It's been a while, and it's actually been a couple eventful weeks, it's hard to know where to start. Let's start at the very end:
No classes today, there's nothing but 5 finals standing behind me and the greatest summer yet. Right now I'm trying to work up motivation to go running. It's a bit cold outside today, and running is probably my least favorite form of exercise. Unless I have a ball, or a finish line, or a new mountain to run up, it's hard for me to justify running. So far I've put on some ankle socks and I'm loading stuff onto my iPod, which might help. Either way, I need to start running. I have an epic mud race in may with Amy, and I'm not sure if I can run 4 miles at the moment, especially if I'm going to have to be climbing over walls and stuff while doing it.
Yesterday I made pineapple cheesecake cupcakes, in honor of the psych season finale (which was great). They were based on
this recipe, which i believe is based on one by Martha Stewart. Remember when Martha Stewart was a thing? I also made asparagus, which turned out ok, but it made my pee smell weird, so I must have done something right. I cooked for my friend, his girlfriend, and her roommate with whom I went to a soccer game last week. It was fun, although there was an overabundance of cuteness between the happy couple. It made talking to them just a little awkward.
On Tuesday I officially got into a laboratory here at BYU. It's sort of a big deal. I'll be working with Dr. Kauwe, who was one of my favorite professors I've had and a big reason I decided to go into biology. I haven't cured cancer yet, but I did do some data entry. It seems like most science always turns out a bit more mundane in practice than you'd expect, but I have had a lot of practice with mundane work, and I imagine it does get more sciencey eventually.
Sunday was Easter. I feel like Easter is not my biggest fan. Last year I found myself unexpectedly single on Easter, this year I found myself skidding across the pavement in the middle of an intersection. My roommate was gone so I decided to ride my scooter to church, which took me on this nice road with a speed limit of 50 mph. It was great, because I finally got to see how powerful my scooter actually is. I managed to get it up to about 65, which was a lot less terrifying than I expected. On the way back though, I was going 60 up a slight hill, and my scooter cut out and slowed down a bit. It kept going, but I noticed the steering was a little stiff. I know think that's because I had a flat tire and didn't realize it, but at the time I wasn't sure if it was just because I was going fast or what. Anyway, I slowed down as I came up to the intersection, so I was going about 20 as I went around the corner, but I completely lost control, crashed my scooter, and cut up my hands pretty nicely. Luckily most of the damage was to my helmet, which doesn't bleed. Hooray for helmets!
I've learned two things from my several accidents. First, I don't do well learning things theoretically. Practical experience seems to stick a lot better. Now I know what it feels like to get a flat tire and what not to do, so let that be a lesson to you. I think there must be a way to learn this sort of thing from a book, or a course, or some other way that doesn't involve bleeding, but I'm not sure how.
The other thing I've learned is people are great. When I crashed my bike, before I had really figured out what was going on, there was already someone at my side calling an ambulance and making sure I was ok. This time, a bunch of my friends stopped on their way back from church, as well as random people that stopped to make sure I was ok. They (my friends) helped me get my scooter back to my house, which wasn't too far away, and helped patch me up a bit. That was great.
Saturday we hiked the hot springs, which was awesome. I think it's my favorite hike. It's beautiful, and you get there and you have a stinky natural hot tub. It's great! But then just like real hot tubs, after we had been there for an hour or two a group of about 20 guys with a couple girls showed up, and made it lame. No one likes a crowded hot tub. So that's when we left, we'd been shooting to get there so that we could hike out by the full moon, but I didn't take into account that the full moon doesn't actually get above the mountains until around 11 o'clock. But we had flashlights, so that worked.
Friday...was pretty boring as Fridays go. I watched a couple movies. Nothing fancy.
Thursday was soccer night. This could be a whole post in itself. We've been playing in the parking garage underneath Zion's bank. It's really cool, and you get this awesome, cinematic, soccer hooligan feel when you're playing. It was a great night, we had about 10 people show up, and they had just put new lights in so it was a bit brighter and felt even more legit. After about an hour of playing, I was out wide and I tried to cross it into the center, but it went just a tiny bit high and caught a pipe. We've hit pipes all the time, usually it's fine, but this time as the soccer ball hit it we hear the super loud PSSSSSSSSHHHHHH of gas escaping. We ran, both out of fear of dying and fear of getting arrested. After maybe 30 seconds, water started shooting out, so we were less afraid of dying, but just as afraid of being arrested. But, as will happen, once we got outside, the better angels of our nature took over and we felt like we should call somebody to let them know. We weren't quite sure who to call, someone called the police and they and the fire department came. Turns out I had kicked the head of a sprinkler system for the fire extinguisher. They took our names down but didn't give us a citation or anything. I called zions bank the next day, and they were pretty cool about it too. For a while I was worried I'd have to pay a bunch of money to fix it, but I had just read this talk about owning up to your mistakes and accepting the consequences of your actions, it felt sort of cold to run off after that.
Wednesday I went to a Real Salt Lake game with a couple people. It was fun, I decided I want to be a RSL fan, because soccer games are so cool. Where else is it normal to throw streamers at the players? The game itself was pretty boring for a soccer game. RSL got one goal at the beginning off a penalty in the box, and then for the rest of the game they mostly played for possession, and Montreal didn't
seem to care that much about getting the ball back. The last five or so minutes were pretty intense, but for the most part it was a slow game. Still fun, and free, which is always a plus.
Well now it's raining, so running seems unlikely, but I do have to go into work and swing by the genetics lab, so getting wet seems inescapable.
And that's my week. Seven days of pretty exciting things. The next few days are pretty promising too, a couple dates, a couple finals, living the dream.
Congratulations for surviving this far, truly your interest in my life is inspiring. Maybe I'll go less than a month before the next one, that seems likely, since from Wednesday on it's just work and adventure all summer long.
