We enjoyed spending time with Janet, Mom and Dad this weekend.  One of the highlights was going to Border's to see if they had a book Janet wanted.  They didn't, but we amused ourselves at the Riverwoods.  There were many Christmas decorations and lights, and we all enjoyed the free carriage ride around the Riverwoods.  Since no one was in line behind us, we got to take a longer route, so the ride was seven minutes instead of four.

After the carriage ride we passed through an awesome toy/candy store.  It was like the stores you see in movies: crowds of holiday shoppers, kids (and adults) playing with all the toys, and a whole wall full of candy, including a life size Christmas tree made of candy.  On the drive home we detoured through the Indian Hills neighborhood to see the houses with extravagant light displays.  A quick trip to Border's ended up being a fun (and free) family activity.

Done, finished, completed, over, concluded, ended.

Those are all words that describe my college undergraduate experience.  It feels pretty good.  Of course, that is assuming I passed all my classes.  I'm still harboring a slight fear that I didn't pass biochem, but everyone seemed to struggle with the final, so I think I'm alright.

So, what am I going to do now?  Look for a job.  It seems that jobs are quite limited in the Provo area, and I don't think I'm willing to commute to Salt Lake City, so it might take awhile to get a good job.  It would be nice if I could get a job at BYU, and since they finally ended the hiring freeze, it might be a possibility, if I'm lucky.

Although I studied a lot, I kept myself from going crazy by doing a few other things.

We put up our Christmas tree, and did some Christmas shopping.  We put colored lights on the tree since that is what we always had growing up, and it makes the tree more friendly.  I think most people here put white lights and matching ornaments on their tree so it is elegant and pretty, but I prefer the more homey, friendly look.  Note:  The majority of those presents are things we are giving other people, they are not all for us.

I made some cookies for a 12 days of Christmas thing the compassionate service committee did for a sister in the ward.  If you ever do something like this, don't choose 11 pipers piping.  It is quite difficult to think up a good present for that day.  Five golden rings or two turtle doves would have been much easier, but I was at the end of the list, so all the easy ones were taken.  If you can't tell what the cookies are, they are trumpets.  I fashioned a cookie cutter myself by reshaping two metal heart cookie cutters.  

I would put pictures of us up, but we look kind of chubby in the pictures we took.  It's a good thing I signed up for the BYU Wellness program.  By completing all the challenges and getting a health screening, we can each get $200 back from our health insurance premium.  I'm totally going to do it.

Thanksgiving Crafts

We spent Thanksgiving in Kaysville at Brian's parents' house.  Most of the Prestwich side of the family was there, and we enjoyed good company, good food, and lots of fun.

I made this blueberry pie.  It looked good and tasted good, but the filling didn't set, so it was runny inside.

Like all good Thanksgivings, this one included crafts!

We made this ornament by gluing folded fabric squares onto a Styrofoam ball.  It took awhile, but I think it looks good, and I really like it.

This ornament is just melted pony beads (in a mold) with wire wrapped around.

I didn't have time to make this one, but it is pretty easy.  Maybe when I'm done with classes I can finish it.

The Blizzard of 2010

Tuesday morning, campus was buzzing with talk of the blizzard that was to come.  At lunchtime I got an email from BYU about it with a quote from the National Weather Service that said it would be a blizzard much bigger than anything we have seen for several years.  Later in the day, I got 18 text messages, two phone calls, and one voice mail from BYU warning me about the blizzard and informing me that campus would be closed except for essential services, like the basketball games that evening.  We kept waiting for the blizzard to come.  This is what it looked like the next morning:

Last night we did get some real snow.  We got 5 inches here in Provo, and up in Salt Lake over a foot of snow fell.  We had an exciting, snowy drive to the airport and back late last night, but I was sad this morning when it was cleared up and BYU didn't close down.

Yesterday

I was sustained in my new calling, so now I can tell you what it is.  If you guessed compassionate service committee you were right!

Also yesterday I had an NMS moment.  NMS stands for National Merit Scholar, and it is a joke in my family that those who are smart academically often do dumb things.  If you find yourself lacking common sense and doing stupid things sometimes, do not despair.  It just means you are smart.  Anyway, yesterday I got out the rice cooker to cook some rice to go with our meal.   The sauce to go on the rice was on the stove, and I was trying to keep an eye on it while deciding how much rice to make.  I pulled out all the accessories that we keep inside the rice cooker like the paddle and measuring cup, and I poured in one cup of rice.  I measured out the two cups of water and poured it in, and promptly saw two cups of water with rice bits flowing all over the counter top and down onto the floor.  Without thinking, I had taken out the pan of the rice cooker with the other stuff and therefore poured the rice and water directly into the electric heating part of the cooker.  As a result, water and rice have ended up in all parts of the rice cooker and in all parts of the kitchen in general.  As it has dried, we have been able to shake out a lot of the rice, but there are still places where the little rice grains have jammed themselves in.  When the rice cooker dries completely, we'll plug it in to see if it still works.  At least it wasn't plugged in when I poured water into it.

New calling

At tithing settlement last Sunday, the bishop asked how our callings were going.  I informed him that I did not have a calling.  Monday night the executive secretary called to ask if I could come in for an interview Tuesday.  Guess what calling I was extended?  That was fast work by the bishop.

If you are bored and want to continue your life long learning, check out this website.  Apparently, Independent Study offers free courses (not for credit) on all sorts of topics, from religious to temporal to spelling.  Some of them sound pretty interesting.  I can't decide which one I should do first after I finish my for-credit classes: Growing Vegetables, Fruits, and Nuts; The Citizen's Guide to American Politics; or Bowling.  I plan on eventually doing them all, although I don't know how helpful English as a Second Language--Chinese Speakers will be.

Family Addition

On Fridays I have my evolutionary biology lab.  Yesterday in the lab, we studied sexual selection, using betta fish as examples.  The tests involved putting two male betta fish next to each other, each in his own container, but so they could see each other.  They would see each other, flare up, and act aggressive until one backed down and swam away.  Usually the bigger, brighter fish were the winners.  We also put a female between two males to see which male betta the female preferred.  She would swim over by the one she liked and get all excited.  It was a cool experiment, and the coolest part was that since we are the last section to do that lab, we got to take our betta fish home.  Please welcome Achilles to the family.

Just last week we thought about getting a fish, but we decided not to.  Since I inherited one anyway, I had to go buy the poor fish some food and a little tank.  And I also got him the cool little plant, which he got stuck under last night.

If you were wondering about Achilles's success in the lab tests, he did pretty well, but in the end got beaten out by Silver Thunder and Harold.  Now I have to find a place for Achilles to live other than the kitchen counter.

Anne of Green Gables

Since my birthday, Brian and I have been enjoying the Anne of Green Gables movies (yes, Brian enjoyed them too).  I was playing around on the internet, and I found that a fourth Anne movie has come out!  It is called Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning.  I was really excited until I saw the rating and reviews.  Users rated it 1 star with the following comments:

Kevin Sullivan has created a monster that spits on the grave of LM Montgomery!

Anne Shirley is an ORPHAN.  She does not, as this film suggests, make up the story that she is an orphan (Walter Shirley did not indirectly kill his wife in a wagon accident and become a guilt-ridden absentee father). Anne was imaginative, yes, but she was not a liar.


 Killing off Gilbert? Seriously? Making Marilla into a liar who kept things from Anne? Diana had next to zero part of the storyline?  Even apart from those issues, this movie on its own doesn't hold up. Parts of the plot are never developed or explained. The pace is terribly slow.


If I could have given this a zero stars rating, I would have.


 I bar Kevin Sullivan from ever stepping on another movie set. In fact I think they should banish him to Iceland.


The credits were good. It was such a relief to get to the end (even with fast forwarding it went on too long!)


Ouch.  I guess I won't be buying that one.

Sisters

This is a conversation Brian had yesterday with his boss, Robert.  His boss came to our wedding reception and invited us over one evening for dinner, so he's seen me a handful of times.

Robert:  Does Sarah have any sisters?
Brian:  Yes.
Robert:  Here at BYU?
Brian:  Yes, she has one sister here at BYU.
Robert:  Is she a runner?
Brian:  Yeah, she is really into running.
Robert:  I saw her running down on University Avenue by the football stadium this morning, a little after 8:00.  I could see the resemblance.

What resemblance is he talking about? And Janet, did you run on University Avenue Thursday morning?

New BYU Broadcasting Building

So, Sarah's been bugging me to make my first blog post on our family blog...so here it goes. I hope this isn't too long!

I guess the thing I spend most of my time doing is working full-time, so, here's a little background on my work.

I am a production engineer for BYU Broadcasting. This entails maintaining, configuring and fixing professional broadcast equipment. I also often do this for live events around campus, such as sporting events, music concerts, studio shows, and anything else that could appear on BYUtv or BYUtv International. When I work a live event, or as-if-live event, I'm in charge of supervising and ensuring that everything technical is setup correctly and working properly.

Many of you have probably heard that BYU's football team is going independent next year. Part of what helped push BYU into making that decision was the caliber and potential of our broadcasting department. Last March, we began using our brand-new HD TV truck and started filming many sports and other shows in high definition. We haven't been able to transmit those shows yet in HD, because all of our infrastructure was for standard definition television. However, this December our new broadcast building comes online and will allow us to transmit in HD. If all goes according to plan, we will transmit BYUtv and KBYU in HD starting December 1.

I used to be assigned to our SD TV truck, but have been temporarily reassigned to helping configure a lot of the brand-new equipment in the new building. The actual construction of the building is like 99% done, but to get all of the equipment inside of it up and running smoothly will take a couple of months--that's why it won't be completely ready until December 1. It's amazing how much equipment, cabling and stuff is going into this new building. I've heard that there is about 50 miles of cabling inside the building (but I bet that is quite an understatement). The backup generators are powerful enough to equivalently power 125 homes.

The following three sketches show the new building, with the fourth being an actual picture.

And to finish it out, here's a short video article about the new building, made last year right after the ground breaking (http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/72429).

Trick-or-treat nostalgia

Last week on a walk through the bookstore I had a craving for those delicious-yet-gross peanut butter taffies.  Janet found some free ones, and they brought back some memories of trick-or-treating in the good ol' days.  There are certain candies that always remind me of trick-or-treating.  

(I loved these!)

When we went trick-or-treating in Rachel's new neighborhood (the rich neighborhood) we got these:

Of course, there were the non-conformists like the Bushongs who gave out dimes attached to some church card, or the weird people that gave out fruit.  If you were cute enough, the neighbors would have you come inside so their family could look at you and they would give you good food.  For some reason that happened less and less the older I got.  Although my trick-or-treating days are long gone, I have fond memories of it, especially the gorging that went on after.

Schutzenfest 2010

A few weeks I got the urge to run a race, so looked around for a 5k to run in and found one in Midway called Schutzenfest.  I really wanted to do it because you got a long-sleeved t-shirt instead of the normal one.  I bribed Janet into running it with me (it wasn't hard, she was in her post marathon depression stage) so we registered.  I looked at past results to see how competitive this race was, and I was happy to find out that last year there were only six runners in my age category, and the fastest time was 22 minutes.  I was sure I could place, seeing that after the first place, the times were mostly in the 30 minute range, which is slower than I've ever run a 5k.  I've always wanted to place in a race, but here in Provo it's near impossible.

The morning of the race we got up and drove to Midway.  The race was at a bed and breakfast at the bottom of a small mountain.  We lined up for the race, and the organizer explained the course:  you have to run a little on this road, and then take that trail that splits off up there.  The trail goes up over the mountain, and then you'll run into a road on the other side that will bring you back around to the finish.  The race was up a mountain!  Janet was fine, but I almost died trying to run up that mountain.  When the runners near me walked up the steep parts, I was glad to be near them so I could walk too.  I made up a lot of time on the downhill because I have such long legs, but near the finish line Janet (who had finished like 6 minutes earlier) had to run with me so I wouldn't stop to walk.  I finished with my worst 5k time ever, but I placed 3rd in my age group!  Janet had gotten first place, and in those 7 minutes or so between us, some other 20-24 year old snuck in between us.

We attended the awards ceremony where we received ribbons and beer mugs (Yes!)  for placing.  We were also both fortunate enough to win "drawings"  for Blue Boar Inn t-shirts, size large. Really the organizer just looked at a list of the registered runners and shouted out bib numbers until all the prizes were gone.  We were pretty happy with our loot, but after almost dying on my way up the mountain, I'm not sure if I'll do that race again next year.  If you want a Blue Boar Inn t-shirt, let me know.  Brian doesn't want the one I won for him, and I'm not sure what Janet is doing with hers.

Updates II

More things happened in the Wood family.  

Brian has been on a one year contract with BYU Broadcasting.  His boss told him in July that they were starting the paperwork to see if they could make his position permanent administrative, even though BYU is still on a hiring freeze.  We finally heard back last week, and...he got the promotion!  Yay!  

Yesterday was my birthday.  I received many lovely gifts, including a pencil from the Testing Center that says, "Happy Birthday from the Testing Center."  If I had known that you get pencils for taking tests on your birthday, I would have done that every year.  

I took my second biochemistry test.  I feel like I did much better.  I probably won't know my score for another two weeks.  

The check engine light came on in the Sentra not even a week after we bought it.  We took it in and the diagnosis was that the swirl valve chip needed to be reprogrammed.  We got the car back the same day, but we're minus a few hundred dollars for the repair.

Updates

1.  We bought a second car.  Trying to find an appropriate car in our budget was not fun, but we're happy with what we got.  It's a 2005 Nissan Sentra with 50,000 miles on it.  It needs a few things to get it into top shape (new windshield wipers, floor mats, oil change, tires aligned).  I am already thinking of possible names.

( This is not our actual car.  It just looks like it minus the front license plate bracket and plus a couple scratches on the side.)

2.  It is the time of year for visiting teaching interviews in our ward.  Since I don't have an assignment, I happily passed along the interview sign-up sheet without signing up.  I got a call yesterday from the RS secretary to set up a time.  When I assured her I didn't need to go because I am not a visiting teacher, she let me know that actually I do have a visiting teaching assignment.  Nobody had bothered to tell me, and my companion never contacted me (if she knew she had an assignment.)  The secretary told me I could still have the interview so the presidency could get to know me better.

3.  We went to Kaysville Saturday afternoon and came back Sunday evening.  Brian's mom and I did some crafting projects while Brian and his dad worked on the pool and went to priesthood session.  Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the crafts, but some of you may be seeing one of the projects.  Here is the current state of the pool.

4.  I have been pondering what the plural of Twix is.  Is it Twices?

5.  School is rolling along.  I wish it were over already, but then I wouldn't have time to bring my biochemistry grade up enough to pass the class and graduate.  I better go study that now.

Food Nanny

Since getting married, I have watched a lot more BYUtv than ever before.  I used to think that all they ever had on was Book of Mormon discussions and BYU sports.  I still think that's mostly what's on BYUtv, but there are some other pretty cool shows on there once in awhile. One of my favorites is the Food Nanny.

The show is obviously a spin-off of Super Nanny, but about family dinner.  No Dad, it's not voyeurism TV.  It shows the Food Nanny (who is pretty crazy, but endearing) helping families who are having trouble with their family dinner--Dad lost his job and the food budget got drastically cut; the kids are terrible and won't sit down for a family meal; Mom has to go back to work, and Dad doesn't know how to cook, etc.  Food Nanny's basic tenets are to make a two week dinner plan with a theme for each night, like Italian food on Tuesdays, or meatless meals on Wednesdays.  Then you use the menu to make your shopping list.  Supposedly, then you are going to the grocery store once every two weeks, and that saves you money.  Then you have your meals planned for two weeks, and the ingredients to make them, and all you have to do is cook and have a nice sit-down meal with the family.

One of the great parts, is that the Food Nanny has a website! There's a cool feature where you can make your own Nanny Plan to follow.  You can search for recipes or put in your own.  Here's the menu I designed using the Nanny Plan (beta).

You should definitely go try it out and watch the show.

P.S.  This is not paid advertising for BYU Broadcasting

State Fair

We went to the Utah State Fair last weekend where I reminisced about the Knox County Fair and Brian got cultured.  It was his first fair experience, and he was awed, especially by the ferris wheel.  He was a trooper though and went with me to see the animals, the floriculture building, and  the home arts building.  We also enjoyed seeing...

this giant robot that scared most of the kids

a guy on his weird tractor that rode around squirting people with a squirt gun

and the ferris wheel!!

From when we got in line to when we got on, it got dark.

The view from the top.  If you look hard, you can see the ferris wheel that we would have gone on next.  It's the ride farthest back, in the middle, named "The Zipper."  I remember going on a similar ride with Dad when I was pretty little and loving it. We had just eaten a funnel cake and hot dogs, so I thought maybe we should hold off on the upside down rides.

We had a great time, but it was a little less fun and a little more expensive than I remember from my childhood.  Maybe we were missing out because we didn't ride the Gravitron a million times in a row.

Pet peeve

I don't want to sound whiny, but this is a pet peeve that's really getting to me.  Every time I get on the internet, especially on Facebook, I see it.  Here are some examples I found on Facebook today.


im guessing your talking about jordan lol
Your more important
your in america
Just wait till your nursing


Did you not go to elementary school, or middle school, or high school?  I remember learning about your problem almost every year.  Sheesh, I know I don't have perfect grammar, and I don't expect others to have perfect grammar either, but this is pretty basic.  I know the wrong one slips out sometimes, but this is like an epidemic.  Sometimes someone has good intentions, and something like the following comes out.


Tomorrows you're birthday!


Okay, maybe the writers were having a computer problem, and they meant this:


I'm guessing that your talking about Jordan is bothering him. lol
Your more important choice is what university to attend.
Freedom is yours in America.
Just wait till your nursing degree is finished.


Most of these people are college graduates.  I'm just not sure how they made it through their (they're, there?) freshman English class.

San Francisco

We didn't have a convertible to cruise the Golden Gate Bridge like the Tanners, but we made it.

We were excited that we didn't even have to pay the toll, but after we got across, we just had to turn around and go back, and then it cost $6 (!).

We were also impressed by the steepness of the hills.

And this is the reason we were there.

In case you forgot what we look like, here we are, overlooking Oakland.

Coming up...

Starting Monday, I will be doing this:

(but with a BYU sweatshirt.)

Then on Saturday we get to go here

to see this guy get married.

Man, that's a good looking couple in the background.  I'm excited!  I've never been to California.  Well, I've never been to Nevada either, but I don't think there's too much to see there.  

Then next Tuesday I will be doing this:

Answers

Okay, here are the answers--
Wyoming - Wyomingite
Connecticut - Connecticuter,  or less popular Connecticutian
Maine - Mainer (I also saw one use of Mainiac)
Massachusetts - Massachusett (in tribute to the Native Americans) or just Bay Stater
Illinois - Illinoisan
New Jersey - New Jersian

Quiz

While we were driving through Wyoming, the question came up, what do you call someone from Wyoming?  None of us knew, so we made up some cool sounding names, like Wyome.  That got me thinking about it, so what do you call someone from:

Wyoming
Connecticut
Maine
Massachusetts
Illinois
New Jersey

No cheating.

Textbooks

Some of you may have put these days behind, but for some of us, it's time to go back to school.  One of the most dreadful parts of that is buying books.  Many times I have stood in line at the BYU bookstore after milling through a jillion people, aisles of books, and the expensive pallet-zone, and then spent a couple hundred dollars.  A few times I have purchased my books online, but it's kind of risky because you can't return the book if you drop the class or the professor says you don't really need the book after all (what happened last semester.)  To celebrate my last semester at BYU, I am joining the trend and renting my books. This is why:

Principles of Biochemistry

From the BYU Bookstore NEW: $170.00

USED: $127.50

From Amazon NEW: $99.44

USED: $92.99

The thought of paying up to $170.00 for a book made me throw up a little in my mouth, until I saw this:

 From campusbookrentals.com: $53.14

I looked into it and decided to do it.  You pay to rent the book for a number of days, 1 semester=130 days.  They send it to you with a prepaid envelope to send it back when you're done.  If you need it longer, you can pay a little more, or if you decide to keep it, you can pay the difference of the used price they set.  You can return it for a full refund in the first 30 days.

If you sell back the book to the bookstore, you get 60% of the used value of the book, which would make the money to spent on the book around $50.  I figured it's worth it to rent seeing that the bookstore only took back one of the books I bought from them last semester.  I got a return of $18 from the $250 I spent.  

Now I'm going the less risky way.  If you want to rent your books too, let me know because I can refer you for a discount.

Bakin'

Unlike Mom and Dad, we have an oven that works.  After we got married, I decided that I would make our bread so we could save a little grocery money and have tastier, healthier bread.  This is the result of the second round of bread baking.

And this is the recipe I use.  I customized it from the Scoresby family cookbook.

Whole Wheat Bread

5 c warm water

1/2 c honey

2 T yeast

2 eggs, beaten

1/3 c oil

2 T salt

5 c white flour

11-12 c wheat flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water and honey until yeast bubbles and rises to top.  Mix in eggs, oil, and salt, Add 5 c white flour and let rest until bubbles rise to surface.  Mix in wheat flour, first with spoon, then with hand.  When dough separates from side of bowl, turn out unto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.  Let rise and punch down 3 times.  Form into 3 large loaves or 4 regular.  Let rise.   Bake in 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Welcome to Utah

I am now the official carrier of one of these (but with my name and picture).

Of course, I stalled on the way there, but the DMV doesn't know that.

I had to wait almost two hours, but I got home and to work on time.  I stalled in the parking lot at work, too, but no cars were around that time.

More Wedding Pictures

For all of you who want to see actual pictures of me and Brian, here you go.  We still haven't gotten the edited ones back, so when you look at these, imagine us looking even better, (if that is possible.)