Change of pace (part 1/2)

Alrighty, So it's been a while since I've blogged.  I had finals, and graduation and moving and all sorts of stuff, and I'm not settled into my new house and feeling good.  In all honesty I totally had time in the past... I just forgot or didn't make updating my blog a top priority.  But I'm here today, so everyone can relax and celebrate again.

In big news I graduated about a week and a half ago.  I don't have any cool pictures on my computer or anything so you'll just have to take my word for it.  Anyway, so now I'm just chillin here in Provo waiting until fall semester to start my Masters... I guess that's not technically true.  So at work you get paid more if you're a graduate student, so I actually got readmitted for the Spring semester and signed up for some thesis credits.  So I guess I'm technically already in grad school right now!  How crazy is that?  What a fast transition.

In other news I finally moved out of Miller.  We moved across the street into a house.  It's so sweet here.  It's crazy nicer than living in any apartment I've been around, and for sure at the price.  While it's admittedly more then Miller and other cheap student housing, it's also considerably higher quality and so much more space.  There're only 3 of us living here, and we've got the entire top floor of the house.  Here are some pictures.

In our front room we currently have 3 couches.  It was convenient last Sunday as we all took Sunday naps on a different couch.  We have a projector set up in our front room again too.  The couch on the right belongs to the people who used to live here and is currently up for sale.  So we may lose it at some time, but I'm not sure we'll mind.

This room is our "tile" room, cause we dont have any other name for it.  Currently it's purpose is for Jarom's art stuff, my computer, and being wide open to remind us how big our house is.  We're thinking about pulling  a table in here as a kind of dinning room when we want to have people over.  We've thrown talk around about making a felt top board to place on the table so it doubles as a game table too.  Could be fun.  I'll have to keep you updated as to what we do in here.

This is our kitchen.  It's basically a kitchen.  The cabinets are a little small, but it holds what we need.  If there's one thing I've noticed about this house compared to apartments is that this house is not made to store tons of crap like college apartments are.  

Anyway, the most exciting part about the kitchen is the:

TOASTER OVEN

I love this thing.  We don't have a toaster, we have this instead.  And I love it even more.  I think toaster ovens are pretty much one of the greatest things made for kitchens.  I use it at least once a day.  Why not toast your sandwich and melt the cheese onto the bread when it's as easy as placing it in and turning a knob?  Yeah, I love toaster ovens.

Lastly we come to our room.  We took the blades of the ceiling fan cause they're a little uncomfortably close to where I sleep.  We got 2 book shelves and 2 dressers of KSL classified for $90 total.  Pretty great deal.  One of the book shelves was out in the front room, and you can only see one dresser in this picture.  I like our room.  It feels much more like a normal bedroom than do the rooms I've lived in in apartments.

Anyway, that's the brief tour of the house.  I've got a couple other cool things to report on, but I didnt want to make this post too big, and I need to have something to keep people coming back after my dry spell.  

In running news the training is going well,  I don't think I've posted up my new running schedule in a while, but as a summery I've been putting in weeks in the low 30's (meaning ~30 miles per week).  I've already run a 16 miler.  This week is a recovery week, so I don't have any long runs or anything, but next week I go 18 on Saturday, pretty crazy.  Today for my run I drove up to the canyon.  It takes longer to run up there, but I figured since it was my birthday it was all good.  I ran up to Bridal Veil Falls, then back to my car.  It was great being up in the canyon, it's definitely my favorite part of a long run to get to be up in the canyon.

Anywhoot, I think that's all for this post.  I'll talk to y'all again in a few days!  Have a great one.

time consumed

What up people!?!?! This has been an incredibly crazy week with many a 12+ hour day. The long and short of this was that his week I decided I should probably finish out the semester and get everything done that I need to, and worry less about running. That being said I only went running on monday before I decided to be all dedicated. I spent a lot of time doing homework, labs, and finishing up my robot racer car. There was even a day I didn't get home till after 2 in the morning. Anyway, I've got some videos of my car driving to post up. Also our final competition is tomorrow (wed, April 11th) from 1 to 3 pm. I went home over the weekend, and got to hide all the easter baskets. Guess that's the benefit of 1 o'clock church. Boy did I do a good job coming up with creative spots to hide baskets, ask Jerusha if you don't believe me.

That's all for today!

Robot Racer Car

Hey all, here's one of the awesome video's I referred to in my last post.

So a quick explanation of the video. We're supposed to be making cars that can play capture the flag, or a similar game. The car is completely controlling itself as well. What's going on in this video is there are 2 bases (towers), on on the other team, and one on mine. The truck looks at the color of the lights on the tower to decide what team a tower is on. Then if the tower has the flag the truck will drive up and shoot it to get the flag from the opposing tower. Once it has the flag it then goes into a seeking mode where it tries to find it's own tower to return the flag to. In this video the car approached and tried to pass the flag to the tower, but the tower didn't see it, and I ended up pushing the truck (it was going slow cause the battery on the motors was almost dead) to close to the tower so it couldn't see it anymore. Anyway, It's 2:30 right now and I just wanted to throw up this video real quick before I went to bed. I have another video and I'll try to get some pictures or something to add up later. Stay tuned for more awesome!

(hopefully this all made sense...)

busy week

Alrighty, it's been a pretty busy week, but I've got a little bit of stuff to put up here. Monday and Tuesday were packed with homework. I did all of it for the week in just 2 days. That's cause I still had a bunch of tests and what not for the rest of the week. Wednesday I took a physics test, I feel pretty good about that. I'll find out how it went on Wednesday probably, since it closes Tuesday next week. On Monday I also received Megan Bracken's wedding invitation. That's pretty exciting. For those of you who don't know here she's one of my best friends in the EE department. We had a ton of classes together the last few years and we spent a lot of time working on homework together.
There's the wedding invitation.

So back to the week. Monday and Tuesday combined netted me a total of 27.5 hours on campus... Wednesday was a test, and then Thursday was all work because I needed to get caught up on the work I didn't do that last few days doing homework and stuff. I wasn't feeling great Thursday either so it was a long day, and then Friday I helped my professor fix some bugs for our robot racer competition, hung out with Melissa Boyer for a little and I went home for conference weekend. The point of pointing out my business is the fact that I was going to get some awesome new footage of my car... and I didn't. But here's an old video I never posted. For this it's driving a figure 8. We aren't controlling the car at all, we just hit go and it drives. So it's pretty cool.


OK, so I plugged my watch in to get my running info for the week and BOOM blue screen of death... So after a short reboot, and thank goodness blogger saved drafts like every minute or so, I'm back up in action... So I think I was on to running... So that's where I'll go next.
So, I know the dates are wrong, but that's because I skipped a week before. Also I think I'll still wait to do the final week on it's correct week, so the current plan is basically to redo this weeks work outs. I'll think I'll add a couple miles here and there though, so it should be a little more this week, or that's my hope.

Well, I think that's about all I got for now, I'll talk to y'all later :D

Little Late

So... This was supposed to be done on Sunday... but I forgot... so here we are Tuesday night. I have to wake up in 7 hours to go running, so I will be brief. Basically last week I stuck it out and didn't run the rest week. I went about 22 miles total as well, so that was good. This week Tina also invited us to join her in her marathon in Colorado on September 22nd (if that date is wrong please tell me, it's kinda important) which I think I will run with her as my last long run before my own marathon, which I'll hopefully run St. George 2 weeks later. Anyway, the last few days have had some cool things that I'd like to post up about, but I need time to upload pictures and videos and tonight I just don't have the time, but tomorrow I should be able to get to it so long as I don't forget. Anywhoot, I think that's all for tonight.

Texting Toddlers

So, at M&O's house we were partying today! Needless to say I've become Jonathan's favorite. Here is a picture of him letting everyone know!
And I know what the question you're all asking is... and yes, this is the new trend of kids and cell phones.

Anyway, nothing else too exciting really happened at the end of this week. So onto running I suppose.
I finally missed a day. I didn't do my long run last Saturday, but it was by choice. I went and played frisbee on friday, and my "hour max" quickly turned into about 3. That night my right leg was hurting pretty bad if I moved it any farther than a walking motion, and the next morning when I got out of bed my left foot hurt pretty bad just to walk on. Considering these fact I decided it was in my best interest to just skip running for the day and rest. That also meant I didnt get to go play ultimate frisbee or racquetball... rough day. On the plus note, I feel much better today! So I guess we'll see how my run tomorrow goes. I put up the next two weeks of my schedule because originally I was planning to skip next week and after what is labeled as week 5 start up a new plan that was 30 miles/week. Well... we'll see how my run goes tomorrow, and if I'm feeling good I'll probably still skip ahead a week, otherwise I'll be taking my recovery week. Only time will tell for now.

Oh I do remember one other noteworthy thing from this week. I totally rocked my physics test. I only missed 1 point. So that was pretty good.

Anywhoot, I think that's about all I got for today, hopefully I'll remember to take my camera around with me more... or be more liberal with my phone. See y'all next post.

America!!! and Pi day

So, unfortunately I've been getting home pretty late at night and with the whole running in the morning thing I've been straight to bed almost every night... Otherwise this would have been 2 blog posts.

So I'll start off with my only in America section :D

So, you may not know this, but Taco Bell now has tacos in doritos shells. Now I know what you're thinking, but despite your thoughts I have photographic evidence that these babies exist. What makes them so special you may be wondering? Well let me tell you. Just think with me a minute on this one. Where else would people get together and say what would make our fast food better? What if we wrapped it up in junk food? BAM! a new taco is born.

This is what it looks like when you first open it! What delicious advertising!
The cardboard case is rather nice as it keeps the nacho cheese powder off of your hands. Delightful! So if you haven't tried one of these yet, I'd recommend it.

Now to the Pi Day

On Pi day we also had our work party in the Marriott center. I took this as my yearly opportunity to "dunk where Davies dunks"
Too bad I can only ride that cash cow once right? Anyway, it was fun playing some basketball and eating free pizza. Sadly I didn't have 20,000+ fans going crazy for me... sad day!

While at the staff party Melissa Boyer invited me over for some pi(e) for Pi day after the party. How could I refuse? I couldn't. And here she is with her homemade chocolate chip cookie pie! It was great.
So yup, that's been my last few days. Everything else is going pretty great. School's keeping me busy, but that's not a surprise. Only a few weeks till I'm graduated and stuffs... pretty crazy. Not sure there's very much else to report for now. See all y'alls later!

Go Cougfins!!!

This last friday was the big Harding rivalry game between Wesminster and BYU. This year there are a few more then there have been in years past... but I believe this is the first of the season. I enjoyed the game and it was nice to come up and spend time with family. I stayed up Friday night so I could do taxes, but BYU's server is having issues and I couldn't get any or my tax forms... Oh well. Still good times.


In fact, everyone was having good times as is apparent in this picture of Jonathan
Hope I spelled his name right... :)

As far as running goes this week I followed my schedule, and I must admit, it makes it a lot easier to get up and go when I know it'd be my FIRST MISSED RUN if I didn't go. Here's how my running went this last week, and a preview of next week's fun!


Also, on the St. George Marathon's home page there is an awesome video about running (the st. george marathon). I really like it. So it's easier to add miles to the week at a slower pace then I thought it would be. I might switch up to a higher mileage plan sooner than I originally thought... I guess I'll have to go look at them this week.

In other news I caused myself to be sick today... I think I just did too much yesterday between my run and playing a couple hours of ultimate frisbee... but at least it was a ton of fun! Right? Anyway, I think that's about all I got for now.

Masters of Marathon???

First off some "big" news. I officially got accepted to BYU for grad school. I'll be continuing on in... I think I put Computer Engineering, but I guess the details are negligible... I should probably find out though :). Anyway, that was a piece of good news! I'm currently heavily involved with research with a couple of the professors, and recently took over one of the research projects. It's good to know I'll be around for another few years, and it's good to know I'll have a job too!


In other news it's time for my weekly report on running. I just looked up a training plan this last week, and after some playing around found what looked like a plan I could follow for the time being. This week my long run was 8 miles (which is twice as far as I've run in months) and it really wasn't bad. Jarom came with me and it was the farthest he's run in his life! I talked to him almost the whole way. I'm used to running basically everything as fast as I can, but I decided this year I'd try to stick with a real training plan. So I used runner's world smart coach to pop out a running plan. Currently I'm working up to a half marathon by the end of this semester, and then when the summer comes I'll start up a more time consuming full marathon training schedule. I'm hoping having all my workouts set will help me be more motivated to wake up and go running each morning. Here's a review of last week, as well as a preview of next week!

I put the actual distances in red, along with the week total. I made the plan late Wednesday night, so it was too late to go running then... Otherwise it was a successful week!

Have a great one!

LEAP DAY

Yesterday was leap day! Apparently this is my equivalence to new years... For whatever reason as leap year rolled toward me I decided I'd like to start taking more pictures. I decided to start carrying my camera with me and snapping pictures of whatever is happening, and then to maybe start blogging again. Figured this would be a good way to save the highlights of whatever I'm up to... and let's just pray that sometimes that's interesting.
In other recent news I've decided to finally be serious about running and I started looking at actual training schedules today. More on this to come as I nail down exactly what I want to do. So that's the other half of my leap day resolutions.
So now you may be wondering, do I have pictures for today? The answer to that would be yes, yes I do!

Snow covered berries!! Manly I know. I let Brooklynn take some pictures while we were out a walkin in the snow storm this fine evening. She enjoys close ups of snow on plants, so I gotta throw the picture up right?

While we were out and about it came time for snow angels, which Brooklynn bravely volunteered to do.


I affectionately stepped on and broke the angels left wing whilst giving it a halo...
After the snow angel we played a rousing game of "try to get your head up" in which I got dragged all over through the snow. Below is the evidence... So sad... So cold...

Anyway, that's all for today. This seems less entertaining than in the past, but I suppose that's how life rolls sometimes. Anywhoot, I'm out!