The Unbeaten Path

Every so often, I get the opportunity to sit down and truly ponder. In today's workaholic world of instantaneous results and gratification, it's hard to get some decent alone time to just sit and think. I got such an opportunity while nestled in the majesty of the Teton Mountains near Driggs, Idaho this past Memorial Day weekend. The following just flowed out of me, as it were, and I feel like sharing. Here you go, I hope you enjoy it:

We can watch our loved ones move on without us. Indeed, they progress toward their dreams and goals as we remain in our last footsteps, stagnant. What we don't seem to notice (but I say we do, though afraid to confront it) is the path that lies ahead of us. Different, winding out of view, but in the same direction as our dear ones': On. That is where we will go, there lies our future and dare we to traverse such a wild-looking path, endless treasures await us. We need not to fear, we need not to fatigue in the sight of the unknown. Onward now, on to bright horizons and the warmth of a life better suited to us than we can presently see.

Catching Up on Things

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted in this. I believe this will be the mode of my blog posting for this semester. I was hoping for once a week, but it may just be once whenever I can. These last few weeks have held excitement for sure. Story time!

Story Number One: About two weeks ago, one of my roommates (we'll call him Zeke) came into the apartment in a fit, saying he locked not only his regular keys in his car, but he believed the spare to be sitting in the middle console since he could not find it in his room. A few days later, we decided to break into his car to get his keys back. By this time, another roommate (going by the name of Mack in this story) wanted in on the action. We had a couple of wire hangers, no tennis balls, and even a string. The closest we got was with the wire hangers. Ten-fifteen minutes after initiating Operation Initiate-Life-of-Crime, we were feeling confident, having finally made a little progress against the car. The score was still Car:1, would-be car-thieves: 0. After an hour and a half with two hangers jammed into the car, me on the car roof for better leverage, and Mack ready to execute his string theory of car-jacking, the score remained unchanged. Zeke had disappeared for a few minutes, and Mack and I were surprised to hear his voice coming from the other side of the car announcing that he had the keys. We turned to see him standing in the open door of his car, holding both sets of keys. Turns out his spare was in a different place than he had supposed. A wire hanger found him swiftly, but without harm.

Story Number Two: This last Thursday (the 24^th) was my first Ultimate Frisbee game in the intermediate league. After much begging from a dear friend of mine, I consented to join her team, The Book Club. Yup, that's our name. It is a traditional name for the captain who's been playing under the name ever since he started competing. At least that's how I understand it. Anyway, it was a good game! It was a bit chilly with a slight wind, but nothing we haven't seen before in good ol' Rexburg. I took a few hits for the team, which I like to think helped contribute to our victory. At least I feel cooler for having done so and survived. But anyway, there's nothing like a little friendly smack-talk between players, right? The first play of the game, the other team had the frisbee in the hands of their best player. I was guarding him and tried to block a pass, but ended up hitting his arm after the fact. He sternly warned me to “watch [my] hands.” The next time I was guarding him, I totally stuffed his pass and said, “I was watching them that time.” Sure I was a little smug, but he hardly said a word to me after that. As a result of the pass-stuffing, my right index finger was tenderized. He had a pretty mean throw, after all. All said and done, we won, and it was well-deserved. Both teams worked hard: it was a close match with a final score of 9 to 8, but we had more heart, I would say. Now to continue building the team's confidence by winning more games!

Story Number Three: One of my classes is Exercise Physiology Lab. In that class we get to do a lot of different tests and whatnot. We've done muscle endurance/strength tests and cardiovascular fitness tests. Turns out I am pretty normal for a guy who hasn't had a solid workout for longer than he cares to remember as far as muscle strength goes. However, I found out that I do have a good heart and am rated “superior” in what's known as a VO2 max test. VO2 max (with a dot above the “V” and standing for Oxygen Uptake) is essentially dealing with Oxygen consumption during activity. The higher your VO2 max, the better you are in cardiovascular activities. We did a partial test to estimate my VO2max last week and this week did the actual test to get a hard number on it. The actual test involved me wearing a tight facial mask that hooked up to a tube that ran to a machine that measures a bunch of stuff like your Oxygen to Carbon Dioxide ratio while I ran on a treadmill. After warming up and maintaining the same jogging speed throughout the test, the treadmill's incline was increased 1.5% every minute until volitional exhaustion (when I decided I couldn't jog any more). I believe I got up to 10.5%-12%. I couldn't really tell because the face-mask blocked most of my lower view (and I was trying to not pay attention and just go). At any rate, the 90^th percentile for men for VO2max (meaning 90% of men in your age-range have an equal or lower value for VO2max) is 51.4. I topped off at 61.59! Yep, I'm pretty awesome, like everyone's always suspected...

Story Number Four: Bill Cosby, the great comedian, family man, and boundary-breaker, is coming to Rexburg June 6^th and 7^th. I have floor tickets to go see him on the 6^th. I'm incredibly excited to be going. End of story.

At any rate, this post is long enough. Pictures will come soon, I promise! Hopefully I'll get some good ones from this weekend. I'm currently in Driggs, Idaho, which is nestled in the Teton Mountains, with a bunch of friends from school. It's really nice up here. We have two cabins that we're all staying in and it feels pretty isolated in the mountain forest. Such a nice change of scenery.

As a closing note, this is Memorial Day and I hope that every observes it as such. I always feel such a great swell of gratitude and respect for the men and women who lay their lives on the line for us and a better tomorrow. May our prayers be with them and their loved-ones.

Anyone Say Differently?

Hello and welcome to another bout of blogging by your very own, Steven Brown. I know I said there would be at least one more blog post from last semester, but that never made it past an unfinished compilation of jumbled thoughts collecting virtual dust in the “Drafts” archives. I posted it, unfinished, and that's just going to be that. As for those “job woes,” I had a fantastic off-track semester, work-wise. I went back to working for Hand and Ortho as a PRN Technician. Essentially, I was like a mercenary tech. If another technician (AKA aide) needed someone to cover a shift, they could call me. If a team felt like they needed extra help, they could call me in to work with them. I had steady hours at our South Temple clinic, but those accumulated to about 13 hours/week and I needed more work to gear up for another semester. I ended up working more hours than some of the “regulars” did. I even got a little overtime some weeks, which was quite nice. It's nice when you've worked with every therapist in the company except for two. That is a total of twelve therapists, for those who were curious. That's twelve different styles of handwriting (ranging from legible to ancient, forgotten languages), twelve different ways of doing things, almost twelve different names for each and every exercise/activity/procedure/etc, and twelve (divided by four) ways my point has been made. Drowning was not an option. It was still really fun.

Moving on, this semester has had a promising start. What I mean by that is that it's promising to not be the best one ever. Let's see if I can't make it break that little promise, shall we? So far, I have not found any sort of groove for doing school work and that leaves me wandering through the mire of assignments and lessons rather aimlessly; just barely slogging my way through to the next day. That, my faithful readers, is no way to live. The good news is that winding path I've thus forged is providing guidance for what kind of groove to establish. Live and learn, as the adage goes. Still, the most stress-reduced way is to have that groove right away and then maintain the discipline to stick with it. I guess that's not how life is supposed to go, though. We fine-tune ourselves through pushing through the muck and mire that lays before us. Why can't it be a nice meadow or something more often?

I had the recent experience of a long-lasting relationship (who-me? Never!) which terminated after surviving the whole long-distance thing. It was surprising to me that it had lasted the 4 ½ months of being spread over a couple of states considering all previous long-distance relationships went sour after about 2, give or take a couple of weeks. I have felt God's hand throughout the entire process and didn't always follow, I'm sad to say. But, at the beginning of this still fresh semester, I could not ignore what I knew had to happen, so we met somewhere as a pair and left as individuals one stormy night. It didn't make sense to me why it was to last so long being apart only to end the day after seeing each other again, but as I go along, I'm given understanding little by little and only as much as I need to know. I think sometimes we forget just how true Wesley's statement really is.

It's interesting to note, though, that we, like trees, cannot grow strong and sturdy without opposition and pain. Just a little something from the most recent CES Fireside.

On the flip-side of that, life isn't just pain: it's full of wonderful things as well. For instance, my birthday is coming up soon, isn't that something? I don't care who you are, a birthday should be a wonderful thing! Anyway, I'm sure everyone can think of at least 25 things that make life worth living, and then go on with the list. So instead of going on and on about it, I'll just let you all conjure up that list if you so desire. It's a good exercise, anyway. I learned in my statistics class that people who record at least five things they are grateful for every day tend to view their quality of life higher than they would otherwise. It was statistically proven to me...through one study...imagine that.

Anyway, it's time to just post this one, as-is, also. It was supposed to be posted on the 26th of last month...I'm slowly getting into a groove of sorts so I will be able to fit this into my weekly schedule and you will have regular blog posts again. Makes me wonder if people are still reading this nonsense.

End of an Era

 So this was supposed to be finished and posted about 5 months ago...Anyway, it's a new semester, so this is going up as-is. Ta-daa...
...Or so it feels. The semester is over along with every academic thing inside of it. Now I'm footloose and fancy-free until April! Sort of. Now I'm really looking for work, but before we get into that, why not fill y'all in on the goings-on of these last couple of weeks.
First off, this picture is of all the ticketed events that I attended over the last four months. I didn't have anything better to illustrate the end of the semester, so that's what you're getting. Merry Christmas.
With the end of the semester came the end of my two-semester-long class of Human Anatomy and Physiology. I'll be sad to say goodbye to that class; these last two semesters have integrated it into my life so wholly. It will be strange to be taking classes in the Spring Semester and not have Anat. and Phys. What really made the class was the teacher, Bro. Shaw. In my opinion, he is one of the best teachers at the school; certainly one of the best I've had. He really made sure that you understood what was being discussed. He would do everything in his power to help the students out in his classes. It was more work for him, but it was okay because he loves the subject. You could tell, too. Sometimes I think he had too much fun in his classes. Something I really loved were his tests. It was the way he made them: I have laughed in every single one of his tests without exception. They were pretty darn great.
Anyway, I won't know my final grades until tomorrow, but I feel good about this semester-nothing lower than a B, I hope. There's something a lot different about the final weeks of this semester, and I owe it to someone special. Without her, I think I would be needing this guy on a daily basis. Amongst the wide variety of things that eat time and cause stress, I have been a lot more peaceful. It's a fascinating development.
Don't get greedy.
Now for my job woes.

Almost a Month Later...

All right, it's time for a break from homework and all the craziness. A lot has been coming up in the last month or so and this has been the thing to head to the back burner. My apologies to the very few who the delay may have affected.

This year I came away from November with three Thanksgiving dinners under my belt. The video pretty much sums up how I was feeling. The break was really nice-fantastic, even. I did a little bit of homework (thank goodness not a terribly large amount was required of me), but mostly spent time with family and friends, thankful to be able to do so. My last day in Utah involved making apple cider using the golden delicious apples from our tree and my Uncle John's cider press. Before you even start pressing the chopped-up apples, the weight of the apple mash on top press the bottom ones and give you, what Uncle John said, the "cider lees" (Isaiah 25:6). That's the good stuff, the most desirable of the press, and rightfully so! It was really sweet and pure. As a roommate of mine would say, it made me all kinds of happy. We didn't have any other types of apples to mix in with our own (aside from two red delicious...), but it was still a very tasty cider. Unfortunately, the day turned into the next one and it was time to head back to the frozen tundra of Rexburg and back to the grindstone.

I had given my roommate that I actually room with (referred to as a cell mate by another roommate of mine) a ride down and back and as we came to our bedroom, this is what we saw:

This just so happens to be our bedroom door

So we got brave and opened it to discover:

"Christmas came early? Hey, I had something just like this!"

If you look closely at the picture to the right, you'll see that even my Tibetan prayer beads were wrapped. Everything was so neatly packaged up in old copies of the school newspaper, The Scroll, and, as you can see, our floor was covered in them. By my desk, it seemed that the culprits just got tired and dumped the remaining stack. Cleanup was "fun", but we managed to get it all into one garbage bag. I contemplated spreading the cheer abroad or even performing a counter-prank with it (we knew who had done the deed almost the moment we saw our door), but decided to avoid prank wars in these final, hectic weeks and threw it all away.

Now it's back to the usual work, work, work, except more-so now that the semester is coming to a close. The whips are crackin' and the students are groanin'. It's hard to imagine that the piles of work we've been given will actually be gone in just a week and a half. The silver lining to that, I guess, is that it helps us stay focused on school and learn what we need to learn rather than daydream about Christmas Break and not learn a blessed thing these last few weeks. Still, it feels like a very thin lining.

On top of that is a lot of church stuff. People still having to get their tithing settlements done because they missed their regular time, others making the regular appointments, and poor Bishop Jones and I having to get it all scheduled and work it out with him being gone most of this week and having our schedule fiddled with this next Sunday. There's going to be a multi-stake meeting this Sunday in which the entire school will gather in the BYU-Idaho Center (our own mini Conference Center) from 4-6pm where we're going to be let in on the particulars of a massive reorganization of the campus-wide stakes. Because of that, we're only having the first hour of church, sacrament meeting. We'll see what goes down in the multi-stake meeting.

Penultimately, I've started seeing a young lady. Apparently I'm really good at finding someone only to have to either break up with her or enter a long-distance relationship. She and I met last year this semester at a weekly social and hit it off really well. I determined that I would ask her on a date the next time I saw her and just like that, I didn't see her again until this semester. We got to talking here and there and I finally asked her out and our first date was the Friday before Thanksgiving Break. Now here we are and things are going well. I'll keep you updated as we go along.

Finally, just some random things going on around here. One thing is that it's freezing cold up here but there's no snow on the ground. All we have are little ice mounds left over from before Thanksgiving. My roommate and I got egged the other night while walking home from swimming. The egg hit the ground and splattered a little bit on our pants, so it wasn't that bad. It was reported to the local authorities. The next day I was walking around finding eggshell and frozen yolk and whites every here and there. I went laser-tagging for the first time in ages with my elders quorum on Saturday. It was really fun because there were a lot of people-mostly kids having a birthday party. In some instances it was like playing "Whack-a-Mole". They would just keep popping up. The difference was that the "moles" fought back.

Anyway, this is rather long, so I'm ending it here.

Triple Eleven: The Day of Magic

Say hello to the old font which seems easier to read.

Today is a magical day for those who actually care that today's date is made up of a single number (this day would have been more impressive in the year 1111 instead of 2011, but I suppose I'll refrain from raining on too many parades). Weddings, movie releases both in theaters and DVD/Blu-ray, video-game releases, concerts, celebrations, parties, induced labor, pagan rituals, the moon refraining from waning (thus altering its faze-cycle), cats and dogs living together, etc. are events taking place on this day to immortalize the three elevens that make up the date for those who don't include the full year when they write it. I, personally, will be attending a wedding reception and a celebration of the day that will involve good friends, good food, and Martinelli's Sparkling Cider. The other way I'm celebrating the day is by treating it like any other day and attending my classes and doing homework (plus this blog) before the festivities (the first 5 seconds are all you need to watch, it just gets annoying after that).

In reality, though, the day is actually set apart to remember those who have served in our nation's armed forces. It's Veteran's Day and let's not forget it! Remember those who have fought and died for our country and the cause of freedom. Their sacrifice has been great in many instances. We're indebted to them for what they have done for us-honor them.
In the way of my perfectly ordinary life (at least it's ordinary for me), life has been a-okay. Tithing Settlement has come upon the ward. At first it seemed nightmarish, being the one responsible for making sure the Bishop met with every ward member, but having two assistants has been a tremendous blessing. I owe those two guys a lot. We tackled that monster and have come out on top thus far. Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes as smoothly as it has!
Anatomy and Physiology is a crazy blast, as it usually is. We've been going over the respiratory system and are now diving headlong into the digestive system. There's so much to learn about our body, it's crazy. It's even more-so when you think about all the things in the body that we still don't know about, which is still a vast "black box" despite the advances we make. Something interesting about the digestive system: It has more neurons in it than the spinal cord. In fact, it can be a stand-alone system if needs be. That's why when someone is paralyzed from the neck down or something like that, they can still eat and get nutrition.
Anyway, I'm still working on that research paper, so I'd best get on that! I have one week before it's due!

Happy Hallow-...Dia de la...What Day is it?

Oh drat, it's been a while since I last posted. Life has gone a little to the crazy side these last couple of weeks: I've had midterms. It hasn't even been that bad though. The worst of it has been my research paper for my English class. The teacher is making us do it in a specific way that is taking me a really long time; it will be miraculous if I get it finished on time. It might not be so bad if it was my only class, but since my Anatomy and Physiology class and Exercise Physiology class also have homework that I can't slack on, it's killer. It also doesn't help that I found out I had been doing the research wrong from day one and had to start it all over again the other day.  Like I said, it might be a miracle to get it done on time.

At any rate, the picture up top there is an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG). It happens to be my ECG taken in lab a couple of weeks ago via placing sticky electrodes on my wrists and ankles (I had a bald-patch on my right leg from ripping the electrodes off)-which explains why it's so rough in nature instead of having nice, smooth lines. The machine has a little to do with that as well. For those who aren't familiar with an ECG, prepare yourselves for a little education! It's a measurement of the electrical impulses traveling across your heart. It's the little machine that goes "beep! beep! beep!" It has a baseline (which is not easily seen in mine) and the deviations signify an impulse: an upward wave is typically going "down" the heart and a downward wave is typically going "up" the heart. The waves are given letters: P is the one right before the big wave (atrial contraction), the big wave is called the QRS Complex (essentially ventricular contraction) (Q is the small dip, R is the big spike upward, S is the spike downward), and the T wave is the one right after the QRS Complex (ventricular "re-polarization" to get ready for next contraction). When the heart speeds up, the P and T waves get closer together, or "You get a little P in your T" (Bro. Shaw) as you can see to the far right of the above picture. There is also a way to use the diagram to figure out roughly what angle your heart sits at in your chest, but I'll spare you the details.

 I found a little something the other night. I was heading off the library to deprive myself of a social life and ensure that I maintain a healthy grade in English when I ran across this little kitten. Someone had accidentally dropped a jar of spaghetti sauce on the sidewalk and this little gal came out and started licking up the mess, obviously starving. The guy who dropped the jar, along with his brother, started dumping water to wash the sauce off the sidewalk, which the cat immediately started lapping up as if it was the only wet stuff she had seen all day. She was comfortable around people and had no problem with me coming up to her. Turns out she's a major snuggle-bug. I decided she needs a good home and a warm place to stay for the night, since it has been getting progressively colder, so I was going to keep her in our apartment, but my roommate's allergic to cats. That wouldn't have worked out so well. Fortunately, I found someone who could give her shelter and took her over there. This morning she was taken to the animal shelter and hopefully she'll have a good home soon.
In other news, Fictionist came to town in a celebratory tour of signing on with Atlantic Records. They played at Sammy's and had two warm-up bands, Tighty Willis and Moth and the Flame, which were both pretty good. I enjoyed their performances for the most part. If I had one critique for Tighty Willis, I would say that they could stand a little lyrical work for some songs and for them to either get rid of the saxophone or make the saxophonist actually play it. It seemed more like he was trying to hurt himself with it rather than get music out of it. As for Moth and the Flame, what I heard I liked. It was during their performance that I got a little lesson in how to be blind, but more on that in a little bit. Fictionist was fantastic last night. I thoroughly enjoyed their show before I had to leave for another commitment. I made sure to buy their EP though, and here it is:

I have a friend who is going blind from the peripherals-in. In other words, she has tunnel vision that will get worse until she's totally blind. She went to blind school to learn how to cope with it and be independent. Part of that was being given a special mask that blocks out all sight and learning to use a cane. Her and my roommate (he had just been learning for fun) came to the show and it was during Moth and the Flame that they decided to have me give a whirl. It was fun, I crossed the intersection nearby in all four crosswalks without trouble (even though it was really scary) and I was even able to find my own way back to where the band was playing. Funny story time. So I crossed the first sidewalk and heard someone say "Hello Steve!" It turned out to be a good friend named Charlie, so I reached out my hand toward him and said, "Come to me." Then I heard a different voice saying, "Uh, no thanks." That voice belonged to a complete stranger, one of about five guys, who happened to be walking between Charlie and me at the moment and ended up sidling around my outstretched had.
Anyway, starting last night, winter has begun to set in officially. That's right, Rexburg has been bedded down in the cold sleep of snow and ice. If anyone loves the snow and related sports/activities, this place is a dream come true. I grew up in a place where having a few inches of snow meant school was cancelled. I'm not too keen on anything but sledding, really. Ask some of my friends who have taken me snowboarding. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hibernate or something.