Happy Spring!

Spring has officially set in here in Rexburg. It's a bitter-sweet time of year, since the snow melts and the days tend to be warmer, and there's lots of heavenly rain; but all of this is accompanied by a monstrous wind that literally takes your breath away. The rain benefits two-fold: it helps to melt the snow away, and keeps the dust from completely consuming everything. Of course, this is on days it actually does rain, which has been averaging about once every other week, and once in a while we'll get another dusting of snow. But when it rains, it's a wonderful thing!

I love the rain. It's so refreshing and beautiful. I remember the summer Mike and I started dating. He had been going to school in Idaho for two summers already and had only seen it drizzle a few times. My first summer up there, in August - after the semester had ended and Mike had left me for Arid-zona - there were at least five all-out thunderstorms, in ONE MONTH! It was a miracle! Of course, Mike was a little jealous, but what're ya gonna do?

Anyway, so all this springiness is what accounts for the change in decore. Obviously, it is a St. Patrick's Day theme, but that works the entire spring, in my opinion. What says "spring" better than St. Patrick's Day? A day to celebrate the man who loved a people enough to dedicate his life to bringing the hope and truth of Christianity to so many of them. It's a great thing!

Trip to D.C.

This last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Washington, DC. It was for a professional conference that I am affiliated with called the AIHA (American Industrial Hygiene Association). They paid for my plane ticket, my hotel stay (Fairview Marriot, normally $300/night), food, and transportation. 

I left the Idaho Falls airport on Friday afternoon. Once we were airborne, I looked out my window and saw the Grand Tetons rising above the sky and had to take a picture. It looked so cool! 

I had a lay over in Denver, and noticed these signs all over the place! I had never seen one before. They were located on the outside of bathrooms and emergency exits. 

On Saturday night, I had the opportunity to meet up with an old college roomate that now works for the Department of Defense. He asked me what I would like to see, and I replied "Ya know? I have never been to Mt. Vernon." It was a little bit later, and the gates were all locked. Unfortunately, we couldn't see a thing! I decided to take a picture by this sign, as proof of my visit. I mean, there wasn't much else I could do. 

On Sunday afternoon, we had a few hours to go do some sight-seeing. We decided to visit Arlington National Cemetery. This was one of many sobering sights. 

Of course, we made it to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier auditorium. 

John F. Kennedy's burial. 

The view from Kennedy's burial, overlooking the Mall. 

This was my first time visiting Iwo Jima, the Marine Corps War Memorial. It was a lot bigger in real life that I had ever imagined! In the picture are fellow students who also attended the conference. The second guy from the left is actually in my sister Holly's ward in Iowa, which was kind of fun. Everyone else is representing University of Utah, Utah State, University of Michigan, and Murray State.

I couldn't help but laugh at this one. While in the airport, I saw a ton of John McCain memorabilia. It was kind of sad that they still had it. The conference was great overall. It was a great networking opportunity, and it's always fun to visit the monuments in our nations capital. 

Climbing Out of the Classics Crisis

Great Books by Authors Who Aren't Dead Yet, I think, should catch some attention. It's written by a professor of mine here at BYU-I--he teaches my American Literature class. And don't worry, he's not so egotistical as to tell me about it himself, I actually found out from a friend who is in another class of his. Apparently, he has a competition going between him and his students in that class (individually) to get the most followers. I told him I had found out about his blog, but I had promised my friend not to officially follow his blog until after the semester since he is already winning the race.

So, not all good books were written by dead authors? Fascinating! Who knew!

I was recently in a debate with my boss, who has a number of degrees, one of which is a doctorate in classics - which means he studied lots of Latin, Greek, old literature, and ancient politics and humanities. I told him I had tortuously forced my way through The Iliad but thought it was one of the most boring books I have ever read, and aside from that, poorly written. He was astonished at my feelings.

"How could you possibly think that?! The Iliad is a masterpiece!"
"The Iliad is pointless. But if you insist on liking it, I wont hold it against you."

After a little of this back and forth, we finally broke into formal debate. He argued that The Iliad had proven itself over millennia, which is evident in the literal plethora of readers who have "enjoyed" it over that time.

I gave him the "Are you kidding me?" face and asked, "So, because a lot of people - most of whom are dead - love it, it's great writing?"
"Well, you can't argue with them, can you?"
"Yeah, I can. A, they're dead. B, they have been told to like it and for centuries the teacher was always right. C, who says half those people even know what "good" writing is, if, indeed, it is definable?" (I believe it is definable, but I tend to avoid the argument because it is nearly impossible to prove due to the varying values people hold.)

Eventually he did acknowledge that basing the quality of a book on its age or by the number of people who have read it was inaccurate and unfair, but he stuck to his opinion that the book was phenomenal.

I'm not saying if you like The Iliad you obviously have no sense of what good literature is, I'm only saying that we can't allow ourselves to be wrapped up in the world of classics when there is great literature being written right under our noses! Let's broaden our horizons!

Internship!

Since last summer, I have been working towards preparing for a specific internship. There is this nuclear site that is about 70 miles southwest of us called Idaho National Lab. It's a very famous lab that was first established in the 1950's to develop nuclear energy. They actually have the first nuclear reactor out there! Anyways, this 'site' takes on interns from our school occasionally from different majors. Mostly Engineering and Occupational Health and Safety (mine). I was originally trying to get this internship starting in January 2009, but they didn't have internship money in their budgets unfortunately. They were actually cutting back on some employees at the beginning of the year. Needless to say, I didn't get the internship I had hoped for starting in January. Instead, I have been doing one with my current job at the Safety Office on campus. Last week, I received a call from them asking me if I was still interested for an internship this summer. I replied "Absolutely!" Their manager called me on Monday morning to interview me over the phone. He just asked some get to know you questions about myself, my experience, etc. He said he would call back to let me know if I got the internship. An hour later, his secretary called me to inform me that I got it!! I was so excited! I couldn't even concentrate the rest of Monday! I will start in April and work until September. There is a chance that I could work through the Fall semester until I graduate with Malie in December. Anyways, just wanted to share the good news. 

Forum Day

At BYU-Idaho, each department gets to invite a guest speaker once per year to enlighten us on something pertenant to the college department. For example, in the past we have had Michael Medved (Jewish Conservative talk radio), Nolan Archibald (CEO Black and Decker), and many more. These are some really big names! So February happened to be the Health Science Department's turn to put on a Forum. We invited Lt. Colonel Winterton from the US Air Force, who is an epidemiologist. Last week, my advisor asked me if I would give a seven minute speech at the Forum Breakfast. I agreed to do it, I thought it would be a pretty cool experience. Then the thought hit me of who was going to be at the breakfast...Vice-President Eyring (President Eyring's son), Colonel Winterton, the Dean of my college, my Professors, and four other guests (all of which are either Presidents or Directors of their respective companies). I think when I made that realization, my stomach had inverted itself! It was quite an intimidating thought to give a speech in front of these people. But, after Mal heard me practice reciting the speech over and over last night, I was feeling pretty comfortable. I gave the speech this morning and felt really good about it. After that, another student spoke, and then Vice-President Eyring addressed us. He looks and talks just like his father, the resemblance is quite astonishing. After that I conducted a Forum Panel by introducing the four guests, and facilitating the Q&A session with them. It was quite a day! Definately not what I was used to. Later that afternoon, we had the actual Forum. Lt. Colonel Winterton speak. He did such a good job, it was very interesting. There was a story he told of when he was in Afghanistan to immunize children five years and under. Some of the villagers were getting very suspicious of the Americans because they thought these immunizations were "sterilizing" their children. There were a lot of upset people, as you could imagine. As the crowds continued to grow restless, Colonel Winterton marched in the middle of the crowd, grabbed a canister full of immunization, and chugged the whole thing. I don't think anything else needed to be said. The crowd dispersed, and all was calm. Immunizations continued. Don't we all wish we could do something heroic like that?

Think Twice!

I am taking an Environmental Health class this semester, and it has been very interesting. There was this concept that we reviewed called "Defect Action Levels". I don't know if anyone has heard of this concept before, but it goes a little like this. It is absolutely impossible to keep food preparation areas 100% sanitized, I think we can all understand that. Due to that concept, the FDA has come out with these Defect Action Levels to permit minor exposures to rodent hair, insects, fly eggs, larvae, etc. Here are some levels that I'm studying for my next exam:

Peanut Butter - 30 insect fragments per 100 grams, or 1 rodent hair per 100 grams

Tomatoes - 10 fly eggs per 100 grams

Broccoli - 60 aphids or mites per 100 grams

Corn - 2 larvae skins per 24 lbs

Apple Butter - 5 insects per 100 grams

Berries - 4 larvae or 10 whole insects per 500 grams

Ground Paprika - 75 insect fragments per 25 grams

Chocolate - 80 insects fragments per 100 grams

Canned Sweet Corn - 2 3 mm-length larvae, cast skins or fragments

Tomato Paste - 2 maggots or 30 eggs per 100 grams

Wheat Flour - 75 insect fragments per 50 grams

Hope you enjoyed a little piece of my study material!

Happy Valentine's!

February 12th was the 1-year anniversary of Mike's proposal, and of course, my acceptance. He surprised me with these tulips! They're so beautiful! And they have lots of blooms. Mike never gets tired of watching them open in the morning and close at sunset. (It is pretty cool.) The school was selling them at the flower sale they have every Friday. (This week they had it on Thursday as well to take full advantage of men with girlfriends and single girls. By the look of the crowds they were drawing, it worked.)










For Valentine's, we made dinner together. We did this last year and liked it so much we decided to make a tradition of it. It's a lot of fun to cook together, especially something we've never cooked before.





Mike put me in charge of finding a dessert. I was looking things up on the internet, and saw a number of recipes for red velvet cake and Mike said he loved it. I've heard of it, but I've never had it, so I figured now was a good time to try. The best part was, we only needed to buy a small thing of buttermilk and two packages of cream cheese for the whole thing. It was kind of an unspoken goal to choose recipes that only required us to get one or two things for them. It came out really well. Here I am just starting to frost the first layer with cream cheese frosting.


For dinner we decided to have lobster tails since they were selling for $4.99 each - which is AMAZING. Since I've only ever cooked whole lobsters, I wasn't sure what the best method was for cooking just tails, so again, we looked up recipes on-line and found a really easy one where we just split the tails, butter 'em up, toss a little seasoning on there, and stick 'em in the oven in a pan with a bit of water in it for 20 minutes. They came out great!



For future reference though: cutting lobster tails in half is definitely not as easy as everyone makes it sound.


Mike (and my hand) holding up our freshly chopped bugs.



















Mike shelling and deveining shrimp for the first time ever. He was intimidated at first, but when I showed him how easily the shells peel off, he jumped right in. Then he breaded them and fried them up. Again, we got half-a-pound of large raw shrimp for $3.00. If this is what a recession means, I'm all for it.









Here I am sticking the lit candles into their vases of water. (We had this all left over from last year.) You can see the plates of food. Aside from the shrimp and lobster, we made hassleback potatoes. (Or I should say, Mike made hassleback potatoes. He actually did most of it 'cause I was busy frosting the cake and sauteeing veggies. Those are on a different plate.) We both agreed the potatoes were a little dry, but hey, it was our first time, and only having one semi-flop looks like a good record. They were definitely edible though! Mike finished his off and I ate half of mine and saved the rest for today. Everything else tasted soooo good, and Mike just kept muttering, "Mmm... lobster," under his breath for the rest of the night.




Then, after about a 30-minute digestion period, we topped it all off with our red velvet cake. I saw one recipe that had coconut sprinkled over the whole of it, and I thought, "Hey, if I can do that, I don't have to work so blasted hard to keep those meddlesom red crumbs from showing through the frosting," and I was right. It also gave it a little extra oomph to the presentation and, naturally, it tasted good.

All-in-all, a very fun Valentine's evening. We went out to the cheap theater after dinner, and just spent the rest of the night hanging out together. It was so nice not to have to worry about homework since we have a 3-day weekend (4-day for me, since my only class on Tuesday was cancelled!) and Mike had already gotten some studying done for a test earlier that day, after breakfast at IHOP. Every time one of those endless buttermilk pancake commercials comes on in the few hours of TV I watch a week, I ask him if we can go. He told me he had a surprise for me, so we jumped into the car in our pajamas and it wasn't 'til we reached Hitt Rd. that I figured it out. Oh it was tastey.