Pansy Parks

It was "chilly" in Florida when I went to visit this last weekend. I have to refrain from using the word "cold" because I still live in Utah and this would be blasphemous and strange and well rather pansy of me. Eric says it all the time... he's a true Floridian. Lessons learned from this last trip:
1. Flying Delta out of Ft Lauderdale on a "very high volume" holiday like President's Day means you should get to the airport two and a half hours before your flight leaves... even if all you have to do is get your boarding pass
2. Don't underestimate public transportation... my airport shuttle, Tri-Rail train, and Boca Raton shuttle was only 30 minutes slower than driving in awful I-95 traffic. I'd take an extra thirty minutes reading on a train than having to be on that road from more than an hour during the day. Much less stress and cost less then the gas to drive.
3. Even this time of year condensation forms on the INSIDE of our windows overnight.
4. Watching well seasoned athletes put their dreams and hours of hard work on the line for tenths of a second/point while eating a bag of Utz sour cream and onion potato chips is a fabulous way to wait out late afternoon thunderstorm.
5. Delray Beach has a garlic festival...
6.

Count down to flush...

So... we've been busy. Busy = half moving to Florida. Half = the Eric part. I'm currently attending my last semester at UVU and then I get to go join him in May. The holidays I wish had been a little more relaxing and restful. Haha, on both Christmas Day and our anniversary Eric was sick. I spent most of my time packing boxes, boxes, boxes. We figured it would be easier to sell as much of our belongings as possible ($12 four drawer dresser from yard sale, oil paints, kitchen cart, etc.) rather than moving it across the country. Just the renting of the U-haul truck would have been over $2000 not including the gas. I moved into a house in Orem, to save money, where I have my own room and get to play with two dogs: Orion and Pumpkin. Instead of living in a two bedroom apartment I now get to put the extra cash from rent towards monthly trips to visit husband, which I did this past weekend. After driving across the country Eric began work last week and is officially a Hydrogeologist..."BACK OFF MAN! I'm a scientist." Meanwhile, I'm banging out a heavy credit load and living like a hermit in my little room. It's all worth it though when I get to have Sundays like this last one where I got to go on a walk with husband in Delray Beach... he says hello. (Blogger wasn't uploading my vid, so until I get that figured out here is the youtube version)

Oh, and also when I get to go through Chicago/O'hare to use this toilet:

the results are in

Howdy. We have some real news this time. First of all it's thanksgiving and we're going to eat this:


Also, we're moving here:

I got a job offer as a hydrogeologist for a groundwater and environmental consulting firm in Boca Raton, Florida where it will be my job to help keep nastys like arsenic and chlorinated solvents out of the water systems. We're both pretty excited. We actually both got to fly down and visit the company and the town last week. Our airplane had to be de-iced when we left Salt Lake City but in Boca, the ocean was about 78 degrees and the birds were singing. Also there were a lot of old people.

Florida...

So, here's the deal...
Depending on an interview coming up this week we may in fact move to what our friend Adam refers to as the wang of the United States:
Eric has been in talks with a company out of Boca Raton for a position as a Hydrogeologist for quite some time now. They had mentioned wanting to fly him down for a second interview and said they would call to schedule the details. Well!, Monday he gets off the phone and looks at me and says, "So do you want to go to Florida next week!?" Immediately the synapses in my brain fire to pictures of sandy beaches and warm breezes only to then fall upon this question that I posed to Eric, "Why do they want ME to come?" So, I called my mom, who by occupation speaks the language of "hiring practices within the big kid career realm" and asked her opinion. After doing so, I realized this company's willingness to fly me across the country has everything to do with wooing us to the high cost of living (80% higher than Provo) that is Boca Raton (hello, $700 quarterly HOA fee) as well as making sure I'm not going to cause any sort of domestic disturbance for one of their potential employees by being a psycho wife that calls her husband at work eighty-four thousand times a day. How will they determine this? Well, they are taking us out to dinner which apparently is my opportunity to convince them I am a non-crazy sort of female... First impressions may help me in this cause so here is where the two people that follow this blog should submit their two cents.

I don't know what to wear.

Eric is no help. Sometimes I'll ask him which high heel to wear with an outfit to church on Sunday and he gives me a lamentable stink face that says, "Why do you even wear those torture devices at all? Also, tall girls are intimidating." I've gone through my closet... this is what I've come up with. Please take your pick and let me know your preference. I no longer live with five girls, with five other closets, and fashion advice in order to make a confident selection.

Things to keep in mind:

1) The difference in weather...
2) Being that it IS Florida, are people more laid back, due to their annual intake of sun resulting in heightened Vitamin D production, such that a business casual dinner is more informal in terms of dress?
3) These people are scientists... not power attorneys, which I'm assuming may mean they prefer practicality over show.
4) I have no idea what restaurant we are going to.
5) Eric will be wearing a tie.
6) We are getting off the plane, stopping at the hotel and then going straight out to dinner.
7) Obviously, I'm overthinking the whole thing.

We fly out on this Thursday the 19th, so take your pick and two cent away!

Almost there.

I turned in the seceond draft of my thesis today, and it looks like I'll have my thesis defense on December 1st. So if any of you find yourselves lying awake at night wondering whether or not you could use frequency domain electromagnetic induction or shallow high resolution seismic to characterize shallow hydrogeology in arid saline soils, just let me know... I'll send you a copy.

Rodents

We have rodents. Pet ones, that is. We've had two gerbils for quite a while now, still not dead, thanks to our supurb parenting skills. We just keep giving them all the PVP pipe their liitle teeth can handle and they keep living. We're ready for human babies now.

But now we also have two rats. Yep. We're the weirdos with four rodents. We didn't pay for them though I promise. We got them for free in order to rescue them from a boa constrictor. The rats are actually pretty cool. They sneeze a lot and sniff around.
You may remember earlier this year we made a couch. Well, it was pretty fun to build, but it wasn't terribly comfortable so we sold it on craigslist. Say goodbye to our homemade couch.

Update

Hey folks. I've been home from India now for almost two months and I'm finally getting around to putting up a few of my pictures. (none of the pictures from earlier posts are actually mine) I entered a photo contest at BYU with a few of my pictures.
Before I get to India though, let me tell you what's been going on. I've been trying to plan out the rest of my life. That's hard. I'm in the process of figuring out where I'm going to work and what I'm going to do for a career now that I'm almost done with my master's degree. So far I've applied to oodles of places and I'm getting close to hearing back from some of them. In the meantime I'm furiously trying to finish my thesis by the end of the week... or sooner!

On to India. I'll just include a few here.































Photo of monks listening to Dalai Lama by Chris Spencer