November - Finals

Again, I must apologize for delaying posts on my life. I was busy living it out ;)

But I have been extremely busy, especially with final assignments, exams, and a few other fun events that I want to get onto!

First off: last night :D

Take a super-powerful green laser...

...get a bunch of physicists, engineers, and computer geniuses (especially one that has a car)...

What do you get? Experiments!!!

I've been a part of two so far. The first was simple: blow some air into a balloon, shine the laser at the balloon, and watch it pop! :D

Second was a little more interesting: Test to see if the laser can be seen from the Y (for non-Provo types, the distance from the Y that has been painted onto the mountain to my dorm (straight-line, not the pathway up) is just short of 2 miles (1.826 miles is a closer estimate (Yay for Google Earth :D )) 3 of us drove and hiked up to the Y around midnight. When we got to the top, after taking in the view, we called the guys back at the dorm. Our plan was to have them set off camera flashes towards the Y so that we could spot exactly where the dorm was. I'm not kidding when I say that we could easily spot these flashes! We shot the laser towards the building and apparently it was visible! As expected it was rather large too; according to a couple guys, they estimated the diameter to be about two stories wide! They could easily identify exactly where on the Y we were because the laser was so bright.

...this what the laser light looks like up close.

I also managed to capture the view from up there:

I tried to video tape it, but I didn't make the realization that even though I couldn't feel the wind, my camera could! You'll hear me talk in the vid, but sometimes I get cut out by the wind :P

(WARNING: video gets fairly loud thanks to the wind)

The Cannon Center is making wonderful progress:

In other news, Michelle and I (check my previous post if you need a refresher) are dating now :) It's been about a month now (again, sorry for delaying the news to some of you) and I love her! She's really fun to be with, especially because her laugh is rather contagious! Here's a couple of pics we took one afternoon:

She's from West Virginia and is studying to be in the International Relations program with a Middle East/Arabic emphasis. It's always a mouthful for the both of us to say it! If it raises questions: no, we are not going to stay together during the mission. We've already discussed this and we've come to the conclusion it would just be too hard on both of us.

The weather has been interesting for the past month, from very clear and warm days to cold, chilly, and sometimes rainy days. Naturally, I thrill in this because I get wonderful opportunities to capture the phenomena:

'Tis the season: the Christmas lights are up and functioning at BYU:

This next pic is a 360-degree view of Brigham Square. It's made up of 10 pictures that I stitched together. Hope everyone can see it cuz it's pretty cool!

Even the floor below me in the dorm decided to deck the halls:

In other exciting news, (if you haven't already peeked at my mom's blog) I've been accepted to be a part of a 26-man workcrew for the Hill Cumorah Pageant!!!!!!!!!!! I was so excited to receive this honor! Here's all the details I know so far:

• I was accepted out of 67 applicants
• Transportation, housing, and food are all accomodated for
• I report in on June 26 and am released July 24
• The actual show dates are July 10, 11, 14-18
• It's a free show *hint hint* ;) Plus it's nearby a lot of church history sites (Joseph Smith farm, Sacred Grove, and the Hill Cumorah to name a few!)
• Once there, our team of 26 divides into a light crew and a stage crew
• I'm not sure what I'll choose at this point, but I'm leaning towards the stage crew

I'm planning on getting mission interviews and other such business done after I get home late-April through when I have to leave for Hill Cumorah. I'll turn in my papers before I go and then get ready to leave for my mission after I get back. Unfortunately, I'll be coming home in April a little earlier than I had hoped. I was planning on watching the Wicked broadway show in April before I came home. I got on the website THE minute that the tickets went on sale. I attempted to purchase tickets like 12 times before I decided to wait like a half hour. They closed the website when I checked again because they were so overflowed that they couldn't handle it. By the time I finally got around to calling them 4 hours after initial sale time, the tickets had sold out FOR EVERY SHOW IN THE MONTH OF APRIL (there's a show at least every night of the month)!!! I was a little depressed about it, but I guess I have to move on now............darn.....

Well, I think I've satisfied everyone's curiosities about my life, I'm off to go study for finals :) Hope everyone is doing better than I am right now (actually I'm willing to bet many of you are ;) it's ok though, it's snowing right now and I'll be done and home on Thursday!)