Sunday, March 29, 2009

Temples

The other day, I discovered a few pictures of the Salt Lake Temple that I really liked, and I rediscovered my love for the temple. A few of them are fairly similar, but I love them. Enjoy!

I'd never seen this picture before, or anything even like it. I love it.


The next few pictures all have the same general idea, but I couldn't pick a favorite, so you get all of them! :)




Really?

So, sometimes I wonder who makes ads, and more importantly, who approves the ads they make. For example:

There's a thing called "Choose to Give" at BYU. Basically what it is, you give money which goes back to other students who are struggling financially. That's a pretty worthy cause, right? Sure. So, they have tons of ads all over campus for the whole week that they're advertising, and sometimes they have some pretty good stuff. However, this year, epic fail. Are you ready for it? Here it is.



Let's think about this for a second. "Are you struggling financially?" Ok, maybe this will be an ad for a job, or some way to make money. Oh no. Pretty much, we get, "You don't have any money? Great! Take that money that you DON'T have, and give it to someone else, who also doesn't have money!" That just doesn't seem like the smartest way to go about doing this. I don't know if it's just me, but even though I'm not necessarily struggling financially, I didn't want to give any money, just because of this ad.

*Side note: I swear this isn't me being selfish or anything. I do understand that there are students in need, and I would like to help them. This post is about people who don't know how to make ads. That's it.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Question:

What happens if a deaf person breaks their hand or arm? Are they "mute" for 3 months while they wait for their hand to heal? Or are they only half mute?

Even worse, what if they lose the limb completely?

This is the kind of sick thing my mind comes up with. Figured I'd share.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Sharks

This post has some graphic pictures of a dead shark and a fish, just so you know. Don't say you haven't been warned.

Every Wednesday, I have my Biology lab, in which we dissect different animals. This last week, we dissected a shark. So, my lab partner and I cut open our shark, and started identifying the different organs. Oftentimes, we have a rule in our lab: you can't cut open any of the organs. Don't ask me why, but almost always, we aren't allowed to dissect the actual parts of the animal. So anyway, we were feeling around inside, and I got to the stomach. I was feeling it, and said to my partner, "Hey...I think there's something in here. Feel this." He felt it and agreed, but as we weren't allowed to cut it open, we kinda passed over it. Later on, I got back to the stomach, and started feeling again. I knew there was something in there this time. How did I know? Well, I had 2 main evidences: I definitely felt a tail, and whatever was in there had a spine. I showed this to my lab partner, and we called our TA over. She began to feel it, and agreed with me--there was something in there. We wanted to know what it was. But there was that little rule: no cutting open organs.

As we all know, I have many mottos in life. One of them: rules are made to be broken. My TA looked at the shark, looked at me, and said, "Cut it open. If they ask, it was an accident." We cut open the stomach. Lo and behold, a halfway digested fish! It was probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen, hands down. And guess what? I got some pictures, just to share with you.

This is the shark, and on the bottom right corner area is the fish we pulled out of it.



This is the fish from inside our shark's stomach. The curled up part is its tail, and it's kind of missing its head...oh well.


This is the inside of the shark, with our fish near the hole it came out of. The color quality isn't the best on it, but it's as good as it's gonna get.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

DanceSport!

This weekend, I did DanceSport! For those of you who don't know, DanceSport is a ballroom competition that BYU puts on every year, and it's a really big deal. On Friday night, I competed in Bronze Quickstep, and my partner and I made it all the way to Semi Finals! We're convinced that we would have made it to the Finals, if the judges had picked the right amount of couples (they were supposed to pick 6, and they only picked 5). But we did really well. On Saturday, I competed in the Triple Swing and the Waltz (I was supposed to compete in the Samba, but my partner wasn't able to make it). We only made it through 2 rounds of the Triple Swing, which was kind of disappointing. In the Waltz, we were dancing up a level, so I was sure we'd be cut after 2 rounds. Well, we made it through to the FOURTH round! We were pretty happy. Overall, DanceSport turned out pretty well. I only got pictures of the waltz, and here are a few. They're a little far away, but we're the couple wearing bright yellow. :)















Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Clouds

I love looking up at a dark and dreary sky, and seeing that tiny spot of blue sky just beyond, and realizing that behind the clouds, there's always that blue clear sky.

As I walked to work yesterday morning, it was frigidly cold, and the sky was filled with dark gray clouds. I love clouds. Clouds are so ambiguous, dynamic, always changing, and they never cease to fill me with wonder and joy. As I often find myself doing, this particular morning as I walked, my eyes scanned the sky to take in the beauty above me. And then I saw it. The 3 small spots of the brightest blue sky, shining through a tiny break in the clouds. Every time I see that, it blows my mind. It's the same as when you're in a plane, far above the clouds. It's hard to imagine that the people below you, underneath those clouds, can't see the blue clear sky that's just above them. It's just hard to imagine that above all those gray clouds, there's still the blue sky. We often don't see things deeper than below the surface, or at least just what we can see.

I know this sounds like another one of those blogs that I post that tell you to enjoy life, to see the happy side of things, to see "beyond the dark clouds of the trials of our lives, to the happiness and joy of the blue sky just beyond them." I suppose it could be one of those. But it's not what I was going for. What I was going for, was the "look beyond the surface and realize that there's more to things that just what you see" idea. Yep. That's it.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Fruit

Everyone knows, or at least should know (and if you don't know, you're about to find out) that the white part on the orange (between the orange part on the peel) is the part that is the best for you. It's got the most vitamins and what not. Most people peel this part off, because it doesn't necessarily have the best taste. Or any taste, for that matter. However, as of late, I've been making an effort to leave any white stuff left on my orange after I've peeled it. I figure it's my attempt to be healthy. Or something.

The other morning, as I was eating my breakfast, I was thinking about this idea that the part that no one likes to eat and that everyone always picks off is the best part for you. And it got me to thinking...does that mean that we should eat the stringy things on bananas? I hate those things! What other parts of fruits don't we eat? The cores of apples? The stems of strawberries? The green part of cantaloupe? What nutrition are we missing out on? This could be the solution to all our problems...just a thought.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Divide Me

I'm not quite sure how to say any of what I'm thinking right now.

Have you ever felt so conflicted within yourself, that you fear that the two halves of you might tear apart permanently, because they seem to be such polar opposites?

Do you think I'll tear in half vertically, or horizontally?

I cannot make a decision. I have, in essence, two options. Each seems so appealing, enticing, alluring, while at the same time, each has consequences that will potentially bring me great sadness (along with great happiness as well). The positive aspects of each option seems to have what the other is lacking. What I must decide is: what can I live with, and what can't I live without? (I guess also what I can't live with and what I can live without, but they're pretty much all intertwined anyway, right?) How do I decide?

I wish that I could pursue both options at the same time. This is, however, completely impossible. It would include emotional trauma not only for myself, but for others involved. The worst part is how interconnected they are in my head, but how I have to find a way to make them not so, when making my decision. Neither option can influence my decision with the other.

It seems that I love posting cryptic blogs. :)