Panoramas

So, this summer I have taken a lot of panoramas. Here they are. In the lower left hand corner there is a little quote looking icon, and if you click on it, you get the descriptions of where the places are.

Pictures

So, we still have not done much with the trip we took the to Grand Canyon. However, I just learned about a new little Google tool, and to try it out, I used some of those pictures. Yipeeeeeeeeeeee.

The 24th of July

So, yesterday was the 24th of July. Excitement. I got a call in the morning from the Red Cross asking me to donate blood that day at a blood drive. Interestingly, that very morning I had thought that it was probably about time to drive to the Red Cross building in Orem and donate. So, I decided to go do it.

For the past 3 years, every single time I have donated blood, about 10 times, I have had to answer yes to the question, "Have you traveled outside the United States in the last three years." Well, yesterday, I saw the question, and got to thinking. I got back from my mission to Argentina the 24th of July, 2004, exactly 3 years before. So, the answer was no.

It was an interesting thought. I have been home three years. Wow. That seems like a looooong time.

Last week!

My mom was here this past week; she had a class reunion Saturday night in Idaho but spent the very first part of the week at my sister's house and then stayed with us on Wed/Thurs. It was a fun visit. We even took her up to the Timpanogos Cave national monument in American Fork canyon on Thursday. If you haven't been there, it is not a long hike but it is pretty steep so my mom and my pregnant self were taking it pretty easy. She got a little lightheaded but was fine and Jeff made it back in time for class and all was well. Those caves are really fun and they haven't commercialized them near as much as Luray Caverns in VA, which we saw on our honeymoon.

On Wednesday I went up to Sandy to check out the new aquarium with my sister, her kids and my mom. It was kind of fun, a lot smaller than Baltimore's aquarium which I went to several times when I was younger (before it cost $20 a person or something outrageous), but it was so so fun to go with the kids. There was even story time in this "sunken ship" room and we went to Rainforest Rendezvous which goes on every Wednesday. I got to pet a common boa constrictor, I thought Jeff would be proud of me. But my niece and mom showed me up by petting the snake AND a Madagascar hissing cockroach. The other two kids were sleepy and so my sister had to take them out when they were getting a bit fussy, so they'll have to go back again sometime with the passes my mom got for them. There were some pretty, colorful macaws that did all sorts of tricks. I was impressed! I worked a few hours this week doing coding/data entry for the literacy project I've been working on since November so that was nice. Income in general is nice, I've decided, so I need to work some more this week to get this done in the next couple of weeks for my boss. Saturday I spent the day in Logan with my older sister. We went up for my cousin's baby shower (she's due a month before me!) but ended up staying until about 8:15. It was fun to see our cousins and chat and my aunt took us all out to dinner. These three cousins (two are married) are the ones I did the most with growing up in VA since they were never more than about 40 minutes away. So it was fun to hang out and see all their houses. My cousins are good little decorators! My uncle just had both his knees replaced 2 weeks ago so we got to see him for a bit. He was reading Harry Potter to pass the time in bed but we actually saw him walk around a bit with his walker so he seemed to be doing alright. In other news, Jeff's sister has made the move from Arlington, VA to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.

We hope to go visit her at some point, and do some snorkeling and other fun activities that the desert doesn't afford us like the tropics would. Jeff is getting psyched for his llama adventure a week from today...so look forward to a post about that!

How do they find us? :)

Congratulations to the web user in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who happened upon our site! This is only significant because it is the first person from Argentina who has found us, and that is where Jeff served his mission, only pretty far from Buenos Aires but the same country nonetheless. I suppose it is also significant that this individual was visitor #384 to the site but they only chose to stay on our blog for a GRAND total of 0 seconds. Clearly we have some work to do so we can make our international visitors feel more welcome.

Corruption

Did you know that quality accounting and auditing standards can effectively combat corruption? Well, I will answer it for you—no, you didn’t. However, in some forthcoming research, it will be empirically demonstrated that heightened levels of accounting and auditing standards are significantly related to corruption, even when controlling for dozens of other variables. I will leave you to consider the immense policy implications. Here is one of the regression outputs.

Provo Peak Hike

So this Saturday morning Jeff Boyd I hiked up Provo Peak. It is a peak that is behind Y mountain, by Lightening and Cascade Peaks, near Rock Canyon Campground. You get there driving up past Hope campground, and it is a pretty neat drive. You are just driving up behind all the Mountains that border Provo, and it is neat. It was about 2.7 miles round trip hike, and we gained about 2700 feet. It was a steeeeep climb. The trail was a little hard to follow, so we ended up just wandering around for a while. Several interesting things occurred: 1.When we got to the trailhead, we saw a guy putting on some hiking boots. There was a two or so year old next to him. Jeff Boyd commented that he should have brought his 1 year old, but that perhaps she was too young. We heard some giggling from the guys tent, and he explained that he and his wife were hiking it, and they were taking the 2 year old and the three month old. And, they did. They made it up to the top about the same time we did. What troopers. 2. I got to use the binoculars that I got from my favorite parents in law for my birthday. They were amazing. It was really cool to just sit at the top of the peak and peer at things. I could see people on the top of Squaw Peak, could see the 6*6 hut on the top of Timpanogos, and many other interesting things. I even took a picture of Squaw Peak through the lens of my binoculars, shown here. It was neat.

3. I took lots of panoramas. Here are some of them. I think they are pretty neat. I dont know why, but Blogger pixilates them a lot. Anyways. It was a really cool mountain, and a fun hike.

4. We took a GPS that was loaned to us by Scott Summers. It was really neat to see where we were going, how far we had gone, how high we were, and all that. Hopefully, I will soon be able to post the map of our route up here soon. If anyone wants to get me a GPS, feel free to send it to me. Post a comment requesting my mailing address. Here is the condensed (the full version is 800 lines long) summery of our trip up to the top, thanks to the GPS:

That is all. It was a good time.

Escape from the TNRB

So, Thursday night I needed to get a lot done. Our Internet is broken at home, as I just stayed pretty late at the Tanner Building here on the BYU campus.

The Tanner Building houses the Marriott School of Management, and as a result, most often houses me. I stayed until about 11:10, not too late, but late enough for me to get some stuff done. I started walking towards the exit doors, when I saw the very familiar and confusing red signs that hang on the doors:

Then I thought, "Oh, it is after 11." Now, this is by no means the first time I have stayed late in the Tanner Building. I have been here until about 1:30. However, they are doing significant construction at the Tanner Building, and as a result, have the front doors, the ones that are never alarmed, blocked off.

I didn't know what to do. I thought, maybe if I pushed the doors open really quick, I could get out before the alarm went off. Then, remembering back to high school physics, and remembering that the alarms are magnetically sen sored, I figured I would have to open the doors and get through quickly enough so there was no interruption in the force between the two sensors--I would have to go faster than the speed of a traveling electron, which, I think, travels at about the speed of light. So, if I could open faster than 670 616 629 miles per hour, I would be in business. I got out a stopwatch, and tested myself on a nearby door. I was not quick enough.

So, as when confronted with any problem, I did what any reasonable BYU student does: I called BYU info. The operator told me the doors REALLY were alarmed, and that the red sign was not just kidding. She transferred me to campus security.

I talked with a nice girl, who told me that she was the one monitoring the doors, and that if I went through, it would be alright. I became slightly skeptical. So, I said, "We are going to have a test. You tell me when I open the door." I then waited a bit, and very quietly opened the door, and she said, "You opened the door." It was erie. I thanked her, hung up, and ran to my truck, watching out for snipers rappelling down the building and shooting at me.

So, that is my story of how I escaped from the Tanner Building. Amen.

Grand Canyon 2007

All week I've been telling myself that I should post pictures and a summary of our vacation last week, but Megan (Jeff's brother's wife!) beat me to it the other day, so in honor of a great trip and my desire to not waste ALL my time, I give you this link to her lengthy and descriptive post. We had a great time and I'm proud of Jeff for working so hard to get ready for the challenges presented in such a trip and to finish it all so excellently! I'd also like to thank our son, still in-utero of course, for behaving enough to let me enjoy peaceful slumber in a tent for the 2 nights we were at campgrounds. Of course the air mattress probably helped with this....but I digress. Bottom line: if you have a minute, read about our summer vacation! And please leave comments or ask questions as needed here on our blog. We LIKE comments! The people on the trip were as follows: David and Megan Hoopes (Jeff's oldest brother & his wife) Jeff and Stacey Hoopes (I hope you know us!) Kristin Hoopes (Jeff's older sister) Joseph Osmond (Megan's brother) Joe Osmond (Megan's dad) John Chesnut (Megan's brother in-law) Charlie Canon (friend of the Osmonds from their days in AL)

Blogs

A couple months ago, we saw a couple of our friends had a blog, and so we decided to follow suit and do the same. It was pretty ostentacious on our account, assuming any one cares what we do. In the end, they dont, and thus whenever we ask our family members if they have read our blog, they are surprised we have one (except for my dad, who reads it and sends e-mails to me with comments as he reads it). In the end, it is an interesting phenomona, blogging. It assumes someone cares what you are doing enough to read what you write. Further, as it grows more poplular, everyone has one, and everyone is assuming everyone else is terribly interested in everyone else's life. Anyways. In the end, I should have figured that if people rarely even ever call me to see what is going on, I should not assume they would get on here.

Quick update & Anniversary Video

Hey everyone! We had a great trip in AZ last week/weekend and it is good to be back at home also. Feel free to catch some pics/videos of our trip and Jeff's hiking/biking adventures at the end of the following 9 minute video summary of our 2nd year of marriage. It really has been a great year, and we are very excited about the coming year and what it will bring! (Our son! PhD school applications and choices! Wearing a smaller clothing size!) In other news my proposal for the AEA conference was accepted as of last week, so it looks like I will be flying with a new child to Baltimore/home this November!

Two Hikes

This week was my final preparation for the “AZ Canyon to Mountain Challenge,” or, as I learned it is also called, the “Death March.” To do that, on Tuesday I hiked up to Squaw Peak for one last time with my sister-in-law Megan and her mother. She is pretty quick, and I had a hard time keeping up with her. But, we summited fairly quickly, and had a good time. Then on Thursday I hiked up Mt. Nebo with Jeff, the same Jeff Stacey and I hiked Squaw Peak with a couple weeks ago. It was really fun. We left my house at about 5:00 AM, and got to the trailhead and started hiking at about 6:25. We hiked quickly, but at the same time stopped often to take pictures. Jeff enjoys and is good at photography (he took our engagement photos), and he packed his tripod all the way up the mountain. We saw only three people the whole way up, a father and two sons who were just hiking around, not summiting, and looking for game with a spotting scope.

We summited around 10:10, about an hour later than we had anticipated, but we summited in very good spirits and feeling very good. The last .75 miles or so of the 5 miles hike we gained well over 1/3rd of the elevation, so the last little bit was a straight up scurry and scramble to the sumit. It was great. It had been a while since I had hiked something where I had to use my hands, and if I slipped, I would be rolling for a looooong ways before I stopped.

We took some pictures at the top, called some people, and had fun. One thing I learned on the way up is an amazing thing to eat while hiking. I had brought a little bottle of honey up, and was eating it like you would Gu. But, I also had some granola bars, and I decided to put honey on the granola bars. It is VERY good, and packs a lot of kick as far as quickly digestible calories go. I am a honey on granola bars convert. We headed down, and made good use of our trekking poles. We got down in about the same time we got up, and had a good time doing so. So ended our hike.