Our pets, interesting details

Ah. Finally I update the blog eh? School is nearing a grueling end. We only have one more week and then finals til the semester's end and the beginning of our 2nd honeymoon in Rock Springs. I have done slightly better on my tests than the last ones. Hopefully enough to keep my GPA up so my scholarship is still in effect. Sara's job is not turning out as amazing as we had hoped. She is always scheduled for 20 hours a week but rarely is able to get more than 8 or 9. She goes to work on time and everything but then a few hours into the shift they send everyone home. So to make up for it, I've been trying to work extra hours whenever I can. We're lucky to be in a position where that is possible. Last weekend Sara saw twilight with some friends and I stayed here to do homework with a short break in between for a ping pong tournament. Sara enjoyed Twilight, homework was awesome as usual for me, but the ping pong was terrible. I got beat so severely by a kid that it looked as though I had never played ping pong in my life. Then on Saturday I went fishing on Bear Lake with my friend Kade. We borrowed Uncle Bob's boat in Fish Haven and had a blast. No fish though. On our trip up to get the boat we saw a huge flock of grouse. I can't hunt them in Idaho but it was enough to inspire me to take time off tomorrow to go hunting at temple flat. Thanksgiving will be a nice break for us and a good time to relax and forget about school before we get worked over by finals week.

And here are some random pictures that I took and/or edited of some of our more mundane experiences. We have discovered that we have a lot of creatures lurking around our house. You may remember the ducks I spotted back in July or something. Now we have 2 pheasants, a cat, and a few squirrels too.




Once upon a time we were chilling in the living room. Sara was immersed in Twilight, I was sitting on the couch when I found a scrunchee. Being fececious I thought I would fling the scrunchee up in the air so it would land on the pillow by Sara's head. Well that didn't work because the scrunchee got so high up in the air that it got scared and hung onto the ceiling instead as shown in this photo. Some may argue that I was in fact aiming to land the scrunchee on Sara's head but as the picture shows if the scrunchee had followed its desired and expected parabolic trajectory then it would land 4 inches away from her head. Sometimes you just can't count on physics. The scrunchees are still hanging there too.

And lastly when it rains here the roof and gutter system isn't so hot so we have setup a system to catch most of the water. We call it "The 3 bucket system" Unique huh? They range in size from an ice cream bucket to a dish detergent bucket to a 5 gallon bucket. I'm still considering using the grill. Enjoy!

down with the sickness

Monday this week I got some sickness that has been working me over all week. Monday afternoon and Tuesday I only went to the classes I absolutely had to and the rest of the week I've been weak or achy. I still have it but it's not half as bad as it was. We also registered for classes for Spring semester. Last semester I worked my schedule to have every thursday off so I could go to Wyoming to do on-site work but I have to take a class before I can continue in my major and it's only offered 10:30 on Tuesday and Thursday. If it was at 7:30 I could do both but not 10:30. And that's the only class I have on Tuesday and Thursday. I may have to retake a couple classes too. We had a test in one of my classes and when I left the test I was feeling pretty good about it but then I got the worst score I ever have in that class. I had the same experience with my last math test too but I think I will probably pass that one. Which brings up another problem. If my grades aren't so good I lose my scholarship and have to fork out an extra $700 a semester. Sweet. Work has been really slow this week for me. The architectural firm didn't call me back on Tuesday as they supposedly "promised". I wil try one more time then give up on them. I finally got some work to do today. The only reason I did okay last week was because I got work from when I went on-site. So I'm not sure what's going to happen next semester when I don't have that work to fall back on. We will get a bonus over Christmas break. If one of the on-site companies I work at gets a bid for a new project they are planning to use us for their drafting work and that will happen over the break. We will pretty much live in Rock Springs for 2 weeks. One week before and one after Christmas. Sara will work 1 or 2 days Monday -Tuesday, then come up with me the rest of the week. But, again, that's all dependent on whether this company gets the contract. I will still try to work full time over the break but there's never a guarantee that 40 hrs will be a possibility.

The Adventures of Fred and Sara

A lot has happened since the last update. Mostly positive. We got the Honda back from the transmission place and to our joy it goes in reverse..... and forward! It wasn't half as expensive as it would've been if the dealer had done it and I think we got a good deal. My work became extremeley busy over the past 2 weeks -- so much that I ened up having enough overtime that my paycheck coming this week will be the equivalent to how much we would get if we were both working. So it's like we're not even missing a beat with our income(s). Definitely a blessing of paying tithing. I also made a sales call this week to an architectural firm based out of Logan and I think we have a really good chance of getting the job. It would be so nice to not have to always go to Wyoming to do drafting work. And, having more customers decreases the likelihood of company "slow time". It will still occur, though. If this firm decides to use us for their drafting work then I will get a lovely commission check which makes it well worth all the time I spend soliciting to companies. Today Sara got an interview with a call center that does surveys out of North Logan and got hired starting Tuesday. I think this job will be a lot better for her personality. Payday loan companies make their employees into a different animal. You either have to be really agressive (or mean) or quit. Whereas asking someone to take a survey is a friendly conversation. She also won't have commission hanging over her head. And from initial appearance it seems as though she sets her own schedule. She has to work 4-10 but she can pick 2 of the 3 or 4 days she works (reason: if you work 3 days a week one of the days has to be Saturday -- not so if you work 4 days). She never has to work Sundays either

Tomorrow we are going to the Augustana concert at Weber as soon as I get out of my test at 3:30. We figured we ought to do something fun together while Sara isn't working. Woo hoo!

pumpkin carving

The deer hunt over the weekend didn't go as planned but it was exciting nonetheless. We didn't see any more bucks but did see quite a few deer. Friday night we hunted up Mill Canyon where we saw the buck on Monday but didn't see any deer there. We did see some grouse and I got one to bring home. I realized that I like to hunt grouse just about as much as I like to hunt deer. I'm still trying to convince Sara to try it whenever I cook it.

Sara went down to Kaysville and chillaxed with her sister and threw a baby shower for one of her friends. Seems like it went well. They were worried that the mom-to-be wouldn't make it to the baby shower but she did although it sounds like she may have had it the next day.

While I was in L-town mom and dad mentioned they had a ton more pumpkins than they needed so they sent me home with a couple which we carved Monday night which brings me to the next item of interest: Sara was at home on Monday night so we go to have FHE for once. She was forced to quit on Thursday from her job so she has every night free. But that means getting back to the grindstone of looking for another job. I got a raise last week but unfortunately it just isn't enough to cover all the bills while I'm not working full-time.

Also, around the same time the reverse went out in my car. I took it to Honda to have them look at it and they glanced at it ( really, that's all they did they didn't touch anything) and said it would cost 720.00 to look at the transmission. And for that useless information they charged us 50 bucks. How nice. So we took it to another placed called one-way transmissions and he glanced at it for free and will take the transmission apart for 600. Much more reasonable. But in the meantime we are down one car. Good timing though because Sara isn't using her car. I got a good vibe from the transmission mechanic (despite the fact that he used the back of a paper towel to write down my information) but I'm concerned with the company name/output. One-Way Transmissions? The car already goes one way! I made sure to specify that I would like the car to go both ways - not just reverse or forward. Hopefully I made that sufficiently clear to him. More news to follow on that possible adventure.

Deer hunt

The deer hunt was a blast this weekend! It was so fun to get up in the mountains and away from school and work for a couple days. I don't think we could've asked for much better weather. The roads weren't slick and it got nice and warm by mid morning. Of course it's always bitter cold at 6 when we got up but that's to be expected on most days in October. Me, Keith, and Steven saw 2 bucks but didn't take any shots. I couldn't tell what they were in my scope and plus if I can't tell they are bucks from that far away I probably would have a hard time hitting one. I saw one deer about 10 minutes after we started brushing that I could've nabbed but it was just a doe. Mom's party was a lot of fun too. We liked seeing everybody just as much as Mom did. The basketball game was extremely intense. I was so beat by night's end. Then we had to head back so I could get up early to do my homework at the house. I was kindof worried that I may fall asleep on the way home but we ended up talking the whole way home. We have been around eachother the whole weekend but haven't had much time together to just talk.

Next morning I did homework til church at 1 then we went to Kaysville after church to see Sara's sister Katie who is in town from Chicago. We haven't seen her since the wedding so it was nice to have a more relaxed atmosphere. We played clue until someone cheated and then it became not so fun. grrr. We came back around 10:30 then it was back to homework til 2:45 when I gave up. I worked on it before, after, and sometimes during classes and finally got it done 4 minutes before it was due. What a pain. I also got the results of my tests back from last week. On the Monday morning class I did the best in the class on the test. I have no clue how - maybe the teacher liked the line made as a result of the test getting pulled out of my hand. I didn't get 100 on it but the teacher is one of those cool ones where he thinks every test will have at least 100%. So, he took my grade and added points to it so that I got the 100 and everyone else got boosted up the same number of points. I don't know what I really got on the test but the 100 sure makes me feel good. The Thursday test, though, was a bear! I have refrained from speaking about it all week to spare others from a possible slough of angry words directed at the professor. Want to know what the class average was? 50.7 %. And the teacher doesn't even care. He thinks that his teaching is flawless and if the class average is really low it's because he just got a stupid batch of kids - so in other words - no curve. I got a 65 on the test and was happy with that. I guessed on 13 of the 20 questions. Total guesses! All I can say is I must be a good guesser. Word is, there are a lot of mechanical engineering students who lose their scholarships each year as a result of this class. I have lost mine before but appealed the loss and got it back. I had a few B's that they didn't like but apparently they don't have forgiveness for D's. Sara also did pretty good on her chemistry test. Probably better than I did when I had to suffer through that class.

Me and Dad also went hunting Monday night up Mill Canyon. We saw lots of deer and at just before dark we saw 3 deer. One of which was a 2x3 buck. I had it in my scope just as it went over the ridge and looked back at me. I fired a shot and the deer jumped about a foot in the air but then I never saw it again. Man I really needed Frank there to help me shoot him. We have mad skills in that area as evident by my first buck up 6 mile. It only took me 17 shots to down that deer and it would've been more if Frank wasn't shooting too. It was so much fun to shoot at one though. It would've been a nice deer too. Dang.

Happy Winter

Yesterday morning when we headed to class at 7:30 we were greeted by the unpleasant sight of snow. It sounds like we didn't get near as much as Mom and Dad did, but there was probably an inch of snow on the ground. Lucky for us, it did melt by noon but it was enough to motivate our landlord to finally turn on the heat and fix one of the holes in the roof of our patio. We were thinking we would need more food storage so we went out and got 5 pounds of cheese, a tub of butter, and 25 pounds of cookie dough. Okay that's not exactly true.... The weather is supposed to be nicer this weekend for the deer hunt though. Oh man, we are so ready for the weekend. We spent the whole last weekend pretty much cooped up in the house doing homework or work. We finished about 1:00 AM Sunday night which made getting up to snow at 7:30 6 hours later even worse. We got out once on Saturday night to go see Eagle Eye and eat at Pier 49 pizza then it was back to homework. By the way, I moderately recommend Eagle Eye (only moderately because I previously highly recommended Batman). But really it's a good one. Pier 49 was a little disappointing. I expected the food to be so delicious that I would be blown away but alas that didn't happen. We ate it all anyway.

Test #1 for me this week was bad news bears. For starters the test was at 7:30 - bad any day. The test had 60 questions to be done in 50 minutes. At 40 minutes the dude said we had 10 minutes left and I was on # 30. Then 5 minutes later no one had handed in their test yet so he said " Okay 5 minutes left - you better start guessing". That would have been a good idea if the test wasn't short answer. To me, a guess is where you take a shot in the dark and have a 50/50 or a 25% chance of getting it right by circling a random T, F, A, B, C, or D. This guy was such a goon too that when the time was up and only 3 people had handed in their test he had his little grunt TA's go and RIP the tests out of people's hands. So, the last problem I was working on has the start of a sentence then half a word then a long squiggly line to the end of the page (created as a direct result of the ripping). How lame. I can't say that I hold a special place in my heart for that teacher or the TA's.

But I can't stop to gripe about that because I have a test tomorrow and then a big kahuna test on Thursday. Then it's the weekend but I can't think about that much because I have a buttload of homework due on Monday. I guess the teachers up here think that a fall break means a vacation for them and slave labor for you. Sara has a big test on Monday.

An interesting Formula

First of all, don't be scared by this picture - there is a reason. My hair is getting pretty long. In class I'm constantly pulling my 'wings' back behind my ears like a girl with long hair. Now that it's fall and the weather changes from hot hot to cold cold my hair is also changing shape. In the morning when I go to class it's cold cold and the hair freezes to my head but then during the day since I am only in one building my hair slowly freaks out like you see here. This isn't that bad actually. So I have been trying to think of how to describe this phenomenon. The only way I can think of to describe it is that it's like super mario where you get a mushroom and get bigger. By days end I feel like someone has mounted a fluffy mushroom on my head as shown. I guess I probably ought to cut my hair eh?

This is also a fairly sad picture as well. I have been using eraser A on the left for 5 years. It started out looking like eraser B on the right. Now A is so small that when I erase I am really using my fingers more than the eraser. I have calluses on my fingertips. So, the time has come to retire eraser A. He has served me well so here is a poem dedicated to eraser A.

Eraser A
What a sad day
We cannot play
Let's go to the bay
Hey
I just may
Eraser A
The end