Snow!

Kiera's and my snow polar bear- Cub! :)

Kiera and Jayden

Me and Cub

Voyager: Quarantine

Four Henries. Five Djuriches. One Thomas and one Lindsay. Eleven lucky people comprising The (second-to-)Last Mission before Christmas break at the Space Center (where they obviously take their jobs very seriously).

For the record, Graig, Ty, Mel and I were 5 minutes late, not 15 as stated on Mr. Williamson's blog. After Sara dropped me off at home, I didn't waste any time getting on the road to pick up Graig and I drove as fast as I could without sliding off the road or getting pulled over. We were all really looking forward to this mission and Melanie talked almost nonstop both ways of her extensive "expertise" on the Space Center (Ty and I kindly neglected to point out she'd only been on one mission). She talked quite a bit during our briefing too, come to think of it. (Much thanks to Thomas and David for letting her be a security guard.)

I hadn't thought much about what job I wanted before Saturday (probably because it was finals week) but I'd half considered engineer and communications. Then during the briefing when our flight director went through the jobs, I surprised myself by telling Sara I wanted first officer. I've been first officer twice before, once on the Phoenix and once on the Magellan. I loved it. The more I thought about being first officer on the Voyager the more I wanted the job. (So, much thanks to everyone else for letting me have it.) The other jobs were sorted out pretty quickly after Lindsay and Rachel "volunteered" for the two most stressful positions (ambassador and captain) and then Jon (our flight director) told us about our mission to distribute vaccine for a deadly flu to a Federation planet in quarantine.

There were three objectives: 1) Maintain the quarantine on the planet. 2) Prevent civil war from breaking out between the 3 annoying, arrogant continents. 3) Survive.

Our first big problem was the pirates that kept attacking, trying to steal the vaccine so they could sell it on the black market for big bucks. They were able to infiltrate our ship and take over the bridge, knocking us out and dragging us down a few decks where our ambassador (when she woke up) was able to talk the enemy captain out of killing us outright and keep her busy until we were able to steal back a gun and slowly recapture our bridge. (There was more to it than that, including the pirate captain being called to the bridge and stupidly leaving us by ourselves, and a brief time when Thomas pretended to have the flu, but that's basically it.)

Even after we beat back the pirates and locked them in the ship's brig, there were complications with our mission. Ambassador Lindsay spoke with representatives from all three continents on Tyrus 3 (the quarantined planet). All three wanted their people to have the vaccine first and all three were extremely hostile and arrogant to us and each other. One leader even threatened bodily harm and launched a ship (to attack us or go get the vaccine herself, I'm not sure which), breaking quarantine. We had to chase it, shoot it, and beam the leader aboard our ship before hers exploded. Meanwhile, also breaking quarantine, the other two continents beamed ambassadors aboard the Voyager and Lindsay had her hands full keeping them from killing each other (or shouting at the captain while she was trying to work).

As first officer, I was supposed to be sending status reports back to the Federation every ten minutes, so I had a giant digital clock sitting next to my computer. I glanced at it periodically, trying not to look but unable to help myself, trying not to panic that our time was rapidly running out. I was grateful Rachel seemed to have things under control because I was having trouble thinking clearly.

The USS Sahara finally arrived with the vaccine, but they'd been attacked by pirates on the way and lost about half of it, so we had to wait for it to replicate aboard the Voyager before we could send equal amounts to each of the three continents. We also had to inoculate ourselves since the Tyrus ambassadors had broken quarantine. 5:00 came and went. I started to relax. Maybe Jon would let us finish...

We were sending the ambassadors back with the vaccine when Jon's voice came over speaker: "Bad news. You are out of time."

He talked us through the mission objectives and convinced us we'd succeeded. (Do they always do that when you run out of time?) Even I was satisfied with the end results. We'd had just enough time to tie up our loose ends and there wasn't much else we could have done (maybe Lindsay could've used more time to make sure the three continents weren't going to end up at war).

I glanced at the clock on our way out and had a sneaking suspicion we'd been given extra time, a suspicion I gleefully confirmed with Mr. Williamson's Sunday post on the Space Center blog. The Space Center rocks. What more can I say?

CHRIST WAS LOVE

I saw Aunt Julie in the Wilk on my way to work this morning and got to talk for a few minutes. She gave me a Christmas present, a beautiful nativity tree ornament and we talked about the people who are important to us. I just want to say, I love all my family members and friends. I wish I could list you all out because I always feel more included when my name is specifically mentioned when people say stuff like that, but listing everyone would take forever and there's no guarantee I can remember everyone I love because there are so many. There's never a worse feeling than feeling left out.

Also I love that my finals are over and tomorrow I'm going to the Space Center with Sara and her siblings!

So sad to hear about the Provo Tabernacle burning down (4 texts from 4 different people woke me up with the news this morning). We the UCAS class of 2010 are now the last ones who graduated in that building. There's so much history tied into it. I'm proud to be part of the history.

More animations- click to view

Fish tank

Monarch

The staring contest you're guaranteed to win

Teaching myself about photoshop

animation by me :)

The great cheese adventure

Tuesday was a long day. Jill and I both had tests. She had school and I had work. I didn't even make it home until 10.

Not everything was work. While I was taking my World Religions exam, Jill rode the bus to her grandma Bjarnson's and had a little dinner, then got her grandma and her uncle into the car and brought them to campus for a free folk music concert in the JSB. I met them in the Wilk and we watched the concert. Most of the folk music was Irish or Gaelic, which is extra cool because Jill, Grandma Bjarnson, and Steve are part Irish. (Grandma is half, Steve is a quarter, Jill is an eighth.)

It makes me wonder what fraction of me is Swedish. And English. Those heritages come from both my Anderson and Henrie families...

Anyway, we got Grandma B and Uncle Steve back home around 9, and then rather than go straight home I called and begged my grandma Anderson to come pick us up. Jill and I both needed a pick-me-up from our rather disappointing test results (even though we studied hard) and Grandma is a great one for pick-me-ups. She picked us up (literally and spiritually) and took us to her house, where we ate taquitos (yummy!) and talked. Jill also had her guitar, and she was playing it. We ended up staying for scriptures and then Grandma drove us home at 10. She even gave us the rest of her taquitos.

(She was so tired. I felt bad and told her lots of thank-yous. She was nice and said "Don't worry about it, your mother kept me up plenty of nights.")

Once home, Jill and I hung around our apartment reading and studying (and eating taquitos, and playing guitar) for about an hour when she suddenly said, "I forgot! I'm supposed to bring Laughing Cow cheese for my French party tomorrow! Do you think Buylow would have some?"

I'd never heard of Laughing Cow cheese and didn't realize it was just a brand name for fancy cheese. "I don't know..."

"I'm pretty sure the Creamery won't have any. We'd better go now. Do you know what time Buylow closes?"

I did not. But we found out, after we'd walked down the street to it, it closes at 11. (We got there about 11:15. It was kind of disappointing.) We climbed a giant mountain of snow in the parking lot to make the trip worthwhile. It wasn't packed down very hard. The challenge was to get to the top and down the other side without sinking so deep you got stuck.

I thought I remembered there was another grocery store next to Buylow, either to the side or across University Parkway. So after we dug ourselves out of the snow we walked some more. We walked a lot. We even jaywalked across University (shh, don't tell- there was nobody around) but there were no grocery stores.

We walked home, double-checked that the Creamery didn't have fancy cheese (it didn't), and then decided to break out the bikes. (Mara wasn't home or I probably would've convinced Jill to ask her for a ride.) We had no idea where we were going, but I had a vague idea of some grocery stores on the corner of Bulldog Boulevard and University Parkway (the fact that Jill followed me again just proves how clueless we were) so we decided we may as well go there.

Wonder of wonders, we found a Macey's open 24 hours (I'm sorry for anybody who works the graveyard shift at a grocery store) and when we got inside Jill not only found plenty of fancy cheese (she didn't even end up buying Laughing Cow) but I found a rack of ski gloves! The night was cold and I happily bought myself a pair of gloves to replace the ones I lost on BYU campus weeks ago, thinking of how warm my hands would be on the way home. (They were.)

By the time we returned to Wyview for good, it was 1 am. We were both dead-dog tired and practically fell into bed, where we crashed for 6 hours until we had to get up for the next day at school.

And thus occurred the great cheese adventure.

Tip for a first date

Get Jill to do the invitation.

This is the invitation to the UCAS Christmas dance Jill made for my brother Graig. He liked the idea of having a snowflake do his talking for him. Not to mention it is a real work of art.

New speakers

My new computer speakers arrived yesterday. :)

Photogenic kitty

Coaly

Dominoes! with Jenga blocks