Sleep glorious sleep!!!!

So as always life is an interesting adventure. My graveyard job only lasted a total of eight days. Just enough time to mess with my sleeping schedule. I spent the past week trying to get back into sleep at night routine. But before that could happen I didn't sleep for four days. Now it would be normal if I didn't sleep for four days and was completely exhausted, but part of the problem was that I wasn't tired at all. I would just lay there wide awake for hours. It was very frustrating. Then I would go about my day thinking I would be tired because I hadn't slept, but no I was wide awake. Thankfully last night was filled with nothing but undisturbed sleep. It was a beautiful thing.

Today I had a wonderful surprise. As I was eating breakfast Christopher text me and asked if I was home. I said that I was and got excited. If he was asking me this question that meant that he was in SLC and I would be able to see him. Turns out that he and Laura were celebrating their anniversary, which is on Monday and so they had dropped off Jane at the grandparents and spent a night alone.

I was told a couple of weeks ago that I needed a belt replaced in my car. I naturally had called Christopher about it to ask his opinion. He said it was hard to give advice about it if he couldn't see the actually problem. So he has been worried about it for the past couple of weeks. What a nice brother to worry about my safety like that.

Turns out that it did need to be replaced. So he and I headed to Checker's to get a new belt. It only ended up costing me ten dollars and change. A lot less then it would have been to have someone else change it for me. Then we went to the Phillip's house to get a tool. I was being the lovely assistant handing him wrenches and such, but then I thought that I could be helpful. We were having a little bit of trouble getting the damaged belt off. I have small hands so I figured that I could get into the small compartments a little easier. We finally just ended up cutting the belt because it was taking too long to take it off. The instillation of the new belt went a little quicker than I thought it would. We formed a plan and then executed it beautifully.

The whole thing was quite fulfilling. Not only did I not pay a ton of money to get my belt replaced, but I helped in the whole process. So if anyone has a '95 Mitsubishi Galant S and they need to replace their alternator belt I now know how to do it. :)

It was great to spend time with Christopher. I don't get to do it a lot and we did a lot of bonding. Thank you Christopher!!!!

I have also discovered that I am addicted to school. I just started an online class a couple weeks ago and I get this rush as I am studying for the class. It is Medical Terminology so there is a lot of memorization involved. There is no better feeling than getting a good grade on a quiz or a test. I know that we shouldn't seek for people's approval, but there is nothing I live more than to see and "A" on my transcript. My class is going well so far and I am excited to go back full time in January; even though my schedule is going to be as crazy as ever.

8:00 a.m. bed time

So I had the opportunity the other day to make a decision about my life right now. This past year has been really interesting as I've tried to find a job. At times I have thought that I've made it and can relax...job found...life will chill out for a little while and I can breath. That is usually how it has been; not this time around though. For those of you who don't know, I've been kind of working two jobs the past little while. I've been working for my Uncle Bruce in his dental office when ever they need some help of Carolee needs a break from the craziness. I've also been working as a PRN physical therapy aide for the office that I did my internship with.

Things had been going pretty well. I had worked everyday for two weeks. It felt good to finally get paid for same work I'd been doing for the two months prior (for free mind you). Then I had a chance to go to Oregon and Montana with my boyfriend. His dad had offered to take us Salmon fishing and his niece was being blessed. I had a really hard time deciding what to do. I've spent most of my life doing all the things that were necessary to get the A or to pay the bills. What I'm trying to say is pretty much I always put school or work before playing or having grand adventures. Now I know that this sounds like a grand principle to live by, but sometimes I look back at the last four years or even eight if you really want to look at my life and wondered what memories I missed out on. Now I'm not saying that I wish I had been more irresponsible while I was going to school. But life is meant to be enjoyed not just endured.

So I was presented with a dilemma. Should stay in Utah and hope that I got called into work or should I go to Oregon and make memories that I would enjoy forever. After I kept being told by people that I needed to live a little I decided that I would take a risk and go on a trip. As you can read in my last post I had the time of my life and made a lot of memories that I'd never had before. While I was in Oregon I got called in to work. It ended up that I could have worked four of the days that I was gone. I sat there one night wondering if I had made the right decision. I decided not to worry about it right then because there was nothing I could do about while I was there and I just needed to have a little fun.

Upon returning to Utah, I wasn't getting calls from anyone. I was working for my uncle once a week, but that isn't enough to pay my rent. I received an email from a girl in my ward (who is the employment specialist) that gave all the information for a data entry job. They were looking for 400 people to work a new project for a few weeks. I sat there pondering it for a while. I wasn't sure what I should do. I already had two jobs, but they weren't always consistent. I left the message in my inbox and went on with my day. Later I came back to it and pondered some more. I decided that I really needed to make some good money so I could pay back people who had been helping me out. I hate owing people money and it has started to wear on me. They were offering the job on three shifts. I figured that I already had two jobs during the day and if I worked a later shift I could still do them if I got called. I didn't want to work the swing shift because I would never see my boyfriend. So graveyard it was. Every person I talked to told me I was crazy and that I was going to over exert myself, but this was something I had to do.

I said a little pray and discussed my plan. I felt like it was the right thing to do right now and that I would be strengthened during my trial. Michael worked graveyards for two years basically and I wanted just a little bit to understand what he had gone through. I've had it pretty easy as far as jobs go and now was my time to have a new experience.

So I started working graveyards last Thursday. The whole experience has been a little odd. I'll give you a little background on the project. I am working through a temp agency called Spherion. They are staffing a project at a company called ACS. The project is processing invoices for "Cash for Clunkers." I'm sure you've all heard of it. The government didn't expect this to be such a hit and wasn't prepared for the rush. They are really behind on processing the claims, so now I have a job. The interesting part is that they just kind of through the project together. They pulled some people from other shifts at ACS and asked them to be supervisors. They were trained during the day and then we came in Thursday night and got trained. The whole thing is a mess really. Out of the couple hundred people on my shift there were only about twenty who could log into the system to process claims. That was last week. They slowly are getting more people connected, but it is taking forever. The first couple of nights I worked we got sent home really early. The time I spent at work was worthless and I pretty much got paid for doing nothing. On Monday night a group of us took turns doing claims on a team members login. I finally worked a full shift, but didn't really do that much work. Tonight I finally had my login worked out, but they hadn't assigned any work to my page. We sat around until 12:30 a.m. at which time they told us that they were sending us home. I'm not really sure why we got sent home, but lets just say none of us were too happy about.

So pretty much I work at night, sleep during the day have a few hours to play and get things done and then repeat. My body is still trying to adjust to sleeping during the day. I don't really think that it likes it, but that is what has to be done. I start an online class on Thursday and still need to study for the GRE which I need to take next month. As well as the other volunteer hours I need to complete for my PT application. So life is busy and crazy as ever, but that is better than the do nothing have no direction for my life state that I was in a couple months ago. Life is an adventure and I am living it.

Adventures in the Northwest!

For those of you who don't know, I just had the coolest vacation ever. I had a lot of first experiences in this adventure filled week.

1) I picked black berries for the first time and even ate one. These things were huge. I wish I had a picture but I wasn't thinking that far ahead.

2) I went salmon fishing on the Columbia river! I caught a fourteen pound chinook salmon. I had a massive one on the line before this one. It was so wild. I had never been salmon fishing or even attempted to catch fish of this size before. David's dad got a hit on his pole and handed it to me and said reel. I had no clue what I was doing. I was reeling as fast as I could but this fish was ripping line so fast, there was no way I could keep up with it. It jumped clear out of the water on one side of the boat and then seconds later was jumping again on the opposite side. Then the beast would be held no longer and left me standing there kicking myself for losing it. But it was an amazing experience I wouldn't give up. Luckily I was able to pull in this bad boy a little bit later.

David and his sister Nola also pulled out some beautiful fish.

Nola and her 18 pound chinook salmon

David's eight pound silver salmon. (He also caught a five pound steelhead, but we had to release it because it was a wild fish.)

There has been a record number of salmon running this year, but they just aren't biting. We were out on the river for a good eight hours and we got a couple more hits, but there were fish jumping everywhere. They just didn't want to come home with us.

3) I finally made it to Washington. I haven't really traveled a ton in my life. The traveling I have done has consisted of the western United States. (Someday I will make it a little further east) But I always had one spot that was left untraveled. The state of Washington was the only western state I'd never been to. I had even been to Canada, but Washington had been elusive. So on our drive over to Montana we headed through Washington. I learned that they have some of the craziest on ramps and interchanges. I was glad to get out the crazy traffic and into the beautiful wilderness.

4) I have now been through northern Idaho. I had always heard how beautiful and majestic Cour'de Lane was but never been there myself.

5) I went fishing in the river. Now don't get me wrong, I'd been fishing on rivers and lakes before, we always had to stay on the banks and didn't really travel too far from the spot we were fishing. Three different days, once in Oregon and twice in Montana I went hiking through rivers to find the fish. Let me tell you, some of those currents would just love to take you down stream. The two rivers in Montana we were mostly hiking upstream. Let me tell you how great of a work out that is. There was only one time that I thought I was going to be swimming because of the current, but I prevailed.

David and I caught some nice brown trout that we cooked up on Friday. They were delicious. We also caught some beautiful cut throats that we had to release.

6) I got to go to my first gymnastics gym. David's brother-in-law is a gymnast. He and his wife own a gym in Missoula, Montana. We didn't have time to play at the gym, but it was fun to look at some of the equipment and hear about how their business is starting to take off.

7) I went hiking with David and his dad the first day we were in Oregon. It was gorgeous country. We sat on the side of the mountain looking across a canyon and scouted an elk herd. I'm sure that we couldn't see all of them, but I counted 19 elk all on the side of this mountain together, just eating dinner. We found them just as they were getting up for the evening. They was a lot of chatter coming from the herd. It was a neat experience. I love nature!!!

8) As we were driving back to Utah last night, we drove through a huge lightning storm. It stretched all the way from Montana to southern Idaho. It was amazing to see lightning strikes all around you. The colors were magnificent.

So all in all it was a great adventure and makes me love being outside and seeing all the things that God has given us. Makes me grateful to live in such a diverse place, with all of these wonders in our back yard.