Bartoq Comes to Visit

So I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, minding my own business, when I looked to my left and baboom!  There was a bat.  I guess he knew Halloween was coming and decided to provide some natural decorations. 

It is a day later and he is still hanging out, pardon the pun =)  Hopefully he does not die between the screens because that would be really fun to try and get out.  "I'd give her a ha! and a hi-ya! and a whooooo-ah! And I'd kick her sir"

A Weekend at Bern. . . Rochester

This is my handsome husband.  He did his hair and got all cute for me for when I came home from spending two weeks with Sarah.  Isn't he adorable!

Weekend In Rochester

Well, it turns out that we live in a beautiful city.  We never knew!

We went on a small adventure this past weekend.  It was decided that we were boring, and we needed to get out and see things, so we decided we would go and look at one of the things on our list.

Rochester has what are called the falls.  Yes, they ARE waterfalls.  Surprise!  There are two of them, named the upper and lower falls.  First on our stop was the upper fall, which was closer to us.  The Genesee River is odd in that it flows from south to north, so the upper fall is actually further south.  My mind had some serious issues coping with a north flowing river - I felt like the world was upside down.

When we arrived at downtown Rochester, we were greeted with an eery silence.  Mostly silence.  The buildings are beautiful, many with roman/greek influence, but downtown goes dead during the weekend when it's chilly out.  There were few, quite literally a few, cars that we encountered on our way once we got into the middle of town.  As we walked about we wondered if we had entered a well developed ghost town, or maybe the apocalypse had happened without anyone telling us.  It was almost a relief to see another couple out sightseeing.  One plus of this oddity was that we got free parking!  Unfortunately, we didn't get any fake money with  it.

Here's a couple of my favorite pictures from the Upper Falls area.  They have a museum (closed) and some nice looking doors.  Melissa has a thing for doors, that I still don't quite understand.  Anyway, here's a couple of pictures:

 You probably can't tell from this picture, or any of the others that I'll put on here, that Melissa has lost some weight, but she has!  She's been doing some pretty awesome exercising, working out often twice a day.  She stubbornly refuses to weigh herself, though, so we don't know how much she's lost.

It turns out I've lost a little too, so we're feeling pretty good about ourselves and our health these days.

This door on the left here goes into the museum.  Pretty door, eh?  And the girl in front of it isn't too bad either.

 So, in this picture you can see the upper falls.  It's really pretty, in case you can't tell.  They also use the falls as a hydroelectric dam as well.  Good for them for using stuff and such, though we were a little sad that the area was as developed as it was.

 This is a door to a bar.  I'm showing my true colors!

Even when you're not looking at the falls, the colors here are starting to be pretty impressive.  It's kind of hard to see because we do not have the most awesome cameras in the world, but lots of the trees are turning this really beautiful deep red color.  There's a multitude of bright vibrant oranges and yellows as well, and an occasional lighter red color.  I actually was disappointed until what Melissa tells me was a tree with faded, light red color, but I'm going to call it pink.  I wanted a pink tree, I saw one, so I'm satisfied.  The colors here are gorgeous, though, and I'm pretty sure Lacey would be going out of her mind right now with all of the picture opportunities.

We also went to the so called "Lower Falls."  They are a lot less developed, but Miss and I have agreed that they are also much prettier.  Take a gander,

This is from a bridge that cars travel on that's above the falls.  you can't see it well, but this is a gorge, which means there are not really any easy ways to get next to the falls.  There is some sort of rock mining or soot collecting building next to the falls (a tragedy, we think) that has a road to it, but you're still limited.  To really get close you have to hike down.  We didn't.  Not this time, anyway.

More Lower Falls pictures!

Don't I have a pretty wife?

This last picture here is from down close to the falls looking at the bridge above the fall.  They have some really pretty photo opportunities here.

We also went to a graveyard!  Turns out our neighbors are all really quiet folk.

 

Sorry about the quality of the pictures from here on out.  My camera is still an enigma to me.  You can't really tell from this picture, but this little house of the dead is built into the side of a hill.  They had a lot of those, and a lot of non-hilly houses of the dead in this graveyard.  It was huge.  Really huge.  And some famous people live here.  For example, it turns out that one of our neighbors is Susan B. Anthony.

I'm ashamed to admit we didn't know who she was when we met her here, but we found out later on wikipedia.  Fredrick Douglas is also buried in this same cemetery, but we were worried our Sunday dinner would be burning (graveyard was a Sunday experience) so we left off meeting him for another day.

Here's some more graveyard pictures:  (this is Melissa, the pictures with awesome color were taken with my camera and edited by me, just so you know) ;-)

Which pretty much sums up our weekend.  We're starting to really get into the swing of things here, and really enjoying ourselves.  We're planning on going to a state park this weekend, which is supposed to be "The thing to do" and "the place to go" here in Rochester, so we're pretty excited about that.

Just for fun, here's a picture of where we're living, from the outside.  You can't tell, but we live in a U bend.  And we're in the bottom part of that U.  It actually is really quiet here, as most of the graduate students spend all of their time at school.  Or at least that's what it seems like.

And there's us, for the moment at least.

Pictures of the Abode

Here are some pictures of our lovely apartment.  It's small but we call it home. 

 This is a picture of David just being silly!  He makes a good monk don't you think.

 The kitchen of course.  I was heading out the door to go see Sarah in Michigan when I took these pictures so the house is in a bit of a mess.  That kitchen table was only $10 at a second hand store.

 The living room.  That couch was found on the side of the road for free.  I like that price tag!

And the bathroom.  It is really small but it's not like we are having a dance party in there so it works=)

A New Yellow Abode

Hello All!

The nifty site looking at tracker thing tells me that so far today (and I'm typing this at nine o'clock pm) there has been a total of one page view of my blog.  Cool, huh?  That means that even the internet surfers are giving themselves a break on Sunday.  A great way to go, if you ask me.

I thought I'd write and share a few thoughts I've had since we moved in.  I guess I should first say that class has actually started, but I don't think it really counts until I've actually experienced all of my classes.  I've only gone to two of my classes because of a fortuitous scheduling that makes my Fridays free of classes, so I feel like school hasn't really begun.  More on that later.  But not in this blog.

Anyhooligan,  this post is meant to be more about a few random insights into our living space.  First, everything is hardwood.  Even the ceilings.  Don't ask me how they got it up there.  No, that was an exaggeration.  It is true, however, that excepting the bathroom and kitchen, which have a linoleum like flooring, everything is hardwood.  There are also these odd places that could either be some very serious air vents or places to put muddy boots.  Maybe both, we really don't know.  There appear to be air vents of varying types all around our apartment, so we're not really sure which ones correspond to the actual heating.  Should be fun to find out which are which, especially because we've covered a couple of them for the time being.

Another oddity of our apartment, and probably the most apparent one, is lighting.  There are no light fixtures in the bedroom or the living room.  The kitchen has a normal light, but the bathroom has a light that is just over the mirror.  It has an eery glow about it - it makes me look like I have a lot more wrinkles and some serious sleep deprivation.  It also makes my skin look oily.  I'm thinking of using the mirror and light as my halloween costume-it should be plenty ridiculous.  We did get two plug-in hanging lights put up.  As far as we can tell, either the people who patch the walls after each resident moves out are really good at ceilings or we may be the very first to put holes (and they're big too) in the ceiling.  Hopefully it doesn't give the management a heart attack when they come to patch up the walls and such.

That's not the only home improvement we've done.  Melissa got up some very nice looking curtains for the bedroom and the living room, and I was able to get a shelf set up in the kitchen, specifically for the microwave.

Our apartment really does look nice, though, and very homy feeling.  We've been scouring garage sales, second hand stores, and even some cheap brand new stuff looking for furniture and such to liven the place up, and I think we've done pretty well.  Our set up is pretty standard, and we even have a little study corner that Melissa banishes me to when I'm being bad and need to go to time out.  Our stuff even almost matches.  We had made ourselves a promise that as soon as we were done setting up the apartment we would get coldstone.  Glad to say that we'll be having that adventure tomorrow.

We've had a good time getting to know our ward.  We just had a couple over for dinner (that shows you that we really are pretty much done setting our apartment up) that is just a little less new than we are in the ward, and we had a delightful time with them.  It was fun to make fun of slightly older or more childed couples too.  In any event, I think this ward is going to be a good match for us, and we're excited to get to know more people.

I think that's all we really have to report.  We miss everyone back in Utah, as we're starting to find as things start to calm down into a daily rythm, but we're doing well.  Yep.  Well.

Traveling to a New Blog

Time is truly american.  Think about it - time is probably the most undiscriminating thing in the universe.  No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, no matter how you live, time passes everyone the same.  Is passing time the right way of putting it?  It's not like you're sitting at a bus station watching it go by or anything.  Or at least I hope your not.

In this case, time is about to find me a new position.  Melissa and I will be moving to New York, the city of Rochester, this upcoming Tuesday.  Oh, yeah, I don't use real names.  Truth be known, this also signals a new chapter in this blog.  Peoples are apparently interested in finding out what happens to the Mrs. and me, so I'll be using this as a sort of online journal/updater/what e'er you want to call it as well as a place to document random thoughts and practice my writing skills.

So, if you're reading this, you get the pleasure of not only my amazing writing, you get to find out what's happening with me and my wife.  Aren't you lucky?

So here's to new experiences, new approaches, and, um, new ones and zeros!

And here's to a random picture.

This is Missy and Me up in the Uintahs.  That's Mirror Lake behind us.  A suggestion for the rest of you smart folks - if you go to the Uintahs, don't forget your long sleeve, long legged clothes, and maybe a sweater.  I didn't bring either and it got cold.  Cold enough to give me the Heebie Geebies, which is the brand name version of the more generic goose bumps.

Okay, I'll make this a quick update about the whole summer.  Miss and I have done A LOT of stuff this summer.  Or at least it feels that way.  We've been back and forth between Ogden and Provo many times, so many that I can't count them.  That's mostly because I get distracted over long periods of time.  Yep, long periods to time.

Anyway, along with all the back and forthageness, we've also gone camping a number of times.There's photographic proof somewhere, but I can't find it.  Anyway, another picture!

Not the best picture ever,  but this is me graduating! Ha, to all of you who thought it would never come!  Of course, this picture is with me having a covered enough face you may say "wait!  This is a set up!"  I assure you, this is not.

Of course, the truth is that as of the time I write this I haven't "actually" graduated.  Apparently WSU takes umbrage with graduating if you have incomplete classes, and one of my two degrees was waiting on a final/senior paper.  So I haven't actually graduated.  However, I will defend my paper tomorrow and hopefully have a grade recorded for that class by the end of the day tomorrow.  I say hopefully because it's really out of my hands, and entirely up to data peoples who hate their job.  Okay, they don't hate their jobs, but they do hold the keys to my future.  Please pray for me.  And them, I guess, if you're feeling charitable.

Dad Nelson, Miss and I went to Blanding to visit my bro and sis.  It was way fun, but we all got sunburned.  We even went on a trip to Mesa Verde to look at the cool cliff dwellings.  We decided that they were crazy.  Miss did really well with the heights and everything, especially considering we went up ladders where there was basically just a small landing, then a 600 foot drop or so.  I don't have pictures right now - maybe later though!

We also took a trip north to Idaho for Josh McVea's wedding.  I guess it was Crystal's too.  Anyway, they're married now, so go throw some rice, or more eco-friendly corn kernels.

I personally spent a LOT of time working on a research paper that I will be defending tomorrow.  I mentioned that already, didn't I?  Anyway, the paper is all about granting in-state tuition to certain undocumented immigrants, and it's about 32 pages long.  Crazy, eh?  It's loooooooooong.  Feel free to request a copy, I'm quite proud of it.

Anyway, that's a quick sum-up of a full summer.  Here's some more pictures to whet your whistle.  Or whatever.

On Engagement

I must be ADD. Because the title of this post made me think "On engagement, on!" Like cheering for it somehow would raise the spirits of just about any single guy out there who is looking for engagement. Is that what guys are looking for? I always thought it was a girl.

I just have a few thoughts about engagement. Well, thoughts on the general subject. My first thought is: I STILL do not understand what people mean when they say things about enjoying the engagement stage. I've had a few people tell me that I should live it up, enjoy being engaged, and all that. I don't really understand that, honestly. To me it's a little like saying "Hey, you starving man over there-you should enjoy smelling that home-made bread. Seriously, man, enjoy it." Sure, there is plenty to be enjoyed, but the excitement about what's coming makes me a bit impatient. That, and the fact that we decided to get married a month after getting engaged is making preparations crazy. And my mom crazy. It's making preparations and my mom crazy. I'm sure it doesn't help when I go bouncing off the walls, singing away about getting married in the morning and such. "Girls come and kiss me, show how you'll miss me. . ." Honey Bee, please don't be jealous.

Oh, did I mention that I'm getting married? I am! I'm getting married to the most marvelous kind of girl possible. Because she already has a nickname, I'll stick with it, and refer to her as Honey Bee. She's marvelous, and I'll spare all of the the run down about her numerous and various virtues. Let it be enough to say that I love her, and I'm looking forward to loving her more as time goes by. Which is very different from when time goes out. Or when time goes bad. Yeah, that's no good. Rotten time is at the heart of almost all indigestion problems.

I've also noticed that people love to tell you how excited they are for you. Just the other day, when my brother Basserpercusionist (it's been a while since I've referred to him in this blog so I hope that is his nym) and I were having a brothers day, he was so excited for me he told me so about ten times before I said I thought I had an adequate idea of how excited he was. I find it ironic that in a world where marriage is so often belittled, people still get really excited for others when they're getting married.

For my own part, it still feels pretty unreal. By that I mean that it doesn't really feel like I'll be getting married. I look into my future, and I see bacon. Okay, I don't really see bacon, I see me doing mostly what I've been doing for all my life. Marriage presents an entirely new world to me, one that, unlike the mission, my preparation has been second place until only a few years ago. I spent the first nineteen years of my life so focused on going on a mission, knowing that it was expected of me, and that I wanted to go. When I left of my mission I was gung-ho, ready to serve. So much so that I didn't feel any homesickness until about three or four months into my mission. It took that long for the shine of 'being on a mission' to wear off, and for reality of what I was facing to really set it. Coincidentally, that's about when my trainer got transferred.

The years since my mission have been anything but clear as to what my main objective should be. Marriage, definitely important, but education was also vital, as was choosing a career path. I arrive, then, on the engagement scene much less prepared than I was for the mission scene. Those who know me well know that underneath the bubbly exterior I enjoy having is a mind that deliberates to an almost faulty extent. I deliberate on most everything, and when I think the subject is eternally important I deliberate more than is probably healthy. Honey Bee will tell you that I certainly took my time making a decision to even date her, let alone marry her. I am certain that I have made the right choice and that I am going to have happiness greater than any I've known to date, and I'm excited for that. But how do you quiet a mind that is so used to weighing every possible outcome, especially the bad ones? It's my nature to think of what could go wrong, as well as how good things could be.

So I don't understand the enjoying of the engagement stage. I find myself in this limbo land where I'm excited on one level and concerned on another. I'm moving forward into something I don't know. It's dark there. Each step lights up a little (am I in a nintendo game?), but the future still has a lot of unknowns. Being engaged, I could still pull the plug (I'm not going to, in case you're worried. The certain/excited part of me is, in the end of the day, the stronger part), so my mind still works over what could go wrong, or how amazing it could be. I'm a peace loving man, especially when it comes to my own soul, so this limbotic (is that word?) stage I find myself in is not so much fun.

Still, it's pretty early in the whole thing. Heck, I'm getting married and the engagement is still going to be a pretty new thing. I have no doubt that when the day dawns it may just be a lot like when I went on my mission. The waiting will be over, Dad and Mom may cry, and I'll be excited out of my mind, to the point where I won't actually remember much of what happens.

I can't wait.

Quick Thing

So, I've decided that Facebook is missing something. An app that suddenly dawned on me. And because this blog is about Facebook, and because I don't much care for Facebook, actually, this is going to be a short blog. Because I've realized a power Facebook could give me.

I COULD MEET MY FRIENDS' FRIENDS.

Woah, that's right, hold on to your socks, because the power of that statement might just shift them a little. Or maybe I'm just trying to get you to stretch. Either way, can you see the power of that statement? No? Oh. Well, then. Never mind.

In all seriousness, though. Well, okay, maybe I'm running at about eighty percent right now. Which would not be enough serious power to avoid a Klingon. But, it would be enough to say that I no longer have to wait to be introduced to the people that my friends know. I'm going to start stalking them before I've even heard of them! Woo! Power to the people! And by people I mean stalkers! Yeah!

It is pretty cool that I can see who my friends know, though. Of course, Facebook friendships are so shallow, it's entirely possible that my friends' friends are only Facebook friends with benefits, you know, that give you sweet deals in farmville and the like. And that is the only benefit of a Facebook friend I could come up with.

I told you it would be quick.