Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving! I sure did. On Wednesday Keith and I drove up to Pocatello with his family to spend a few days with his mom's side of the family. I was too busy having fun to remember to take pictures, sorry. We ate, played games, and ate some more. Wednesday evening Keith, his aunt, and I went to see the play "Forgotten Carols." His cousin was in the choir and it was fantastic. During intermission we got to go backstage (Keith has connections) and meet Michael McLean (the producer, star, etc). On Thanksgiving morning some of us went to shoot clay pigeons. I do not have photographic evidence, but I did actually hit a few of them. I am not, however, very skilled with firearms and have a bruise on my shoulder to prove it.

Friday morning we headed back to Utah and Keith and I got dropped off in Layton to visit the Branch's for a couple of days. No Thanksgiving at the Branch house would be complete without the annual creation of "the Village." Everyone gets a house made of graham crackers (okay, so not really gingerbread) to decorate. Each village always has frozen pond in the middle and a path with benches. It is fun to see the new inventions that get added each year.


Keith and I were neighbors :-) with a shared backyard. We have an M&M river, firewood piles, a tree, and a bench. The wreath on my backdoor (the house on the right) was a gift from Emily.

Our front yards. Please note the weeping willow in my front yard on the left. I was quite pleased with myself.
Emily and her house with a backyard full of gummy dinosaurs.
Keith putting up his Christmas lights (bits of Nerd Rope candy).

Hunter, Emily, and Zac with the finished village.


On Saturday we met up with Jason, Natalie, and their wonderful family to hike on Antelope Island. There were buffalo, great views, geocaches, and fun bouldering rocks.


It doesn't look very tall in the picture, but this was an impressive rock that Emily and I conquered.

And now it is back to the grindstone for three weeks. But after that... oh, good times are comin'.

To the universe

Way back in May, way down south in Ushuaia, Argentina I needed a good, long book. I was facing an 18 hour bus ride, and 24 hours of alone time on a plane before I was back in Puyallup. So I wandered into a book store and found a small shelf with some English books. The selection was small, and I kept on going back to one fat classic: Moby Dick.

Perfect! I had spent the last four months living by the sea, it was a classic, it was long; what could be better? Oh, dear.

It is now near the end of November and I am only a bit over half way through.

Herman, my dear, what were you thinking!?! Yes, you have some beautiful prose in there. Some of your words just beg to be read aloud, over and over. But what is the deal with all the long chapters about why you think a whale is a fish, or how you get oil from whale fat, or all the theories on the origin of the word "whale." I am more interested in biology than most people out there and even I don't care to read an entire chapter on why the whale's forehead isn't really it's forehead.

Now for the reason I am posting about this. And, no, it is not to discourage any of you from reading Moby Dick. On the contrary, it is well worth it (just don't do it when you are in the mood for some light reading). But as my friend Megan would say, if you want something to happen, just put it out to the universe. Now usually she would prescribe this as a way to deal with "boy situations," but I think it will work for this as well. So here I am putting it out to the universe that I will finish the entire, long, saga of Moby Dick before Christmas break. That is, before December 20th.

Sunsets

If a time of day can hold memories and emotions, the evening does for me. Sunsets will always remind me of home. When my parents built our house they walled it with windows. I remember pressing myself against the dinning room windows as a child, looking at the evening sky all around me, and feeling as if I was within it. Evenings could be chaotic; Dad would be getting home, Mom would be finishing dinner while trying to get us to set the table, round up siblings, or just plain help. But the great thing about all those windows was that no matter what I was doing, or what errand Mom sent me on to another part of the house, I could keep an eye on the gentle (and occasionally dramatic) changes in the evening sky. The kitchen lights would glow into the newly arriving night as we all settled down to eat.

I have seen incredible sunsets from mountain tops and never ending desert plains, but those childhood sunsets over the back pasture are the ones I treasure the most. They are the ones in my dreams after a day of telephone conversations with family.

Provo sunsets infusing color into the brown Wasatch mountains capture my attention and make me smile. But mostly they remind me that further west there are sheep bedding down, evening prayers being said, and family.

Math Atheist

Calvin just seems to have an amazing ability to understand my feelings about the GRE. I have been focusing on studying for the math section lately which has led me down the path of becoming a "math atheist." Although that will not come as a shock to anyone; it may come as a disappointment to my wonderful Dad who has tired to make me cherish math as he does. Sorry Dad.