The Fourth

               Since being home from Spain, my life, I admit, has been a bit boring for my taste.  I have done a lot of sleeping, at least initially, watching movies, talking on the phone to catch up with friends and family etc.  I was and still am desperate to work because that it what summer is for!  And all I have been doing all summer is playing in Spain!  So I made at least fifteen phones calls in the first few days of being home, trying to find temporary work and landscaping jobs.  I got one; and so far no others.  But the one that I did get was for my former bishop, cleaning up his back yard that they are planning on landscaping soon.  So Keaton and I worked a total of like twenty man hours cutting weeds and raking them up and hauling them to the dump. 

                Keaton and I both continued our job hunt, trying to find work.  Out riding my bike one day, I saw Allen’s Food and Drug store and thought that perhaps they were hiring.  So I walked in and asked for a manager and got two applications, for Keaton and I after the manager said that indeed they were hiring at that time!  So we both filled them out, and turned them in.  A few days later we both got called in for interviews.  Keaton got called back and starts next Tuesday!  Very exciting for him because he hasn’t been able to have steady work for a long time!  I felt a little over qualified for the work, but just wanted extra hours, however he has never called me back.

                I went to campus a few times to talk with work associates and other adults friends to perhaps find a job somewhere.   And talking with the chief of security at the Museum of Art (I work in the museum shop during the school year), he said that they were still hiring for extra security at the Stadium of Fire.  Stadium of Fire is an annual concert and fireworks show hosted at the BYU football stadium.  He called right in for me there and we spoke with the head police event scheduler for BYU and he hired me on!  So on July third I worked ten hours guarding the antique cars that were brought in to the dress rehearsal for the show.  Then on the fourth I started at 6 a.m. and went all day until 12 a.m. midnight.  I had a very easy job, I was like the jack of all trades for security guards.  I went and opened gates, swapped positions with people that needed a quick break, ran errands for the officers, and delivered lunches and dinners.  The best part was that I ended up getting two more free meals after the show, I got to see the whole show basically, including the fireworks and got paid time and a half for 18 straight hours!

              The show featured Scottie McCrary and The Beach Boys!  The Beach Boys were so cool!  Not moving very fast and not hitting every note perfectly but still fantastic!  When the Beach Boys came out they drove out six antique cars and I should have gotten a picture! There was a 1960's Cobra, 1963 Chevy Impala 409, 1933 Dragster, classic 1953 White Thunderbird, Ford 1967 GTO, and a VW bus from the 60’s.  All very cool.   The fireworks were good and there were just so many of them!  But I feel like I have seen better variety in other shows.  Though most of them had loud explosions which I love!  The finale of the show was a whole bunch of canon ball explosion fireworks that sent sound waves riveting through your body! I loved that!  Earlier in the show when the Star Spangled Banner was sung, right as it finished four F-18 fighter planes flew right over the stadium!  That was very cool too!

                I have had better success at being consistent with running and exercising, and a friend of mine invited me to run a half marathon with him last Saturday.  It was the Hobbler Creek Half that started at the top of Hobble Creek Canyon, and ended in the middle of Springville where the canyon ends.  It felt fantastic!  We got up right before 4 a.m. to get to Spingville, take the marathon bus up to the top of the canyon, and wait for the race to start at 6:30 a.m.  Originally I was just going to try for less than two hours, just jog and go my own pace all the way because it was my first half marathon.  But once the race started I found myself running with the one hour and fifty minutes pacer.  So I stayed with him for the first few miles.  Eventually he started talking to me because I was the only one that was still keeping with him then. He asked me if I had raced before because I wasn’t breathing very hard.  I told him that this was my first one.  And then very shocked apparently he asked me if I had trained a lot for it and I replied that it was on a whim and I had only signed up two days before the race.  He was shocked and started asking about my running career and I told him a bit about it and all.  After talking for a mile, he checked his watch and said that we were going too fast to stay on pace and that he needed to slow down.  I didn’t really care so I slowed down with him, but after another mile he said that we needed to slow down again, and then after another half mile he said he still needed to slow down, and that we were ahead.  At that point I felt like I could handle myself just fine so I took off.

Lori, Isaac, Me

                That was at mile sixish.  To finish thirteen and a tenth miles in an hour and fifty minutes you have to run and 8:23 mile thirteen times in a row.  I ran ahead and felt really fantastic for the next four miles but once I got to mile eleven and twelve, they felt soo long!  The finish line was also around a few bends and curves in the road, so it was also hard to judge when I needed to kick in my final boost of energy to get through the finish.  But I ended up catching the one hour and forty five minute pacer and passed her about two hundred yards before the finish.  She was a little behind apparently so I finished right at 1:45.13!  Awesome!  The website said that my overall average for the race was 8:02 minute miles which means that those last five or six miles on my own I had to be going under eight minute miles to pull my average down by twenty three seconds!  So overall I am very pleased!  And was very exhausted!  They handed out popsicles and water.  And one guy had a 32 oz V8 Fusion which I also sought out and obtained, drinking it in its entirety! We got free massages for our legs afterwards, and I went home and slept on the couch for four hours!  My legs were pretty stiff for a few days but I got over it on Tuesday and was running regularly again.   Now I want to do a ten mile time trial!  I have a goal to run it in under seventy-five minutes, and during the marathon I did it in around eighty minutes! 

Lori, Isaac, Me, Tatiana

                I started working at Geosys Design finally.  It is a Geotechnical engineering consulting company based out of Bluffdale Utah.  I had one day of training two weeks ago and this week I have worked four full days.  My job is primarily to perform testing for soil nails (retaining wall anchors) being installed, but I also observe at construction sites and input data into spread sheets.  So far I really enjoy it, but wish I could get more hours.  It pays well so I am still doing good.  Just shy of forty hours this week at Geosys, I made almost exactly as much as a month’s worth of pay working at the Museum of Art part-time.  So if I can do that steadily for a month I will at least be ready for school expenses in the next year.  Hopefully I can get some more random jobs like landscaping to supplement that.   But it is a really good experience that i am glad that I will be able to put on my resume!  Perhaps in my next blog entry I will describe more in depth what I do for the testing.  It really fascinates me, which is a good sign, since I am planning on emphasizing in geotechnical engineering in my post graduate studies.
               Yesterday I was able to have some fun playing frisbee golf with some friends that I go to church with and then hike for three hours!  It was a pretty decent hike.  I went with my police officer friend Wayne Beck and we hiked to the top of Y mountain.  (BYU has a really big concrete Y on the mountain next to campus, but the Y is only three quarters of a mile up)  Over all it took about three and a half hours.  We climbed from 5100 feet to almost 8500 feet, with a total distance of 6.6 miles.  It was so fantastic!  The view was incredible! And on the way up we got rained on pretty good, and so the rest of the way, even though is stopped raining, we got soaked but the dense trail lined with brush on either side and many times above us too!  When we got to the top, there was another mountain peak about three miles away and we started yelling weird noises to get echoes back!  It was incredible how far our yells went!  Over all it was a fantastic way to spend my afternoon!

Utah Lake

At the top!

The echoing mountains!

The is the trail at the 2nd meadow, the only place you could see the trail well enough for a picture!

                Life goes on.  I am relatively happy, and trying my best to work with what I have.  Sometimes it is hard to stay busy, which bothers me, but it will all work out.  I know Heavenly Father has plans for me to accomplish great things; I just have to learn how to do them first.