Sisterly Love

Well, we had lots of fun this week with Melanie out to visit.  Monica sure liked having Melanie here since I had to work a bunch.  It helped Monica to not be bored.  It also made for fun nights playing board games.  Such as:

 Gubs

 Rampage

 Roborally

Just to name a few.  We had a lot of fun.  We played board games most nights during the week when I got home from work.  Melanie was also super great and kept doing the dishes and stuff!  How nice!

On Saturday we finally had a little more time to do things.  Saturday morning started off with running the SEAKR 5k.  The race was fun, but my leg was still gimpy.  On the plus side Monica couldn't run very well either, so we just stuck together through the race.  The race is used to raise money for the SEAKR foundation, which is a charity the company started to help wounded veterans who got disabled serving in the military.

Pre-race!  Check the smiles, that's how you know it's still PRErace. 

After we got home from the race I mowed the lawn real quick and headed into downtown Denver to do some sight seeing with Melanie.  We went to Hopdoddy for lunch and then walked around in the city.  We found a herd of buffalo:

And a public piano!

All the keys on the piano were stuck down though.  It's probably been hammered on a whole bunch.  But please, only 1 hour per person!

There were a couple of these pianos scattered around that I saw.  The other ones worked better, but this was the first one we ran into.  We also went up to the Capitol building and to a Cathedral that's across the street.  Unfortunately my phone was dead by the end.  I have some pictures on Monica's phone, but I haven't gotten them yet.

When we got home Saturday we were all pretty beat from being out in the sun all day!  We still managed to play a couple games before heading off to bed.

Sunday after church we went up to visit Tyson and Tina.  Spencer and his family were driving through Denver and stopped for the day at their house.  We came up and all had dinner together.  It was a lot of people, and a lot of fun!

I think those are the highlights from this week.  Hope everyone reading this is doing great!

Ragnar 2015

Well, the start of this week flew by.  I worked 13 hour days Monday through Wednesday... how joyous!  I didn't have much time outside of work to do anything other then work out in the morning.  I was also able to pull together this:

Behold! My Psych board game!!

The base of the game board. 

It's a quad-fold board game, so it folds up nice and small.

Sometime last year I started to enjoy working on creating my own board games.  This is the second one I've worked on.  It's based on the TV show Psych.  In the game you drive around to various locations in the show and try to collect evidence to solve crimes.  I wanted to have a quality copy of it before I showed it to my family.  Since we were heading out to visit/run Ragnar at the end of the week I decided I'd try to get a board together before we left.  It turned out pretty well, and I learned some valuable lessons of things to do different next time.

Unfortunately the night I intended to debut the game everyone decided to go home and go to bed quite early, so I played with Mom.  Monica joined in about half way through.  My mom ended up champion... at least for now.

Wednesday night we went to Tyson and Tina's house to spend the night because we were planning to leave quite early the next day.  Thursday we spent the morning in the car driving out to Utah.  We left around 6 am, and it was super nice leaving so early in the morning.  We stopped in Laramie to get some breakfast.  Then Monica and I were going to drive to Rawlins to get gas, which was about 100 miles away.  We got approximately exactly 2 minutes out of town when BOOM! a bird flew up right in front of the car and into the windshield!

It was pretty... interesting, and gross.  It hit the window right in front of my face!  Well, the reason I point out that it was 2 minutes out of town is because the bird didn't quite clean off the windshield... and we were only just 100 miles from our next stop... great...

We also stopped in little America because that's Tyson and Tina's designated stopping point.  Monica and I took advantage:

It took some serious lassoing, but I eventually tamed 'im!  I wanted to ride the dinosaur the rest of the way to Utah, but Monica told me sometimes when you really love something you have to set it free... sigh :(.  So we just took the bird-smasher instead...

As mentioned above, Thursday night I tried to get a group together to play my game, but to no avail!

Friday was the big day of the race.  I successfully tapered for 5 weeks in preparation.  Not really.  In reality I got a super bad shin splint or something and I couldn't run or else it was gonna get even worse.  So I was resting my leg in hopes that it would be better for Ragnar.  It wasn't, but that's life sometimes.

My first run was 8.1 miles downhill.  The downhill was nice, and by the end my leg loosened up and I thought I might have run through my injury.  That was not quite the case as I found out when I tried to start my second run.  Here's a picture from my first run:

It looked very nice running down the hill.  I apparently made it a habit to take a picture while running, because I took one on each run.

In the end I survived and ran about 20 miles!  It was fun, but it was really hot this year!

The team medals this year were matching sets.  When you put them together on the back they said Ragnar Wasatch Back (not show in the picture), Together we ran 200-ish Miles. We made it back pretty late Saturday night and we were all pooped!  What a day.

Sunday we got to go to church with all the family.  Before church started Johnathan wanted a turn holding Matthew:

He kept trying to hide behind Matthew when I tried to take a picture.  So cute.  After church we drove back to CO, and brought Monica's sister with us!!  That should make for a fun week!  We got pretty late, and I was really tired, so I decided to wait till today to post!  Hope everyone is doing great!

Alex

Little Catching Up

Well... It's been a while, and I have a little catching up to do.  Firstly, I don't think I'll end up doing part 2 of my new house tour... that's just really old news (3 years old), so I think I'll spare you too many details.  It was in that house, however, that I started dating Monica Blood.  If you're reading this post, you're probably familiar enough with my life to know that we are now married.  If you're not that familiar, SURPRISE! I married her!  Here's us at Snowbird right after I proposed!

We got married 6 weeks laster on August 17th, and promptly left on a cruise to Alaska to escape the summer heat.  It was a lot of fun!  Once we got back from that it was off to our last year of school, mine for a Masters, and Monica for her Bachelorettes.  We rented out a basement to live in and it was a pretty great first place.  The people above who owned the house were great!  Just a little older than us and had a little baby, so cute.  They also kept there air on, and it kept it nice and cool for us :).  The house unfortunately sprung a leak...



During my final semester of classes I traveled a whole bunch interviewing for jobs.  I went to FL, CO, TX, AZ, and UT!  I interviewed at 5 companies, and I got 5 offers.  We accepted the job in **SPOILER ALERT** Colorado **END SPOILER**.  I had to enroll in Spring semester to finish writing my thesis, and we moved in with Monica's parents for a month while I was working on it.

With my thesis complete (and my Masters degree as well) we were ready to move out to Colorado where I started working for SEAKR Engineering.  Here's my picture by the fireplace on my first day of work!

Things have been going good at work so far!  I just passed 1 year working at the company and we're getting ready to deliver hardware for the first project I've been on.  It might be a crazy next couple of months while we try to get everything integrated and out the door, but things are going great so far.

When we moved out to CO we first moved into an apartment.  We were there for about 6 months while we were house hunting and eventually we found the one!  Funnily enough, we bought the house from one of Monica's childhood friends!  Small world!  Here's a picture of our house:

We moved in in November, so we've been here just over 7 months!  Time sure is flying.  We've undertaken various projects since we moved in, such as replacing all the blinds, and planting a garden.

Our most recent item of note, as you probably all know, is that MONICA IS PREGNANT!

So exciting!  She is due toward November 28th, so just a little after a year in the house.

Well, I think that is a very brief recap of the last ~3 years.  There are obviously things I missed, but I think might return to some past stories in their separate/own posts (this is really just me covering for when Monica and I are boring for a week).

I am hoping to start posting each week, and to include at least 1 picture each time, so feel free to come back and read more!

I hope everyone is doing great! and hopefully we see you here again soon!

Alex, and to a lesser extent, Monica (Monica approved me saying that)

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