School's out for the Summer!

That's a good song.

Well, school is over.  This was probably the fastest moving semester I've had so far.  It's a little sad that it is over, but I was taking several classes this semester that I wasn't really interested in.  I am very glad to be done with the Organic Chemistry Lab class that I was taking this semester.  I disliked that class, because your grade wasn't dependent on your ability, or your effort.  It was based on your ability to guess luckily on very ambiguous graphs called NMR's.  Which I very much disliked.

The sad part about school being over is that many people are leaving for the summer to go home.  This year I decided to stick around and do research over the spring term.  I'm really excited to get to do that, and be paid to do it.  I love research.  It's especially important, because Tyler, the grad student in my lab, leaves at the end of the summer to go to USC Davis.  So someone needs to learn whats going on with our research.  I'm going to miss my friends who left already.

But summer is here, which means sunshine and fun.  I'm glad that my schedule for work is super flexible.  I can do things during the day if I want to, then come into work later.  Wohoo!

Jake's First Weekend Home

Jacob got home this week.  How exciting is that?  So exciting.

For months, I'd been planning on being home to see him give his talk, to hang out, and try and get to know each other a little bit again.  It was decided a little over a month ago probably that I would drive, so I could pick up my brother-in-law Dillon, because he wanted to be there too.  For the past 2 weeks, the weather has been pretty much perfect.

Friday, the day we were to leave, it started snowing. While it wasn't bad in Utah, it was not good in Idaho, and it was terrible in the passes in Oregon.  So I didn't get to go home.  I was pretty bummed out.

So even though I was sad, and Adam was sad (his wife got flown out to Portland) we tried to make the most of it.  We geeked out writing VBA code, watched some shows, broke his diet, went and saw a movie, and even hung out with his in-laws (It was weird that we were eating with Kristen's family while she was eating with ours...).  So it turned out to be a pretty ok weekend.  I still miss my little brother though.

Best Tuesday Ever

It's been awhile.  But today is a good day.  Here are the reason's in order of least awesome to most awesome:


A)  Organic Chem lab actually worked out for me.  My product formed, pure, and quickly.  Which is nice since the last lab failed on me not once, but twice.  The world is in balance again.

B)  Lunch with Friends.  I went to lunch with some of my good friends from class.  We don't get to hang out doing fun things very often, so it was good.  Too bad David couldn't be there.

C)  I'm finally getting a computer that can run the games I own for the computer.  As part of that, I get to learn how to put it together.  That's happening tonight.  I'm pumped.

D)  Last, and most awesome:  Jacob, my little brother who I grew up with as an every day part of my life, is finally home from his mission.  Our missions overlapped by 12 weeks, so I haven't seen him since June of 2009.  That's a long freaking time.  I can't wait to drive home this weekend and be face to face for the first time in too many years.

Trunky

I wasn't this trunky when I was getting ready to go home from my own mission.

My little brother Jacob gets home this month.  It's about 2 and a half weeks from now (till I get to see him anyway)  Adam, Dillon, Shanda and I are all making a quick trip/drive to Oregon for the weekend to see him.  It's definitely going to be an adventure.  I can't wait.  It's been almost 4 years since I've seen the kid.  That is a long time.  Especially since he and I grew up together.  We're only a grade apart in school, (or were, I think I've gotten ahead of him some more) and shared a room till I was 10.  In high school, a lot of our friends were the same, so we spent a lot of time together.  But it's been so long since we've seen eachother, we're both going to be different.

So I am very trunky for him to get home, and very excited to get reacquainted with one of my heroes.

Here's a video of a song written for me by one of my companions when I was getting ready to go home from my mission.  I sent it to Jake.  :)

Optimism and Pessimism

I think of myself as an optimist. This morning, I was standing in the shower thinking about optimism.  (Ok, it was this afternoon.  Our hot water was out for some reason this morning)

Lately in dating, I've been on quite a few dates, and nothing has come out of them.  Which is normal for dating I suppose (Dating still doesn't make any sense to me).  But when I go on a date, and I have fun, my thoughts are already thinking to the potential of a relationship.  I think this has to do with optimism (I feel optimistic that it will work out).  That's great, but every time the relationship doesn't work out, it's makes me pretty sad.

In light of this, I was wondering if pessimism might be the way to go.  If you expect the worst to happen, anything that goes well is a pleasant surprise, right?  Maybe.  But even then, I don't think you're ever happy for long.  So that won't really work for me either.

I think what I decided today is that I'll continue to be optimistic, but a hybrid optimist.  I'll recognize that people make stupid choices that are disappointing, but that I'm going to hope for the best anyway.   That way, I can be happy more often, but also be pleasantly surprised when things do go well.

3 Day Weekend

Ah President's Day.  The last day off I got until the school year is over.

I spent my weekend very well I think.  Here's the breakdown

Friday:  School, Chinese food, more school stuff.  Then that evening, I got to hang out with Taylor Williams. We played video games, drank Dr. Pepper, ate some brownies.  Just like the good ol' days.

Saturday:  In the morning, I went up to school, studied and took a Molecular Biology test (got an A).  After, I went home, and got recruited to record the sound for a movie that a guy in my ward was making for fun.  That was actually pretty cool.  Headphones and a boom-mic and everything.  It was pretty legit.  After that, I spent some time with my roommates playing the classic starcraft.

Sunday: Pretty usual Sunday  except they decided to start a mandated dating class for Sunday School.  Not sure how that contributes to the purpose of Sunday School, but hey, what can you do?

Monday:  Temple with Elder Smith in the morning.  Then he, Creed and I all went to los Hermanos for lunch, stayed and talked there for like 2 hours (I'm sure they loved us for that...).  Afterwards, I came home, finished reading a book, then went to FHE.  After FHE, Andrea came over and we played Super Smash Bros. (N64) and Mario Kart.  It was  a good night.

So yeah.  I like 3 day weekends.

Valentine's Day

At the risk of sounding...bitter?  Yeah, at the risk of sounding bitter (which I'm not) I'll post my thoughts on this holiday.

I think for a guy at least, it is better to be single and have a date on Valentine's day, than to be in a relationship.  Here's why.

Between movies, TV, commercials and the whole retail community, the expectations for today have been built up to people believing that the boyfriend needs to plan the perfect, romantic, fun, and exciting date.  Every year.

Last year, I was dating someone, and I felt like this was the expectation.  Unfortunately, it also fell on the most busy day of the week for me.  As a result, I was very grouchy, and it was probably the worst date we had the whole time we were dating (almost a year).

Compare that to this year.  I have a blind date with the friend of the girl I work with.  I don't feel pressured, because not only is it a first date, it's a first blind date.  No pressure really.  I'm planning on having a great time, and today has not been nearly as miserable as last year.

I read it in a book...

Yesterday I had a quiz in my molecular biology class. It went pretty well for me. But my study partner asked me how I remember things so well. She said, "you read it once in the reading and we never talk about it again, but you remember it." It made me laugh a little bit because it reminded me of one of my dad's favorite stories of when I was a kid (I don't remember it). My sister and I would play trivia games, and she would always get mad when I knew the answer. She'd ask, "how'd you know that?" My response, "I read it in a book." Guess that's still the case.

Research

Between school, work and research I stay pretty busy.

This year I started to research with Dr. Sevy, looking at N20 and pyrazine.  We use a UV laser to excite the pyrazine, then an IR laser to watch the excited pyrazine transfer energy to N20.  Do I understand exactly what we're looking at? Heck no.  But I am getting the hang of figuring out what I'm doing in setting up and experiment, shutting one down, and dinking with the computer.  But it's a blast learning new things, playing with liquid nitrogen, and having an office.  I think the office part is my favorite part.  It's nice having a place to go and leave my crap.  I bought a 20 dollar 17 inch monitor on craiglist for my desk, so I dual screen my laptop when I'm here.  It's pretty awesome

Professor Zach (for the day)

I'm not a big writer, obviously.  How long has it been since I posted?  I don't really know.  But I figure since I don't really write in a journal anymore, I should have some sort of record.

This week I got the chance to teach a college class.  Dr. Woodfield, the professor for the Chemistry class I TA for was in Ohio.  So he told me that I got to teach.  It went pretty well I think for my first time teaching.  It's different teaching a big class than teaching as a missionary.  There isn't a whole lot of interaction from the students, unless they have questions.  Since the teaching part is supposed to be minimal (so they can be in the lab) I had notes, and cruised through them.  We took 15 minutes for lecture and questions, then got down to the lab.  I was pretty pleased.  That's about what I was supposed to aim for, less than 20.  It was a little weird, because I think since I taught the lecture, the other two TAs thought I was the expert.  So I got all the questions from them, and the stockroom.  So I guess I really was the teacher for the day.  Pretty sweet.