New Job

Last week I started hanging around my new team at work - the Quality Team! Monday was my first day and the supervisor from Vancouver was in town. Two-thirds of the team is here in SLC and the rest is in Vancouver - there's only 12 of us total. So to celebrate Troy's visit - the supervisor - we had ordered lunch from Cafe Rio and had an off-site excusrion up to Sundance! I'd only ever driven through there before - it's up in the mountains and it was beautiful! We took the ski lift up to the top and look at the awesome views - the leaves were changing already! Anyway - it was a great day and I REALLY enjoy the people I'm going to be working with! I'm excited. This week I'm spending 3 days on that team and 2 days on my old team to help tie up loose ends, but next week I'll be full steam ahead on the Quality team! I've included some pictures from last Monday. We also had a dinner on Wednesday night last week as well - it was great! I'm really enjoying the work so far and I'm glad I made the move over to Quality :)

Food Poisoning?

Yesterday after lunch I started to get really sick. Nauseous and achey all over. I just wanted to go home and rest. It's the weirdest feeling I've had...nothing like I've felt before being sick. I think the yogurt I ate for lunch was off. Last night was rough too...when Ramin crawled into bed I remember that I was FREEZING....super cold and I couldn't warm up at all. I was half asleep though so I finally dozed off but I woke up a few times in the night very uncomfortable. I haven't thrown up yet and it just feels like my stomach is stuck...I feel a tad better this morning...my temp is a bit low at 97.9. I did eat some cereal (even though I really didn't want to)...I'm hoping it will help push things along. Ughh...at least I'm having the trend of getting sick on the weekends lately.

**UPDATE** Mom thinks I may have the flu...she had something similar last week...the aches and the nausea. Who knows...I do feel a lot better now though...it's 9:30 pm...I was really crappy the entire day up until an hour or so ago. I just ate a salad so we'll see how it sits with me.

Body Worlds

So the Body Worlds exhibit is here in SLC. I've seen signs for it all over downtown and just the other day I heard someone from work talking about it cause they went. Last night we got the UofU health newsletter and on the front page is the Body Worlds info - I have this feeling that some force of nature is telling me to go to it :P

http://theleonardo.org/bodyworlds/

The admission is kind of steep at $22 per person...we do have a $3 off coupon. It also looks like this show is open through at least New Years...so perhaps we can make it once school is done and I have some leisure time.

At any rate - it looks very interesting!

The Evil Eye

Ramin's mother sends us gifts every time his brother visits us. This summer she sent something that I had no idea about. An example is above - ours looks almost identical to the biggest one on the very far left. I honestly had no clue what it was - just that it looked like some sort of a decoration. The one day, I was looking at his cousin's facebook page and she had a little application on there called The Evil Eye - and it looked exactly like our new decoration! So I got intrigued to find out exactly what it was all about. I found a website that explained it pretty well:

"The evil eye belief is that a person -- otherwise not malific in any way -- can harm you, your children, your livestock, or your fruit trees, by *looking at them* with envy and praising them. The word "evil" is unfortunate in this context because it implies that someone has "cursed" the victim, but such is not the case. A better understanding of the term "evil eye" is gained if you know that the old British and Scottish word for it is "overlooking," which implies merely that the gaze has remained too long upon the coveted object, person, or animal. In other words, the effect of the evil eye is misfortunate, but the person who harbours jealousy and gives the evil eye is not necessarily an evil person per se. "

Very interesting huh? I like this concept a lot...I've hung up our amulet in our bedroom along with another persian decoration she sent us. I'm really enjoying everything she sends to us because I enjoy learning about the culture. It's all very interesting and I'm hoping one day we'll be able to visit Iran with his family because I really enjoyed our time with his family in California :)

Official

I can finally announce it to the world - I got a promotion!!! I'll be starting as a Quality Specialist next week at eBay. I'm really excited because I get to do something entirely NEW! I also know a few people in that department already and I think it's going to be a great transition and somewhere I'll totally feel comfortable at!

The great this is that I get to keep my current schedule - working swings while I still go to school! For the next two weeks though my schedule will be wacked a bit cause I have to get some training in and I'll also still be covering my old team for a bit. But I'm way excited! I had to keep it a secret for a long time but now it's official! YAY!

Between the work excitement and school I'm EXHAUSTED yet again. But I'm living through it. I do think I'm starting to get a sore throat - and you know what the leads to! So I'll be taking lots of Airborne this weekend and getting plenty of rest. I plan to stay at home, read, relax and do homework - fun stuff.

Ok that's the news this week :)

Organized

I feel good right now. This weekend I was able to get SO much done - I feel awesome. Saturday I spent the morning cleaning...like really deep cleaning. I don't mind cleaning, I like it a lot. I like having a clean house, it makes for an easier time to read and do homework for me. I cleaned the kitchen, both bathrooms, vaccuumed upstairs and down. It was good. Then I went and did some shopping - the usual groceries but I also spent time at Barnes & Noble browsing some books. I also bought a few home decor magazines to give me some ideas. I'm not planning on doing anything soon, but once school is done I plan to paint! I also got some really nice new towels and rugs to match for the master bathroom. We were in desperate need of new towels and ones that actually matched the decor in there. I like having nice soft towels :P Chris and Ramin went to a friend's house to play video games all night, so I was able to get a LOT of reading done. I was able to catch up on a lot of homework and I even caught in some time watching My So Called Life DVD's that I'm borrowing from a friend. I have a few more episodes left to go before I'm done. I also found time to wash the sheets for the bed too!

On Sunday I spent time relaxing reading the paper and the ads. I did some more school reading and then we watched the race. Mom couldn't come over because Bob is sick and she had to drive him to one of his jobs - that sucks, I hope he gets better soon. So the race was kinda short and it was over by 4:30 I think. I worked on some more homework (remember I have 4 classes) and then Ramin and I made dinner. He BBQ'd the chicken and I made potatoes and rice and crescent rolls. Dinner was done by 6:30. We watched Funniest Home Videoes for a bit - oh man there was the cutest baby video ever! I did some more reading and then Chris helped me with my computer science homework - holy cow I am SO glad he is here to help me. There's no way I could understand it if someone else was trying to teach me. By the end of that it was only 10 pm. I laid in bed and watched some of my recorded haunting shows for an hour and then went to bed. Oh yeah, I threw in a walk with Lady sometime after dinner - it was nice!

This morning I woke up at 9 am and took Lady for another walk - it's good for her (and me :P) I came in the office and finished up my last classes homework and now I'm done! I'm all prepared for the school week to start tomorrow - it's such a good feeling having everything taken care of at home and school. The one thing that makes me sad is that I didn't get to visit with any of my friends this weekend. I feel awful. I wish I had more time for them but if school keeps up the way it is, it seems most of my weekends will be like this last one. Ah well, such is life :)

A comment on classes...

Here are my thoughts so far on my Fall classes:

1) Syntax - I'm still trying to figure out why anyone really even cares about the structure of sentences and why some people think it's fun drawing sentence trees. All these linguistics people in my class appear to want to become syntactians. I understand the grief I get about choosing philosophy, but at least I can see some use in it in the real world. I'm giving this class a chance, but so far I'm just bored out of my mind and find verb and noun phrases completely boring.

2) Ancient Greek Philosophy - LOVE this class! The professor is awesome and teaches well, the material is entertaining and I think this may end up being my most favorite philosophy class. Right now we're reading Plato - specifically Theaetetus and The Apology.

3) Contemporary Ethics - I like Ethics, I took my initial Ethics course with the same professor that is teaching this new one. This class is my first 5000 level class and it doesn't appear any harder than any of my other philosophy classes. It's interesting but it's highly technical philosophy - stuff I'm already used to.

4) Engineering Computing - the ONLY reason I'm taking this is because of my Cognitive Science minor (same goes for Syntax). I am NOT a computer coding person. I'm not good at math. This class is already kicking my butt. I've enrolled Chris and Ramin to be my personal tutors. I hope I make it through this one - literally.

So there we are...some good, a lot of bad. This is my hardest semester of my life. I want to apologize right now to all of my friends that I will ignore from now through December. I'm sorry, if you know me well, you know I have to do well and if that means I have to sacrifice some fun time with family and friends, so be it. It's only temporary. Don't think I'm leaving you in the dust forever ;)

Here are some more pictures from the California trip. There's a mix of Disney, Lego Land and Nascar stuff in there.

Picture Time!

Finally I have some time to upload some of our pictures from the California trip! These are all of the ones from my camera. I still have to sort through all of Ramin's pictures on his camera and when I do I'll post those :) Enoy!

Ramin's aunt's with all of us! They were so great to us and made excellent food!!

Ramin's aunt Mariam - we stayed with her and her husband Howard. They are awesome and hilarious!
Ramin's uncles acting gangster like with Ramin and Chris :P


Ramin's cousin took us out for a night on the town in Hollywood. Here she is with all of us! It was a fun night!


Here's Chris and I with the Kraft Family - Grandma and Grandpa - Uncle Bobby and Aunt Lisa. It was so great re-connecting with them again after so long!

Ramin and Chris at Lego Land - this was in the mini-village. Yes, NYC was made out of Legos!

During our night in Hollywood we stopped at the famous Rosevelt Hotel - it was pretty cool!


Chris at the Chinese Theater - I have a ton of foot in the cement pictures of all kinds of people.


Chris and The Thinker at Lego Land

Self explanatory!

Alas, no time!

So we've been back from vacation for like 2 days now. I jumped right back into school yesterday - spent 8 hours at school (including the 2 hours commuting on the train) and then headed straight to work for another fun filled 8 hours. I left at 1:30 am. Henceforth will by my life on Tuesdays and Thursdays :P I do have TONS of pictures to post of our vacation but I probably won't find the time to properly post them (the way I want to) until the weekend sometime. Even then, tons of reading and homework await me. On the right hand side of my blog I've posted my current courses. I've taken 4 courses at a time before, but it was usually 2 in person classes and 2 online classes. This time I actually have to attend all 4 classes every day. We'll see how long I last. I will try my best not to burn myself out. I am also planning on taking it easier at work and not committing to any overtime or extra stressful projects that require me to adjust my schedule all crazy. I want to find a routine again and just focus on school.

Anyway - I haven't forgotten to update things...I will on the weekend...hopefully ;)