Update
Life is good. We finally have our car registered and working well. We came out of church last week to find one of our tires flat, so we had to get a new one. We have our ward temple trip to the DC Temple this coming weekend so we are hoping it holds out. We were excited to hear Pennsylvania is getting a temple! Although Philadelphia isn't much closer, it's actually further. We'll probably leave before it's finished though.
School has been keeping me busy. We are approaching the mid-point of the semester. Most of my classes are structured as half semester courses or 'minis', so I have finals coming up in most of my classes. I will then get another handful of new classes for the last part of the semester. I only have two classes that go the whole semester and we have mid-terms in those classes. I've been working hard on three or four group projects as well as preparing for tests. It haven't felt overwhelmed yet, just busy.
The last few weeks were fun also because of the career fair. Companies were mostly looking for full time hires, not interns, so I went just to get to know the companies that come to Carnegie Mellon. It was a very impressive list. Tech companies included IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Apple, Real networks, nVidia, Mozilla(Firefox), Oracle, Amazon.com, and several others. Big banks and investment companies included Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, and Citi. Consulting firms Deloitte, Accenture, Brulant, Micro Solutions, Oracle Consulting, and several other small ones. Big companies Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Proctor & Gamble, Disney's Interactive Media Group, and Capital IQ(Yahoo! Finance uses of their stuff for stocks, etc.)
So with that list there always seems to be an information session to go to, or company to be doing research on or applying for. Hopefully something comes out of all this good exposure. I had some thoughts during all the hype. Since starting school I've felt like the minority. I'm surrounded by intelligent people who are mostly from China and India, however, at the job fair I was surprised at how many of the companies were only looking for US citizens or people legal to work in the US. I don't know how to describe what it was like coming back and talking with my peers and listening to their frustrations at the limited options they had.
Sharon is doing well. Her job with the little children is entertaining. She always has fun stories to tell, as well as some frustrations. It is a job that requires a lot so she is usually pretty tired too. She's amazing.
Sharon is doing well. Her job with the little children is entertaining. She always has fun stories to tell, as well as some frustrations. It is a job that requires a lot so she is usually pretty tired too. She's amazing.
She has steadly been working on making amazing improvements to our little home. She made an amazing red courch cover for our couch. The couch looks kind of new, and the color fits with the theme of the room. She made some awesome wall hanging to go above the couch. She made some frames and streched some nice cloth overthem. On that same theme she took some of the old, rather sad looking couch pillows that were left and made new covers for them so they macthc wall hangings.
She has also been getting back into making bread. That includes homemade pizza dough! This morning she made some good cinnimon rolls for conference:) I'm not complaining. Since we are both gone most of the day she has also started to make good use of our crockpot. She made some good French Onion soup. She is such a good homemaker, I love the hard work she puts into making our home beautiful and putting food on the table. I try to reciprocate, but never get close to what she does. To make it up to her I've tried to get us out on some fun dates.
Dates
Baseball
We went out to a professional baseball game with some other students in my program. People here are extremely loyal to their professional sports teams. The Pittsburgh Pirates were playing one of their last games of a...umm..pretty bad season. They played the Astros from Texas. They lost in good pirate fashion, but the fireworks after were amazing. The best fireworks show I've ever seen. (There was another firework show last night to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the city that probably beat it, but I was at the priesthood session of conference)
Gallery Crawl
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This weekend there was a 'Gallery Crawl' in the cultural district of the city. There were probably 25-30 little gallery's open to the public in a part of town called the Cultural District. The 'District' is roughly from 6th Ave to 9th Ave in one direction and from Liberty Ave to Fort Duquesne Blvd. There is a Symphony Hall and Opera House. Additionally there are four to six theaters where the ballet performs and other shows, usually Broadway productions, take place. Wicked was showing the night we went to the baseball game, and Spam-a-lot is being advertised right now. There are also restaurants and small galleries sprinkled through out. We enjoyed seeing the local art and roaming through downtown. Here are some pictures.
We have also discovered Hulu.com. I've know about it since it was launced, but I hadn't been to it for a while. Since we don't have a TV, but we do have a nice FiOS(fiber) link to the internet we now get our entertainment on the computer. We can watch the recent versions of our favorite shows, 'The Office','The Simpsons', SNL, as well as watch the debates. Hulu even has an old classic tv show that I got hooked on in the spring. Remington Steele. They have the first two seasons:) During our free trial on Netflix we could get up to season 5. Unfortunatly the trial was only for two weeks :( Someday I'll get around to watching them. Hulu will provide plenty of distraction for now. That is a perfect segway into my next section on thoughts.
Thoughts...
We took advantage of the free trial to netflix to see a few movies we've been meaning to see for awhile, which have also prompted some interesting thoughts.
Joe Versus the Volcano
I really liked this movie. It's a classic in my book. I recommend it. I think it's PG-13 for language. It's one of, if not THE first Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movies. The part I liked was the morning after he is told he will die and a business man shows up to convince him to jump into a volcano. The five minute clip of that conversation resonated with me. I think because of all the recruiting and information sessions I've been to lately where companies are, in a way, trying to sell you on 'jumping' into their companies. The whole movie is a nice metaphor on life and living life to the fullest.
Why we fight
This is a documentary on the rise of the Industrial Military Complex in the United States, specifically since the end of World War II. I found it very interesting. Since watching it and listening to the debates for the election I've had to ask myself, why are we fighting, why do we want to keep fighting?
I actually started thinking about this before we watched the movie. I did a personal scripture study on War and found it interesting that besides defending their liver fighting a war was usually linked to some sort of ideal, like Freedom of religion, protection of our families, etc. I tried to parallel it to our situation today.
Are we fighting for freedom? Who's freedom? Or freedom of what? Are we fighting to maintain our lifestyle? What lifestyle? What 'ideals' and 'interests' are we fighting for. Some of the reasons I get feel abstract. What defines freedom in the context we use it. Our freedom? Another people freedom? Are we really making them free? I don't have any concrete answers, I've just been pushing ideas around. Another thing I hear from people is we are fighting for peoples rights. What defines a right? At what point does a right in our society become, in our view, a right for everyone in the world? What are the eternal rights that are worth fighting for?
As I listened to the priesthood session of conference, I can't remember which talk, a man was talking about the war Satan is waging on the young men of the church, a great battle. It dawned on me that real wars are part of that war. Young men and women go to fight, for some reaason?, and are killed. They could be men and women serving the Lord as missionaries. Wars also keep the gospel from being heard in every nation. Was it not the word of God that changed hearts in the Book of Mormon, more than warfare?
Since I haven't developed my thoughts completely I won't say much more now. This post is already pretty long. I would also be interested in other people's thoughts.
SiCKO
This is a movie by the somewhat 'controversial' movie maker, Micheal Moore. It's about the health care system in the United States. It was interesting because he went to other countries and talked to people about, why they have socialized health institutions. In the UK, a man from parliament that was interviewed made the point that there was a common concern among all the people that everyone be looked after. I thought that was amazing. I've been pondering that and then I heard D. Todd Christofferson's talk in conference on the importance to care for the sick and needy in our societies to become more like Zion. Not just our church community.
A comparison or argument came to mind, and I don't know how it will sit with people (I'm still thinking it out too), but here it is. As members we believe that abortion is morally wrong. Many members feel we should make abortion illegal because it is against the commandments of God. Well, following that logic should we not be morally and legally obligated to care for the poor? Why are so many members against social programs that care for all members of society the way Christ asked us to? Because we have to pay higher taxes? Should we not be willing to support programs that will take care of and give opportunity to all members of our society like education and health care? Surely tithing to the church won't create a program that can adequately care for all the poor in our nation, unless they raised the percentage we pay...but I might be getting blasphemous now.
Anyway, a lot has been running through my mind as I've weighed in on election debates and issues, listened to conference, gone to school, and observed other happenings around me.
