Canada v U.S. or U.S. v U.S.

Canada versus The United States in hockey was kind of a joke. It was a good game, but in all reality it was the United States versus the United States. I checked afterwards to see how many of Canada's players actually played in Canada and only two members of their team actually played on teams in Canada. The rest played for teams in the United States. I know the players have Canadian citizenship, but I think it's safe to say that if Canada's players didn't play in the NHL that the Canadian hockey team would not be as good as they are. Also, I know that it's cool to go and play for the country where you were born, but they're not the one's paying you to become a better hockey player, the American sports fans are. I guess that's our own fault though, because if we didn't recruit them to come and play for our teams, the Canadians wouldn't stand a chance against us, because their players would not play in as competitive of an environment. The same holds true for the rest of the teams as well. The Russians were also loaded with NHL stars. The Olympics were pretty much the NHL v the NHL and a few other guys thrown in here and there. Canadians can say all they want, but hockey is not their sport anymore. Almost all of their players play in the U.S. and the best hockey in the world takes place in the U.S. Sure Canada develops good players, but they don't stay in Canada. Anyways, if you can't tell I was pretty bitter about Canada winning gold in hockey, basically because I felt those players were traitors to the country who had helped them achieve their level of talent. If anything they should be playing for the country in which they live, but I guess if that were true, most of the Olympic athletes from around the world would be competing for the United States since most of them train here. I hope that in four years we will dominate the Canadians at their own game. We were so close to winning that game. I also felt it wasn't a true gold because we had already beat them once. If anything they should have had to beat us twice, because the series is tied 1-1. Anyways, that's how I feel about the whole hockey issue, which is probably more than you ever wanted to know. I just hate to lose at anything, but hey at least we won the most medals overall, so that's good.

The Weekend

This past week was very hectic. Having been gone for most of the prior week in Reno, I had lots to do. I had three tests and a ton of homework to get done, but somehow I survived. Despite being hectic, this week was also a really good week, because we were finally able to pay off my school loans and become completely debt free. Between our large tax return and Rachel's bonus, we had more than enough to pay off my school loan. We have quite a bit in savings, so we weren't worried, but it was sure nice to be able to pay off the loan, especially when we were able to do it with money that we weren't expecting. To celebrate being debt free we went out and bought a game we've been wanting to buy for a while called Dominion. We first played the game at Rachel's twin sister's house and have been wanting it ever since. We counted it as part of Rachel's bonus. The game is different from any other game I've played and changes each time you play it, so it's a good investment. The game also won game of year in Europe. It's hard to explain the rules, it's one of those games you just have to play to understand. We're actually going to play it tonight with some friends, so that should be fun. I would recommend this game to anyone, because it's a lot of fun, but at the same time you don't get upset when you lose. You'll understand what I mean once you've played the game. Anyways, I have to get some stuff ready for when our friends come over, so I better run. I love Sundays, because you are forced to rest and take a break from work and school, which was what I needed the most.

Kentucky

So while Caleb was at his competition I went home to Kentucky last weekend. I flew out early in the morning on Feb. 10 and I got to Kentucky that afternoon. On Wednesday night I just hung out with my parents and my sister and my incredibly fun nephew (whose favorite hymn by the way is "Teach me to walk in the Light," which he will mumble the words to quite often). We went out that night to Marshall's which is basically a TJMaxx. On Thursday we slept in and time our time in the morning. Then Mom and Sarah and I went to Half Price Books which is a discount book store that I haven't seen out west. Then for lunch we went to Flag Fork Farms which is a little lunch cafe/boutique of sorts. I had a yummy BLT with some cut veggies and a cup of potato soup. Then I bought a shawl there with is light purple with a flower pattern. Caleb says it's something old ladies wear but I think it's pretty and wore it to work this week where a few different people complimented me on it. After that we went and saw the movie Leap Year at the dollar theater. It's a pretty decent chick flick. On Thursday night Sarah and I took Jackson in for a hair cut. It was pretty funny, any time the scissors got close to his ears or the back of his neck he would squirm. But he survived with the help of a sucker. On Friday my mom and I drove over to Bybee pottery.
Bybee pottery has been around for over two hundred years. My mom used to take us there when we were little. It was so popular then that people would line up outside at 6 in the morning just to get in and get some pottery. It's less popular now but it's very affordable. This time I got a few pieces to start my own collection. After we got back from that we went with Sarah and dad to my old elementary school which has been turned into an antiques mall.
It was fun to look around and remember where everything used to be. One of my favorite things that I remember from elementary school are the carnivals, particularly the cake walk. I loved doing the cake walk and hoping I'd be on the right number in the end to get a cake. After that my mom took me to Chipotle, one of my favorite places to eat. I always try and go when I'm there. They have one here in Utah but it's up in Midway I think, so it's a bit far to drive just for lunch or dinner. Then Friday night was the stake valentine's dinner and dance. So I went with mom and dad to that. Ammie, one of my best friends from back home was there with her husband so we took the opportunity to catch up. Then we went back home to catch the rest of the Olympics opening ceremony. On Saturday morning I went with my mom and Sarah to go shoe shopping for Jackson. He thought it was a lot more fun than the hair cut. Then we did some grocery shopping and headed home to relax for the rest of the day. I think I was super lucky to get to spend the weekend in Kentucky and it was infinitely better than staying home alone. Caleb picked me up from the airport on Sunday morning and we got Valentine's day and President's day to relax before going back to school and work. Lucky us I say.

ASC Competition

This past week was one of the craziest weeks I've had this past year. On Wednesday morning at 4 a.m. I left for Reno to go and compete in a Design Build competition. We had been preparing for the past five months, me and five other BYU students. We arrived at the Nugget Casino in Reno around 1 p.m. We had to wait about an hour to get into our rooms because the hotel was overflowing with construction management students. BYU took around 50 students to compete in 8 different events. After getting into our rooms we set up our computers and moved a bunch of tables into one of the rooms, which was made into the work room. After we had finished setting up for the competition it was time to go to dinner. When we got to the room where the dinner was to be held the place was once again overflowing with students and teachers. There were about 600 students packed into a huge conference room. Before we could eat we had to listen to a speaker. I thought it would be a short speech, but I was mistaken. The man talked for an hour and a half. I thought my stomach was going to eat itself before the man finished. After that we ate, watched a drawing and then we headed off to bed. I woke up to my roommates alarm clock at 5 a.m. The competition didn't start till 7 a.m., so I was surprised that he was getting up so early. I later found out that he thought we were starting at 6 a.m. Needless to say my morning was shot and I didn't get any more sleep. At seven we made our down to the designated room and were given our problem, which consisted of a packet of papers that contained the instructions to build a student services center. We were told that we would have the next 17 hours to design a building and turn in the required write-ups. When we got back to our room we passed out the papers and started the process of reading through the lengthy packet and coming up with a design. After reading we were notified by one of the designers that he didn't have the architecture program installed on his computer, so we only had five computers instead of six to work with. This proved to be the start of many disastrous events that would precede that day. For the next couple of ours we all worked on our assignments, but unfortunately for us the designers fell way behind schedules and could not decided on how to design the building. It ended up takin ten hours for them to design the exterior shell, a job that should have only taken about an hour. This of course through everyone else off schedule and spelled disaster for us. I was working on write-ups and developing a site plan, but was missing a crucial piece, the layout of the new building. I was supposed to be done with site plans around 12 p.m., but didn't receive the building layout till about 8 p.m. I had been of course doing write-ups during the rest of the time as well as helping to design landscape features, but the delay really hurt our schedule, because I had to go back through and use a lot of my time inserting the new building into the site plan. Another area that really hurt our team was the fact that the designer, who hadn't loaded the program into his computer, didn't know how to use the architectural program. When he was given a computer to use, he proved to be entirely worthless. Meanwhile the rest of us had to make up for this and do our best. Another problem we encountered was that our writer decided to try and help the designers and rather than making sure that all the write-ups were done and installed in one file he spent his time with the designers trying to do their job. Again, a disastrous turn of events for our team. Meanwhile the rest of us, the remaining four, are having to do a six person job. We were supposed to have finished around ten o'clock p.m., but due to the reasons given above we were way behind schedule. The designers didn't finish until 11:30 p.m. which killed us because there was no time to print and our color printer stopped working. Also when we went to turn in the electric copy of all the documents we found that the writer hadn't done his job and that all the writing material was scattered on different computers which made it impossible to put them all in one file. It was extremely frustrating. The failures of our design team coupled with our writer not fulfilling his duty decimated our chances of winning. Our hard work was in vain and needlessly to say we didn't win. We did however get everyone to pull themselves together and create a good presentation, which was helpful for those of us who did a good job, because there were many recruiters there watching us. It was a long week for me, especially since most of us had worked so hard. I've decided that you can learn a lot about people when you are forced to work with them in a pressure filled environment. It allows you to see who they really are. The plus side to the competition was that I learned a lot and was able to meet a lot of HR people from various construction companies on the west coast.

Sundays are the best days of the week

I would have to say that Sundays are my favorite day of the week right now. With all of the tests I have coming up, homework, and having to leave on Wednesday to go to Reno; it's great to have a day to just relax. There's nothing better than being able to let all your worries and troubles go away for a day or two. It's also nice to just be at home after being stressed out and trying to get a millions things done this past week. Today, Rachel made potato soup in the crock pot, which was really good and then she read while I watched parts of the Super Bowl. I didn't watch a lot of it, because it was boring this year. Also, I was a little disappointed with the commercials that I did see. They weren't very good. Our favorite commercial we decided was the Dorito commercial, where two guys are in a gym and one guy has a bag of Nachos in his hand. The guy offers his friend some Doritos and then he tells the friend that he stole them from Tim. The friend immediately spits the Doritos out and tells his friend to hide the bag. Next thing you know there's a nacho stuck into the guys throat and he falls over dead. The camera pans over to Tim and you see this crazy guy wearing a samurai outfit made out of Doritos. It was pretty funny. It's one of those things you have to see for yourself. Something else that was interesting this weekend was when we went over to Rachel's sister's house, yesterday, and played a game called Dominion. We've decided it's a must have game. It's a really cool card game that once again you have to see or play for yourself. Apparently the game is extremely popular in Europe and won the Spiel Award for best game of the year. It's probably the funnest card game I have ever played and it's a game where you can't really get mad at anyone else. Rachel is currently trying to take as many surveys as she can so that she can earn enough reward money from Amazon so that she can buy it for free.