Clarification

Just in case anyone was wondering, the last post wasn't a joke and I really am pregnant. Surprise!

A few interesting tidbits:
I am currently 12 weeks along.

My due date is April 7, 2011.

I promise this blog won't focus solely on pregnancy/baby.

As far as sickness goes, I've been nauseaus, picky about eating, way fatigued, my face has broken out, and I'm more sensitive to smells. But I haven't thrown up, so I definitely consider myself lucky.

I'm really hoping for a girl.

Isn't Technology Amazing?

    If there's one thing that Matthew has helped me realize in the past year of marriage, it's that space and technology are really amazing things.  The way that the laws of physics help explain all the phenomena we see is pretty cool, and by using these laws we can produce some incredible technology. (This might sound boring... I promise it'll get interesting. Keep reading.)
    One area of technology that really seems to be taking off lately is photography.  I mean, if you think about where it is from derogotypes, to color film, to digital, that's really quite the change.  There is also another branch of photographic development that is perhaps less well known, but even more spectacular. 
   This photo is actually an example of how we have recently been able to bend space and take photographs not only of objects hundreds of light years away, but from hundreds of light years away.  This is a picture of our own Milky Way Galaxy.  How did they get the camera there?

I promise, this was labeled as "milkyway_4".  It must be a true picture.

   But, there are even greater advances.  Not only can we capture events as they happen, scientists have now helped us go back in time and capture events that happened thousands of years ago.  Don't believe me?  Look at this photo.

 

   This is an actual photograph of Saul on the road to Damascus.  Now, I know it isn't the best quality (it sort of looks like a painting), but you have to remember the amount of time this photo is crossing.  Plus it was an earlier attempt at "back-in-time" photography.  But, the FHE manual where I got this assures me that it is copyrighted by Globe Photos Inc., so there you go.

    Now this photo is a prime example of the advances in this particular field.  Scientists were able to get an actual photo of the First Vision!  In fact, I think they're even planning to release a video of the event they have captured from over almost 200 years ago.  Absolutely astounding. 

    And now, for perhaps the greatest advancement of all.  Scientists have developed a way to take photos of... THE FUTURE!!  Now, thanks to Matthew being a physics major, we were able to help in the testing of this, and we have a picture to share.

    This is a photograph of Stephanie from about March of next year:

Pretty amazing, eh?  Well, we thought you would all be interested in this fantastic development. Just so you know, we're absolutely thrilled about it.

a shopping (mis)adventure

Back in July I bought a shirt for about $10 at Forever 21. As an aside, I have to say that that store has really gone downhill the past few years. I remember it having some fantastic clothes back in high school... now its just all kinda skanky.

But in July I did see a shirt that I liked, and so I bought it, but I am my mother's daughter and a couple of days later decided that I really didn't want to keep it after all. Unfortunately, Forever 21 has an exchange only policy. Matthew ended up returning  it for me, but called me from the store and said he found some guys jeans that looked good and also happened to be $10. The guys dressing room was closed, but we figured if they didn't work we would just return them again.

Later that day, I asked him to model the jeans for me. You can imagine his surprise/embarrassment and my amusement when it turns out that Matthew had just bought some tight skinny boy jeans. Bahahahaha. I really really wish that Matthew had let me take a picture, but there was no way he was letting me near a camera with those jeans on. Too bad.

To make this story even better, it turns out that Forever 21 enforces a 3 week exchange window--after 3 weeks there's no going back. I guess in the midst of moving and the end of classes and such we forgot to go back and exchange them... which means that we still have Matthew's skinny boy jeans in the closet of our spare room. *Giggle* The funny reminder every time I see the bag is very much worth the $10 of clothing that won't be worn. Maybe I can convince him for Halloween...??

A better deal than $4 generics

Most of the time I, like I'm sure pretty much everyone else in the country, do not have particularly fond feelings towards prescription drug companies. Sure we all really appreciate the meds because we need them, but who likes paying an arm and a leg, and maybe even selling your firstborn child in order to pay for it? Yeah, me neither.

However, lately I think I have to admit I admire drug companies in one particular case. The BYU student health plan does not cover any prescription drugs. Zero. I know, its crazy good coverage right?? Anyway, for people like me, who needs insulin to live, or Matthew, who has his meds every day, that could get really expensive really fast.

Thankfully BYU has the Student Assistance Program. If you don't make much money, you can get all of your prescription drugs... for FREE. Well, actually we pay $25 a year for the application to the drug companies, but then we get all the insulin we need for the next year. Can you say lifesaver?

I take my hat off to you, drug companies.

Reruns

Well adding and dropping three or so classes later, the add/drop deadline has passed us and Matthew is signed up, of all things, for Nutrition 100. I know. He could've been taking French, but nutrition is my other one love and so I'm very pleased. Again, this was not even something that I tried to cajole him into doing. Nothing but good times here.

Speaking of good times, Matthew ordered me a belated birthday present that arrived a couple days ago. Apparently he was getting fed up with my chapstick crises... as in I run out of chapstick and we HAVE to go to the store RIGHT AWAY and get some more... or I can't find my chapstick and everything else goes on hold until we find it. And heaven forbid if there was some sort of disaster or chapstick factory explosion and there was a run on chapsticks at the store...

So, Matthew's solution was to buy me 45 packages of chapstick! Now we can put one in every room in the house, in the car, in my blood checker and in my purse. I'll never be more than 10 feet away from a chapstick again in my life!

Jobs and flowers

Greetings from the world of unemployment! In case you didn't know, turns out the economy isn't exactly producing a multiplicity of jobs... so this college grad is writing this post at 11:30am on a Thursday, from the comfort of her couch, sans job. And its not even because I'm not trying. Oh I've tried. And I will continue to try. Tomorrow.

The good news is that I am looking at 2 gorgeous bouquets of roses that my dad and my husband got me for my birthday. Sometimes you get a bouquet of flowers and they don't really open up very well, or they just die right away. Lucky for me, both of these bouquets have been fabulous and opened up just beautifully. It makes me excited for next semester when Matthew is going to take Floral Design (and he's doing it of his own free will and choice!) That's right folks, not even something that I'm secretly signing him up for. Can I just say I'm stoked for gorgeous arrangements of flowers each week? Cuz I totally am.

Speaking of secretly signing Matthew up for classes that I want him to take (read: French), I again signed him up for French 101 this semester. And he even went to a day of it! Yup, my husband has taken exactly one day of French class. And then yesterday he decided to drop it and add another smarty-pants Physics class. Electrostatics and Magnetism or something like that. And it makes sense in the grand scheme of things... so I guess I'm ok with it.

But it puts a damper on all of my plans. My big plan is to have Matthew realize that there is nothing he would love more than to get a job or do an internship in France for a year or two. And there are plenty of physic-y things to do--working at the Large Hadron Collider is one of them.  But I realize that its hard to take the leap from his current mindset to the "it would be a great idea to live in France" mindset. So... to help facilitate the change of heart, I figure that taking several French classes could help. *Sigh* Oh well. We'll try again next semester. And, for the record, Matthew did tell me that he would be willing to take a French class or two, but it just didn't work out very well overall this semester.

One last thing. My job up until last Friday has been working as a secretary in the Nutrition department office. Up until a month ago, I just came in for 2-3 hours in the afternoon and would work on random stuff after the regular secretary went home. Well, she got a different job at the end of July, and so I became the only secretary for many weeks. It was great--I got more hours, and got to learn and do a lot more stuff. In fact, that was going to be my "full-time" job when I graduated, except there is a hiring freeze at BYU, so they couldn't hire me as a regular staff person. Which made my job a bit of a two-edged sword in the sense that I was learning how to do a lot more stuff and was feeling fulfilled with my time at work...but I knew that in a few weeks everything that I was learning would become irrelevant (because it would no longer be my job). Oh well. It was still a good experience. On my last day, I came into the office to find this cute thing on my desk:

Flower shaped measuring spoons! How happy is that?! The dietetics faculty gave them to me, as a thank you for helping out a lot more the last month (and its true, there were a lot of things to do to get ready for the beginning of school). Anyway, I appreciated their thoughtfulness. And they're so cute! I just can't quite get over it. :)