Mothers

Yesterday at church a friend of mine, Michael, asked if I would join him to give a blessing to a member of the ward in the hospital. James 5:14. The woman, we'll call her Anne, and her mother, who we'll call Joy, don't come to church often, so we didn't know them. When we arrived we spent some time getting to know them.

Joy and Anne lived here in Austin. A few years ago, Anne moved down to San Marcos to attend school. While there she took care of her grandmother (Joy's mother). A little later, Anne was diagnosed with Addison's disease, which affects hormone levels, making it difficult to do such simple tasks as walk. Since then, Joy has spent a great deal of time in San Marcos, taking care of both her mother and her daughter.

When we finished with the blessing, Joy came with us to the door. Michael said, "Happy Mother's Day, though its probably not the best Mother's Day." Joy responded, "When I'm with my mother, she wants me to hold her close. She tells me she's grateful that I can be so close to her. And now I can be here with my daughter. It's a good Mother's Day.”

I think of the mothers in my own life. My mom’s mom: when she married my grandfather he didn’t go to church, though he’d been raised Mormon. To my understanding, she wasn’t much of a churchgoer, either. As they started having kids, she felt that they needed some religion in their lives. So she began taking them to different churches. None of them felt quite right. So one day she told my grandpa, “Alvin, you’re Mormon, why don’t we go to your church?” This time, the church seemed right and it wasn’t long before she was baptized, bringing her husband back to Christ as well as shaping the lives of her (now) dozens of descendants.

My Grandma Pulsipher had her hands full, raising her first couple kids alone while my Grandpa flew missions in Korea.

My own mother, who didn’t let sleep get in her way. She raised 7 children while working 12 hours night shifts as a nurse.

My wife who, not a mother, yet, who looks at the little kids in sacrament, grabs my arm and whispers to me, “Stephen, look at all the babies!”

I know this is a day late, but I want the mothers in my life to know I love them. There are a lot of women out there who, married or single, working or stay-at-home, do simply incredible things. It would be impossible to overstate the effect these women have in our lives. Thank you and Happy (belated) Mother’s Day!

The Greatest Gift

I'm copying this from a service blog I started writing a couple weeks ago.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

For almost two weeks now I've been reflecting on the sacrifice of a friend of mine, Andrew Britton-Mihalo, a Green Beret killed in Afghanistan on April 25. I don't have time to write much, but this blog would be devoid of meaning if I didn't post a tribute to someone who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Scrolling through a tribute to Andrew on Facebook, I thought about my memories with him. I remember being jealous of him because all the girls seemed to like him. I remember his smile when he was with friends. I remember how serious he would get when we were about to do something challenging - spelunking, kayaking, rock climbing, wrestling. I remember the 5 months I spent on the wrestling team, when Andrew was there to back me up. When the seniors picked on me because I was the new guy (and probably the weakest on the team) Andrew was there. That year - 2002-2003 - was probably the year Andrew and I were the closest. I remember hanging out at his house, playing Star Wars Monopoly. Watching him jump off roofs. Calling me Steve-o, which no one else could pull off. I remember him struggling in the water on swim team as much as I had struggled on the wrestling mat.

I think as long as I'd known him he wanted to join the Army. So that's what he did. Why? For one, that's what he was good at. He was physical, aggressive, and driven. But most of all, as I've heard again and again since he died, he stood up for those he loved. He was a true friend, a dedicated brother, uncle, son.

I only saw him once, I think, after we graduated from high school. It was a couple years ago, right before my wedding. There was pain in his eyes. I don't know much, but I know he'd gone through some tough times. But as we chatted, I knew the goodness in his heart, the love he has for those close to him, was still there.

That's why he fought. Andrew and I were different in so many ways. But that's one think I'd like to think we share - a love for who and what is most important. He is an inspiration. I hope to live up to his memory. When I see him on the other side, I want to tell him his sacrifice was worth it, that I used the life he protected to make the world a better place.

I Never Knew...

Friday night I found myself walking from the law school to the bus stop late, with the last light of the day fading from the sky. Just past the law school, next to a chilling station, there's a small grass lawn.

A few trees deepen the darkness. I walked between the lawn and the road. Not many cars passed by and the sidewalk was empty. As I walked, a flash of light zipped across the corner of my vision. I walked on. Then another one. I looked around. Was I seeing things? Another flash in the grass up ahead. I looked at the road to see if a car was coming, thinking there must be something reflective in the grass. No cars coming, so it wasn't the reflection of headlights. Could it be...?

I paused and watched the little field. Another flash. And another. It had to be. I stepped from the sidewalk to the grass. I saw the lights, like tiny sparks, flash into existence, glide along the ground, then disappear. Fireflies, the first I'd ever seen.

I never knew how much I wanted to see them. I stood there mesmerized. For a few seconds, almost a dozen would wink in and out of existence. Then a few seconds would pass without anything. Then one or two more glows. An unpredictable, spectacular, miraculous little light show.

I never knew how beautiful they are. I never knew how incredible. I felt a sense of awe I've only felt a few times in my life. The last time I can remember feeling it, I was walking home to my flat in Australia. I looked up in the sky and saw a familiar sight - Orion. But Orion was upside-down. I'd never thought I wanted to see that so much. But once I did, I fell in love with the sight. All my life I'd been taught that Australia is on the other side of the world. That night, for the first time, I knew it for myself. I still feel that awe every time I see the familiar shape in the sky.

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...)

*****************************************

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.