For my ward's FHE activity last night, we went to the Church History Museum downtown in Salt Lake, which seems like it could use some new exhibits, I didn't really see anything new since I was there at least a year or two ago. But in wandering through the exhibits on each of the presidents of the church, they had this Time magazine cover featuring then-Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson:
It's hard to see in this image, but the date was April 1953, 56 years ago. The quote below the cover image is "No real American wants to be subsidized." I don't know if that reflects the public sentiment at the time, or just President Benson encouraging people to take responsibility for their actions. Either way, it seemed like an especially poignant thought in today's world where it seems like many Americans are asking "Where's my bailout?"
Last night, a couple of friends and I braved threats of storminess and cold to go check out Girl Talk and Lupe Fiasco outside of the Student Union up at the U. First of all, so grateful that the weather held and after raining/snowing all day it finally stopped for the duration of the time we were out there. Yes, it was a little chilly, but thankfully I wasn't drenched by the end of the night.
Eric and BJ during Girl Talk's set.
Now some of you are probably asking, "Who is/are Girl Talk and Lupe Fiasco?" Well, Girl Talk opened the show, and what he does is mash up other people's music on his laptop and dance around. I know it sounds kinda weird, and I guess it kinda is, but it's fun and we had a great time groovin'. When he first came out, we were like, "Is that him?" He was shorter than I imagined, and it's just him up there with his laptop on a table. Most of his shows you'll see him surrounded in a mass of people while he does his thing. Last night, there were only a select few allowed up on stage who apparently had some kind of backstage passes. Anyway, he played for around 40 minutes and then bid us farewell. Probably my favorite part was the mashup of "Whoomp There It Is" and "In a Big Country" which also appears on the Feed the Animals album.
Update: Here's a video of the Whoomp/In a Big Country Mash-up
Me and Eric in between shows.
Lupe Fiasco is a more traditional hip-hop artist, who has been featured on a Kanye West song or two, and has had a few hit singles himself. He brought a DJ and also had someone playing live drums, which was cool. It was sometimes hard to pick up which song he was singing, because he often did them over different beats than what they're over on the albums. He also often only sang a verse or two rather than the whole song. Probably my favorite parts of his set were when he did the first verse of "Little Weapon", "Go-Go Gadget Flow", and when he closed the show with "Daydream". I took several videos with my camera and if I can get them online I'll try to post a couple here. The audio quality is only so-so, due to the thumping bass that seemed to overwhelm my little camera mic.
I know it's not Wednesday, and I also know I haven't blogged much lately. Lots of good things going on, and a few not so good. Trying to focus on the good for now. Anyway, for some reason I've been wanting to watch this video that I saw a while back and thought I'd share. This is cold-war era footage of Russian dancers throwing down some sick dance moves. ABDC would be lucky to have guys of this caliber on.
P.S. Despite a cold and stormy forecast, I'm still looking forward to tomorrow night's Lupe Fiasco & Girl Talk concert at the U. Anyone else going?
Had another doctor's appointment on Wednesday to confirm what tests had shown. Resulted in getting referrals for two more appointments with specialists.
Sat down with a car salesman on Tuesday and decided that, yes, in fact, they are no fun to deal with. Hopefully tomorrow morning goes better. If not, I may still buy something anyway. Got pre-approved today for a loan.
Settling in at the new place continues. We got Internet/cable turned on this week and it was nice to watch parts of two Jazz games this week, as well as having Internet. Caught last week's Lost. Still one week behind.
Investigated noisy desktop. Looks like I've got a bad fan motor on my power supply. Might call for some hardware-style nerdiness. Not really my forte, but doesn't seem like it's too crazy of a thing to replace.
Had a planning meeting with some friends to plan a vacation. Looking at possible Caribbean cruise in August. Still waiting to hear on family vacation. Hopefully PTO doesn't become an issue.
Still dealing with clean-up/clean-out issues at the former apartment. Because I'm the one that management trusts they want me to do a walk-through with them on Tuesday next week (the 31st). Just found out that one of my roommates can't move until then. Also, he's the one with two cars, two motorcycles and a snowmobile. Somehow I'm guessing that might not all be out by Tuesday afternoon. Let's hope so.
Can't remember if I mentioned this here or not already, but I DID get final approval on my dissertation from my supervisory committee, so now I'm down to just getting approval from the Thesis Editor's office. Unfortunately, I also need signatures from two people who happened to be out of the country until next week. Hopefully by middle of next week I can get that all printed and dropped off for initial review.
when you can have people come pick it up at your house?
At the apartment I just moved out of we've got some furniture left behind that no one wants to take with them. So I stopped by last night, took some photos and then posted them to craigslist under the "free" category. For the futon that none of us wants, I literally had at least 15 emails in the first hour. And other people were also willing to take away my old desk and a loveseat that no one wanted. Now the people I promised them to better show up and bring some muscle. I'm not giving stuff away for free just to have to move it myself.
For those of you who only follow my life via my blog (does that statement categorize anyone?), you should know that I moved last week to a pretty sweet abode that affords me a spot in a garage and a spacious living room with a brand new sectional. And no, I didn't buy this home, but I'm only paying a smidge more than what I was paying at my old place, so hopefully I can start saving up for buying important grown up things like a new car, a place of my own, and possibly more medical care (a topic for another day).
However, due to my move, I do not currently have internet access at home, so I'm posting this from work (after my work hours for the day, mind you).
More from the good and exciting news front, last week my supervisory committee gave me the thumbs up on my last draft of my final chapter and I now have the green light to go to the Thesis Editor and receive a thorough pen-lashing about tabs and spacing and page numbers and who knows what else. Hopefully nothing too drastic. So, probably by the time I'm walking this Spring, I will actually have finished doing whatever needs doing to be really graduated.
I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I've had a lot on my mind, but not much that I feel like blogging about, between boxing up stuff to get ready for my move next week, and a variety of medical tests (had blood drawn 3 times this week). Anyway, in the midst of packing and running packing-related errands today I swung by this place I saw last night to take some photos of some Rainbow Snow snowcone shacks in storage/retirement. Maybe they pull them out again come summer.
One of the things I might miss when I move is the view from my window, that looks out over a little valley with an expressway running through it, and the tree (someone once said it was a flowering pear, but I'm not expert) right outside as well. I woke up this morning to find that it had snowed considerably overnight and it made my tree look like it was a cotton plant.
I've taken a variety of photos of "my tree", as I call it, in the 2 years I've lived here and today I made this mosaic of them, using the mosaic tool on fd's flickr tools page.
My twice-a-year blogger brother recently chastised me for not blogging enough lately, so here's a quick update on my life:
Working full-time, but things are kind of slow right now for me, as I wait for other, busier people to have time to decide how they want me to do the work they've assigned me.
Due to persistent abdominal/side/back discomfort/pressure/pain, I'm having trouble sleeping most nights (though not last night, thankfully). I have an imaginary chain of paper loops in my mind, counting down the days until my doctor's appointment under my new job-subsidized health insurance coverage (six!)
I'm thinking hard about buying a new car, but first I need to register my current car under my name, as my parents recently "sold" it to me (for $10) so that I could trade it in or sell it. Not sure if the time/money to have it re-inspected, registered, get new plates, etc. will pan out to be profitable in the end or not, but let's hope so. :)
Going to be moving in a couple weeks. Excited about a change of scenery. Not excited about packing and moving, but it should be a good time to dump some stuff that hasn't been unpacked in the two years since I last moved.
Sent a draft of my last dissertation chapter to my committee chair last Thursday. Haven't heard anything back yet. Hopefully I'm getting close to finishing that up. I'm meeting with him today for work-related reasons, so maybe I can ask about it there.
Enjoying the slightly warmer weather we've been having, and looking forward to spring.
So, last I wrote about what I was reading, I was starting "The Miracle of Forgiveness". That was like 3 months ago. And, I guess what happened was I got partway through that book, and then started another book for a book club I joined, and then the copy of Miracle of Forgiveness that I'd gotten at the library happened to have some printing problems (there were large sections where every other time you turned a page, the next two pages were blank). Anyway, I took Miracle of Forgiveness back to the library without finishing it, and in the meantime I read two other books for this book club.
The first one, Graceling, was a first-time effort in fantasy realm that had some potential starting out, but then mostly turned into a romance/feminist novel that stopped caring about the plot that I was caring about and started caring about whether the heroine could be happy in a committed relationship or not. Not my favorite.
The second one, A Long Way Down, was a novel by Nick Hornby (author of About a Boy and High Fidelity, both of which I enjoyed), about 4 strangers who meet on New Years Eve on top of a building they plan to jump to their death from. They end up not jumping and spending the next 90 days deciding if that was a good choice or not. In at least one case the book is clear, in the other 3, I'm not 100% sure what happened. It was my least favorite Hornby that I've read so far.
Seems like this book club thing isn't working out too well for me. Also, it's keeping me from reading some books that I'd like to read, so not sure whether I'll stick with it going forward or not.
I just finished "A Long Way Down" today, and I happened to be at my local library to do some writing (still trying to finish up the last bits of my dissertation) and took a few minutes to look for my next book. No luck finding something I was really interested in -- this library is pretty small, so I mostly use it as a pick-up spot for county-wide requests -- so I picked up another Cormac McCarthy, "Blood Meridian", but when I got home I went online and put in a few requests for stuff I'd really prefer to be reading ("Atlas Shrugged" and "Fight Club"). So I might hold off on starting something new for a week or so to see if one of those comes in. Oh, and tonight during dinner I ended up reading maybe a third of "The Christmas Box" which our stake presidency bought for each member of the stake as a Christmas gift. So I guess that counts as a book, right? Maybe it will tide me over for a few more meals. :)
I'm sure that everyone out there has their own opinions on health care and what's wrong or right with it and what does or doesn't need fixing. Now that I finally have a job with benefits (starting next month -- the benefits, not the job), and am no longer obligated to seek all of my medical care through the student health clinic, I decided I ought to find a new Primary Care Provider to meet with and talk about my persistent, nagging, discomfort in my side. Given that I work for the largest healthcare provider in the state, I have a wide variety of doctors I could choose from. How to decide?
Someone I know suggested contacting the insurance company's "advocates" as they could help me find a doctor near me who was taking new patients, etc. I called them today and told them I was a new patient and needed some help choosing a doctor. I asked them if they had any quality measures or feedback from other patients that might help me in making my choice. The first answer was "no". The second answer was "yes, but we don't share that." The third answer was "Don't worry, though, because if anyone complains we really do care and try to resolve their complaint."
So basically, they told me that while they DO, in fact, have information about which doctors are better than others, they can't use that information to help me, their customer. But don't worry, because if you do choose poorly and have a problem (remember these are health problems we're talking about, not car problems), they really will do all they can to resolve my complaints. Unless, of course, my complaint is that they won't tell me who the best doctors are.
I looked around on the internet and found one site with doctor reviews (ratemds.com), and the doctor they ended up recommending to me, based on location and the fact that he was taking new patients, had only one review, which was very positive. Another site someone mentioned to me is Angie's List (ala Craig's List), but unlike Craig's list, it is not free for consumers. Not tons of help, but better than nothing, I guess.
I just can't see how it isn't in the insurance provider's interest to funnel more patients to the doctors that do the best job, whether in terms of patient results or satisfaction, or in terms of cost effectiveness. It seems like somebody ought to be benefitting here, right? If not, where's the motivation for the doctor to do a better job? Just in the goodness of her heart? Not to say doctors don't want the best for their patients, but if there's no reward for being better, why try to be anything but average?
One of my favorite Computer Science professors would bring his laptop to class and actually write code during lectures, which I found to be immensely helpful just to see how the process worked down to that level of detail. (If you aren't a programmer, don't quit reading yet, I promise this isn't just about CS stuff.) One time after compiling some code successfully (basically, the syntax of his code was all correct and he was able to turn it into an actual program that could be run) he said, "No matter how long I've been a programmer, it still always feels good to see your code compile with 0 errors". So true.
Anyway, I bring up that story because I got a date last night for our upcoming stake dance this Friday. And no matter how long I've been single, getting a date still feels pretty awkward. And it still feels good when a girl says yes.
And yes, I've written about this before, so there's another testament that some things really never change. :)
This past weekend, I went out to eat both Friday and Saturday night with friends. Friday night I convinced a couple friends to go to Sizzler with me because I've just had a hankerin' for some steak and malibu and some cheese toast.
After dinner a larger group of friends went to see the movie Taken starring Liam Neeson. It may be the only movie I can remember seeing with absolutely no sub-plots. And it would have been a tiny bit more believeable if so many people hadn't shot at him with submachine guns at close range without killing him. My only other complaint is that the main girl who was in it also played Shannon on Lost, and I really couldn't stand her as Shannon, which made me still not like her here. I'll probably never be able to get past her as annoying Shannon. Seriously, what was Sayid thinking? I'm just glad that she didn't make it past the beginnings of Season 2. And even though we're now seeing all sorts of dead people, we've managed to avoid a return of Shannon.
And in case you were wondering, Saturday night I ate at Pei Wei.
How is it that on perhaps the best non-freeway thoroughfare in the valley (700 East), there are three separate school zones? 3 times during my commute all the cars have to slow down from 45+ to 20-. Can't they make 7th East the boundary or something so that kids don't have to cross it to get to school?
Also, this morning while driving in one of these school zones, an ambulance showed up going the opposite direction. My question is: Does the ambulance have to slow down in the school zone? Which takes precendence?
I realize it's nearly February, but I just barely took time to mull over my favorite music from 2008. By the way, here are some links to previous years' lists:
Turns out that 12 months is a long time. Thankfully I was able to see through iTunes what music I added to my library last year, and last.fm was able to show me what I listened to the most last year. Looking over those lists I was able to come up with 4 albums I listened to a lot last year, and 22 songs to share.
It turns out that I didn't listen to as much music last year as perhaps in years past. Partly, I've been filling my commute time with talk-radio-ish podcasts, and partly since I gave up file sharing, I just don't get around to checking out as much new music. However, with great things like Pandora and YouTube, there is tons of free music that you can stream over the internet totally legally. You'd be hard pressed to not be able to find somewhere to listen to music for free online. Sure, you can't save it to your iPod, but you can at least check something out and decide if it's worth purchasing. For my birthday, I got a $25 iTunes gift card and I still have about $6 left, just because I like to listen to a song quite a few times before I go ahead and buy a song to keep.
Anyway, this looks to be a three-part series. Today I'm starting with the best albums and then I'll get into the best songs over the next couple posts.
My favorite albums of 2008 (in no particular order):
Originally scheduled for release in 2007, this album's release got pushed back to early 2008. As with most Counting Crows albums, it took me a few listens to get a feel for which songs I liked the most. It's always interesting to see how their albums resonate, or don't resonate with me. So far...I'm not loving this album, but I do like it, and probably with time I'll come to like more as I have with the rest of their albums. If I had to rank their albums (original content only, not counting live albums or repacked best ofs), I'd probably go in this order:
1-August & Everything After 2-This Desert Life 3-Hard Candy 4-Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings 5-Recovering the Satellites
Not to say I don't love songs on each album and can enjoy listening to just about anything Adam Duritz is willing to sing.
Feed the Animals - Girl Talk (Warning: Explicit Lyrics)
If you don't know who Girl Talk is, it's high time you found out. Basically he's a guy who puts lots of song clips together on his computer and then plays them. At his concerts, he covers his laptop in saran wrap and people dance all around him. Here's a clip:
Anyway, Feed the Animals is his new album that came out this fall -- available at a cost of your choosing, including free. Part of the fun for me is trying to pick out all the samples he uses, you can use Wikipedia to check your answers. Lots of great samples on this album. One word of warning, all the samples are unedited, and he does seem to pick a lot of stuff with explicit lyrics, so if you get offended by that, you'll want to skip this one.
Metro Station - Metro Station
I realize that this band is probably just the latest band to come around singing emo love songs with a peppy beat, but I can't help but like so many of their songs. From "Shake It" to "Kelsey" to "I Wish We were Older". I fell in love with Shake It before I knew the name of the band, and Pandora was happy to mix most of the rest of the album in with other stuff I was listening to.
Alive - Daft Punk
Now, this album actually came out sometime in 2007, but it was something I found on my buddy's computer and decided to check it. It's a recording of a live Daft Punk show in Japan. And it's awesome. If you like Daft Punk, you should definitely check it out. I think all, or most, of the tracks are 2 or 3 of their songs mashed up together and it's a great, high-energy album. I can't really pick any tracks that stand out especially, but the vibe is great from start to finish.
Over Christmas break we had fun calling my sister "Bird Nerd" because of her new-found love for bird-watching and her new job as a biology TA for a professor who teaches a Gen Ed Biology course that, rather than teach about Biology, only teaches about birds, and requires students to go out and try to find as many local species of birds as they can.
Why do I bring this up? Just for fun, mostly, but also as an introduction to a story about my own nerdiness. When I was a kid, I had cereal most mornings for breakfast. And while I ate my cereal, I used to entertain myself by counting the number of times that certain letters appeared in the text on the box. Usually I would just do the vowels, but occasionally I'd also branch out and count some of the more prevalent consonants. Some sides of the box obviously were more word-rich environments. The front usually doesn't (didn't? I hardly ever eat cereal any more) have a lot of writing, and when it does it's usually large font, low word count. The side with the nutrition information was always a good source of words, in both the count of essential vitamins and minerals (niacin, potassium, etc.) as well as in the list of ingredients (enriched wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, etc.)
Obviously the vowels were generally more common than the consonants, although 's' sometimes could be close to the big boys. Of the vowels, 'e' was by far the most common. Because I'm sure you were dying to know. Anyone else spend their breakfast hours counting vowels on their cereal boxes? No? Anyone?
Between starting my new job and dealing with a weird, undiagnosed illness I've been kind of busy. Also, I need to get back to finishing up my dissertation edits, because the longer I wait the harder that's going to be.
Aside from vague left flank pressure/discomfort/pain and a cough that refuses to go away, I'm doing pretty well. Learning a lot about my company and about some specific projects that I'm going to be working on. Stuff like that.
Not that I don't otherwise have them, but last night had at least one incident too many. Let me explain. Yesterday morning as I was arriving at work, the battery light and the emergency brake light on my dashboard came on. I thought it was odd that they would both come on and figured it might be something to do with whatever electrical system controls the lights, because the brake wasn't on or anything, and after work, my car still started up just fine. I made it home without any incidents and proceeded on with my Friday night plans.
A friend (Tandy) and I had organized a sledding activity last night and invited a large number of people. We'd be meeting at her place in Sandy and then heading out from there. I tracked down all my snow clothes and my tube and left with what I thought would give me enough to get to her house on time. The directions I'd looked up on Google maps (True Dat! Double True!) told me to head east on Sego Lily, but I forgot to look at exactly how far south Sego Lily was. And it turned out that on 7th East, the street sign didn't call it Sego Lily, and I drove right past it. A few blocks later, I realized I'd gone to far and decided to head east on 10600 South, thinking I could just backtrack to where I needed to be. Unfortunately it turns out that 10600 South is on the south side of a huge gorge with no roads crossing it, and while I kept hoping to find one, it looked like in the end I was going to have to go all the way up to Wasatch to backtrack toward the north.
Now, as I'd been driving, with my battery and brake light still on, I started to wonder if maybe my headlights weren't as bright as they ought to be, and if my heater wasn't blowing as strong as normal. And as I headed east on my long detour, suddenly my radio turned off, and wouldn't turn back on. A few moments later, the airbag light started flashing, and then just after that, my car slowly died.
I pulled off the road as best I could, but my detour had taken me in to a less traveled part of the valley and I was on a two-lane highway with no street lights. The lack of electrical power also meant I couldn't even turn on my emergency flashers. After a brief debate I decided I should probably stand at the rear of the car and encourage oncoming cars to not hit it or myself. Not sure if it was the wisest decision or not, but I'm still alive to write this post, right? :)
I called Tandy, explained my situation and tried to figure out about where I was. She said as soon as someone else got there, she could leave and come look for me. Just after that another friend, Dave, called for directions and I explained my situation. He offered to come help find me as well. After these phone calls I got my trusty jumper cables out of the trunk for future use, and put them in the front of the car, and opened my hood. While I was in the car, I decided to try the emergency flashers again and lo! and behold! they worked. Which made me figure I ought to try starting the car. It started and I quickly closed the hood and resumed my journey.
I was able to make it up and around the east end of the gully and start back down toward my destination before the airbag light started flashing again and I figured I better find a good spot to pull off the road quickly. I did so, and ended up only being a few blocks away from the final destination. My friend came and picked me up and I figured I'd come up with a way to get my car to the shop after sledding.
Here's a map you can look at to get an idea of where this all happened, and to encourage you to not use 10600 South to go east:
If you made it this far, I commend you, but let me just say that this story is just getting started.
For sledding, Tandy recommended a little park with hills on all sides and a bowl in the middle not far from her place. After everyone arriving, we loaded up and headed over there. It ended up being a pretty fun spot, with one main hill that had a couple small dips where you could get some excitement, but nothing too crazy. A few minor spills and what not. At one point, people were talking about putting three people on my double tube and Dave came up and said "Now just let me say that every time I go sledding, someone gets hurts, and usually it's when they try to put three people on a tube." That was enough to discourage them from that.
Across the park from that main hill was another hill that had a bit of a steeper drop off, and a couple people had gone over to try that and then come back. A bit later I was looking around and didn't see Dave and figured he must have gone to his car for something. A few minutes after that we heard someone yelling from the bottom of that other hill, asking for someone with a phone to call 911. I looked around again, and not seeing Dave, started to get a little worried. Someone started calling 911 and we hustled over to the bottom of the hill.
They'd seen something at the bottom of the hill and, when they got over there, found Dave face-down in the snow on a sled, unconscious and bleeding from his face. Thankfully he was at least breathing, and everyone took precaution to not move him. I observed his feet moving a little, which was encouraging. After a couple minutes, he slowly started to come to, mostly moaning, but not responsive to our comments. We tried to keep him from moving his head around, and got someone's sweater under his head to keep it out of the snow. The paramedics soon arrived and about that point he was starting to respond to their inquiries. Not real well at first, and he kept trying to push himself up on his arms and they kept holding him down. They put a neck brace on him and loaded him onto a backboard and carefully took him up the hill and to the street and loaded him into the ambulance.
Someone suggested that I go with him to the hospital, and since I probably knew him as well as anyone, I figured that was probably a good idea, although I was still thinking I was going to have to go back and get my broken down car at some point. Other friends were kind enough to find his phone and wallet and call his parents, stop by his house and pick up some clean, dry clothes for him, and then come down the hospital as well. Halfway through the ambulance ride, they decided he was well enough that they could turn off the siren.
Upon arriving at the ER, they sent me to the waiting room and did some tests on him for a while. After a while, they told us we could go see him. He was doing pretty good at that point, although he was clearly still a little loopy and complaining of double vision. Originally they wanted to admit him to the hospital overnight for observation, but eventually decided he could go home that night as long as he wasn't going to be home alone. We gave him his clean clothes to change into and loaded him in someone's car. (FYI: apparently, if you go to the ER with some kind of trauma, you're likely to have all of your clothes cut off of you, even if things are terribly urgent. Dave was kind of pissed about having his favorite sweatshirt cut in half. Also, if you don't have friends who will bring you clean clothes, they are perfectly happy to send you home with just your hospital gown and a blanket.) We got him home and handed him off to his roommate.
Then Brandon was kind enough to drive me back to Sandy (we'd gone to the new hospital in Murray), jump start my car, and follow me back to the shop near my house. Driving home, we had to jump start the car 2 more times, once in pretty tricky circumstances that required him to make a U-turn going the wrong way on Fort Union to pull in in front of me. We almost had to jump it a 3rd time, as I had to coast into a parking spot at the shop after the car dying again. I took my valuables out of the car and left the key under the mat. Brandon drove me home and even helped carry my boxes of work stuff up to the house. Quite a night.
I felt lucky to have such good friends, and that Dave was relatively alright, and that I was able to get my car to a shop. Turns out it's the alternator, which is what I would have guessed after thinking through the problem.
Yes, I'm still alive. My holidays were great. Loved spending time with the fam, and then being lazy for a week afterward (wait...wasn't I supposed to be finishing up my dissertation edits?...hmmm) and now that the holidays have come and gone, I've gone and started a full-time real job for the first time in about 4 and a half years.
Today is just day 2, and already I've run out of things to work on for now (guess I could think about my dissertation for a minute). I mean, I'm sure things will be picking up shortly, as I've been in touch with several people to talk about several projects, but for now it's just been setting up meetings and getting ready to move my stuff from one location to another. Yesterday was corporate orientation and it wasn't too awful, but I certainly wouldn't categorize it as "efficient". This morning I met with the guy who is my advisor and also the head informatics guy at my company, and he let me know about moving, and also that I have a meeting to go to tomorrow morning at 8 (and every Wednesday morning for the foreseeable future. And while the whole getting up early like working people thing isn't my favorite, having some structure in my life again is nice.
First off, Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope that this holiday season finds you well, even with the tough economic times we're facing. Hopefully you can find joy this holiday season in things that money can't buy.
I'm going to try to sum up my past year and looking back it seems like it's been a pretty full year. Definitely the #1 focus of this year has been completing my PhD research and writing my dissertation. I successfully defended my dissertation back toward the end of October, but haven't quite managed to get my committee to explain everything they want me to finish up in my final edits yet, so I'm not completely done. But getting close. Which feels good. Just not as good as being completely done would feel. Or so I imagine. In any case, it's definitely been an exercise in patience throughout the entire grad school process, and it's rewarding to be reaching the end.
Along with completing my research and the bulk of my writing, I also was able to get my first paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) which was both exciting and rewarding. You should be able to view the abstract here even if you aren't a subscriber.
I'm also currently in the process of lining up a job for when I finish. I have a generous offer on the table here in Salt Lake and recently traveled to Boston for an interview with another great applied informatics group. Hopefully I'll have made a decision on that by the end of the year. UPDATE: Since the time I was drafting this, I came to a decision and decided to sign with Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, and will be starting in January.
Speaking of my recent trip to Boston, I also did a fair amount of traveling this year, most of it school/work related. However, my first, and probably funnest trip of the year was back in March when my good friend Jon and I headed to New York City for Spring Break. We have another good friend, Randall, who lives and works out there, and he and his wife were gracious enough to not only let us crash at their place in Queens, but also drive us to and from the airport, show us around town and just be amazing hosts all around. Thanks, Randall and Traci! Definitely a fun trip.
You can read more about the trip in these blog posts:
Also in the Spring, I went fly fishing for the first time, out to the Green River with my dad and older brother, and even managed to catch a fish on a flyrod. To be honest, there weren't a lot of fish caught by anyone, so I was happy to at least catch one.
While my brother and his family were in town we also had a "vacation" to Salt Lake City, that involved staying at a hotel, going to the aviary, and playing laser tag. It's always fun to get everyone together.
Then in late June, I went to Las Vegas with a group of friends, just for the weekend. I'm not a huge Vegas nut, but as long as I'm only there for a couple days, I can usually find a few things to do that I find entertaining.
I wrote about the trip here, and there are some photos here.
In early July, I made another quick trip, this time to Washington, D.C. for the annual NLM training conference, my 5th and final time participating in that conference, as my NLM grant ended in August. To be honest, it really didn't feel like a vacation. I was mainly focused on making revisions to some papers I was working on at the time, and I really didn't take much time to do any sight-seeing. I did get the chance to have dinner one night in Alexandria with my old roommate Chris, so that was nice.
After D.C., I was able to take a break from traveling and work on finishing up my writing. However, as I didn't finish up my degree by the end of summer semester I had to enroll for Fall Semester, the one bright side of which was being able to get student football tickets for another great season of Utah football. This year's team went undefeated and will be playing in the Sugar Bowl on January 2nd. This year's home schedule featured amazing last minute victories over Oregon State and TCU, and then a less stressful win over BYU to cap the season. My friend Jon, who started grad school at Washington in Seattle flew home to go to the BYU game and we had fun storming the field after the big win. Here's a blog about the game.
Interestingly enough, my first year in graduate school was the year Utah went undefeated and then played in the Fiesta Bowl. Nice bookends for my grad school years at the U. In another interesting coincidence, my first year at the U for my bachelor's degree was the year that the Men's Basketball team lost in the national championship. I've definitely been lucky to see some great years of sports at the U.
And as previously mentioned, I did just recently return from a trip to Boston for another job interview.
I'm still single, and still attending the same singles ward here in Salt Lake. We always seem to have a large number of fun activities going on, and fun people are always moving in (yay!) and out (boo!) of the ward. In February, our Elders Quorum was split and I was called to serve as one of the two new Elders Quorum presidents. It definitely hasn't been as stressful as the first time I served in this calling, but sometimes I wonder whether that is a good or a bad thing. I'm sure there is more that I could be doing, but hopefully I'm doing an alright job of things. I definitely feel blessed with good counselors in my presidency, even though I've just replaced my 2nd counselor for the 2nd time as they keep getting married on me.
This was from an EQ Shooting Activity we had this past summer.
Speaking of marriage, I'm of course not married, but still en la lucha ("in the struggle") as we used to say in Argentina. As far as I can tell from my records, it looks like I've been on 20 dates so far this year, up from 16 last year (an increase of 25%), and 14 the year before. In case anyone is interested in that sort of thing.
I guess it also bears mentioning that I turned 30 this past September. I don't really feel all that different, but I guess with finishing up school and getting close to taking a career-type position, I am starting to feel a little more grown up.
Picture from my birthday party
One of the highlights of my birthday was this video from my niece, Lucy, wishing me a Happy Birthday:
It doesn't get much cuter than that does it? :)
Looking back at the year that was, it definitely seems to have been full of fun, adventure, and accomplishment. I feel blessed to have had multiple great job options at a time when many people I know are struggling. I am so grateful for the many blessings in my life including my wonderful, loving family, and the very many friends that I've been blessed with. The older I get the more I think about the people in my life, and the less I think about the stuff. Once again, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
