Random Bumper Stickers

So my local bike shop put on a ladies night tonight at their Orem location.  During the process of driving home afterwards, I saw the following two bumper stickers:

       and

I only comment on this because this is not something you usually see plastered to a car, especially in Utah...  Plus I have always been under the impression that those who lean more towards the pagan side of things don't necessarily broadcast it but keep it more under wraps.  But I could be wrong.  I am by no means an authority on pagan religions and their do's and don'ts.

Then I saw this bumper sticker:

I find it funny because it is completely random.  I know that Robert Jordan has a huge following (I am actually attempting to reread the Wheel of Time series right now... attempting because I am in school full-time and working full-time and as a result, do not have a lot of free time so it is going very slowly...) but you don't usually see a lot of Wheel of Time paraphernalia out there unless you are at a convention, book signing, or something....  Again, I could be totally wrong here.  I am not an authority on Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time either.

Another reason, I find this interesting is because of two other recent events concerning this series.  First, at the beginning of February, I went up to Rexburg to visit people and one of the guys that I gave a ride up there was reading this series and we ending up talking about it for a bit.  Second, sometime in January, I was in the bookstore on campus looking at the most recent release for this series (i.e. reading the flap, etc...) when two guys come up to me and we end up talking about the series and about the co-author.  Random.  And I find it interesting because I know exactly what the bumper sticker is referring to.

An A++

So, this semester in my Advanced Financial Analysis class, we have to do a bunch of case analysis'.  This time in particular, we had to defend/ explain our answer for a question we were randomly assigned to.  The company we were looking at this time was MCI and the theoretical question that we got to "defend" our answer for was what kind of financing option would we recommend the CEO take after our analysis and with the options of: 1) $500 million in bonds, 2) $500 in common stock, and 3) $500 million in convertible bonds that were callable after 5 years. After our analysis, we picked the $500 million in convertible bonds.

Side note:  We were assigned groups for group work in all our classes for the semester and they are the same for every class.  So I have this guy in my group, who I knew from before when I took Stats my first semester at BYU, who has a really bad habit of always thinking he is right even when the numbers prove he is wrong and we tell him a 1,001 ways he is wrong.  We also have gotten to the point where we kind of ignore, for the most part, whatever he says because usually he is wrong anyways.  Is that really bad?

Anyways, without boring you with all the details, when we were explaining why we chose the $500 million in convertible bonds, he kept trying to go off on his tangent that we had shot down multiple times already and we had not included at all in our analysis.  Our professor was like "okay" in that way where you are not really too sure about a person or not.  So I spoke up and started explaining why we had chosen the $500 million convertible bonds and afterwards my professor said "you get an A+ for the day."  A few more questions later and this group member trying to go off on his tangents again several times (even after our teacher telling him that he should just stick with me because I was right), he goes off again.  So I just start talking and explain another aspect of why we chose it and then my teacher said "you definitely get an A++ for the day."  And then he says again to this group member "you should stick with Jessica."

Score!  Then when the next group was defending their answer for the same question we answered, they said "well, we chose that option (the $500 million convertible bonds) because Jessica is right."  My teacher replied, "yes, Jessica is right but why else did you chose it?..."  Anyways, it just made me feel good inside that I knew what I was talking about and it was on a topic that I really could not have told you too much about before this semester.  Plus, it was just funny that my teacher kept telling this group member of mine to stick with my answer because I was right.

So I got an A++ in that class for the day! Not that it really counts for anything but still....

New Year's Fun

I spent New Year's Eve with Jamie, Rob, and their family up in Bountiful and of course we had loads of fun.  We ate lots of snacks, drank some Martinelli's,

and watched a few movies.  We were going to play some games too but somehow we never made it that far...

After getting some much needed sleep that night (I am still fighting a sinus infection and working full-time was definitely not helping me get over it), we all went sledding!  First we headed over to the stake center as there is a pretty decent hill there, however, a ward had the same idea we did.  Off to the next spot...  We found a hill at a park and spent some quality time getting to know that hill.  Everybody went down the hill (even Jamie!  I have pictorial proof!) and had tons of fun!  Brandon and Sean even went down a hill and off a wall onto the snow below!

Brandon going off the wall.

Alauna and Natalia getting ready to go down the hill.

Jamie going down the hill with Rob and Natalia cheering her on.

Sean tried multiple times to master this hill.

 Coming back up the hill with Rob giving Alauna and Natalia a ride back up the hill.

 Natalia not quite making it on her own.

Brandon

This is how we do things at Centennial...

... we store our unused, extra couches outside during winter...

Work

I just worked 16 hours on 1 hour of sleep. I am supremely tired now.

TOE JAM!

So this semester I am taking a Biology 100 class.  However, by some of the assignments, you would not guess that this is a general education class!  For example, we have to do a big project complete with proposal, peer reviews, major sources, the experiment, research papers, etc....  So for this, I decided to do my project on....  wait for it.... toe jam!   I started my proposal off with "How clean are you really?"  We also had to include a sentence in there about why our experiment is original and creative and I put down that mine was original and creative because we get to measure toe jam!

The point of the experiment is to determine if it really matters what kind of bar soap you use in showering, and if so, what kind.  According to the FDA, there are three types of soap out there: "true" soap, cosmetic soap, and drug soap.  "True" soap being soap that just cleans without any extra ingredients, detergents, cleansers, etc... added in.  Cosmetic soap being soap that cleanses, moisturizes, beautifies, etc... with drug soap being soaps that are recommended by determatologists, acne soaps, etc...  I set my experiment up to have 3 control groups with 3 people in each group.  Each group will shower with one of the soaps and take four samples of bacteria throughout the two weeks.  There will be a sample taken before they start showering with the soap, 3 days in, 7 days in, and at the end of the 2 weeks.  Basically, they will just shower with the soap and when I give them a petri dish, they will scrap between their toes and wipe it on the dish.  I was able to get the hook-up with the petri dishes (meaning I didn't have to pay for them of the auger!  Bonus!!!  because I needed 12 of them.) and the guy that gave them to me, Chris, told me that I could use that lab and the resources there to incubate and refrigerate the samples too!  I was pretty happy about this.

One of my Biology teachers had told me to go talk to one of the Molecular Biology teachers and he'd tell me what I needed to know to conduct the experiment and where to get the petri dishes and auger.  After class, I went up there but none of the teachers or TA's were up there.  Then I saw one of my old roommates working and when she asked what I was doing up there and I told her, we talked with the head lab student, Chris, who hooked me up with everything.  I was just expecting to get some questions answered that day about how to do everything but instead came away with petri dishes in addition to getting my questions answered!  Score!

Random Pictures

Here are some random pictures from last month:

We were having a watermelon seed spitting contest.  The object/ desired goal to get the seeds into was the sink.  We had some pretty crazy moves going on with the contest: twirling, whirling, upside down, mass ejection of seeds, jumping, etc...

As you can tell, we didn't have a lot of success.  We got watermelon seeds all over the place!  We were still finding them over a week later in random places in the kitchen.  The Dirty sign is for our dishwasher but highly appropriate in indicating the state of our floor.  I took some video of the contest too.  Once I get it edited and down to a smaller size, I'll probably post it.

This next picture is of my roommate, Brynn Secrist and her fiance, Matt Adamson.  I have known Brynn for about 12 years or so.  We met about a year or so after my parents moved to Colorado.  And after all this time, we are still friends and we decided to live together this year because it would be fun and we already knew that we liked each other.

They were eating ice-cream and also feeding it to each other.  Matt kept giving Brynn huge bites of ice-cream and so Brynn was trying to get him back by giving him tons of ice-cream.  He was trying to stop her and was saying something about how strong she was in getting the spoon up to his mouth even though he was trying to stop her.  And Brynn said, "Of course I'm strong!  I feed old people for a living!"  It was pretty funny but it might have been one of those things you might have had to been there for.