sack lunch?

I love having lunch while I'm at school.  Don't tell my wife this, but I am actually really, really glad that she gets up and packs some leftovers into a tupperware for me to heat up and eat for the days lunch break. (I usually tell her not to worry about it, and that I'll be fine).  I like to be able to sit down, eat some real food, and take a break from staring a computer screens (food isn't allowed in the CAEDM lab you see).

What really irks me about having lunch though is using the microwaves on campus.  No, I don't have a problem with their interface, I do think there are enough of them, and I don't think they're *too* gross to be used, but the other people using them need a butt kicking if you ask me.

Why do we use a microwave?  to be fast.  What are most people I see using the microwaves doing?  not being fast.  I refuse to stand in line behing Mr. Picky-Eater as he heats his pizza for 25 seconds, stops, turns it, dabs grease off the top and puts it in for another 25.  I hate watching as people insert last night's casserole for 30 seconds, take it out, stir it, put it in again for 30, take it out, stir it, put it in for another 30... and on and on!

If I see someone standing in front of the microwave (there is only one in the Clyde Bldg.) there is usually someone behind them so I will go somewhere else, get a drink, to the bathroom, anything for a few minutes to avoid watching them take their precious time heating up food over and over.  Most days I end up having to go into the MARB where there are two microwaves and I have never had to wait in line.

To me a sack lunch is good for being cheap and fast (you don't have to wait in line to have someone else make your sandwich) and these people are ruining half of it.  Either they don't value their time much or they value their food way too much.

Wii

For Christmas Stephanie and I were blessed to get the curse of a Wii from her parents.  I say curse because all of our spare time is now spent not on catching up in classes, but playing Mario!!  (it's not quite that bad, but I am wary of the entrapment that it represents).

For the last couple weeks we've been involving ourselves in playing Super Mario Bros Wii, and I just realized that we did a pretty good job of beating the game in just a few weeks (we started Sunday Jan. 1) considering: we did it together, we never played by ourselves (we each had our own games for when we were home alone).  We went through every world, although we did earn the trip to some world-skipping cannons, we went back and beat every castle the levels.  We even spent some time playing finding missed star coins and earning extra lives in World 1.  

And for the visual enjoyment of all.  This is how you beat Bowser.  You avoid one half of the screen while not falling into the lava.

And how do you do it?  (notice the mario in the above pic?  yeah, you pretty much have to fly.)

in my head

I'm standing in the MARB waiting for a class, there are people all around, sitting on the ground mostly reading or texting.  There is also a girl who looks and sounds Russian talking on her phone, in Russian.  I begin to wonder what she is talking about, is she a spy, a terrorist, a scientist looking for high tech secrets, or perhaps passing info on the education system here back to top officials in Russia.  She is speaking quickly (at least it sounds fast to me) and seems a little stressed (or maybe distressed).  

Then her Russian is broken by something I recognize, 'Ma, Ma, Mama!...' and she continues complaining to her mother about how hard of a time she is having here at the beginning of the semester.  She's not a spy after all, she's just a normal student, having normal problems that her normal mother still doesn't understand.

Sunday Dinner Parties!!

Every Sunday evening the Beres family plays host to a myriad of BYU students to help fight college hunger and have a little fun.  Wendy is very good at knowing when birthdays are coming up and making a big celebrations for everyone's birthday.  This last week we had an exceptionally special birthday for our beloved Mums.  I took the liberty of being the photographer for the evening and snapped a few pictures on my cell phone.

Happy Birthday Mums

Correctness

I just wonder, what the professor's reaction would be if, when asking for an answer, a student were to say, "two hundred and thirty five then thousandths" instead of the normal, "point oh-two-three-five".....

Friend wheel

Years ago I played around with a facebook app called "Friend Wheel" which generates a rainbow colored circle arrangement of your friends and shows the links between each of them (if they're friends or not).  When you mouse over someone's name it highlight's their connections and displays a number of how many connections they have within the circle.  When I first discovered this I found that I had the most number of common friends with one, Melanie Tess Hansen, a girl who had been in my high school, and also in my freshman ward at BYU.  My roommate had also been a high school friend, but he wasn't' a big user of facebook, so he ranked some 40 or 50 common friends less.  The runner up to Melanie (if I remember correctly) was Steffanie Meyer, also a friend from high school and was dating one of my freshman roommates.

Then I went on a mission and made lots of friends there, but facebook wasn't used much in the philippines at the time.  When I came home I became fb friends with lots of my american companions and mission buddies, and over the course of about a year, many of the filipinos I knew also got on facebook and extended my friend connections there.

For the next two years I roomed with one of my original roommates from my freshman year, and to my surprise of of my next door neighbors was a friend from my mission.  A girl from my post-mission ward became my girlfriend and then my fianceé and now my wife.  This is how all those people stack up now:

Melanie Hansen - 120
Chris Taney - 154
Steffanie Meyer Reece - 105
Cameron Reece - 140
Austin Lund - 169
Stephanie Ashby Murray - 104
Erin Murray Herd - 106
David Hyde - 125

(The significance of these last two is one is my sister, Davis is a friend from the mission and I'm sure we only have mission/filipino friends in common.)

Just interesting food for though.

and now you're older still....

I often have made fun of old people.  In my mind there are endless jests toward students who have children, and those who show obvious signs of having a wife watching over them.  I know several engineering students who often mention, my wife made me do this, I need to do that for my wife....  

Living my own life, making my own decisions, that is a symbol of my youth and independence.  Old people are made old by losing their independence, first by marriage, then by the baby in the baby carriage.  

So often have I scorned the student eating the sandwich his wife made, pulling it out of a plastic tupperware, along with a yogurt and spoon.  All carefully packaged with the care only a woman could possibly have for lunch.

......

Such were my thoughts today as I put my plastic tupperware back into my backpack and thought, I'M OLD!!!    though I don't wish anything else, since being married is so much better than single life, and the 'loss of independence' really isn't bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQd4tAQJT_M