Hi there!

It's been about 7 weeks, and I am full of guilt; see, when school was in, I had every bit of an excuse to not be blogging. I was finishing out a very demanding semester. But that was over almost 4 weeks ago, and here I am just now writing anything. All I can offer in the way of an explanation is that I've been enjoying summer, and for that, nobody can expect me to apologize.

So, some of you need an update, the rest of you can just skim through the details you already know to get to the better, fresher ingredients that make this blog stand out amongst it's competitors like Papa John's pizza.

I decided to stay in Rexburg for the 7-week semester break. The geology dept. offered to allow me to work through the break, which is nice. But while that means a source of income and a something productive to do during my break, it also means that I won't be seeing my family and friends in Arizona. It also means that a much-less-exciting Rexburg is my home with most all of the college students leaving.
But here is my pledge: when school starts up again, I'll be planning a trip (during school?!! ...I know). I'd like to visit before my Ju leaves for her mission to the Filipino island of Cebu.

But for the meantime, I'll be hangin' with the spud farmers here. And in my free-time, here's what I do:
1) SWIM! There are some awesome places to go here: Rigby Lake (5 bucks per vehicle), The sandbar in St. Anthony (free), Monkey Rock (where the picture at the start of this post was taken, also free), and lots of others that I have yet to try.
2) GYM! You're all sick of hearing about it, but I stick with it. I'm making extra efforts since I don't have school.

3) MOVIES! God bless the dollar theater! I've seen some really great movies this summer. If movies were a drug, I'd need an intervention. I recently acquired a few new titles I've been meaning to add to my collection for years: the Hunt for Red October and Freaky Friday. I know those two are at opposite ends of the entertainment spectrum, but such are my tastes. I found them at Hastings. If movies were a drug, Hastings would be my dealer. That store is altogether way too fun.

So here's the story of the photo at the start:
It was the last week of school and a group of us decided to (ok, promise not to tell. Promise? ok, keep reading) ...break curfew and go night-swimming and then go eat out at Denny's. It was awfully mischievous and awfully fun. I might add that the water was FREEZING cold. Monkey rock is a fork of a river where the water passes over a rock ledge (a jointed basalt vitrophyre, to be precise ...and I know my Mom now knows at least what basalt is). It's a great little swimming hole where you can actually swim under the waterfall and come up behind it. We took glowsticks to light the way, then stacked them on the rocks behind the waterfall. It looked all strangely glowy, kind of like the planet Pandora on the movie Avatar.
I adjust pretty quickly to cold water, as long as it's not too cold. So it was fun, until everyone else couldn't stand it any longer and we headed off to Denny's. We got home around 3:30am. Then at 10:00am, I went to take my Group Dynamics final, which was fine because it was an interview with my instructor, not a written exam. I really like those kind a lot better. So while breaking curfew is really not acceptable behavior here, it was totally worth it.

I mentioned finals, so here are the outcomes: An A in Book of Mormon (my final religion class), An A in Group Dynamics (so sad this class is over!), A B+ in Calculus (which is a KILLER because it's an 89.4%! Only .6 of a percent away from an A-!!!), and an F in Physics. Yes, I failed that awful, awful class. I was concerned about it, because I need it to graduate. I talked with my good friend, the division chair of geology, Dan Moore about it. He said "just take the lower-level Physics and call it good." If he says so, I'm 100% fine with doing that. Physics 105, here I come. I've said it before, but I know the reason that I don't do well with Physics is that it is highly-detailed in areas that I just have no desire in. I love learning, and I love knowing that we have methods for deriving the physical details of the minutia that make up the foundation of our physical world, but I'd rather leave it to those who get a kick out of solving it. I have to literally force myself to even try at every turn along the Physics path. There's no desire there to keep me trekking along otherwise.

For the rest of the break, I'd like to go camping, keep swimming, and gym-ing, and movie-ing. And I'd really like to come home, but for the sake of finances, that one will have to wait.