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.

Here they sang about tomorrow.

Today I found out the I know five girls who hadn't watched Groundhog Day.  Luckily we sorted that out, more on Groundhog Day in a bit.

My monthly challenge went ok.  It turns out that January was a bad month to try to exercise everyday, somedays I didn't have time, and all days it was cold outside.  I think I managed about every three days.  This next month I'm going to shoot for a more climate-appropriate challenge: writing in my journal every day.  I think it's going to be a lot more manageable.

Regarding Groundhog Day, Sometime it's easy to feel like life is just the same thing over and over.  The last two semesters have been really busy: waking up early, going to class, eating lunch, going to work, eating dinner, doing homework, staying up late, repeat. Mixed in are a lot of first dates, movies, game nights, and the like.  Suffice it to say, it's getting really existential in here; prepare yourself.

Someone commented how great it would be if we could relive the same day so that we would have that time to progress and learn and everything, but that's truly what life is.  It's just one more day, over and over.  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.  We just fill our days with so many things that there's no time to do any of things that we wish we could.

And indeed there will be time.

I just feel like it's easy to get so busy in all the things that we don't have time to really do anything, to  learn skills and get to know people and play in the snow and save lives and read and think. Because I think that's what makes life worthwhile, and I feel like I can't be this busy for much longer, not because I can't handle it, but because it's defeating the point of life.

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse. I really should just do something, so that I can do less, so that I can do more.  But what could I cut from my life?  Facebook might be a good place to start.

Am I right or am I right?

Challenges are challenging

Day 2 also turned out difficult. I'm not sure what to do now, but I'll work something out...

Day 1

Are you asking for a challenge??

Day1 turned out to be a challenge.  The original plan was to swim, bike, or run every day, but then it was cold.  And it turns out the pool is closed today for new years (how are you supposed to keep your new years resolution when they close the gym on the first day of the year?)

It's inadvisable to leave your bike out in the snow for a week.  

I couldn't fail on my first day though, so I worked out a bit in my apartment, I even borrowed some weights from my roommate.  So day one was a unqualified success, despite having to call an audible there for a bit.  

I'm considering doing a separate blog for this, that I update daily, but I think hearing about me working out every day won't be that excited anyway, so I'll probably just post incrementally (fibonacci-ly perhaps?)  and as exciting things happen.  

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

I'm on a train!

So I'm on my way back from salt lake, enjoying the plush seats, free wireless, and opportunities for people watching that the Frontrunner train provides.  I figured it was as good a time as any to finally update my blog.

2012 has been busy, this last semester especially.  But life is, for the most part, good.  I find that rap up of my life are sort of boring, so here's some recent stories:

Sometimes, when you are a man, you get hit by waves.  It's for fun. 

I just got back from california for christmas with the family.  It was great, and california is beautiful, and warm.  Every day I smiled as I was on the beach in shorts and saw that Provo was in the teens and snowing.  California was everything I could hope for, and I had time to finish the original pokemon, and Ocarina of Time, and Farenheit 451.  It's been a while since I've been able to just hang out without any real responsibility.  Some of that was because I've been putting off a paper I need to co-write, but you can't do work in california, it's just too pretty.

 I have all these photos, so I feel like I should try to get enough text to fill up the post.

How could anyone not walk out to that?

It certainly wouldn't be california if I didn't find a big patch of poison oak to roll around in, and it didn't disappoint.  On the water fall hike (the one that could have been the site for the hobbit) I spent a lot of time climbing on rocks and crawling around, and to my surprise, I found that my legs were covered in poison oak.  It pretty much all on the back of my legs, so it seems like I must have sat on some, which may  have happened when I was dropping through this cool tunnel in the rock, and pushing bushes out of the way.  Anyway, it's pretty itchy.

Elephant Seals!  They had new babies, which weren't actually that adorable.

Shadows are cool.  

Hanging out with nephews was fun, but I have mixed feelings about spending lots of time with lots of little kids.  I'm a big fan of kids, in small quantities.  I did have some good QT with Tanner, and I'm fairly certain I've won the coveted spot of Tanner's favorite uncle (although I don't know what the Wade side has in the way of competition).  I don't think I can compete with Isaac though for Ethan and Carter. It's hard to beat almost constant lego play.

I guess I should mention what I got for christmas.  This christmas felt less like christmas than most, probably because I wasn't at home (not quite sure where I call home these days) and the days leading up the christmas felt pretty standard.  We did do all the christmas stuff: Davey's first christmas, the Nativity, the Night Before Christmas, etc.  It was good.  I think another contributing factor in the lack of christmas was the fact that presents just aren't as exciting for me anymore.  For quite a while I've had enough cash on hand to buy the things I really wanted, and so I don't have a big list, and then I think there just aren't as many things that I feel like I really need anymore, but I'm not at the point where I'm buying lots of presents for other people, so I'm sort of stuck between the two meanings of Christmas.

That said, I am getting a pretty sweet Craftsman tool set.  I'm excited to break it open and go to town on my scooter this week, which has been on the fritz ever since it got cold.  I also got a game, and bought myself some clothes from old navy's after xmas sale.

Best made gift so far?  The Family Historians will have to decide

On the giving end, I did make one of the cooler made gifts I've done so far.  We ended up making a bunch of canvasses for a ward activity that I organized, so I learned how to do that, and so I figured I could make some cool stencils for Cami, or some of her favorite things.  After I got to her house, I realized she has more decoration than she actually has room for, but they turned out pretty cool, I want to make a couple for me, but I don't quite have the energy at the moment.

Oh, good.  It's snowing in Provo.


Anyway, I'm almost to my station, this train thing is lovely.  It seems like this would be a good time to make some sort of new years resolution and wrap up 2012, but I don't really like year long resolutions, and I feel like no one wants to here about me reflecting on last year.  I am going to do something new this next year and try to do monthly challenges.  Last year I tried for a month to wake up every day at a reasonable hour and do something meaningful.  It went ok.  This year I'm going to do something like that every month, and post about it.  The first month isn't very exciting, I'm going to try to exercise every day, I'm not getting fat, but I would like to actually be in good condition, so I can win sports and run races.  So that's this month, later months might be more interesting, we'll see. If you have any suggestions for month long challenges that would make me a beter person, I'm open for that too.  Happy January!

We took a quick stop to middle earth

Marine life, it's alive! 

Wait, what's this? An update? Oh yeah, I remember those

Sometimes life is hard, and after I have a couple weeks (or a whole semester) of intense college, things slow down, but I'm just so burned out from all the college that I have a hard time motivating myself to do the little bit of homework I have.  It feels a bit like this:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
(there are one or two examples of scantily censored profanity, if reading that sort of thing would offend you)

The point of all this is that I've had a busy Autumn, but I'm coming to the tail end of it, and I'll try to post in this again, since it's how I keep in touch with my family, and that's important.  Otherwise we'll have way too much to talk about when Christmas rolls around.  The other point is that I have a little bit of chemistry homework, and I'm just not in the mood, but then I am a Perkes after all.  Back to work.

~Some sort of Wizard
P.S. - this weekend it got snowy

Not sure why this was sideways before

and the living is easy

Once again it's been too long.  Nothing too momentous has happened, but there have been lots of adventures.  Here's a short list (in reverse chronological order) :

Today I made Teriyaki chicken and rice, banana muffins, and taffee, and played some games, like Jenga.  Turns out that if you play jenga to the inception music, it becomes the most dramatic thing you've ever done.  But in all fairness, that's probably true for anything.  Today was also my last week of church here at centennial.  Next week is stake conference, and then I get kicked out when my contract ends, and roughly a week later I'll be moving in to my new ward.  So hopefully more adventures will ensue.

This past week my parents and Isaac came out from mississippi and we had all sorts of adventures.  Not all of them are pictured here, but we backpacked in the Uintas and went up to this resevoir where we swam.  I was hoping for cool rocks to dive off of, but didn't find any at the reservoir.  Cami and I did swim across the resevoir and back, which was wonderful, and inspired me to start swimming again, once school starts I can swim in the pool again, so hopefully I'll keep my motivation and make that happen.  We did find a great place up in the mountains to swim, but as I was swimming, there aren't really any pictures of it, though I did get a cool shot of the rock we jumped off.  Check out my google+ for all the pictures.

 A couple weeks ago, some friends and I hiked Timpanogos peak.  We left early enough to see the sun rise as we were starting the hike, which was beautiful, and definitely worth waking up a little early (I'm not convinced that making it to the peak to see the sunrise is worth it.  That hike was tough). On the way down we hung out at that little lake that you can see, and there someone swam.  I probably would have swam, but it was cold (the air, the water obviously was too), and I was wearing jeans.  So no swimming there.

 I watched the Dark Knight Rises (after watching the Dark Knight on a projector in our apartment) it was great, I think it ended the trilogy perfectly, and while it wasn't as much fun as the other two, it was a great movie.  My summer has been pretty evenly split between movies and outdoor adventures, which is great.

 My scooter turned 4000, which is cool.  I'm still working on fixing it up since i crashed a while back, now I just need to switch out a wire so that the blinker will work again, then I can get my license (since right now I don't think it's technically street legal, and so they probably wouldn't give it to me) Also pictured here is my smart phone, which has been great.  Actually all of these pictures were taken on my phone, which made it easy to post on my blog.  The future is totally happening these days.

 More cooking, I made stuffed french toast, with cream cheese, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  It was fantastic, although not quite as good as when my roommate makes it.  We've done a lot of brunches.  I'm getting fairly decent at making pancakes and waffles that put iHop to shame.

And it's now been over a month, but I visited Mississippi and got to check out the new Perkes house, of which I approve.  It was my first summer back in mississippi since 2008, and it sure was hot.  I'm not quite sure how I survived all those years down there, but i definitely appreciate the weather here in Utah.  I managed to make it up to Jackson for the first time in a long time and spend some time in the old stomping grounds and see some people.  That was fun.

So that's about the gist of my life.  Summer is winding down, and I still have a few adventures to fit in before the end.  This next weekend I'm headed down to Zions, which will be great.  I also read on occasion, I've read quite a few books this summer, which has been nice.  Next on the list is the Catcher in the Rye and Fahrenheit 451.

Summertime really is one of my favorite times.