mind around.
  
  But I guess its okay if I would be shocked to be visited by an angel. Most of the people in the stories are, too. In any case, it inspired me to read the scriptures and listen in my church meetings with new ears. And that's been a good thing so far.
  
  
• Feeling a little bit unattached from things socially of late. I'm sure that part of it stems from having been out of town for most of the last 2 weeks, and another part stems from transitioning to a different ward after 5 and a half years. Don't know if I'm not trying as hard to reach out to my friends or if they aren't reaching out to me as much. Just had a lot of nights lately with nothing going on.
  
  Most all of my friends are in my "old" ward and I don't really know many people in my "new" ward, and have yet to do anything socially with any of the few people I do know there. Kind of uncertain about where things go from here in terms of trying to make new friends in the new ward but still hang on to the old friends. Also, losing one roommate and getting two new ones. All this coupled with the start of a new year has me feeling like I'm in between. Not sure what I'm in between, just that I am. In between.
  
  
• This is the first year that I've started without being enrolled in school since the mission. So that's definitely a new thing. One of the (few) things I miss about school is that it always provided an easy set of things to work on/toward. Now that I'm just working, sometimes its hard to figure out what things I want to/should want to work toward.
  

Christmas Presence

One of the big highlights of Christmas was hanging out with these 3.

My 2009 Christmas Card

Well, believe it or not, Christmas time has rolled around again. The older I get the faster each year seems to go. And yet, when I look back at what all has gone on in the last year, it's clear that there was still plenty of time for things to happen. If this is your first time coming to check out one of my Christmas cards, I guess I'll say, by way of explanation, that I try to give a thorough recap of the year that has passed with a few photos and a lot of links to other blog posts and photos for those of you who want to read or see more about a specific thing. If it gets a bit long-winded along the way, I apologize, and won't be offended if you just scroll past the text and look at the photos. :) (Note: clicking on any of the photos will take you to my Flickr.com account, where, with a free membership you can see any of the pictures at full-size.)

One of the things I did plenty of this year was travel. In fact, at one point in the summer, when I did most of my traveling, I felt like had maybe over-vacationed. Maybe I was just compensating for not doing much vacationing in the last few years due to that whole finishing-my-PhD thing that I had going on. In any case, I have so many vacations to talk about this year that I thought I'd intersperse them through the rest of my yearly recap.

But first, I guess I better talk about how I was able to afford my vacations. Last year at this time, I had just accepted a position as a Medical Informaticist with Intermountain Healthcare, here in Salt Lake. I started January 5th, so I'm coming up soon on my year mark. It's been a really enjoyable experience so far. I've been working a lot on setting up a tool to let our doctors fill out death certificates electronically. When I first started it was just at a theoretical stage and now, a year later, we have a lot of progress to show and are hoping to have that up and running for a pilot test early next year. My boss and co-workers have been very enjoyable to work with and that's made the whole experience that much better. Definitely happy with my decision. Most days I work from my shared office in the basement of LDS Hospital. Random fact: the photo at the top of this Christmas card was taken just outside of the hospital near my office.

**************** Vacation Time! ********************

The first real vacation I went on this year wasn't even until the 4th of July weekend (I had to accumulate some time off before I could take some, you know?). My good friend Jon (who you might remember from last year's Spring Break trip to NYC), now goes to school at Univ. of Washington in Seattle, a place I had never been. So for the 4th of July weekend, I took a quick trip up there and enjoyed some of the fun that Seattle has to offer:


The Space Needle


Pike's Market


The Fremont Troll


Fireworks at Gasworks Park over Lake Union

More Seattle photos.

Day 1
Days 2 & 3

************************************

Even though I started working full-time in January, I still had some loose ends to tie up with my degree. In a meeting with my committee, just before the holidays last year, I got some direction as to what writing they would like me to do to get final approval on the text of my dissertation. After taking a few weeks to settle into my new job, I got back to the task of writing in February. In order to avoid some of the distractions of working at home, I found a sufficiently boring spot at the local library where I was able to to buckle down for a few nights a week and was able to get the last bits of writing finished and approved by my committee. Definitely a huge relief to get that taken care of. Then after a few, relatively painless rounds of formatting corrections with the Thesis Editor, I got everything ready and printed in time to officially graduate in Spring of 2009.

My family and a good friend (Eric Harris) joined me at Kingsbury Hall for the School of Medicine's commencement ceremonies. I know some people don't really care for graduation ceremonies, and to be honest, I have to agree that they are rather boring. However, I have always felt that commencement serves as a good moment of closure on a round of schooling. This time around was extra fun because I got to wear some fancy robes that weren't just plain black and got "hooded" as well.


Before


After

More graduation photos

**************** Vacation Time! ********************

After kicking off July with my trip to Seattle, I followed up with a 10 day period later in the month in which I went on 3 separate vacations. I dubbed it my "Week o' Vacationing 2009". The first trip of the week was a weekend jaunt down to St. George in an SUV full of friends for some extra-warm weather and to see "Footloose" at the Tuacahn outdoor theater.


Swimming at Sand Hollow


Visiting the St. George temple


Waiting for the Show at Tuacahn

More St. George photos

Day 1 in St. George
Day 2
Day 3

************************************

Around the same time that I was finishing up my writing I also went to see a doctor about some persistent discomfort I'd been having in my side. In the end that was determined to be some pain originating from the muscles between my ribs, but along the way, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. That diagnosis led to my making some changes in my diet (basically reducing the carbohydrates that I eat) and starting to exercise more regularly. As a result, my blood sugar levels are back within the high end of normal. As an added benefit, I've also lost around 40 pounds in the last 9 months. Dealing with diabetes continues to be a constant in my life, but it's not something that I worry about a lot right now and served as a good impetus to make some healthy changes.

**************** Vacation Time! ********************

The 2nd vacation of my Week o' Vacationing was a family vacation in Park City. George and his family came up from Texas and we got to spend a few fun days together with them at a nice condo that my parents rented in Park City near the Olympic Park. We had fun times doing Park City stuff (Olympic Park, Alpine Slide, Outlet Malls, etc) and just being together. Definitely a fun few days. Fun to get to play with the nieces and nephew, too. Ben and I were even in charge of dinner one of the days and I feel like we did a pretty great job of putting together kabobs on the grill. (Kabobs: 2009's food of the year).


Playing with Austin and Elise


Being silly with Lucy


Kabob Night

More Park City photos

Day 1 in Park City
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

************************************

Also at the end of March (March was clearly a crazy month), I moved from the place I'd been living in for the last couple years into a very nice house that a friend of mine from my ward had just purchased. By the end of my time at my previous place, I was getting worn out of being in charge of finding new roommates all the time and dealing with management who didn't really like us living there, so moving into a place where someone else was in charge of everything has been a nice change of pace. People keep telling me that now is a great time to be in the market for a place of my own, and I've started saving money toward that end, but given how nice the place I live in now is, and how much I enjoy my roommates, I really don't feel like I need to be in any big rush. I guess it's potentially something that could happen in the next year. Check back next year, I guess. :)

**************** Vacation Time! ********************

The 3rd and final portion of my Week o' Vacationing was a quick camping trip up to Yellowstone National Park. My first time ever going there, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did we manage to avoid any seriously bad weather (far from typical for my camping experiences), I got to see lots of cool stuff in a short span. Geysers, waterfalls, bison, elk, spectacular canyons... and had a great time with some great friends. Definitely would recommend Yellowstone to others. So many of the sites were very accessible. The roads take you very close to some beautiful sites, and then it's just a short walk from the parking lot to see them. I know some people like the feeling of being alone in nature, or of being some place that very few people have been. I was perfectly fine seeing this stuff with 400 other people, if it meant I only had to do a 10 minute hike. :)


Old Faithful


Part of a big herd of bison that crossed the road in front of us


Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River
More Yellowstone photos

Day 1 in Yellowstone
Day 2
Day 3

************************************

Yet another thing that happened in March was that I started shopping for a new car to replace my (not so) trusty 1996 Nissan Sentra. After doing a fair amount of research, I decided that what I probably wanted to get was a new Nissan Altima. After a variety of test drives and dealership visits, I was finally able to settle on a new 2008 Altima that I drove off the lot with only 180 miles. It's been really nice to have a car that I've haven't had to worry about breaking down and that has all of its parts working. So much so that I've enjoyed putting over 10,000 miles on it in the last 9 months. :) I'm finally driving a car that was built in the decade I'm driving it in, although I guess, depending on how you count the decades that might be coming to end in a few weeks.

**************** Vacation Time! ********************

In the middle of August, I embarked on a week-long adventure: a 5-day cruise to the Bahamas with my roommates and other good friends from my ward. We took a red-eye flight to Miami (that I was able to sleep through better than most) and departed from there for points southeastward. Our stops were Grand Turk (in Turks and Caicos), Half Moon Cay (an amazing private island owned by Carnival cruise lines), and Nassau (capital of the Bahamas). In addition to mostly beautiful weather and spectacularly delicious dinners, some of the highlights included swimming in gorgeous blue water, swimming with and feeding sting rays, a catamaran ride to a reef for snorkeling, and winning a collection of ship-shaped trivia trophies.


Group photo at Half Moon Cay


Sailing on the Catamaran


Some of my trivia winnings

(Many) more photos from our cruise

Day 1 of the cruise
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6 & 7

************************************

In September of this year, I (as usual) had a birthday. I turned 31 this year, and had a fun evening of dinner and bowling with some good friends. It's a little weird to think about being in my 30s, but to be honest I mostly still feel about the same as always. I do feel good about being done with school and having a job that is satisfying and that pays well. I really can't complain about where my life has taken me so far. I feel blessed to have most of my family nearby and to have made so many great friends. When I returned to Salt Lake in 2000 after completing my mission to Argentina, I only really had 1 or 2 friends in Salt Lake. Now, I can honestly count hundreds of people as good friends, and most places I go I run into people I know.


Birthday Bowling at Bonwood

**************** Vacation Time! (Kind of) ********************

In what was my last trip of the year, I went to San Francisco in November to attend the Fall Symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). I didn't attend last fall as I was in the midst of wrapping up my dissertation and didn't have any funding for travel, so it was nice to catch up with some good friends who've moved on to other locations, or even friends who are still here in Salt Lake, but that I don't see much these days.

I managed to find a little time to take a cable car down to the wharf one morning, and then went to Wicked one evening. Aside from that it was mostly a business trip.


Looking out the front of the cable car at Alcatraz


Me at Wicked

More photos from San Francisco

More about my trip

************************************

Now, obviously traveling wasn't the only fun I had this year. Some of the other fun things I enjoyed were:

• Being a first-time Utah Football season ticket holder. Not the amazing season we had last year, but still a good one, and very fun. They went undefeated at home, so I can at least say that they won every time I was in attendance.
• Concerts. Two concerts stand out in my memory as having been especially fun: Girl Talk & Lupe Fiasco at the U's Grand Kerfuffle, and They Might Be Giant's Flood Anniversary show.
• Photography. I wouldn't say I do a lot of photography for photography's sake, but I did get out a couple times this year to take pictures of stuff that I thought turned out nicely:
  
  
  a spot in Murray where a bunch of Snow Shacks were stored for the winter
  
  
  some shots of fall color that I took in Big Cottonwood Canyon
  

It's become a personal tradition to give a report on my dating life each year in my Christmas post, and this year is no different. I am somewhat pleased to report that, as of this writing, I've been on 22 dates this year with 16 different girls. That's up a tad from last year (20), and the year before (16). I wish that I could say that the increased dating has resulted in my actually entering into some kind of serious dating relationship with any of these girls, but sadly I cannot. I did try to do better this year at going on more than a single date with girls, and 10 of these dates were not first dates, so I guess I made some improvement there. Suffice it to say that I continue "en la lucha, che" as the Argentines are fond of saying.

As I bring this Christmas letter to an end, I just want to comment on how truly blessed I feel. I'd be remiss to not acknowledge the hand of the Lord in my life.

I have so many wonderful people in my life that fill it with joy and fun, that even when I have minor setbacks they aren't even enough to make me feel down about things. To be finished with school (quite possibly forever), and in a job that I enjoy is a big relief and reassurance of the Lord's guidance throughout my life. Being diagnosed with Type II diabetes was a pretty big downer this year, but I'm grateful that I was able to have it diagnosed almost as a fluke, without having to go to the Emergency Room in some kind of diabetic shock or something.

Though I'd prefer to have my own family by now, I'm grateful that I've been able to make so many great friends here in Salt Lake, and hopefully I've been able to make their lives better with my presence, the way that they've done for me. A friend reminded me the other day that if I'd been married years ago, I probably wouldn't know her or most of the people I associate with now. And while I'm sure that I would know other people instead, I feel really good about how things have worked out so far and the opportunities I've had in place of having my own family.

In any case, I've probably already gone on way too long. I'll leave you with a collage of some more fun photos from the year gone by.



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Old Book, New Book #14: Atlas Shrugged -> The Dark Frigate

It's over! Our long national personal nightmare is over! And by that I mean that on Friday after work, I finally finished reading Atlas Shrugged, a book I started reading back in March. I know. 9 months seems like a ridiculously long time to be reading a book (we'll save the discussion of how it's taken me 12 months to read Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus for another day). But here's the thing: Atlas Shrugged doesn't fall into the same category as most books. In fact, I'd say that in many ways, the plot points of Atlas Shrugged serve as a framework for Ms. Rand to present a collection of essays, thinly veiled as the kinds of things that a character in a novel might possibly say. Which means that the plot moves along at a relatively snail's pace. I would definitely not classify this book as a "page-turner". The speechify-ing reached its pinnacle near the end when one of the character proceeds to make a speech that lasts for 70 pages.

That said, I wouldn't say this was a "bad" book, or that, for the most part, I didn't enjoy reading it. It just didn't have a lot to make me hurry back and see how things turned out.

In reading Atlas Shrugged, I think what I will take away is a stronger conviction that governmental redistribution of wealth is not good for the country, and a bit of a change in philosophy about the wealthy. This change had already begun when, during President Obama's campaign, he would often ask if anyone in the audience made more than $200,000. Because he was only going to raise taxes on those people. Because that's too much money, I guess. And anyone who makes that much money must be a bad person and deserve to be punished. In reality, probably because there are fewer voters who fall into that group than not. (Kind of like how the AARP is going to bankrupt America's future because young people don't vote). I can understand that people who make more money can afford to pay more taxes, but a flat tax would also provide that. Anyway, the idea that taking money away from people who worked to earn it and giving it to people who didn't seems pretty unfair. I know I'm certainly oversimplifying things a lot, and I can understand there are many shades of gray here that I'm glossing over. Just trying to summarize a bit of the thoughts that I had while reading this book.

I'm not sure I would wholeheartedly recommend this book. Ayn Rand's got to have a shorter book somewhere that does a better of job of describing her philosophy succinctly. Haven't read the Fountainhead. Maybe that one does.



In any case, it feels good to have finished Atlas Shrugged. Maybe I can enjoy some lighter reading for a bit now. The next book I started is "The Dark Frigate", the next of the Newbery Medal winners that I happened to pick up last time I was at the library. Not as famous as the other two that I've recently read. In fact, in trying to find a decent Amazon.com link for it to put in the my sidebar book list (way down at the bottom), I had to look hard for a paperback edition that was still in print. Anyway, I just found it on the shelf at my local library, so if you wanted to read it, I assume it'd be relatively easy to find.

Another old one, written the year after The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle. It appears to be the story of a young man, recently orphaned who gets into some pirating adventures. Had never heard of it prior to looking at the list of award winners. Guess I'll find out why.