Wow its been a while!!

I am almost surprised I still remember my user name and password to post here. I wasn't sure as I was signing in to post. Well it has been so long since I have posted last I am not going to even try to catch everyone up on what I have done. That is if anyone actually reads or even checks this blog anymore.

I have been extremely busy with school for the past month. Since the first of October I have been behind in all of my work, having late nights studying regularly and barely getting everything done. I was told that once I made it through my Junior year things would get better but I would say I have been going through my longest semester to date. Hopefully next semester is better. At least my class schedule will be nice with Tuesdays and Thursdays off and I will be done with class by noon two other days.

As for other things going on I am very busy as an officer in our Tau Beta Pi chapter on campus. I was told it would not be much work but they were wrong. I also am working with the Boy Scout Troop at my church so that is keeping me busy. Luckily that is a very fun busy with camp outs and stuff like that.

For Halloween Amanda and I were old school skiers and that made me so excited for this upcoming season. I purchased new skis this year from Sniagrab and I can't wait to use them. I am sure most of you remember the Iron Maidens. They were replaced a couple years ago but with "Purple Thunder" which was not much of an upgrade. This season I will be skiing at Copper as I only bought a four pass because I don't think I'll get up there much this year. I am definitely counting down the days to my first ski day!!

I look forward to seeing y'all at Mike and Carly's wedding and maybe before. If anyone comes up to the Fort let me know and we'll get together.

I am a Terrible Person

I have loved the idea of having a blog ever since Dunham first suggested it. I liked it because, as the title implies, I am a terrible person and am horrible at keeping in touch with people. So now I can't even write in a blog to keep people up to date on the happenings in my life. Hopefully I can change my ways and be better at keeping people up to date.

Well enough of that, on to my life. I now have only two weeks left in my internship and I have really enjoyed it. I am revised the emission factors for the company I work for so they can estimate how many harmful chemicals are being released into the air and then what they can do about it. I also had a little bit of an odd job as I was asked top design a new wash down area to rinse big filter and such. I spent a couple of weeks trying to learn a little bit about structural steel and the different materials that we could use for this structure. I almost called up Mike for some suggestions but I think I got it figured it out. I guess I won't be around if it falls.

Since my last posting I have done quite a bit of mountain biking with Amanda. We have been all over the state trying out various trails and me trying to not kill myself. We went up to winter Park and rode with the Fat Tire Classic. It was a lot of fun but really tough. If anyone wants to do it next year I hear there are lots of free samples after the ride. We spent a weekend in Wyoming camping. I know it sounds weird but there are some pretty nice places to camp in off of I-80. I spent half a week at summer camp with the scouts from church which was a lot of fun. Other than that than not much has been going on, just staying busy with day to day activities.

I don't know I put this in any other postings but after I knew I would be commuting to Longmont every day we purchased a Chevy Malibu which has proved to be a good car for us. It is a 2004 and had low miles, now that I am commuting I have put close to 4000 miles on it this summer!!

Well I hope everyone is doing well and if y'all are ever up in Fort Collins let me know and we can hang out. Hopefully there will be another posting soon.

Not quite a month

I was almost a regular blogger but alas I have returned to my once a month posts. I don't feel so bad because the "regulars" have slacked off as well.

Since my last post I have moved from my last place to the married student housing. Luckily Amanda and I do not have to much stuff and it turned out to be a pretty simple move. I have also started my internship at a chemical manufactturing company out of Mead. I really enjoy the job so far I just have to drive to their office in Longmont everyday which can become tedious. It is a small company of only about 150 employees. Right now they are expanding to two new sites in Longmont and Hudson (its on the eastern plains) and so a majority of my projects have dealt with that. We inherited the site in Longmont so I had to go around and see its production capabilities and what was needed to do to start production. I also worked on a layout of the new facility. My biggest project has been to work on environmental emission factors which estimate how many bad chemical are going into the atmosphere and if it is within our permit. The past two days I have been unloading trucks coming into Hudson with our new equipment. You know it is a small company when the engineers are unloading the semis.

That is enough with the work stuff. A few weeks ago Amanda introduced me to the great sport of mountain biking. Before then I have ridden bikes and some off-road but never on hiking paths and through streams and stuff. Needless to say I had a blast and as long as I can afford it I plan on continuing the sport. We also had the great opportunity of going the Rockies/Dodgers game where the Rockies actually won. We went last Friday and had great seats. Amanda got a little money for graduation so she decided ot spend some of it on a Rockies game. We were able to sit one row behind the cameras next to the dugout on the 1st base side!! I have never been that close. It was as close as watching the game on TV but getting balls hit your direction. We found the tickets on a market place on the Rockies' website where season ticket holders can sell their tickets they are not using at face value. So we sat in $45 seats for $35 after the service charge. (Note there is a 30% service charge so the tickets were only $27)

Well that is all for now I hope everyone is doing well and I hope to see y'all soon.

MWC Champion

I was hoping this title would get some attention. The past couple of weeks have been very busy and the next couple will be hectic as well, but in between the madness that is currently my life I was able to take about a week off and spend it in Utah. Why would I go to Utah where it has been blazing hot you ask, and what is there to do there? First of all being Mormon gives me a few more thing that interest me in the state that deal with the church's history and operation. The main reason for me driving across Wyoming was to watch Amanda compete in the MWC Track and Field Championships. It was an extremely hot two days sitting on the bleachers but well worth it. The first day of competition she competed in the Long Jump and did alright but wasn't able to make the finals. On Saturday she had an amazing day!!! She jumped a personal best and school tying record 41' 6". This was able to give her the longest jump of the day and she walked away with the title of MWC Champion. This was the first time anyone (boy or girl) has won a championship from CSU in the triple jump. The only downside to the day was the girls team took second finishing behind BYU.

Other than this lull in the action, I have been very busy finishing up my finals and school for the summer. I have been preparing for my internship in Longmont. Amanda also graduated this past weekend but was not able to walk because she was in Utah. We also bought a new car, I figured with a commute to Longmont an SUV would kill me in the pocketbook so we purchased a Chevy Malibu which gets much better gas mileage. We are also moving in about 2 days so the house is a mess and packing is going non-stop.

I hope all is well with everyone who still reads this I hopefully in a few weeks we can actually hang out.

New News

Well a lot has been going on in my life and some changes are coming soon. No Amanda and I are not having a kid. First off I have accepted an offer from Boulder Scientific to work as an intern for them this summer. I will be dealing with an expansion project in building a new plant for them in Hudson, CO. I am very excited about that and think I should get some great experience working there. It is a smaller company based in Mead, CO so I will be doing a little bit of commuting but not too bad.

The other bit of news is that Amanda and I will be moving later this month. We decided to move into the student housing for a year while I finish. It should save us a lot of money plus we have a lot of friends living there as well. I will post a new address on the friends website for anyone who will need it.

Amanda will also be graduating on the 12th of May but will not be walking as she will be in Provo competing in the MWC Championship. She is excited about that and has no idea what she wants to do after the summer so that should be a fun adventure for the both of us. I hope all is well with everyone who still checks this and I look forward to seeing any of you soon.

This one has been coming for a long time.

Okay so I hope people are still checking on this blog. I don't blame you if you have given up on me since I haven't written for close to three months. As I hope you can figure out I have been very busy for the past few months, both because of school and my own doing.

Here are the highlights of my life for the past few months. School has been very good for me this past semester. I will admit I thought it would be a terrible semester but I have been able to make it through pretty well. I have had a lab where I have had to write three reports with the smallest one being about 20 pages. My other classes seem to be going very well. On two of my tests I have done very well so I am very happy about that. Other than that I have also begun my honors thesis project. I will be doing research in acid mine drainage. I will be looking at one of the processes to treat it a little more closley that it has been in the past. Iwill not bore you with all the details.

Amanda has been doing very well over the past few months. She is doing an internship at an elementary school working with kids and helping them with their health and wellness. She has also been doing track since January. She did well in the indoor season. She never hit the marks she did last year but she did well enough to win a number of meets and take thrid in the confrence. The highlight had to have been the girls team winning the Mountain West Championship by one point over BYU. This was the first time BYU has lost since the MWC began. Although no one knows it at CSU, there is one team that has won a championship, more than the football and basketball teams can say. She is now far into the outdoor season and doing much better than she has been doing. She has qualified for the regional meet and hopes to go to nationals. She will also be graduating in May.

Although I have been busy with school and all I have had some fun. I have been able to go skiing a number of times. The best had to have been over spring break where we went to Copper for two days and stayed in Silverthorne. It was so nice not to have to drive home after skiing. The first day skiing it snowed all day so the snow was good but conditions were not ideal. The next days was great. The weather was beautiful and the snow awesome. The highlight of the day was going up yhe snow cat and skiing Tucker Mountain. It was a long hike but the snow was amazing. Probably my best day skiing all year. Other than skiing I also made a quick trip to Albequrque NM to watch the indoor confrence track meet and see the girls win the championship.

Similar to Dunham I have been doing job searching for the summer. Unfourtunatly I do not have people banging down the door to hire me but it has been a good search. After attending numerous job fair I have been contacted by two companies. I have had two phone interviews with Amgen, a pharmecuetical company in Boulder. I have an on campus interview next week. I also applied for an internship with Boulder Scientific in Mead and I had an interview with them last week. I have already recieved an offer from them so now I will see if I get anything from Amgen and then make a decision.

I am sorry this has been long and random but hopefully it helps update everyone on what I am doing. I will try and post more often and I will keep everyone up to date on my job search.

Spring Semester.....begin

So today is the second day of the semester and things are looking pretty good for me. I know that the classes coming up will be tough and require a lot of time but I am looking forward to them. I have classes in heat transfer, reactor design and circuits. I have a lab as well. I really hope I can learn a great deal in them. Along with doing well in school this semester I also have the goal to find an internship for this coming summer. I have spent a great deal of time working on my resume and hopefully it will pay off.

I had a great break. As my previous posting mentioned I traveled to San Antonio for my brother-in-law's wedding. Since then I also traveled to Jackson, WY to do some skiing and attended my sister's wedding.

While I was in WY I skied at the big resort in Jackson and loved every minute of it!! The week peceeding they received 3 feet of new snow which made for great conditions. The morning was warm followed by a snow storm in the afternoon. The one thing that surprised me about the resort was 1st there were no lines like the CO resorts, the most I waited had to of been 5 minutes and this was on a Saturday!! Also I had no idea how step the resort was. On some of our blue warm up runs were steeper than some black runs in CO. I have a good story about sliding down head first for quite a while down the slope. If anyone knows about Jackson Hole they have a tram that takes you to the top of the resort. We didn't get up there until after lunch so there was a lot of blowing snow and it was really hard to see on the top of the mountain but it was a blast coming down. If anyone has a chance to ski there do it!!

My sister's wedding we also great, there was only one drawback, its timing. It took place right in the middle of the Broncos first playoff game. I was very disappointed to not be able to see the game but thank goodness for TiVo and no one saying anything at the wedding I was able to see the game minus the commercials at 10:45 that evening and celebrate the Broncos victory. I have had a great break and am ready to get back to school.

Fall Semester.....done

So today at work I am working on calibrating an SPME fiber which I don't expect anyone to know what it is, but because of it I have a lot of time on my hands waiting for the GC to take its measurements. I figured I would give an update of my past week to all who are reading. I think I mentioned in my last post that last week was my finals week and boy was it a tough one. I had five total finals with two Monday and then one Wednesday through Friday with me flying to San Antonio on Friday for a wedding. I am very upset with one of the finals I took in my numerical analysis class. Three of the four problems were from our last section of material and I blazed through with no problem but with over forty-five minutes left I came to the final question and it was a question that we had one problem on six weeks ago and how to solve it was mentioned in class once. I was upset over that question that was very obscure and not even something he told us would be one the final. Needless to say I did not do as well as hoped but luckily it did not effect my overall grade too much. This wasn't nearly as bad as what happened to Amanda. For her advanced wellness programming class she had taken a couple tests and they were multiple choice which took her about 15 minutes to complete. So she shows up to the final and the teacher had decided to change the format and have it be short answer and it took her over an hour to complete. I have decided that I really dislike all the tricky things a professor will do just to make you screw up on a test.

Now for the better part of the week. After my last final Amanda and I headed to San Antonio for her brother's wedding on Saturday. Here are a few things I learned/observed about that city:

1) They are all bitter they do not have an NFL team and have to share the Cowboys and Texans (Honestly do they really want the Texans representing their city??)

2) Every Mexican food place has terrible service (i.e., food on the menu not available, slow) but the food is good.

3)The roads are very confusing

4)It is winter there but the trees are for the most part still green

5)Sea World is closed in December

6)After eating the food for a weekend I see why Texas is one of the most obese states. (It is very good, so good you don't want to stop eating)

7)Do not eat pastries outside of Starbucks on the Riverwalk, pigeons might spill someone's coffee on you.

8)Beware of pigeons they may eat your food

9)In reference to 7 & 8, I know where the idea of The Birds came from

10)The IMAX movie about the Alamo, don't see it, it is a waste of 9 dollars, it should be shown for free at a room in the Alamo, see Harry Potter instead.

11)Definently see the Alamo it is worth the time and effort to see where history was made.

12)The Alamodome has weird architecture (That is for you Mike)

13)For a city so large the airport is so small

14)The Riverwalk is very cool with lots of lights for the holidays, and lots of good restaurants. (I suggest The County Line BBQ)

15)Nice hotels with King sized feathertop beds are awesome!!

All in all I would say I had a very good weekend down in Texas. I did have a bad run in with a pigeon as I am sure you could tell but other than that it was good getting to know Amanda's family a little better and I got to see a part of the country I had yet to see. I would recommend seeing the Alamo if you are ever in the area. With the riverwalk and some other attractions in San Antonio it could make for a good little vacation.

Well that is all for now I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

A long time coming

So it has been almost a month since my last post and I am sorry for it, life just gets busy and with no internet at the house I have to post from school where I am usually in a hurry to check e-mail and get to class. I know I have tried a few times to post but I always have to leave when I am half way done so it never gets posted. Enough with the rambling. Like I said life has been busy for me, as you guessed it has been with school. I did mention though that I went to see The Phantom of the Opera when it was here. I have always enjoyed going to the theather and seeing a show. I would have to say this is one of my favorite Broadway plays so it was a real treat to see it. I wish I could have afforded better seats but it was still a great night. After the show Amanda and I went to The Cheesecake Factory on the 16th street mall. As usual the food was very good, but I would have to rate the service as poor. We were there about 10:30 PM and a good number of the tables were dirty and even some of the dishes we were given were not very clean. The server took a while to even talk to us and after we had finished our food it took him close to 10 minutes to even bring us the bill, and my water glass was never refilled. It is my opinion that someone who is trying to be a good server will at least refill the water. It was still a great night and overall I would encourage everyone to spend a night on the town and see a good play.

I had a great Thanksgiving break. Because of how all my classes were arranged I did not have to pick up a book for a class for the entire week. It was a much needed break, it has just been hard to pick the books back up for the last 2 weeks of class. Thanksgiving day was spent at the parents house and watching the Broncos beat the Cowboys.

The after Thanksgiving I had the priviledge of going skiing. It was a beautiful day and the snow was good for early season. It is still better than anything on the east coast or midwest. The only thing was is that there was a lot of bumps so my legs were killing me by the end of the day. I am looking forward to going up soon with the almost 4 feet of fresh snow!!

That is about it for now, take care and I'll let everyone know how I'm doing after finals.

Still Alive and Kickin'

So I would like start by saying that I am sooooooo happy it is the weekend. Since last Friday I had had an exam in all 5 of my classes with three happening in the last 24 hours. I just finished my last (and hardest) exam in P-Chem. I have no idea how well I did, I am just happy to be done and free for the weekend. Since last week I have done very little but study, (sorry to all those who came up for the reuinion who I did not hang out with very much) so as of now I am not going to touch a book or think of school until Monday. Luckily I have a great weekend where I will be going of Denver to spend some time with my family and see The Phantom of the Opera with Amanda. If I have time I'll try and write a review. As for now that is about it.

Nothing New

I just thought I would let anyone know who cares to actually be reading this regularly that nothing is new with me. I have had a week with very little homework and stuff to do so I actually was able to relax and watch some sports. Now that that week is over I now have to begin studying for tests in all five of my classes which all fall within a week of each other. Three of them are in less than a 48 hour time span of each other. I love college. I decided though that even though it can be really busy it better than working the real world.

Great Movie

Tonight I had some time with the family and so I went to go see a movie with my dad and sister. I saw Wallace and Grommit which was one of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time. At the end my Dad couldn't stop laughing, I thought he was going to pass out or wet himself or something. I would recommend it to anyone for a good time!!

What's going on

So I figuered I should jump on the bandwagon and get myself a blog as well. As everyone knows I am still at CSU working on my degree. I am very busy with school and work. I work at FedEx in the mornings and I am still doing research with Dr. Reardon at CSU. I have lots of homework and confusing subjects to keep me busy as well. For those who want to know married life is great and I would recommend it to anyone who asked. Amanda is finishing up her last semster of classes and then will have an internship to finish of her degree in Health and Exercise Science. Track practice has started for her and she stays very busy with that. She is also working at Coldstone. I am also trying to get myself an intership this summer, so to those engineers who have graduated keep your eyes open. I want to try and get one at Lockheed Martin or ATK Thoikol working with rockets, missles and solid rocket bosters. I have loked into that area and I think I want to work in that field after graduation. So if anyone knows a rocket company loking for intern let me know. Life is going great for me now and I hope everyone is doing well.