Whew! What an update!

Mrs. Sixline and I moved. We're about 10 miles up the road from where we were, bought a home that is way too big for us (waiting on kids and aren't moving for at least 15 years), and I have since started my job at ATK.

AND, to top it all off, we've been spending roughly $100 per day trying to get crap we need. In fact, we decided to finance a washer and dryer through Lowe's (got 10% off that way) I just got done hooking everything up. I was pretty proud of myself; normally I'm not very handy. But, with an intrepid indomitable spirit, I read the instructions of how to hook up my gas dryer, followed them, hooked it up, went to Lowe's to build a make-shift drain (I just wanted to bring a pipe up from the drain near the floor so that it would be easier for the washer hose to reach), and started a load. Well, Mrs. Sixline did. I suppose it's her right, she picked out a front loading washer and dryer from Whirlpool and I guess they're pretty. ~shrugs~ She's liking it.

I need to make sure I'm up for when I start the gas dryer. I hope that this isn't my last post ever... Don't want to blow us both to kingdom come. Anyway.

We're in our house, it's slowly being un-packed and finished (the builder's driving me a bit nuts, but I suppose most contractors are tough to deal with), and we're very much enjoying life. Once my thesis is completely defended and school is a done deal, we are going to enjoy life that much more.

On a side note, I think it's important to really enjoy life now. I mean, sure, work is going to suck sometimes (in fact, the Ares 1-X project is beating the brains out of a few guys at work) but I think most everyone has tough times at work. I really want to make sure I'm happy now. Can you imagine the crushing blow it would deal to my spirit if I wasn't happy? No, seriously. For the past 5 years I've been running a marathon-- go to school, study, take a test, get a good grade, get a degree, get a job, get money, buy a house, be happy. After all that grueling work if I'm not happy my head might explode. I will be happy. So there. Nyah.

On another side note, how come no one commented on the last entry? I thought it was pretty cool. Oh well.

stuck in a rut

I've been stuck in a rut. I don't think anything substantive will happen on the job scene until the new year. My wife and I put earnest on a home we adore, but I doubt the job will come before the earnest period is up. We've been kind of getting down on ourselves, and then yesterday, as we were whining to each other, we snapped out of it. We got ourselves motivated and got right back into the swing of things. This morning had SUCH a different feel to it than other mornings. It's been good.

In the meantime, I've taken to transcribing my mission journals from paper to computer and adding in afterthoughts. It's fun and embarrassing at the same time. I'll have to post a few of the choicer ones with commentary.

Hooray for new posts!

random things

1.) The company in Paris still hasn't contacted me. Now it's August, the French month long holiday. I wonder how this'll go down.

2.) Yesterday I felt really good about this. Mrs. Sixline is getting more and more excited at the prospect of going there, so we're both really hoping and praying that it happens. I even dreamt last night we ended up in Paris.

3.) I really despise it when people use the adjective 'sexy' to describe anything other than the opposite sex. iPhones are do not have sex appeal. They just don't. Any fool can see this.

4.) Half the mountainside in my hometown burned in a blaze yesterday. Two separate fires. My guess is lightning. It was bad. Yet again, the rest of my state seems to forget that people live up here because I haven't seen anything on the local news websites.

random mess

-Don't feel like working. I mean, I do, but, I'm kind of afraid of it. What if I don't know how? I'm nearing the edge of the realm of things I know how to do and being pushed to think on the spot frightens me. Maybe instead of blogging I should get back to it. (Hey, the project's synthesizing. Back off.)

-Ratatouille, Harry Potter movie and book, Transformers, and a wide variety of other decent films should make this summer kinda fun. We've already barbecued like 6 times, we should be camping in south eastern Idaho, and if we hit a few minor league ball games this summer should be rad. Oh, wait. Good friends are leaving. Jerks. We don't need you anyway. (At least I don't have to help them load up the truck.)

-I'm thinking about moving my blog over to Wordpress. Most all of the readers I have are either friends I know out there in the real world, or they're just search engines that will end up finding my site anyway. I'm not sure why I want to move... I might even rename the blog. How d'ya like them apples?

-I like listening to French radio on the internet. The only downside is a wide variety of my dreams are now a little too Français. No, it's not that I'm dreaming in that language, it's just that my brain is firmly wired to associate France with mission. Last night I remember laughing at my companion because he was so new and I'm serving my second mission and I get to go home and see my wife. I was even street contacting. It's a bit of a throwback to former days. Thinking back on my mission... there's a whole can of worms I can open up on that, so suffice it to say the dreams make me very... very... *pauses* disquieted.

news and notes

I was very proud of myself last week. It was a good post. It was well thought out and came from deep down. I wish more posts could be like that. Sadly, I can't bring myself to be that poignant every time.

I certainly need to make sure I care about what I post about, and that it flows. My thoughts by nature are very random, and they're often written down in the order that they crop up. This results in many drafts that never make it to the next step of being published. That's ok. I'd rather publish only the best of what I write, which in turn means I only publish what I care about.

In the world of news, I'm expecting a call from a company I interviewed with two weeks ago. The interview went well, and I have reason to be hopeful for a second visit with them. Mrs. Sixline and I are doing well, getting ready for our trip. In case I forgot to post, we're going to France the 14th through the 30th of May. We'll be visiting some very good friends and families of people I served with. I hope I remember names and faces well enough.

Now you're up to date.

News and Notes

Food news:
I was watching the Food Network a few days ago and saw this special on garlic. They had a restaurant from San Francisco highlighted which served garlic in everything they served. Well, I guess some of the drinks didn't have garlic. But the ice cream did. As they were showing some of the entrées and other dishes, they actually told you the recipes for the dish they were highlighting. One dish was a garlic and parsley bread dip. Chop parsley and garlic into fine bits and add olive oil, salt, and vinegar as desired. I got hungry for it yesterday as we were shopping and I bought some garlic and parsley. We had (obviously) the other stuff back at home.

So I started chopping garlic and parsley and added it to a bowl. I then poured in the olive oil, some vinegar (white) and some salt. I mixed it up and dipped some California sourdough bread into it. I was rather pleased with my concoction and proceeded to consume mass quantities of bread and dip, largely forgetting that dinner was on schedule to be consumed in the next half hour. Mrs. Sixline had prepared some shredded beef for the better part of two days to go into some fine burritos. She hates it (duh) when I munch and crunch not waiting for dinner because she puts so much effort into making wickedly awesome food. As such, I assured her I'd eat at least one burrito. (Did I mention I went through half a bag of Gardetto's rye bread chips before the garlic and bread dip?)

Then Mrs. Sixline does a number on me and prepares a warm fresh baked cookie smothered with chocolate ice cream. Who can resist that? So I chow down on that.

By this time, the garlic bread is starting to produce gas that results in garlic tasting burps. So I swallow chocolate chip + chocolate ice cream, and revel in the taste for a few moments when all of a sudden garlic comes rumbling up. I manage to get the dessert in my stomach before the burp surfaces and my mouth is filled with garlic again. It was a rather disorienting experience going back and forth between garlic and chocolate, but I didn't stop.

I can only conjecture that Garlic swooped in, planted roots and setup shop in Stomachland when Shredded Beef Burrito landed troops and began the assault. By the time they sat down for peace talks, Shredded Beef Burrito called in troop reinforcements (because both chocolate and burritos are brown) and Garlic began sending for help (the burps.)

I obliged them and went to bed, dreaming of very strange tales which shall be blogged about soon after.

My blog sucks!

Bah!

Who am I kidding.

No one's reading this. The only one that does usually hears me blab about my latest post ANYWAY... Bother my lack of audience and bother my need for one to post something that's worth half a penny.

But I don't want to quit. Maybe I should just start perusing other blogs, commenting here and there to try to generate some people that come and visit mine. I also should remove all tracking code so that I don't get depressed that no one comes. Leave a little magic to it, you know?

Oh well. My mom thinks I'm cool.

A plug for the Swiss

This guy off my Utah Jazz message board lives in Zurich. Nice guy-- as evidenced by my parcel in the mail this morning. I was chatting with him about Mirador and Farmer Croc-- two EXCELLENT Swiss culinary items. The former is a sort of spice, the latter is a cereal. They are very good, and made for heavy staples in the missionary diet when I was serving in Neuchatel. I missed those foods quite a bit, and I humbly asked if this friend of mine could send me a box of this.

He sent it a good 3 weeks ago. It arrived with some USDA markings on the box, and had been opened and re-sealed. But I had Farmer Croc cereal this morning. So good. When we have pasta next, I'm gonna put some Mirador on it. Oh man that stuff is good.

Nice guy. Next time you see a Swiss person, tell them they're great.

finally

After 3 weeks of having a living room comparable to a hurricane disaster area, it's finally clean.

That's right, it's clean. My poor wife did every scrap of laundry yesterday, leaving a mountain of clean clothes on our bed. I did half the dishes (I got too pooped to do the rest. Mrs. Sixline said she'd cover the rest today, Lord bless her.) and together we got the bathroom in working order. I even took an old (clean) rag, dipped it in piping hot water and did a little mop job in there.

But the big ticket was that living room. Since we live in a house that was built in 60's, our basement carpet is blue. It's kinda cool, but it's kinda dirty. Tracking snow and ice in there makes the carpet an almost brown color. This is disgusting. How can blue turn brown?! Anyway. In addition to the floor that's dirty and hadn't been vacuumed in the last 3 weeks, I had my fish crap EVERYWHERE. Remember last week, when I thought I'd be done? That tank was filled with water and rock and sand and the stupid thing cracked. So I had to wait another week to get a replacement tank. In the meantime there's been PVC pipe, wood shavings, scrap pieces of PVC, paint cans, tools, drills, drill bits, buckets of sand, buckets of salt, and a big tub of water and rock hanging out in my living room. Not only that, but our little table that we eat on (strange apartment layout, no room in the kitchen for eating so we put the small table for two in the living room.) It was pushed out of the way and just made things difficult and clunky in that room.

Yesterday I got the new tank in place, emptied the sand from the bucket and took care of said bucket, placed the rock in the tank and removed its tupperware container, cleaned up all my tools, disposed of all excess PVC and trash, put away all other chemicals, cleaned off the fishtank stand, and vacuumed. Then I moved the table back. We finally have a house in working order.

spontaneous combustion

When I get really stressed, sometimes it's like I must go through the cycle of:

1. Thinking about the things that stress me
   
2. Having them weigh on me
   
3. Blowing up (last night was a doozy)
   
4. Relaxing
   
5. Re-structuring/prioritizing life in order to finish what needs to be done
   
6. Having confidence it can happen
   
7. Making it happen
   

I'd really like to be able to eliminate all but the first, and the last three. 2-5 just don't add anything to my life. Humans are such creatures of habit. Even though I'm aware of this cycle, I feel like I'm powerless to stop it in one coup. Sure, it can stop. But it'll take a while. I heard once that our brains have thought patterns and processes, like the order the neurons fire, and that our brain gets used to doing it that way-- almost like the way asphalt gives way to tires running on it all the time. Our brains literally develop a groove, rut-- if you will, and that makes habit breaking extremely hard.

Maybe I should sell tickets to my panic episodes. Then I could at least generate revenue while trying to better myself.

Plateau

Recently I've felt a renewed sense of motivation. It's a welcome change to the otherwise blasé attitude I seem to have.

I think the key to continued motivation and personal progress is to not get too far ahead or behind. Just keep a pace-- whatever pace that might be-- and go.

As far as school goes, things are going fine. I was able to drill my fish tank (drilling glass is a trying endeavour) and I'm proud of myself for being able to do it successfully. My local Reef Club message board kept trying to convince me to take the tank to a fish store and have them drill it. Most fish stores want about $15 per hole. I have to drill 6 holes. The aquarium was free, why would I pay $90 to have someone else do it?!

Anyway, I rarely ever feel like I'm good with my hands, so this was one of life's little victories for me. They said I couldn't I proved them wrong. The only thing that bothers me is that they're not around to have me rub it in their faces.

Oh well. High road it is.

P.S. -- This is my 100th post.

Word for the day

Dichotomy.

I'm not sure what it means, but if you combine it with other big words and a political buzz word or two, I'm sure you'll sound extremely smart. Like this:

The dichotomy of the situation is such that the sessile incumbents aren't proactive.

Nice, eh?

random updates

This is a good read: Nephi and his Asherah. At least I thought it was. Daniel Peterson really is good at writing journals/papers. Most-a-the-time when I read journals and papers (even within, nay; especially within my own field of study) I nod off and can't go two paragraphs without a strong dose of Mountain Dew.

Eeyore's givin' me a big hand on MD. Whee! Babysitting time for them.

I have discovered Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. And it is beautiful. Which segways into...

Why are Jews so flipping talented? That sounds bad. I have a hard time expressing deep feelings without the use of euphemisms or four letter words. It's not my intent to insult. I'm astounded by how many Jews are household names. Rodgers and Hammerstein were Jewish. (One I believe was raised Catholic, but he still had the blood in him.) The world's pioneers in quantum mechanics and physics were either Jewish, or had one Jewish parent -- Einstein and Bohr. Jerry Seinfeld, the world's funniest guy (in my opinion) is Jewish. George Gershwin, the guy who wrote Rhapsody in Blue was Jewish.

I can't say it enough. I'm astonished by their success and prowess in almost any field known to man. I guess there's your evidence for the existence of God. Jews, God's chosen people, are 12 million strong nowadays. Out 6 billion people in the planet, they happen to dominate the rest of us in Nobel Prize winners. They are excellent statesmen, scientists, entertainers, writers, film makers, businessmen, and literary artists. How can you look at that and say they're not blessed, or supported by a Heavenly Hand?

Hats off to them. They get such a terrible rap. They have been, and sadly, probably always will be, the object of derision, hate, and vitriol at the hands of petty men with jealous hearts. It's really a sad thing to hate a rose for being beautiful. The only thing the Jews are guilty of is success.

After thought...

Common gripe: "The Jews control the world!"

What it should be: "The Jews excel to positions that allow them to be of influence in areas and their success can be written off as mob-mentality fear of a collective of people ruling the world-- a fear I have subscribed to!"

Dirk Magnumforce

If I ever was to be a super hero, my name would be Dirk Magnumforce.

I just thought you should know that I actively think about different ways I could wear a cape, as well as my underwear on the outside of my tights in a socially acceptable way.