Challenges and things

For the last month I (more or less) successfully wrote in my journal everyday.  I missed one or two days, because once or twice I had to stay up into the early morning finishing homework, but other than that it went really well.  I'm trying to figure out what my monthly challenge will be for march.  More on that in a bit.

Here's a brief overview of what went down in February:
I turned 24!  My birthday came and went with out any extreme fanfare, it was fun though, played some games, ate some cake, felt loved.  It was good.  24 seems a lot older than 23 for some reason.  But this looks to be a pretty good year, including the last semesters of college, and hopefully other exciting things.

I went through yesterday and figured out every class I need to take to graduate, it's sort of terrifying, but also I realized that I only have 22 or so credits to take, but I'm planning on doing 2 semesters (I looked into graduating in december, and the courses don't quite line up).  This means I'm going to have to take somewhere between 2 and 6 credit hours of fun classes.  So far I'm looking at scuba diving, swimming, soccer, bowling, and cell bio. We'll see.

Hm, this post it boring, which is odd because I feel like my life is pretty exciting.  The past few months I've been trying to slow down just a little, take time to relax, to reflect, to read, to study, those sorts of infinitives, and, as it happens, to take an epic road trip to vegas:

Because you're a Perkes,
and Perkes can stack hard things

There are tons of pictures on my facebook, you can check them there, but a friend of mine who is from  vegas got a bunch of people together to road trip down.  It was a blast, and it was warm.  I was in a t-shirt most of the weekend.  We went up to red rock and climbed around, I spotted a friend while he almost slipped and fell to his death (or more likely moderate injury, it was only about 20 feet).  This was scary, mostly because I'm no good at spotting, and I didn't want his blood on my hands.

They used to let people sample the chocolate,
 but then a large German boy was injured
in a tragic but comically instructive incident.

I have to say vegas itself was a little underwhelming.  It was cool, but it mostly felt like a sketchy amusement park/mall with a lot of people I wouldn't usually spend time with (for a lot of reasons; some were sketchy guys in spartan costumes, others were middle aged white people who go to vegas for their vacation to spend money and take pictures with show girls and sketchy guys in spartan costumes).  Maybe I'm just bitter because our buffet was not even a little worth it.  Red rock was $7 a car and it was my favorite part.  Go Nature.

In some other news, I went up to Logan twice.  The first time was for a research conference.  I gave an oral presentation on the research we've been doing  (on the effects of CETP polymorphisms on cognitive decline and Alzheimer's.  Ask me about it sometime if you want details).  That was cool, it made me feel like almost a scientist.

Yesterday, we went up for my cousin Adam's funeral.  That was less cool and more sad, but it was nice.  That was only the second or third funeral I've been to in my life, and the first one for someone I knew (the last funeral I went to was in Portugal). It was cool to hang out with the cousins and see all the family.  Funerals are weird, and so is death.  It never quite seems real;  but that's a post for another day.

It looks like I didn't get accepted to the two internships I signed up for in Cambridge and California, so now I'm deciding what to do.  I never found any other internships I was really that excited about, and it's getting a bit late, so I might just stay in Provo and work harder in the lab.

As far as this month's challenge, I was considering making all my own bread for a month.  I eat a lot of bread (something like two loaves a week) so that would be kind of fun.  I'll probably figure out today if I want to commit to that much time.  Stay tuned.

So that's my life as it stands.  It's crazy that it's March, the long, snowy winter is coming to a close.  I got to play soccer outside on friday, which was great, and I'm biking again.  Life is good.


OH!  PS - I got to meet the ambassador of Portugal.  He came to our classroom and visited my missionaries in the MTC and talked about Portugal and such.  That was pretty cool.  I got a picture with him, my district, and Richard Hinckley.  So that was exciting.  That's all.