Les Miserables

 Whenever I see any Les Miserables I always feel the same way, very awe-inspired. I can't ever believe how wonderful the book/play/movie was. I just  saw the most recent Les Miserables with Hugh Jackman and I thought it was very good. I really liked the cast they chose. Some voices were not quite as good as the broadway or concerts but the acting was really really good. The very last song where everybody is singing is so powerful.
  This Christmas has been a very good Christmas. For a while I was in a very bad mood about Christmas. I was very sick of all the commercialism of Christmas. And I felt like when I didn't have any money it wasn't fun at all. I felt like I was obligated to get people gifts. It ended up being really good. Dane's Crowton side had a really fun Christmas party. I tried beer bread which was really yummy. Dane and I spent Christmas eve with his family and had Korean food which was really really good. Hopefully I can learn how to make it. I also need to learn how to make stockings. My Grandma June made my immediate family these wonderful stockings. I want to be able to make Dane and my future family stockings. I went to my family's house on Christmas. It was really sad my mom was unable to be there. She ended up having to work all night. I really missed her.
   Jenessa's baby Madden was really cute Christmas morning. One of his presents was this big truck and all you heard forever was wow, wow, wow. He loves anything that moves and so loved the wheels on that truck. Dane and I saw a play called "The first Christmas" at the SCERA theatre in Orem. I liked it for the most part. I do wish I saw some Christmas Carol this year oh well next year.
  I saw the Hobbit on Christmas eve. That was really good also. Les Miserables and the Hobbit were the two movies that I really wanted to see all year. Now I can go back to waiting for movies to come out for rent. Dane and I did get to see Wreck it Ralph a few weeks ago. I thought that was pretty cute. But it surprisingly made me cry a lot. I guess I have big issues about kids getting picked on and feeling like they don't fit in. Why do we all have to be so mean?

(From John Tesh)

What if money was no object

Something to think about 

Look again at that dot

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Ear difficulties and rambling

    Yay for the snow! I think the most exciting thing about snow is just the change of scenery. And the more snow we have the more water we will have in the spring and the summer.  And it gets me in the mood for Christmas!      
    So I am still having hearing problems since my scuba dive down to the crater. I went back to my nurse practitioner and she said my ear drum had retracted a lot and I needed to go to an Ear specialist. So I saw the ear specialist yesterday. It was so cool when they looked into my ears they had a camera so I was able to see inside my ear on a computer! I got to see my normal ear and my "bad" ear. My bad ear looked pretty bad. The ear canal was all bloody and my ear drum had all this fluid and looked kind of shrunken. They are thinking maybe I was congested when I went scuba diving which made equalizing harder. But I don't know. I talked to my scuba diving instructor a few weeks ago and he suggested Sudafed I took that a few weeks ago and it seemed to do nothing. The ear specialist wanted me to try it again and try an antibiotic. I will see him again in about a week an a half. If the antibiotics didn't do anything the doctor will need to put a hole in my ear to release the fluid. I guess my ear drum is like inside out right now. Depending on how my ear heals I may or may not be able to take my last part of the scuba certification.  And the doctor thought my ears may not be cut out for scuba diving I kind of have issues with swimmers ear and ear infections.        
        As far as scuba certification I want to finish to get my certification. I want to finish  because I am taking it at school the class is part of my grade. And I want to finish because my Scuba class has been pretty expensive.  I paid half for my certification and am supposed to pay the other half when we return to the crater in december. I will be pretty bugged if I can't get that $80 I have already paid for.                  
   Another bummer with my ear is because I am taking antibiotics I can't  "donate" plasma until I have been off them for a few weeks :( Maybe it's a good think I think donating plasma is hard on your body. I have been having issues with my pulse being too high. It wasn't ever too high when I started donating.  I will try to add more  Cardio fitness in my life to see if that helps.
      I signed up for my classes for next semester this week!  My schedule is just really annoying. I didn't have very much options. When I signed up for Biology I there were like 15 different class options and now for Biology  II only 3. Organic Chemistry was the same. I have to take a labs for both which are really hard to schedule since they are 2 to 4 hours long and only available a few times a week. I hate driving to school everyday I feel so bad using gas. But the bus system in Utah is so bad that I can't even work it out with my schedule. The Trax system from Salt Lake city to Provo will finally open on December 5th! I am so happy on Utah working on there public transportation!
     Anyways back to my class schedule. So I tried making my schedule so I don't have to drive 5 days a week. But only could make it 4. So Now one of the days I get a lab on Saturday. It was really frustrating that there was no option for me to fit it in on one of the other days.
      Today is Dane's last day of football for this season. It has been really fun to watch him play. I am really glad he did it. Dane and I are signed up for a dodgeball team thing. I haven't played since 6th grade. And if anybody has seen my coordination with balls you all know how that is going :) But I am glad to be doing something active. 

October spooking/scary things

     Today was an absolutely gorgeous day! Raining with fall leaves so beautiful!  I do love Fall I just kind of dread winter. My body cannot handle the cold very well.
     October is kind of known for doing spooking/scary things. I went scuba diving for the first time in a crater last Saturday. I was very nervous. When I practiced in the pool I did not feel comfortable with the diving equipment. I felt like somehow the equipment would fail me and I would run out of oxygen. In a pool the deepest we probably went was 15  (I don't know how deep swimming pools go). So I was really worried when I went 35 feet deep and the surface wasn't quite so near somehow my scuba gear would fail me. It did not. And I got a lot calmer after I discovered that. The water was so nice! 97 degrees fahrenheit! It was dark though and the only living thing was algae growing on a wheel. We were just practicing but it would have been neat to see more life. I did hurt my ears though :( When I got home from the crater I found blood coming out of my ear. I went to the doctor and I have a "partial tympanic membrane perforation". Which means I can't go underwater for a few weeks :( Which means I have to miss my final in the pool scuba class. I really hope I don't lose a lot of points. It is not my fault I have to miss. Well it is a little my fault I guess I didn't equalize right. I swear I equalized every few feet. So I don't know what happened. Oh well overall I am very happy with my scuba diving class. And I am happy with conquering my fears.
  I got to "donate" plasma today! I was so happy I have had problems with too low of blood pressure. I did not think I would pass today. But I did! Now I have a little extra cash and hopefully I can keep doing it. I do feel weird trying to raise my blood pressure for money. Since all my life I have been taught to live the healthiest life style I can.
  I  am excited for Halloween I made this costume with my sister Alyssa and I am really excited for it! Although I really don't have a place to go with it. I can also wear to Renaissance fairs though so it's not all bad. I really do like to sew. It is crazy how addicting it is.
  The beginning of Fall has made me happy.

He who controls the spice controls the universe-Frank Herbert

He who controls the spice controls the universe--- for those of you who don't know that quote is from the book Dune by Frank Herbert.

I've come a cross a lot of things lately where I keep thinking money controls the world. It is  pretty sad and annoying for the poorer people. But I know there are so many more people in the world who are way way worse off then me so I should never feel bad.
  I saw this from John Tesh; Statistics show that if you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, then you're richer than 75% of the world.

Since the storm at Maryland that left our power out for a few days. Being so dependent on electricity has really gotten me paranoid. My prayers go out to the people dealing with hurricane isaac. Power going out is a lot different t in Maryland than Utah. When power goes out in Utah you basically know the most it will be is a few hours. Maryland or anywhere with big trees I am guessing it can be days or weeks.
  The power went out for us when we were moving out of our Apartment in two days. It was really bad timing. Luckily the power came on the morning that we were ready to leave and I could vacuum and get all the stuff I didn't see with sunlight and flashlights.
  But anyways it made me really envious of amish people who are not dependent upon electricity. I know I need to figure out ways to not become so dependent I just don't really know where to begin.... Also I will be really happy when I can finally own a home and have a garden. I miss gardening a lot.

School has started and has made me really happy. I really do like school and learning.  I really really like going to a Community College it makes me wonder why I didn't do it when I started. It has a lot smaller classes and the teachers have more time with you. There is homework which I like having. Most of my USU classes just had the exams.

I'm taking this scuba diving class to get scuba certification for this intern I want to do. Hopefully it goes well I've only had one classroom class so I really don't know yet. A pre-requisite for the class is to be able to swim 200 yards. I've started swimming laps. I never knew before I much I enjoy swimming laps. Who would have guessed?

Sort of an update

My first year wedding anniversary was June 25th 2012. I didn't post anything mainly because I was really busy and  that time was a very depressing time for me. We did have a good day.  My sister got to stay with us a few days which was really nice. She was our first official visitor :) We got to see DC with her and visit Jamestown. And I can't remember if we did anything else... Oh yeah we did watch the movie Brave.

 Overall I was very happy with Jamestown it had a lot of hands on activities which I thought was really neat. 

Brave, I was disappointed with. I felt like the story wasn't very good. It felt very forced. I feel like it should have been an episode in a TV show. It was sad how it wasn't very good I really do love celtic stuff. 

That time was really depressing for me mainly because I had given up hope that good was going to happen. It was a stressful time because we needed to move and really did not know what was going to happen when we got to Utah. Things are looking up at least things aren't as bad as I expected. 

Baltimore Harbor

Baltimore Harbor behind us

Aboard the USS Torsk 

Aboard the Lightship Chesapeake 

(A lot more room then the Submarine) 

Aboard the USS Constellation 

Overall was a very nice day in Baltimore. The ships were my highlight of the day. 

Natural History Museum

Dane and I finally made it to the Natural History Museum in DC! The smithsonian has taken a lot more time then I expected and we still haven't seen it all. I got a Monday off so thought it would be a good day and wouldn't be so crowded. It was still very crowded just with a different crowd, loads of kids going on field trips. At four p.m. we returned for something and most of the kids had gone home so it was a lot less crowded.

Below is picture of Dane next to the Thor tree ;)

 Horsie head a long time ago

 Horsie head now

 A size comparison to the horse and the tapir.

 Another size comparison can you see I was deeply impressed by these miniature horses.  I didn't get a a good picture but you can see the horses used to have toes which slowly disappeared. 

 And the horse jumped over the Dane.

 triceratops !

 A walrus and a river otter right next to each other :)

Relatives to my wedding and engagement ring

 More relatives to the horse

 Giant Sloth behind me

 Mammoth behind Dane since he really really wants to clone one.

 Below is information about the first burial sites that have been found. I like to think how long man has thought about the afterlife and have mourned and respected the dead. Me, Toriana, Maren, Macloud and Dane all watched this documentary on the evolution of man a few months ago I thought it was funny that it said changing our diets to meat made our brains develop and made us smarter. Without it where would we be?

 It's always crazy to think about how species lasted so long and then could go extinct like that. Our species Homo sapiens have not been around very long compared to others. I wonder what a drastic climate change could do to us?

 This was my favorite museum. Dane's is probably the Air and space museum. It was a good day. I like using the metro but I'm pretty sure it costs more than driving. Which I think is bad. DC should encourage more people to use metro. Although the metro is used a ton so maybe they do need to get rid of people I don't know. 

 Dane I finished up the day by seeing the National Archives. We saw the declaration of independence. Dane really liked seeing the Magna Carta. 

 It was a very nice day started off sprinkling and then left the rest of the day with overcast. 

Ocean City

Dane's car made it from coast to coast.

Boardwalk

 The new world behind me.