Sundance

My friend Anne knows a family that happens to have a little place in Park City, so a bunch of us went up and stayed there and got to experience the Sundance Film Festival. We got there Friday night, went to dinner, then wandered around for a while. We ended up seeing an awful independent film that wasn't accepted to Sundance called 'Joe Killionaire' that was a spoof on Joe Millionaire and reality shows in general. It turned out to just be poorly filmed, poorly written and directed, and extremely juvenile. Saturday morning we were able to catch a real Sundance film and the difference was apparent. We saw 'Drum', a film about Apartheid in South Africa around 1955 told through the story of a reporter for Drum magazine in Sophiatown. It was an excellent movie, except for a couple of gratuitous wardrobe malfunctions. The place we stayed in was awesome, too. The owners were out of town, so we had this whole lodge to ourselves, moose head, bear rug, and jacuzzi included.

Infinite Cat

The internet is a strange place... For proof, go to this site and click on the "Next Cat" icon as many times as suits your fancy :)

Another Update

I'm still alive, but my hopes for a daily blog apparently aren't... Things haven't changed much, but this is what's going on:

Work is going well. This last set of classes I've taught Excel Basic and Word Basic and Photoshop Advanced. Those have gone pretty well. Also, I've been teaching Access to a Facilities Management 430 class and I had my last full session of that last night. It was an interesting experience. The class is about 20 people, all guys. I got to try to teach them Access in 3 3 hour classes. Overall I think it went all right, except that the teacher's assignments were very confusing and I usually spent the last part of the class reexplaining the assignment. Oh, and I got to write up quizzes as well. And the TA did all the grading :)

On the side, I've been able to get some database jobs done for some extra money. I don't remember if I wrote about it or not, but a week or two ago I finished a job for a guy I'd done some work for before. It was just adding some features to a database I'd already made for him. Just recently I did the first stage of another database job for a guy in Salt Lake that has ties to BYU. He needed to consolidate and make automatic changes to invoices from 4+ different Excel files, so it was a fun exercise in macros and action queries to import them all, update some things, append them all together, add fields, etc. I haven't heard back from him yet, but if this stage is satisfactory, I think he wants me to do some more with it.

Everything's still going well with Amber. We haven't really done anything noteworthy, just the usual. Friday we went to the International Cinema and saw Children of Heaven, a really good Iranian movie. Saturday we read in the park and watched a movie among other things. We usually do at least something together every day. Unfortunately, the inversion and cold weather here is really affecting her and it makes her tired all the time. I feel bad, because it doesn't affect me at all and there's not much I can do for it, but that's the way it goes, I guess.

Nothing but cold air

A couple of days ago, Adam and I noticed that the house was pretty cold, so we checked the thermostat and indeed it was. The heat was supposedly turned on, but only cold air was blowing out of the vents. Luckily I'm out of the house most of the day, but I've still had to sleep in temperatures that have gotten to the mid 50s in the middle of the night. (During the day it's been a balmy 60...) The heater guy is coming over today, so hopefully I'll be able to get a good night's sleep tonight!

Zoorific Weekend

I haven't been very good about keeping this current, due to a certain petrified tree resin, but I'll try to write at least the major events.

On Friday night I went to Amber's sister's birthday party at her brother's place. We had a fun time making salmon and playing mahjongg, the real version, not the computer solitaire kind. Pung! Saturday we went to the temple in the morning then made a big breakfast for lunch. (Thanks for the scrambled egg hints, Mom, I got them pretty close to yours.) That night we watched BYU's amazing men's volleyball team cruise to victory. On Sunday, Amber's apartment made a delicious sweet-and-sour chicken dinner of which I was able to partake. Afterwards I got a beautiful haircut from a cute hairdresser named Amber.

Yesterday on our day off, we decided we should get out and do something, so we started driving for Salt Lake not knowing exactly what we were going to do. On the way there, Amber's brother called and suggested the Hogle zoo, and we thought that was a good idea. I hadn't been to a zoo in a long time and it's always fascinating to see the animals up close. We just sat and watched the giraffes and other weird animals for a long time. I wanted to take a tiger home for a big pillow, but Amber didn't think that would be a good idea. Perhaps the best part of any zoo, though, is the required usage of bad animal puns. The Hogle Zoo features such masterpieces as the "Beastro" and "Catwalk" restaurants, the "Zoofari" train ride, "Edzoocation Center", and "Bear Essentials" gift shop. At the section of the zoo featuring savanna animals, we were shocked and appalled that they hadn't taken the opportunity to label it "Savannimals" in true zoo fashion :)

Amber is still great. It's been over a week and we're still together, so that's progress :) But seriously, it's gotten to the point where I think we both finally understand each other and are comfortable with everything. It wasn't easy, but just like Jesus didn't say, "I never said it would easy, I only said it would be worth it."

Unbreak up

Well, she "convinced" me. We're back together and life is happier. (You can fill in the accompanying DTRs and drama with your imagination...)

I'm Back

It's been a long time since I've done this, I guess. I went home for Christmas break and it was good, but I never really could get into it. I got a nice set of horseshoes from my parents and a USB 2.0 card for my laptop so I can get high speeds from my external hard drive and DVD burner. The weather was beautiful in VA when I left, in the 60s, and as soon as I come back to Provo it snows for 2 days straight and we have probably a foot of snow. At least it didn't screw up my flight.

I got my grades back and got 2 As and a B in my last CS classes, so I'm done for sure. Now I'm just working a little part time. I'm teaching a MS Access unit for one of the classes on campus and also some of the normal classes I usually teach. I also have 2 side jobs building some databases that will get me a little bit of extra money. As far as the girl goes, that seems to be over unless she can convince me otherwise.