Thanksgiving weekend: twenty-eleven

Wow. What a weekend it was. I believe one of my favorite ever. Of course Thursday was filled with all of the usual family stuff. Early dinner with my dad's family and pie with my mom's later in the evening. I also actually managed to make it over to my parents early this year and watch some of the parade with them. At pie with the Broshinsky's I had some time to look at photos with Karen. We both took some time to show off some of the shots we had taken, that was a lot of fun. After looking at some of her work I'm getting really excited about taking my photography class next semester and learning more about how to use my camera. That really just about covers Thursday, nothing really out of the ordinary but great nonetheless.

Friday I actually took part in some Black Friday shopping for the first time as a customer. Well, sort of. I went to Target in the afternoon after things were done being really nasty and bought a vacuum. Exciting right? I also got Blu-rays of all the old Christmas classics, which is slightly more exciting. After that my day really began. I went geocaching with Tiffany Conger. We had a great time. We found 4 total caches including a revisit to my first attempted cache that I never found. It was nice to be able to finally cross that one off the list.  We also found one that was up the side of Mt. Olympus on some crazy metal contraption. I'm really not sure what it was. Neither was the guy that placed the cache actually. If anyone can tell what this thing is from the picture it would really be awesome to know. It has an enormous engine attached to an even bigger winch all attached to a small tower. It was the craziest thing. It was really cool though. Although we ended up having to drive up part of the mountain on a pretty sketchy looking dirt road. I was a little worried for the safety of my car to be honest. Even after the sketch drive there was a little bit of a hike up to this thing which Tiffany was really not happy about but I bought her tea after. Hopefully she forgave me for that. :/

Post geocaching, we decided to grab some pizza at some new pizzeria Tiffany's cousin works at. I think it was called Limon something or other. Anyways, really weird pizza. The one we got had olive oil, mozzarella, spinach, prosciutto  and blackberries. Weird right? It was really good actually. A little sweeter than I'm accustomed to for pizza but I enjoyed it anyways. We ended up taking our pizza back to my house and chatted about our Nooks for a while. She ended up loaning me Percy Jackson Lightning Thief. I was fairly surprised to get this particular recommendation from her as we saw this movie together. It is arguably one of the worst films I have ever seen; however, several chapters in now, the book is not too terrible.

Next up: Black Metal Friday. Woo, what a night. I headed out to the Donahue's for some drinking and black metal. It was a grand time. Haley set up a black metal shrine on their table that was really cool. I tried to get some photos of it. I haven't edited them yet but I think I got a few good ones. We had mead and butter beer and other beverages. The butter beer was particularly interesting. It was served warm and I believe Haley said it had beer, butter, and eggs in it. It ends up being almost sweet and very rich. It's an interesting concoction but I think I enjoyed it. So, drinks were consumed, conversations were had and as the most metal of us left, the night gave way to pop music, dubstep and dancing, kind of an interesting transition I must say. Overall; a very fun night. Unfortunately it didn't lead to the greatest morning come Saturday.

We worked on our engineering project pretty early Saturday morning. As you can imagine I was a little grumpy about this situation but with the due date closing in and our machine still not climbing stairs we have some work to do. We made attempts to attache some spikes to the tires in hopes that they would catch the stairs and pull it up. It seemed to work pretty well but unfortunately We were impatient and tested it before the glue dried. It managed to pull itself up one step before everything tore apart. It has been re-assembled and testing will commence this evening. Fingers crossed.

Wow I didn't really realize how packed this weekend really was. I'm looking back at what I've written and realizing it's really a lot of stuff. That doesn't even cover it though. I spent a significant amount of time on homework, a great guitar hero hunt, put lights on the house, deep cleaned the kitchen, and more!Wow, what a weekend. Hope you all had a great one as well. :)

It was a dark and stormy night

Ok, this is freaking exciting. Five Iron Frenzy is back! The band officially announced their return last night at 7 PM. With it came the release of this brand new FIF song. Here's the thing that's really amazing. Since they are releasing this new song without the help of a record label, the band has asked for the help of their fans to raise the money necessary to record, produce, mix, master, market this new album. Kinda risky right? Wrong. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise $30,000 by Jan 21 2012. In less than 24 hours after the announcement of the upcoming album, FIF fans have donate over $80,000 towards the production of the new album/touring/marketing/etc. HOLY CRAP. The band has promised that any money past what they need to produce the album will go toward putting the band back on tour and I'm certain that donations will continue to flow in hopes that after an eight year hiatus, FIF might make appearances.

So I was thinking about this in terms of other fundraising efforts that I have seen. It seems that people were much more willing to donate to a bunch of middle class American rockers than to the tons of relief efforts that have been happening over the last few years. It's kind of an interesting priority. Most of us are a lot more willing to donate money for the promise of a new CD of our favorite band than to send money to disaster stricken countries to aid people that really need it. That being said, I plan to donate next payday to the FIF cause. I try to donate to more worthy causes when opportunities arise but I think I could definitely do better. End minimally fact based social rant. 

Ok now, that is out of the way. I am waaaay beyond excited for this new album. I was a little concerned when I first heard about it, fearing that it would be a half-assed attempt at a comeback from a bunch of guys that have long since lost their touch on their various instruments. This new song they released really boosted my confidence in the band and in fact, made me feel bad for doubting them. These guys still have it and I am stoked to be part of the backing they need to get the gears rolling on the next chapter in FIF history. 

                                                                                        

In all fairness, I did say bring it on.

Holy crap. This week has been absolutely insane. I have been working my butt off trying to get the new Mystery Theatre show open. The Agents of Chaos (including my assistant director) were busy most of the beginning of the week tearing out everything from the old 3300 South haunt building. It's really kind of sad to see it go. A lot of my life happened at that building and as cliche as it sounds, I did a lot of growing up there. During the move I took a couple opportunities to head over there and take a few pictures. I think I got some kind of cool shots of the old building but I really haven't had time to look through all of them. I'll hopefully get them posted in the next little while. Anyways, I took Mon-Wed off of work this week and worked 12 hour days Sat-Wed at the show. From 3D haunt space to the Cromwell Bed and Breakfast took a ton of work and a lot of hours. Fortunately I occasionally had some help from the cast, my mother, and now that the move is over I have Allegra and company to give me a hand.

During all of this craziness I still have school going full speed to finals. It's coming up really quickly and getting pretty stressful. It seems like we're behind in every one of my classes. My engineering class is behind because it  is a Friday only class so the Fridays that we have had off put us a week behind schedule each. My trig class is behind because our teacher is an idiot. He consistently shows up late, leaves early, and a couple times has just not shown up for class. All of us in the class are concerned about learning everything we are going to need for the final and being up to speed for calculus next semester. My chemistry class is behind for unknown reasons and we are tearing through material at break neck speed trying to get caught up.


On the bright side, my engineering project seems to be going fairly well. We started welding together the remainder of the components over the last few days and it's really starting to come together. We hit a couple snags yesterday and had to take things apart but we came up with a new solution for our gearing so we have a plan to get it all welded back together this weekend. It should be pretty exciting to get the thing going.

It's been a rather exhilarating few days and I have managed to get a lot done. I can't wait for life to get back to normal though. I'm way behind on sleep and nodding off at really terrible times. :P Oh well, show opens Saturday and then hopefully I can get things back to normal. I don't think I've ever been this excited for Christmas time. I get the whole week off between Christmas and New Years and it is going to be a very well earned break. I think I'll start my countdown now. :)

As an afterthought; for a while I was doing fairly regular updates on my non-smoking progress. I haven't updated on that in a while and I don't want anyone to think that it's because I've slipped up. Things are going exceptionally well. Since my small slip up while drinking that I posted about I haven't had any problems at all. The only time I even think about smoking anymore is occasionally when I take a deep breath and notice that my lungs don't hurt. It's pretty fantastic. :)

Bring it on....unless there's another option.

Holy crap. Things are about to get a little crazy. Haunt season just ended and that means I have like 15 days to get the next mystery open. I met with James and Brian yesterday to start planning out the space for the new set and I started to realize how much work I have to do. It's a little scary. I'm a touch behind on homework and I have TONS of work to do to get this show ready. I'm a little nervous. Finals are coming up, work is getting kind of busy, things are just piling up. Game on.

Speaking of work, there are some kind of cool things going on. My first real mechanical project is taking shape. It was a project to add a belt drive motor to a mechanical mixer to add an additional rotational axis (kind of). Anyways, we fired the thing up yesterday and it appears to work just fine. We need to modify the cover to make it fit over the new components and I think it's ready to go. I'm pretty excited about that. My next new project I've been working on is for freeze drying. I can't actually say what it's for (which makes it seem a lot cooler than it is) but I need to basically make a freeze dryer. We want to experiment with the process without spending $10 grand on a dryer. It should be pretty cool. :) I've been doing a lot of research on the process and different configurations and should be ready to start buying parts and piecing the thing together here in the next couple of days. Exciting right?

Week 1 and Other Things

Well here we are, 1 week after my decision to quit smoking and I have done damn well if I do say so myself. My health is improving at an incredible rate and nicotine cravings are near non-existent. It is really a great feeling. My success aside, I did slip up on Friday night and had one cigarette at a party. For some reason this is absolutely the hardest time for me to stick to my goals. I imagine it has something to do with impaired judgement but at the same time, if I realize how bad it is for me sober, why after a few drinks does it sound like such a good idea. Smoking does nothing positive for me when I'm not drinking. Why should a few beers make smoking a good idea? It's a problem. If anyone has any suggestions about how to better deal with this problem, I'd love to hear them. Unless it's don't drink. I should not have to avoid situations in which I smoked in the past to beat this thing.

Ok, so, smoking update, check. Now, on to the rest of my life. Friday afternoon in my design class, we had to present our progress on our group projects. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before but we're building a stair climbing machine. My group has done fairly well. We have solid drawings of the whole project, most of our materials on hand and we actually got our frame welded this week. Our teacher was really impressed with the progress we have made and I'm excited to continue on with the project. We are expecting to have it running the week before Thanksgiving.

I had an interesting experience Saturday night. I had borrowed my grandpa's truck to finish up some yard work, when I dropped the truck back off to him I stopped to chat for a while. It ended up being a rather lengthy conversation that was much more pleasant than some conversations with my grandparents have been. We just chatted about life, it was nice. I got the latest health updates from both of them which, while not great, was also not terrible. My grandma has found another incompetent, rude doctor that she will not be visiting again, and my grandpa's vision has been slowly improving. For the benefit of those who don't know, my grandfather has macular degeneration, which is a hereditary condition that destroys your eyes as you get older. He was diagnosed when I was about 8 and we were told that he would likely be blind within 10 years. The fact that his eyesight is actually improving is incredible. Granted, it's definitely not 20/20, he was telling me how exciting it was that for the last few weeks he had been able to see well enough to put his heart pill into a pill cutter and cut it himself. We spent some time talking about that and what I should be doing to give myself a leg up in case I get it as well. He also spent some time telling me about his father which was pretty cool. As I was leaving, my grandpa stood by the door and waited until I drove off so he could wave me off. It made me think of when I was younger. This was the norm any time we were leaving their house after a party. My dad would be driving off and he would turn the dome lights of the van on so that my grandparents could see us waving back. After I left my grandparents house I had to run to my parents house to return some tools I had borrowed. We chatted for probably around 30 minutes before I decided to head out. The thing that really struck me as odd then is that as I pulled out of my parents driveway they stood in the doorway, waving as I left. Holy full circle Batman! It hit me then that I actually am an adult. It's weird that this was the thing that really drove it home. The whole moving out, paying bills, taking care of myself thing didn't do it. It was a wave from my parents. Weird right?

Last night I made curry again. This was my second time and I think that I'm improving. The recipe I used is really great. It's one of the simplest Indian recipes I've been able to find. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com. It's called Spicy Chicken Curry, if you're interested, go check it out. I found that it turns out much better to use coconut milk instead of the two cups of water that it calls for. Anyways, the problem I'm having with this recipe is the peppers. The first time I made this I used two jalapenos instead of the chiles it calls for because I couldn't find chiles at the store I went to. I think this turned out pretty good. It was just the right amount of hot but I thought that the jalapenos added a little bit of a Mexican flavor. This time, I did a little advanced planning and went to El Rancho Market thinking that would be my best chance to find the right peppers. I ended up with four yellow chiles. This turned out pretty good but it wasn't nearly as hot as the jalapenos and the flavor of the peppers was a little overwhelming which might be okay if I liked peppers. Long story short, I'm now on a mission to find the right peppers for this recipe. If anyone knows of a Thai or Indian food market here in SLC where I could find some Indian chiles I would be eternally grateful. :) 

Verified Sources

Check it out. I found the list I posted about yesterday with LEGIT sources! Cool right? Here it is.

• 20 minutes after quitting: Your heart rate and blood pressure drops.(Mahmud A, Feely J. Effect of Smoking on Arterial Stiffness and Pulse Pressure Amplification. Hypertension. 2003;41:183.)
• 12 hours after quitting: The carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1988, p. 202)
• 2 weeks to 3 months after quitting: Your circulation improves and your lung function increases.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 193, 194, 196, 285, 323)
• 1 to 9 months after quitting: Coughing and shortness of breath decrease; cilia (tiny hair-like structures that move mucus out of the lungs) regain normal function in the lungs, increasing the ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce the risk of infection.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. 285-287, 304)
• 1 year after quitting: The excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker’s.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)
• 5 years after quitting: Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a non-smoker 5 to 15 years after quitting.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)
• 10 years after quitting: The lung cancer death rate is about half that of a person who continues smoking. The risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, cervix, and pancreas decrease, too.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, pp. vi, 131, 148, 152, 155, 164, 166)
• 15 years after quitting: The risk of coronary heart disease is the same as a non-smoker’s.(U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, 1990, p. vi)

Immediate rewards of quitting

• Kicking the tobacco habit offers some benefits that you’ll notice right away and some that will develop over time. These rewards can improve your day-to-day life a great deal:
• your breath smells better
• stained teeth get whiter
• bad smelling clothes and hair go away
• your yellow fingers and fingernails disappear
• food tastes better
• your sense of smell returns to normal
• everyday activities no longer leave you out of breath (such as climbing stairs or light housework)

This excerpt was taken from an article provided by American Cancer Society, you may read the full article following this link Guide to Quitting Smoking

Benefits of Quitting

So my little sister sent me this link from Stumbleupon (awesome service by the way).It explains what happens to your body right away when you quit smoking. I found a few things about this interesting. First of all, I'm curious about his sources. This guy does not site a single thing. Not one! Come on, you could at least say, "I heard this from a buddy of mine at the bar. He was 12 drinks into the night and nearing comatose." At least then I'd have some kind of gauge as to it's accuracy. Ok, moving on. Let's pick this list apart.

* In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.

As you might expect, I really don't have any way to verify this as I don't regularly check my blood pressure. However, I did notice while working out yesterday that my heart rate was noticeably lower than it had been in the preceding few months. That is definitely encouraging. This also brings up a rather interesting point about the state of your body while you are still smoking. Most people I know go at least 20 minutes between cigarettes while they are smoking, at least during weekdays anyways. Smokers are a little bit more likely to be chain smokers on the weekend but for most working people there are 2 hours between smoke breaks during the day. That means that if this point is true, a smoker’s blood pressure is on a roller coaster ride all day long. That can't be good for your heart (not like smoking was particularly nice for it in the first place.)

* In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.


I thought this was an interesting claim. 48 hours seems like a very short amount of time to be able to determine if a risk of heart attack has decreased. How in the world could anybody possibly study that. You would have to have an insanely large study group, filled with smokers, non smokers, and people who had just quit that day. Of course after that it's easy. Just monitor them all for 2 days and count how many of them have heart attacks. Say what?! Come on. No way. As far as nicotine leaving your body; I'm very curious to know what the actual facts behind that are. I've heard claims about that anywhere from a day and a half to a month after you quit. It seems like that could be dependent on how much you smoke. If anyone has any verified facts on that one, I would be very interested in seeing them. The taste thing is really hard to gauge as well. The night I quit I ate KFC, not exactly a flavor explosion, and the night after I made spicy Indian curry. I can definitely say that I tasted more of the curry than I did the KFC. That's probably not a very good comparison though...


* In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.

I'm going to disagree with this one as well. My energy levels have already increased. Granted, I am now at the 72 hour mark but, I was feeling more energetic before now. I suppose that could have been in my head but does it really matter? If I feel like I have more energy, it amounts to the same thing as having more energy so who cares? I'm not entirely certain what is entailed by "your bronchial tubes will relax" but my throat is, again, feeling better this morning. I've also been coughing a lot of garbage out of my lungs. That's not really a new thing but it's nice to know that I'm no longer filling them up and once it all gets expelled they're going to STAY clean.

* In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.

I don't really have anything clever on this one. I wouldn't mind finding out about that one. Is there a way I can monitor my circulation?

* In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.

Well, the wheezing is gone already. The wheeze was only an occasional thing for me though; usually right after a cigarette or maybe the day after a particularly heavy night of smoking. In terms of coughing and other breathing problems I think that this is also a fairly conservative estimate. It may take that long if you've been a chain smoker for several years but I think most people in my situation who have been at a pack a day for maybe only a few years, you'll start to see these changes a lot sooner.

The remainder of these I'm not even going to touch. The ten years for normal cancer odds thing I've heard before. That's one of the really common ones that they tend to throw at smokers to scare them into quitting. My nit-picking aside, I think this is a really encouraging little list. A lot of these numbers may be based off of something closer to a "worst case scenario" and for most people they are going to be a pretty generous estimate. That's kind of a cool thought though. Take a look at the list, "Hey, this is as long as it's going to take for me to notice this benefit." I think it's pretty cool. And you have it from an ex-smoker that while the numbers may not be 100% accurate, you WILL notice these benefits and more.