Picking up Elder Tripp at the Airport

Sitting at the dealership, waiting for them to tell me that my battery needs to be replaced even though its good enough to start my car anytime except when I've been sitting in it (with it turned off) for at least 10 minutes.... Anyway, figured this was as good a time as any to do a little blogging. 

Ben got home from serving a 2 year mission to the Honolulu Hawaii mission in June, and we went and picked him up at the airport.  The highlights included the awkwardness of Natalie avoiding eye contact with the brother of one of the other missionaries who she'd gone out with once, as well as the fact that the missionaries stopped to chat with Thurl Bailey on their way down to where we were waiting. Guess they didn't miss us as much as we missed them. :)


Hanging up the sign on the garage


Hug for mom


Hug for dad


Hug for Natalie


Spence looking dubious/weird

Here's the video I took of his arrival:


Anyway, it's been good to have him home. He goes to school at the U and works with the athletics department, and I see him every couple weeks or so. He's currently living in Grantsville and commuting into town for school/work.

My 2012 Christmas Card

(Yes, that's my very first Christmas tree and all 4 of my ornaments)

Merry Christmas!

Once again it's time for me to put up some pictures and talk about the year that was 2012. I was surprised to find out that this is the 7th such blog post I've made.  Seems like a lot for some reason. Has it really been that long since I lived at Turnberry?  But I'm sure it's at least as much fun for me as it is for anyone else to look back on the year that was and take inventory of my life. Always, as I look back each year and remember what all I did, I'm surprised at how many things I did manage to fit into a year, and more importantly of how blessed I am to have good friends and a loving family. More than any specific thing that I've done, what I enjoy most is spending time with good company. 

I was not as good at blogging this year as I have been in some years past, in part because things have been busier at work (I guess that's good, right?) -- still with Intermountain Healthcare -- and also because, at least in the 2nd half of the year, things have been busier outside of work as well, for reasons I'll get to momentarily (Spoiler Alert!: It's not because I'm getting married). I also thought I'd sprinkle in some personal favorite "Bests of 2012" along the way.

Best Book of 2012 (Non-fiction): "What the Dog Saw", a collection of essays by Malcolm Gladwell. Runner-up: Popular Crime by Bill James.

What the Dog Saw was a really interesting collection of shorter takes from Gladwell, and Popular Crime was a book covering the history of popular crimes in American history and attempting to build some theories and methods for categorizing and evaluating them. But my favorite parts were when the author would go over the known evidence and try to opine on whodunit.

One of the highlights of the early part of the year was a quick weekend trip I took down to Arizona to visit my friend Julie in Phoenix. And let me tell you, Phoenix is a fantastic place to fly in February. Or visit. But if you say "fly" you get an extra 'f'. :)  Nice and warm.  We had a great time exploring abandoned baseball stadiums, the Phoenix Zoo, and a Mexican restaurant called On the Border. (Have you ever heard of all-you-can-eat enchiladas?)





Best Movie of 2012 (Action):  The Avengers
Runner-up: The Hobbit
Best Movie of 2012 (Comedy): Pitch Perfect 

To be honest, I don't really remember seeing anything this year that I was blown away by, but the Avengers put on quite a show and was pretty entertaining along the way. The Hobbit was long, but I enjoyed all the time given to a book that I've read numerous times.  Pitch Perfect had good music and made me laugh, and Anna Kendrick wasn't too hard on the eyes either.

Also in April, as a family, we had the pleasure of a visit from George's family, all the way from Hawaii, and my parents found a great place to rent up on Traverse Mountain for a couple days. It was lots of fun to have them here and to just do some stuff together for a few days.  They won't be in Hawaii too much longer, and despite losing a free place to stay there, I'm much more excited about the prospect of having them much closer.





Best TV Show of 2012 (Comedy): Parks & Recreation
Best TV Show of 2012 (Drama): Breaking Bad
Runner-up (Drama): Sherlock

Parks & Rec just hits the sweet spot in terms of making me laugh but also making me care about its characters. The end of Season 4 of Breaking Bad (which probably aired on TV last year, but I saw it this year) had not one, but two jaw-dropping, me-staring-at-the-TV moments.  Not a show for the faint of heart (it gets a little rough at times), but if that doesn't bug you, its worth checking out.  And BBC's Sherlock has been fun to watch, and even more so now that Watson is The Hobbit and Sherlock is...the bad guy in the next Star Trek movie.

In Jeopardy! winner/author Ken Jennings came to do a book reading/signing here in Salt Lake, and my friend Kathryn was kind enough to humor me and come along to see what he had to say.  He started his reading with a brief trivia quiz and it was cool to meet him and ask a Jeopardy!-related question that came up at work one day. ("Do you have to use question words to phrase your answer in the form of a question, or can you just use voice inflection?")



Best Album of 2012: Camp [Edited] by Childish Gambino
Runner-up: Underwater Sunshine by Counting Crows

I don't listen to many complete albums these days and this rap record by Community's Donald Glover was probably the only one that I listened to all of.  Counting Crow's album of covers was also pretty good.

This summer was quite a bit different from those I've had in recent years in that I don't think I left town at all until the end of August. No road trips. No camping trips (minus a fathers & sons campout that my ward did). No St. George, no Lava Hot Springs.  The main reason for this was that at the end of June I decided I was ready to buy a home.  So I called my friend Caleb who happens to be a realtor and we got to work visiting pretty much every home that was for sale in the greater Salt Lake area. Ok, maybe not ALL of them, but it felt that way sometimes.  One Saturday we looked at 20 houses (or maybe it was 21, I forget).  In any case, doing that nearly every Saturday, and often a day or two during the week as well, kept me in town and kept me busy for all of July and most of August and even a little of September. I made offers on a couple places along the way that didn't work out for one reason or another, but finally near the end of September I found a place I liked that I was able to get for a price I thought was reasonable. 

It's a 3 bedroom-2 bathroom townhouse in Millcreek, with a family room in the basement.  I closed at the end of October and moved in the first week of November, and I feel like I've barely had a day to relax since. :) I've got a medium-length list of things to work on on it, and I suspect that as a home owner that list never really goes away.  In any case, its been nice to finally buy my own place, and I've been working on getting it furnished/decorated, though so far the only new things that have actually arrived are a washer & dryer, and a dining table. I've got a couple couches coming at the end of the month, and have started thinking about what I might like to put on the walls, but there's not much up so far.





Best Video Game of 2012 (Xbox): Batman Arkham City
Best Video Game of 2012 (Free Online):  Kingdom Rush 

To be honest, I didn't love Arkham City the way I loved Arkham Asylum, but it was still pretty fun to play through.  The only other game I really played extensively this year was Halo: Reach, and I like that one, but that one was more of a time killer than being really engaging. As for Kingdom Rush, I may have started playing it last year. I don't recall. But either way it's fantastic and its free and you'll probably like it a lot. :)

Backtracking a bit, as I mentioned, I DID leave town at the end of August, going to Hawaii for a week with a few friends. We had a great time and played pretty hard the whole week.  Always fun to be there, and especially so because it means spending time with George and Kimi and the kids, though we spent less time doing family stuff than in on other trips since I was there with friends. I did manage to blog about that trip, and if you look down further on the blog, you can read all about it.




Best Song of 2012: "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen
Runner-Up: "Good Feeling" by Flo Rida
Runner-Runner-Up: "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men
Also Really Liked: "What's My Noise" by The Hood Internet



Choosing a best song of 2012 was maybe one of the hardest categories to decide. There were quite a few songs I really enjoyed this year across many genres. I haven't put together my Best of 2012 playlist yet, but I suspect it'll be pretty long. Since I had to choose one song to be the very best, I went with "Call Me Maybe". It was really catchy when I first heard it and then when I hadn't heard it for a while, I'd hear it again somewhere and just really enjoy it. Also it is one of the best songs for just throwing it into casual conversation. :)  Flo Rida has been putting out a lot of fun upbeat songs and chances are you've heard "Good Feeling" and "What's My Noise" was a fantastic dub-step style remix of Snoop Dogg's classic "What's My Name?" that I just really enjoy. "Little Talks" should win an award for being the song that sounds most like it was recorded by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros but actually wasn't. :)

Another highlight of August was getting to see Counting Crows in concert for the first time in several years. They've skipped Utah on their most recent tours, but they were finally back in town.  I went early enough to see all of the opening bands and get a pretty good spot in the first few rows, and eventually my friend Emily showed up to keep me company.  My good spot led to some great photos, which were definitely a highlight of the year for me.





In September, I got to go see The Head and the Heart again, and I really do love their music.  Last time was a little more intimate, in the garage that is Kilby Court, but this time they were at The Depot, and had a little more room to rock out. I also enjoyed Blitzen Trapper who opened for them.

Best Book of 2012 (Fiction): 11/22/63 by Stephen King
Runner-up: The Wind Through the Keyhole, also by Stephen King

These two were both by the same author, but totally different in subject matter. The first was a story of a man who travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, and the other was a story shoehorned into the midst of the Dark Tower series, and it was fun to have some old friends back.

My last trip of the year came in November, just a few days after I had moved into my new place.  My good friend Jon is wrapping up his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Washington, and will be leaving Seattle shortly, so I thought it would be good to get up there one last time to see him and Seattle, and when his brother bought some tickets to the Utah-Washington football game, he suggested that would be a good time for me to come. And it was. :)  Utah didn't end up winning the game, but it was a great weekend nonetheless.  Highlights included dinner at Red Mill, seeing the Kurt Cobain bench (Why?!!!), and taking the ferry across to Bainbridge.



Speaking of Utah football, we (my mom and dad and I and whoever I could convince to come with me) did have tickets again this year. Not Utah's best year of late, but we DID beat BYU (3 times!) and had some other fun late seasons wins over Cal and Washington State. And I've been a Utah fan long enough to know that some years it just doesn't go as well as others.




And for those who care to know (including and possibly limited to my parents), I am still out there in the exciting world of being single and dating.  As best as I can tell, I went on 47 dates this past year. If I can get in one more before the year ends that would be 4 a month. Bro. Poll would be so proud. :) 24 of those were first dates, and 7 of those were blind dates.  And yes, I'm still currently available. Ladies. ;)

It seems like I should write something here in closing to sum up my year.  Obviously the biggest change of the year came toward the end, with buying my own place and moving out of Brandon's place after 3.5 fun years.  I didn't travel as much as I sometimes have in the past (Can you believe I only went to Hawaii once this year?!).  But on the whole things don't seem to have changed too much.  And to be honest, that's kind of the way I like it. :) Thanks to everyone who shared this year with me. I hope this Christmas season finds you all in good spirits. Remember that it's a lot easier to find happiness by wanting what you have than by having what you want.

Happy Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

Fathers & Sons campout (minus a father or sons)

Man, I've really been slacking. Might be time to get back to my 30 post challenge...

In any case, I did take some pictures of something this month, so I figured they might be worth sharing.  In the ward I'm going to, I'm in charge of activities for the Elders Quorum. And our bishop assigned a "Men's Outing" aka "Fathers & Sons Campout" to the Elders as our one ward activity for the year.  So a lot of that responsibility fell to me. Thankfully our Quorum President took it on himself to make a lot of it happen, and that took a big load off of me.  And in the end, I pretty much just showed up. We were able to find guys in the quorum who could do most of what I couldn't do or didn't know how to do.

The bishop wanted a place that was close so people could come up and not stay the night if they didn't want to. So we got a campsite at the Spruces in Big Cottonwood Canyon, about 30 minutes from my door. So that was nice and convenient.  And a less active member of our ward is a chef and they got him to cook us dinner.  And it was one heck of a dinner.  A gigantic ham, several large turkey roasts, corn on the cob, both roasted red potatoes, and sweet potatoes, pasta, rolls.  We ended up with about 30 men and boys altogether and we made ate 1/3 or 1/2 of all that he brought up. The camp host came by on his golf cart at least 3 times to fill up a plate of food for himself or someone else.  In the morning we cooked eggs along with leftover red potatoes and ham.  The potatoes were so good. I ate all I could fit in me.


Brian cutting up ham and turkey


Sweet potatoes around the fire

Dinner time!

Some of the guys enjoying our feast

Wandered down to the river for a minute to take some nature shots

After dinner, we had spiritual messages from the Young Mens president and then from the long-time gospel doctrine teacher. I really enjoyed his thoughts on manliness and how being a "real man" is mostly about putting others' needs before your own.


Lesson time


More of the guys

After dinner, we had three different types of dutch oven cobbler to choose from, as well as stuff for making s'mores. 

I bought my first very own tent for the campout, but when I got up there there wasn't a ton of space for tents and one of the other guys offered me space in his tent along with two of his boys (aged 5 and 3 approximately). So I didn't even get to set up my tent for the first time. Guess I'll have to find another excuse to bust it out soon.

I was kind of looking forward to having my own tent and some privacy and not having to worry about whether or not someone would complain about my snoring.  Turned out to be just fine in the end. The boys slept most of the night and if they woke up I didn't hear it.  It was actually kind of fun hanging out with some kids.  As usual, I couldn't make it through the night without having to get up and use the bathroom (pretty much a guarantee every time I sleep in a tent), but it was fairly warm when I got up in the night and the stars were beautiful.

In the morning, we ate our aforementioned delicious breakfast, got cleaned up, packed up and headed home.  In the process of packing up my stuff, I came across a young moose picking its way through the brush off to the side of the main road down to the highway.  It came up close to the road a few times, spotted me, and shied away. Eventually it did cross the road not too far from where I had stopped to watch it. Always fun to see animals out in nature.


The moose

All in all I thought it was a pretty successful event and I was relieved to have it over with. :)

A few more photos here.

Hawaiian Thanksgiving, Day 4

Day 4 of our trip was Sunday, and it was an extra special Sunday because we got to go to church, not just once, but twice! :)  Lucy goes to school at the Lutheran school next door to their house, and sometimes the school kids get to sing at the church's Sunday service. So we got dressed and walked over to the Lutheran church for their Sunday meeting. Pretty sure it was my first time at a non-LDS church. I was complemented by the greeter on how "classy" I looked in my white shirt and tie.

Definitely a different meeting than an LDS sacrament meeting. The pastor (preacher? reverend?) would say some prayers and sometimes we (the congregation) would join in by saying some of the lines. There was a projector screen with powerpoint where the words would be for us to say.  We sang some hymns, one of which was "How Firm a Foundation", but with somewhat different lyrics, and totally different music. Another was a hymn I didn't know, but the tune was one that we use in the LDS church for a different hymn. So that was interesting.  Lucy sang a couple times.  For a while, they took all the kids in the congregation over to one of the other buildings for a while. Someone got up and read some scriptures.  The pastor gave a bit of a sermon.  There was an opportunity to make a donation. Kind of a mix of all the stuff I'm used to in 3 hours, condensed into 1.  There was a potluck afterward where I had a cookie or something, I think.

Then it was back home for some more hanging out while we waiting for the LDS church meetings.  Which was pretty much what I am used to. Fell asleep for a bit during Sunday School.  One interesting thing was chatting briefly with the full-time missionaries that were there, as they seemed to know Ben or at least had heard of him.  Kind of weird that he's in the same mission where George lives. Definitely different than my mission experience, but I imagine that every mission is different in its own way.

After dinner, we went home, had dinner, and spent more time hanging out and playing. I spent some time hanging out with Elise and Austin while they rode their bikes. Austin has a "helmet" that's actually a deflated kickball that he wears while he rides. Its good that he's happy with it, because apparently they only have one real helmet and Elise wears that. :)

All Grown Up! (Part II)

As I mentioned previously, my youngest brother, Ben, just entered the MTC last week for a few weeks of training before heading off to Hawaii to be a full-time missionary for the church.  And my only sister, Natalie, has now officially accepted a job as a reporter for a news station in El Paso and will be moving there in the next few weeks. Kind of crazy.  In any case, prior to both of them taking off, we managed to get together for a sibling dinner (Sorry we didn't invite you, Geo) and a movie. 

We hit up the Cheesecake Factory, and even got cheesecake! :)  And then we went to an opening night screening of X-Men: First Class that I thought was definitely a worthwhile choice.







The next week, Natalie had to head off to San Francisco to win more national awards for her broadcasting prowess, so it was just me, Ben, mom, and dad for the Ben's setting apart and for the actual drop-off in Provo.  They've sped up the dropping off process since I was there, and there's no more "watch a movie and cry together" portion anymore. You just drive in the gates, they direct you to a number on the curb and you unload. And off they go. For 2 years. Kind of surreal.

Before getting set apart

Packing (and watching the NBA Finals)

Taking some last minute photos before heading to the MTC


Hang Loose!


Heading out

I know from experience that when it comes to missing people, I'm really not very good at missing them in the moment that they're leaving. Generally I miss them at some unknown point in the future when I wish they were around.  So, so far I've managed to avoid getting to teary about Ben and Natalie ditching Utah for warmer pastures (I was going to say greener, but I think El Paso is probably not so much green as it is dry), but I'm sure soon enough I'll find myself wishing they weren't so far away.  Good luck, guys!

Why would prosperity lead us to seek other gods?

Last night in my Institute class, we read the following passage from Deuteronomy Chapter 8, that talks about the danger that once God has blessed us many good things and met our temporal needs of then forgetting about God and thinking that we got all those good things by our own power and might: 

10 When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

 11 Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:

 12 Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;

 13 And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied;

 14 Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;

 15 Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;

 16 Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;

 17 And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.

 18 But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

 19 And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.

 20 As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.

Certainly this is a common pattern that we see in the scriptures. But what really stuck out to me was in verse 19, where it says that having forgotten God and feeling like we did it all on our own, that the people would "walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them".  And I started wondering, why when God has given us so much and our needs are met, why would we then worship other gods?  You'd think that if God has given us everything we need, if we aren't going to worship him, wouldn't we just not feel like we need gods at all?  But clearly, as I've been reading the Old Testament over the last couple years (I'm still only about halfway through), the children of Israel love to have them some other gods before Him.  Pretty much every other generation there are idols ("groves") and Baal worshipping and offering sacrifices in places that God didn't authorize ("high places").  So it's not like their prosperity led them to atheism. It actually led them to seek out more gods to worship.  

So I was thinking, maybe it's because even when God gives us everything we need, out of His great wisdom, He doesn't give us everything we want, at least not on the timetable that we think is best, or at the level of effort that we are willing to put forth to receive it. And sometimes rather than accept that He knows better than we do what is best for us, we turn to other sources that we think can give us everything we want and right now, and with less effort than is required for real spiritual growth.  And of course, these spiritual get-rich-quick schemes, these junk food joys, can bring us momentary pleasures, but in the end they are like cotton candy, leaving us empty or worse, if we eat too much, with a spiritual stomach ache.
 

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about last night in my class. Thoughts?

Guess I spoke too soon, and something I read that I wanted to share

So...turns out that I may still be sicker than I thought.  I had stopped sucking on cough drops and cut back on my generic cold medicine to just twice a day, and I was down to just a mild, dry cough. And then somehow I ended up back at sore throat ville.  And increased congestion.  Is this a new cold? Or just the old one making a comeback, aided by the super cold weather we've been having? Who knows? I just know it sucks. I don't want to be sick any more? Do I not want to be sick any more enough to get to bed at a reasonable pre-11 time? Guess we'll find out...

In other non-sicky news, I was reading through this month's Ensign last night, and I found a "Gospel Classic" from President Packer titled "Strengthening the Less Active", adapted from an address he gave back in 1969.  I won't recap the whole thing for you here, but I felt like the crux of it was that we should ask less actives to participate more in the areas where they are able to (prayers, giving short talks and testimonies) and not be so worried that they'll be scared off if we ask them to participate.  Pres. Packer compares activity/participation to medicine and says that by not giving less actives opportunities to participate, it's like we invite them to the hospital but then take all the medicine for ourselves:

When a home teacher brings a lost sheep to meetings, it is only a beginning of his being found. Where can he be used for his spiritual benefit? Actually, there aren’t many places in which a leader can use a person who is struggling for worthiness. Unfortunately, it seems that those few situations in which we could use them—to offer prayers, to make brief responses, to bear testimony—are almost invariably reserved for the active: for the stake presidency, for the high council, for the bishopric, for the patriarch, for the auxiliary leaders. Indeed, we sometimes go to great lengths to import speakers and participants—to the loss of our hungry ones.

At a ward sacrament meeting I attended recently, a sister had been invited to sing whose husband was not active in the Church. He was, however, at the meeting. The bishop wanted a very special program for this occasion. His first announcement was: “Brother X, my first counselor, will give the opening prayer.” His second counselor gave the closing prayer.

How unfortunate, I thought. The three men in the bishopric struggle with such concern over the spiritually sick, then take the very medicine that would make those people well—activity, participation—and consume it themselves in front of the needy!

There are some fantastic stories that he shares and it just reminded me that what's important isn't so much that the talks and prayers and everything that happens at church be perfect, but that we give people opportunities to learn and grow.  That participation is probably more important than sitting and listening to others participate, even though both are important. 

He closes with a fantastic story of the principle in action in a stake conference he presided over, where opportunities were given to some who otherwise probably would not have been asked to speak, and great things happened. Anyway, I really liked the article and recommend it.

Time to Reflect

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?"

Old Book, New Book #12: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft -> The Miracle of Forgiveness

After what seemed like a pretty long time, I finally finished up "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft", and I have to say that it was a pretty good collection of short stories, and especially interesting considering how old these stories are, written at the beginning of the 1900s. Lovecraft has some favorite words ("eldritch", "Cyclopean", "foeter") that appear in probably all of these stories, and most of them fit within a mythology all of Lovecraft's creation, commonly known as the Cthulhu Mythos. The crux of this mythos is that at one point in the far distant past, the Earth was ruled by "Great Ones" who came from outside of our solar system and then were somehow killed off or forced to hide under the sea. These Great Ones, including Cthulhu, are waiting for their chance to retake power and rise again, and dark cults deal with them and work for their renewal. There were many variations on this theme in the book, dealing with creepy things coming from space or from under the sea. Other common themes were dreams, the ability to travel across space, and the ability to separate one's consciousness from one's body. Anyway, towards the end, the theme seemed to feel a little repetitive, but overall it was a decent read. The other interesting thing that Lovecraft almost always does is start the stories at the end. Like "the story behind the mysterious death/disappearance/etc of so-and-so is an interesting one". That kind of thing, where you usually already know how the story ends. Which is definitely not typical in today's fiction, and, for me at least, seemed to limit the suspense of some of the stories. However, sometimes there was a twist in which the story then continued forward once we'd caught up to the beginning, after going back and telling the backstory, if that makes sense.




The next book I've started is obviously a big change in theme, topic, subject matter, etc. I'm generally not the best at reading non-fiction, including books of a religious nature. But I was at the library the other day with just a few minutes to find something new to read, and after looking for a few works of fiction that I've been meaning to get to and not finding them, I remembered that I'd been thinking about reading this one. I've already heard "The Miracle of Forgiveness" spoken of highly, but at the same time, it seemed to carry a stigma with it along the lines of it being something that was only read by people working through serious sins. Which, from the few pages I've read so far, doesn't seem to be the case at all. A lot of what Pres. Kimball is talking about is the universality of sin and the universal need for repentance and forgiveness. Certainly having heard about this book for a very long time, it feels like I should know everything that's going to be said, but I'm sure there's more to it than might be assumed at first glance.

FSS 8: Stuff White People Really Like

This last weekend felt like a tribute to the red states. Which I feel good about, being that I am from one of those red states, myself. :)

Saturday morning we had an Elders Quorum activity in the which we drove out to the desert and shot lots of guns at stuff, so my Friday night was taken up mainly in making sure that everything was ready to go for Saturday morning. After driving about an hour west of Salt Lake, we pulled off the highway drove a short distance out into the hills to do some shooting. We started off with some trap shooting, shooting shotguns at clay pigeons.

After exhausting our supply of pigeons, we moved down to a different spot and tried out shooting rifles, handguns, and assault rifles. The assortment of weaponry on display was kind of amazing. Not being a gun owner myself, they really aren't on my radar. So I was a bit taken aback to see guys that I know pulling out handguns, AK-47s, and AR-15s. It was certainly an interesting experience to shoot all the different types of guns, although it might have been slightly more entertaining had we done a better job with targets. We brought some cheap soda cans to shoot at, but those were gone pretty quick and then it was kind of difficult to pick things to shoot at.

















After the shooting activity, I headed back to Salt Lake, making a brief stop by the Tripp ancestral mansion to say hello. In addition to including several hours of shooting, the day also featured a cheap Saturday night rodeo experience. The Riverton rodeo was only $6, so I headed out there with some friends. I was semi-surprised to find that Jerry Hurst, who taught at my high school was the rodeo clown for the evening. I remember being in Elementary School and him coming and doing some magic, so I knew that he was a rodeo clown, but I'd never actually seen him in action, since I never went to a rodeo until after leaving Grantsville behind.

Anyhow the rodeo was fun, albeit the talent level was maybe a tad low and at times the announcer didn't do a very good job of keeping on top of the action. Sometimes riders would come out of the shoots on horses while he was still talking about something else. Also there was no audible timer for the 8 second rides, at least not one that the audience could hear. But given the cost of admission it was tolerable.

With a full Saturday, Friday night and Sunday seemed fairly nondescript. Or maybe I just don't feel like typing anything more today. :)

The Return of Fin de Semana Stories

Remember when I was going to try to give more updates about what I'd been up to? Well its never too late for a second chance, right?

This past weekend was a pretty fun one. Friday night I went to Cafe Rio with about 10 people from my ward, and then after that we headed over to another friend's to watch Game 6 of the Jazz-Lakers series. The Jazz trailed by a lot for most of the game which made it pretty hard to watch. Then at the very end, they made a tremendous comeback only to fall 3 points short, with two chances to tie in the last 5 seconds. And thus ends the Jazz's season. I feel like it was a successful season, although if our goal is to win a championship, we need to make sure we've got all the pieces in place that we need. Right now, my hope is that they can hang on and stay healthy and outlive all the other current Western Conference contenders, but that seems like a bad way to try to win.

Anyway, Saturday I spent catching up on some errands that I needed to run (grocery shopping, paying bills, etc.) and then had a blind date Saturday night. It felt like a pretty typical blind date -- nothing to write home about, but thankfully not too painful. Maybe I should have a better attitude, but I rarely go into those things with high hopes. Not entirely sure why, but it does seem like if I have a hard enough time finding girls that like enough to want to pursue a relationship with, choosing from girls that I know, the probability of someone else (who in this case, doesn't hardly know me either) picking someone for me to go out with that I'm going to end up being interested is pretty low. I still feel like I went in with an open mind, but lets just say my expectations are pretty low on those things.

Finally, Sunday was pretty full of church stuff: ward breakfast, EQ Presidency meeting, church, three home teaching appointments, and ward prayer. In between some of those things, we managed to finally have someone come over and look at our room for rent and decide that they were interested in moving in. I'm not counting my chickens until they at least move some stuff in, and maybe not until I see that first rent check, but it sounds like a pretty done deal. So that was a pretty good thing to have happen. Finally, I finished off the night watching "School of Rock" with some friends, and got to point out the Spider move to some people who had never noticed it before.

Speaking of optimism, I'm tagging this post with "weekly feature", so we'll see if I can't keep it up.

My 2007 Christmas Card

Merry Christmas!



Pretty much along the same lines as last year, I'm slacking off on the physical Christmas card front, and giving you this cheaper, electronic version.

As I look back at the year that was 2007, I guess what probably stands out is all the traveling I did. I don't really consider myself a big travel nut, but this year I traveled to San Antonio, Palo Alto, Germany/Austria, and Chicago. Four places I'd never been, and in the case of Germany/Austria, a place I'd never really considered visiting. The trip to San Antonio was a family vacation to visit my brother and his family who live there, and the rest were all for school. If you want to read more about my trips, and/or see the pictures I took on my new digital camera, which I love, you can check out some of these links:

San Antonio (Pictures only)

Palo Alto (Pictures only)

Germany/Austria
Days 1 & 2 - Exploring Munich
Day 3 - Mass Transit Extravaganza
Day 4 - Stop looking at me, schwan
Day 5 - Austria, eh? Throw another shrimp on the barby!
Day 6- The depths of Hall
Day 7 - I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!
Day 8 - Monday Night Football
Day 9 - In with the Innsbruck Crowd
Days 10 & 11 - The Voyage Home
(Pictures only)

Chicago
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 1
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 2
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 3
Chicago Travelogue, Pt. 4
(Pictures only)

Here's a small sample of what you might find:











When I wasn't busy gallivanting around America and Europe, I spent most of my daytime hours working on my dissertation research. Getting my research project off the ground end up taking much longer than I had anticipated, but alerts are finally going out to doctors, although not quite as often as I'd like. Additionally, I passed my qualifying exams back in the spring, and its nice to have that step out of the way. I also presented a poster at our annual NLM training conference that was at Stanford University this summer. I also was on a panel at the AMIA Fall Symposium. (Luckily the number of people who attended doesn't have to go in my CV.)



Its my goal to finish by the end of the coming summer, although given my inability to guess how long things would take me so far, that might or might not happen. At the very least, much of what I'm doing now is entirely up to me, and other than one small fix, hopefully I won't be waiting on other people. I've got a lot of writing to do in the coming months and hopefully that will go well. Certainly I would hope to have graduated by this time next year, which seems doable, but at the same time seems like it would still be quite the achievement.

Aside from school, I was released from being the executive secretary for my student ward in May, and was given what seems like a pretty cushy job as the ward communications co-chair, at least in comparison to the busy jobs I had before. Pretty much, I run the ward website, and make sure that people get their pictures taken, and that we have a sacrament program on Sundays. I've got a small, but efficient committee which makes things pretty nice.

Also this year, I moved to a new apartment in February just a few blocks away from my last one. The guys I live with here are nice and relatively clean, and in the brief moments that we're here at the same time we have good times.

(Picture not taken in February)

And yes, I continue to be single. I've managed to go on 16 dates so far this year, which is a 15% increase over last year, for those of you keeping score at home (mom, dad, I'm looking in your direction). Not as many as I'd like, still, but a lot of times I just don't get excited about dating for dating's sake. If there's someone I'd like to get to know better, or that I'd like to spend time with, then yes, I'm all for that. So, yes, I do look at the numbers, but try not to put too much stock into them.

In the meantime, I still had time for plenty of random fun this past year.


I went snowshoeing for the first time.


Back in the spring I won our ward Guitar Hero tournament, and then retired effective immediately so I could go out on top. (Not really, but I haven't played much since then.)


I did a fair amount of bowling.




I went to a couple Salt Lake Bees baseball games, and tried out the "Fireworks" preset on my camera.


I once again had tickets in the Muss, and only missed one Utah home game. Beating UCLA 44-6 was of course the highlight of the season.


Halloween was fun.

I have to say that looking back it was a pretty great year, and I have no reason to believe that next year won't be just as great. At times I've wondered if I'm on the right path, and then I have to realize that if I weren't where I am now, I would have missed out on a lot of experiences, and especially on meeting so many great people that I'm lucky to know. I hope that this Christmas finds you all doing well.