Wrong Turns

A few weeks ago, Stephen and I were out shopping for a kitchen table (we've decided it's time to upgrade from our card table). We decided to try Crate and Barrel, but quickly realized it was a bit out of our price range. We were shaking our heads at one price tag when another customer walked by us and suggested "Try craigslist" in a hushed, conspiratorial tone. We're obviously not the Crate and Barrel type, I suppose.
So we headed home, tired and out of ideas. However, we were met with an unexpected detour when Stephen missed the turn for our highway. I'll admit it; I groaned. I always want Stephen to drive but I know better how to get around since I'm the one with the car all week.
"Maybe we'll find another furniture place," I offered, trying to be cheerful.
And that is exactly what we did. It was reasonably priced as well and made our table shopping trip seem much more worthwhile. That wasn't the best part of our wrong turn though.
Right next to the furniture store was a little exotic pets shop. We decided to check it out. It was a tiny little place, stuffed with freaky looking spiders, boa constrictors, baby ferrets and fat wet, pacmans (pacmen?). I wanted to bring home a chameleon but Stephen said no.

After spending an enjoyable half hour, we were exiting the store only to notice a sign saying "If you don't see the sloth, it's sleeping in the blue bin". What?! We looked up and two yellow eyes and were peaking up under the lid of the blue bin. Out reached a two toed claw like the top of a coat hanger. The claw grasped the branch above it and out came the rest of the sloth. It slowly made its rounds around the artificial tree, one claw after another. I was vaguely afraid it would fall as I couldn't imagine it ever being able to get anywhere once it hit the ground, but it made it safely back to its blue bin, climbed in and disappeared from sight.

I promised myself not to chew Stephen out for wrong turns any more. 


(In case you're wondering, we still haven't decided on a table...)

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Since before we moved to Austin we’ve wanted to go to Alamo Drafthouse. It’s a movie theater with a twist – they serve you dinner and drinks during the movie. When we got a 2 for 1 coupon, we figured our time had come! All we needed was a movie we both wanted to watch in theaters (turns out I enjoy movie theaters a lot more than Alisha). Along came Hunger Games.
So, with the perfect combination – a theater we could splurge on (the Provo dollar theater spoiled us) and a movie we both were excited about – we headed for the theater. That night my law society had a closing social down by the lake (I’m always confused because I’m pretty sure it’s just a river), so we thought we’d stop by there and then go to the Alamo Drafthouse on S. Lamar. So, as we headed out the door, I typed “Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar” into my iPod touch and got directions.

The closing social was nice. We grabbed some food and chatted with a few people from my society. After about an hour we took off. Alisha pulled up the directions on my iPod. Soon we arrived in Zilker Park. But the directions said we only had a few hundred feet left. Yup, turns out typing “Alamo Drafthouse S. Lamar” takes you to the middle of Zilker Park. Anyway, eventually we made it to the theater (S. Lamar was just a little further east), but by this time we were way too late for the movie. We’d come all this way, so we decided we’d go to the 9:45 showing (we’d been aiming for 7:25).
So what to do for two hours? First, we stopped at World Spirit Books, From Alchemy to Zen. While Alisha found a book about how to half your grocery bill, I found a book written by Robert, channeling Speaks Many Truths, revealing that the planet earth is on loan from Sirius (or some other star). Later I read Magick Herbes while Alisha read about crystal balls. We left the bookstore much enlightened about the mysteries of the world, but still unsure about what to do with the hour and a half we still had left. I thought a walk sounded nice, so we headed onto the residential street we saw nearby. I thought we were just taking a stroll in a nice neighborhood. Little did I know, I was about to learn just what makes Austin so weird.
The first indication came as we passed the first house. The alley between the house and the shops we’d just left was covered with flowers and leaves painted on the asphalt and walls. We approached the house and found a sparkling, colorful place with a sign in front proclaiming, “Great for Kids!” We looked at each other, realizing we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

Next came the six foot tall floating egg. At the end of the street sat a house with a wooden egg hanging from the tree on the front lawn. It’s purpose? Art, I suppose. OTher than that the house seemed normal. We took a right, wondering what would come next. Our eyes were met with a bewildering variety of houses – cute little single-family homes, nice looking townhouse like homes. Then huge, overgrown bushes – apparantly someone likes their privacy. At one point the tops of the bushes dropped so we caught a glimpse of the house and saw a room with walls almost entirely made of glass. Right next door we encountered a tiny little house, sitting in the shadows of the giant yucca-like plants (someday I’ll know what they are) in its front yard.

Then I looked in the street and thought I really was in Oz, or at least Australia. In the middle of this tiny street there was an island with plants – something I’ve only seen in Sydney. Not to mention the sign that warned of “Street Humps.”
And in the midst of all these nice homey little houses, this fortress.

Finally, our dream house. We liked the porch and balcony.

To sum it all up, Saturday night we encountered the weirdness of Austin.

BIg News…

There are two main occasions when I really wish we had kids already: when I’m bored in church, watching laughing babies bounce up and down, toddlers trying repeatedly to sneak out of the chapel or onto the stand, and mothers trying to stop kids from flying Buzz Lightyear into the air and yelling “and beyond” (that was church today)…and when I’m trying to find something to blog about. Baby pictures look like they make blogging so easy. Hmmm….tempting. But no, I’m not pregnant (I know that’s the question that’s running through at least some minds). So here’s our babyless update on life :)


Stephen’s update:
So, over the winter break I spent too much time playing Civilization. In the game, you can choose “civics” for your civilization that give different bonuses. You choose slavery, feudalism, even emancipation. Being the good-natured gamer I am, I like to get to emancipation quickly. Unfortunately I’m not as lucky as my virtual citizens. There are some elements of the modern, real world that aren’t in such a big hurry. In fact, the recession has actually pushed society backwards. Back in the “boom” years, as some lawyers call it, law students could fairly easily get high paying summer clerkships during their first summer. Post recession, however, only the very top students (top 25% or so at UT) get these clerkships. The rest of us compete to offer our services for free to whoever will take us. That’s right – we compete to be slaves.
Fortunately, I’ve approached the end of my part in the competition. I’ve received an offer from the State Office of Administrative Hearings right here in Austin. It’s perfect for so many reasons, but I won’t bore you with the details. The best two things are that it’s here in Austin, so Alisha and I won’t have to be separated (we’re kinda spoiled that way) and I’ll learn about several different areas of the law.

Alisha’s update:
I feel like my life is pretty stable compared to Stephen’s. No long breaks. No insane exams to take. No worries about summer internships. Just work. Every day.
I’ve really been enjoying my job, though. It’s an environment involving rubber band wars, taco deli Fridays, and building Lego robots when you have extra time. As long as you don’t knock over a VP with a scooter (which apparently has happened) and you do your work excellently, things are pretty easy going. I’ve recently moved up to support a more specialized line of products. I support “distributed controls” which basically means that I support devices that you can stick in a rainforest or on a glacier for ten years at a time and acquire updates continuously and wirelessly. That kind of thing. It’s fun to  talk to customers about what they’re doing with our devices: coding the controls for crash tests, testing DNA by the billions for identification purposes, something involving sheep on treadmills. NI doesn’t necessarily make things that are cool by themselves, but we like to take some credit for all the cool things we enable.


A few pictures of our recent life:

These are pictures from a recent hike we went on with the Jeff and Jessica Kitchen and Chad and Leilani Williams. Most of the pictures are courtesy of Leilani, who is much more attentive to her camera than Stephen and I have ever been. We had our own little adventure right in the middle of Austin, complete with rock-climbing,  rock skipping, tree shimmying, and stream hopping. There were blood and bruises and laughter. Aren’t the boys cute on their rock?

I bought these for Alisha for Valentine’s Day. Now she knows I love her .
I also took her to the Turquoise Grill, where we drank some delicious Ayran, a Turkish yogurt drink you should all try at some point. Don’t put it off! (Really, it seems that Turks like to put yogurt in everything: you could drink yogurt, eat yogurt, get anything smothered in yogurt) The best part, though, was the lamb chops. Not only was it the most expensive plate on the menu, it tasted great. I’ve fallen in love with lamb since Australia, but it’s always so expensive here. I’m sure Americans could improve the environment and save some money by raising more sheep and fewer cows. Afterwards we joined some friends to watch Sherlock Holmes, where we enjoyed lots of slow motion shots of trees exploding and mental, telepathic boxing/chess matches.

A Month Into My First Real Job

People ask me what I do, and the simple answer is that I'm tech support, tech support for other engineers. Doesn't sound very glamorous, does it? The first day of work, I was talking to a new R&D guy and his comment was something to this effect "Yeah, another company offered me a job like that, but I took this one because it was actual engineering work. I'm sure they'll let you apply for a new job here soon."

Sometimes, I'm feeling a little in agreement with this guy, a little sad that my job isn't more technical, more glamorous, that I can't say I'm designing boards to [insert cool application here: control robots, diagnose the flu, help premature infants to oral feed, make planes fly autonomously]. Plus, let's be honest. Dealing with people that are confused/frustrated/upset can be confusing/frustrating/upsetting/difficult.

But, mostly, I love my job. It's definitely challenging - when engineers can't solve their own problems, they call us to solve them. The day flies by because I get so involved with all the people I'm trying to help and all the problems I'm trying to solve. The company won't let me get bored, either. In another week, I'll be back in training so I can support hardware and in another month I'll move into a specialty team where I'll be supporting more complicated, specialized issues. Soon after that, I'll start collecting projects from other departments to work on. My 'mentor' has been working 8 months and she's already the lead of her specialty team and flying around the country teaching customer education classes and recruiting from college campuses and working on outside projects.

I've been thinking about why the company does it this way? Why do they advertise this as the best way to become a leader in the company and recruit all these newly graduated, super ambitious engineers? Then, I think about the perspective this position is giving me. It's kind of like how the gospel makes you better at whatever else you do in life. The gospel makes you understand that there are things that matter this week and then there are things that matter in the eternities. This week, you might really like buying that [insert your dream buy here] and playing with it, but in a few years you're going to be grateful for family time and service given and knowledge gained. I think this position will make me better at whatever other engineering (and maybe more domestic) positions I have in life. Engineers tend to want to add whatever they think is cool to an item -- they might make a remote control airplane that's super accurate and fast but only if you press the dozens of buttons in the right order -- not very user friendly. This job forces me to think about the people using the products, to make sure they're satisfied and understand their needs. And, I mean, if you want to make products that will actually help people (and make money) and build a company that people keep depending on, then that's pretty important.

(sometimes, this is me but hopefully not too often)

Of Family and Football games and First days

For Labor Day weekend, we celebrated our new proximity to my family and drove down to Lake Jackson for an entirely lovely weekend. Friday night, I revisited high school by going to a high school football game. I agree with my dad: It’s so nice to visit and know that you don’t have to go back. It’s funny, though, how going to a football games completes my feeling that I’ve come home to Texas. We also hung out and watched the BYU game, played Settlers of Catan (classic), shopped with Mom and Cheristy (Alisha), and did law homework (Stephen).

 

The beach was probably the most exciting though. The weather was great for sailing; the waves weren’t huge and the wind was blowing pretty hard. Maybe too great.

 

The wind urged our little sailboat through wave after wave, each one crashing right through the little sailboat. As we came out of a particularly powerful one, something snapped and the mast tipped a little. Whoops. Luckily, my dad has a cool head and we turned around immediately and started tacking toward shore. Right as we pulled the sailboat up onto the shore, another support snapped and the whole thing toppled over almost onto Stephen’s head. I don’t think Stephen even noticed that he almost died but I was a little freaked out.

 

This last weekend involved a lot of football. The BYU football team gave a fireside at our church building on Friday night and then we went to the game with some friends from our ward on Saturday night. The UT stadium is incredibly huge – there was 100,000+ people there. Our group was made up of three UT grad students and their wives, all just graduated from BYU. I think we were mostly convinced that our loyalties had split; the Williams even wore apparel for both schools. However, I think we were all rooting pretty hard for BYU and so were disappointed when things collapsed in the second half. Oh well. Good thing Stephen’s and my happiness aren’t based too much around football.

 

Today was my first day of work! I am now an employee of National Instruments, which I heard described today as the Home Depot for engineers.  I even liked my ID badge picture which seems like a good omen. Mostly, today was just training and orientations so nothing too exciting to report.

Gone to Texas :)

Enjoy the Utah summer with family and nice temperatures and green mountains. Check.

Pack up and leave our first apartment together. Check.

24 hour drive through red, brown, yellow, and greenish deserts. Check.

Move into our new apartment in Austin. Mostly checked.

Start law school (Stephen). Check

Melt into a puddle of mush due to heat. Mostly checked.

Actually, I think I’m getting used to the heat. I’m remembering now that mostly avoiding and sometimes enduring over 105 degree temperatures is just a part of life. It’s good to remember that instead of vaguely thinking that I must have wandered into somebody’s oven.

I’ll quit complaining about the heat though. We’re really quite enjoying Austin. Stephen’s busy with being a super thorough law student and I’m busy with…well, I’m not actually busy. I did unpack almost all of the boxes last week though. I still haven’t been able to figure out what to do with our 12 boxes of books though. I’m not quite sure where they all came from and I’m completely clueless as to where they all should go. We’ll figure out places for everything though. And I’ll start my job with National Instruments on September 12. Then I really will be busy. I’m pretty excited for that.

Our apartment complex is set on a huge hill with lots of trees and rocks instead of grass. Somehow this lends to kind of wild feel to the place. Stephen said that he feels like we’re staying in a cabin in a National Park when he looks out the window. There's even wildlife in the form of multitudes of squirrels. There’s always a couple squirrels running up and down the tree in front of our door. I think maybe they’re provided for free entertainment. Our apartment itself feels spacious to us after Wymount. We don’t have a ton of furniture so our apartment is still pretty ideal if you’re looking to hold a dance party.

We’re enjoying diversity of the area ( although I mean, really, anywhere is diverse after BYU). Our ward at church has a substantial African population (mostly refugees, I think). The sacrament prayer was in an accent I’ve never heard before. There’s a corner in Relief Society where the French speakers discuss the lesson. Also, I think there’s quite a large Jewish population in our neighborhood. There’s a Jewish school, a large kosher section at the local grocery store, and we saw some Jews on their way to the synagogue on Saturday. At the neighborhood library (a tiny one-room branch), there’s a whole little section completely in Korean. It’s all kind of fun. Stephen also sat on the bus by a pharmacology major who “loves drugs.” She was shocked that Stephen had never smoked marijuana before (and that he believed in any kind of organized religion). Definitely wouldn’t have run into her at BYU

Anyway, we’re excited about our lives and excited to get to know the people around us.

Summer Journeys

It’s been an exciting month:

-Hiking Squaw Peak with Kyra and Kevin

-Grand Canyon with Mary Li and her family

-Thanksgiving Point with Alisha’s family

-California with the Pulsipher family

-BYU’s Paleontology Museum

-Anne’s Birthday Party part 2

-Seven Peaks

And we worked…a little.

Our pictures are a little sporadic and scattered due to the fact that sometimes we forget to take them. Here’s a few we did take.

Alisha: The hike to Squaw Peak was mostly shady, quite steep, and ended with a beautiful view and shaky legs. Stephen even survived being the only non-electrical engineer among the four of us.

Stephen: The next day we began our journey to the Grand Canyon to join Mary Li and her mom and uncle. The journey was stressful due to a lack of maps. It looked so simple on Google Maps that I didn’t bother to print it out and decided to rely on memory. Of course, I know my memory is not that great, but in this case I, well, forgot. Anyway, we made it there and enjoyed a couple beautiful days in one of God’s wonders, the Grand Canyon.

We enjoyed talking with Mary’s mom and uncle and were a little surprised sometimes. Americans love sugar a lot more than Chinese do, but Mary’s uncle love s’mores. And the media gives the impression that anyone outside the US hates Bush, but Chinese people (in Mary’s hometown at least) loved President Bush.

Alisha: We got back to Provo in time to spend a day with my family before Stephen’s family reunion. We all went to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point. If you know Stephen, you know this was perfect since learning about dinosaurs is one of his favorite things. I have to admit that it was a really cool museum plus it was just so nice to spend the day with my family. I like hanging out with them.

Stephen: I can’t move on without commenting. The Dinosaur Museum was one of the coolest places I have ever been. After walking through a room talking about the age of the earth, how fossils are formed, and describing a dig, all with hands-on exhibits for kids and lots of stuff to read for adults, you walk through a dark tunnel with stars around you and come out to a mural describing how scientists believe the world came to be. Then you go through the different epochs of geologic time, with fossils and dioramas everywhere. There are few things more fascinating that seeing all these remnants of ancient life – fossil upon fossil. If I make enough money, I would love to retire early and become a paleontologist.

Ok, on to what I’m supposed to talk about – California. Due to the lure of Bethany and Brandon driving with us, we got up quite early to drive down. The drive was much easier than the one to the Grand Canyon, though we still managed to miss the exit to the Pearblossom. Alisha’s not going to let us travel anywhere without a map again, though. We loved the trip. I enjoyed introducing Alisha to the Pulsipher tradition of beach camping. It brought back lots of memories and was a lot of fun despite the quite painful burns we both received.

One of our favorite moments was on the second day at the beach when we walked down the coast to a little bay. Here the waves were calmer and we could see bits of kelp floating out in the water. Then the sleek grey backs of dolphins broke the water. We sat on a wind and water sculpted piece of driftwood and watched for the next 20 minutes or so as the dolphins passed by, spouting and occasionally flipping their tails out of the water.

Alisha: Another thing we’ve enjoyed, both on our California trip and scattered throughout the weeks, is the opportunity to be aunt and uncle to some really adorable kids. We love listening to them, and playing with them, and cuddling with them and watching them. We love watching their parents as well, picking up a lot of unsaid advice and trying to figure out how we want to be when we’re parents. We’re so excited for that day and glad to have so many examples to draw from.

Seeds

First of all: Happy Fathers Day to all the dads!

I was thinking today about why I’m grateful to my dad. I think that  I’m just realizing how many seeds he planted in me that have grown to make my life more beautiful. Because of him, I love hiking in beautiful places, doing crossword puzzles, and playing complicated board games for hours on end. He persisted in teaching me to drive (even after me almost hitting a mailbox without hitting the gas pedal at all), got more excited about my science fair projects than I did, and is mostly responsible for my highly competitive streak.

More importantly, though, my dad taught me to love people and to love my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. He has always been an example to me of scripture study and good works.

This week, I also saw the seeds my parents have planted sprouting like crazy in my brother, Erik. He came to Provo this week to enter the MTC (LDS missionary training center). It was really great to spend a day with him and talk to him some. We went to all the Provo hot spots: Tucanos, J-dawgs, BYU campus.  I could tell he was a little nervous, telling me all sorts of things he had heard about the MTC (apparently, there’s something weird about the orange juice?). I could tell, though, that he was prepared and excited to serve the Lord.

It’s kind of weird to know he’s living a couple blocks away but have it seem more like hundreds of miles. At least I know if I make treats, I can have them to him same day delivery

Yesterday, our Relief Society had an activity centered on the Law of the Harvest. This topic took me back to the unit in Marriage Prep where we were graded on how well we could grow a plant of our own. The project was supposed teach us that in order for our marriage to bloom (sorry for the dumb pun), we needed to put in the appropriate work daily.  My plant sprouted once, but then it died. I think I went through about 10 seeds to no avail. So far, I think marriage is way easier than growing a plant in the middle of a Provo winter.

We’re hoping that growing plants is easier during the summer. At the Relief Society activity, they gave us each a pot full of dirt and a few starter plants. I ended up with 2 peppers, a tomato, and a squash. Since 4 plants do not fit in one pot, Stephen and I ended up buying several more pots, some potting soil and some basil and rosemary seeds (always having fresh herbs is one of my dreams in life). Never mind that we’re going out of town next week or that we’re moving to Texas in two months. I’m quite excited about our makeshift garden. Stephen keeps catching me peeking at it out the window just to see how things are going.