So close and yet so far...

Hi everyone, this is going to be a short post since I need to finish working on some things.

First off, Rob is doing fine. Still in the same area. He said he had a nice Thanksgiving, and they have a bunch of ward Christmas parties to attend in the next few weeks. Hopefully he isn't freezing too much walking outside. It has been bitterly cold the past few days. This morning when I went to go to work it was -6. yay! not. haha. I had my coat and 2 jackets on. Plus two pairs of gloves. On Sunday there was a pretty bad snow storm in Logan, and after the wind from the canyon was blowing really hard. They said with wind chill taken into account that it was between -10 and -15. Oh well, I don't mind the cold so long as the snow isn't dangerous.

I have been working all week on studying for finals, and writing my 22 page paper. I am happy to report that it almost done! I have almost 22 pages, and all I have left to write is a conclusion and another paragraph of intro. I have a few things to add to my citations, and I need to fix the grammar errors and stuff. And then I need to figure out which paragraphs should go where. It is all basic stuff that I should be able to complete pretty quickly. It isn't due until Sunday night, but I want to get it done tonight and turn it in tomorrow. I just want to be done with it! Right now I am so close to finishing, but I have so little energy left that it feels so far away. All of my other finals went well, or at least I feel like they did. Honestly though, I don't really care if I pass with A's or C's, just as long as I pass. haha. It has been one of those semesters. :)

I hope everyone is doing well. I will write a longer post next week, and include pictures from the past few months. Enjoy getting ready for Christmas! There is only 15 days left! :)

Due to popular request

Ok, not really popular request, but due to my mom's request here is a new blog. :) I haven't had time to update for a while, and probably won't have too much time until December when this semester is over. At that time I will update everyone on everything, and I will add all the new pictures I have. Until then...

Rob got transferred to the Taylorsville area, and says he likes it a lot there. He is right by the Hires Big H which makes me a little jealous. (They have fabulous cheese fries and cherry lime-ades) He is now in a companionship with only one other elder, instead of two others like his last area. They have a baptism coming up on Friday night, and he says he is really enjoying teaching people and getting to know them. I am so glad that he hasn't been transferred out to the Sandy/Draper area of the Salt Lake South mission, I never go to Taylorsville so I know I won't ever run into him. I want to tell him to go to the General Army Navy Supply store on Redwood Road. It is pretty close to his area (if not in it) and it is probably one of the coolest stores to roam around in. He probably won't tell anyone what he wants for Christmas, because that is just how Rob is, but he is a man so candy and baked goods will always be enjoyed. He also likes pictures and other stuff to remind him of his friends and family, so if you felt like sending him something but didn't know what to send, there are some ideas.

I have been doing pretty good, there is only about 3 1/2 weeks left in the semester, which is awesome but scary at the same time. Scary because I have a 22-24 page paper to write before that time. I will probably be a zombie all during finals week trying to finish it. Which means I will probably be super tired and also very grouchy. So I give this warning now (especially to my sweet roomies): sorry if I snap at you, I don't mean it, but stress makes me irritable. :) Other than that work is going great. I still do relatively little for a good amount of pay, and I will have the same schedule next semester. I am only taking 12 credits next semester because that is all I need. I really only need to take 9 credits, but I need 12 to keep my scholarship. In other news, I drank a whole jug of strawberry orange banana juice in less than a week. It was so good. :) And I am not normally a juice drinker, so everyone should be proud. We made green bean casserole on Sunday night for the potluck dinner in our building and I just wanted to eat the whole thing by myself. haha, that stuff is so delicious. My little brothers and I have worked out a deal where we are switching video games for a few weeks. They will keep my xbox 360 and the games with it, while I will take their PS2 and the rock band/guitar hero games. I am so excited. That will help to relieve my stress during finals week. :) It is finally cold in Logan. yay! I love it when it gets cold. I get to wear my big coat, sweaters, gloves and scarves. :)

I hope everyone has had a fantastic November so far. Have a great Thanksgiving, and I will try to update this again soon. :)

Some Changes...

Ok, so first change, I am not going to talk about Rob first. haha Mostly because I haven't yet received his letter this week, and because I feel like being selfish. :) I will try to update more about him as soon as I hear more.

This last week as I was stressing about my capstone class I made a crazy decision. I completely changed my topic. With only about 6 more weeks to do research and write the whole dang thing. Crazy I know. But my old topic was leading no where and I wasn't interested in it anymore, and so now I am researching old newspapers looking at articles about slave rebellions/uprisings etc... I am thinking about looking at how one event is covered by multiple newspapers and how the accounts and the way they are portrayed vary by region. And the amount of hysteria and reaction that is generated in response. I haven't figured out which specific event I will look at, but thanks to the Milledgeville Historic Papers Archive, part of the Digital Library of Georgia, I have access to several newspapers in their entirety. Yay Georgia! :)

This upcoming weekend is Halloween. My roommate Lindsay and I got our Halloween costumes last weekend at the D.I. and I have to admit, they are pretty sweet. She is going to be an 80's rocker. She has acid wash jeans, a red snake skin leather jacket and a Metallica t-shirt. She is also going to rat her hair and use tons of hairspray to make it crazy. I got a crazy vest. It is brightly colored with sequins and beads. It is fantastic. It looks like I belong in a Peruvian pan-flute band. :) I am going to also rat my hair and make it crazy. I don't know exactly what my costume is, but it is cool! :) Pictures will be coming soon. :) There is a Halloween party at the University, and it is usually pretty cool, so that is where we will be going.

As I mentioned earlier there is only about 6 weeks plus finals week left of the semester. Which is good and terrifying at the same time. It is good because that means relaxing over Christmas break, bad because it means that all my projects and papers are due before then. I still have at least one 5-10 page paper due in every class and the capstone one is also due. Plus my final exams. The frustrating part is, I don't even have the paper requirements for 3 of them. I guess that means just working on what I know now, and not procrastinating later when I find out more about them. Easier said than done though. haha. On the brightside, with Christmas less than 60 days away I have almost all of my shopping done. I got started early this year! :)

Alright, now a little bit about Rob. He is still doing well. Says they are teaching some people who are really interested and are learning, and he hopes they all keep up with everything and keep their commitments. He got a haircut from a lady in their area who owns a beauty parlor and gives haircuts to the missionaries for free. He said he didn't like it at first because she put in something that as he put it "made him look TOO missionaryish." Probably just some gel or pommade, but Rob doesn't like "putting product in his hair" so it probably really annoyed him. haha. He is finally starting to enjoy his area a lot, and has stopped longing for India and he says it has made the days go by faster now that he is more focused. Last I heard he could be there until at least Christmas time, so he will be almost a quarter done with his mission by the time he actually leaves Utah. Crazy.

Everyone have a spectacular week and if you are in Utah then enjoy the beautiful snow that is falling! :) Wishing everyone a fun and safe Halloween. Boo.

It has been a while since the last post, and for that I apologize. Here is an update on what Rob has been doing for the last few weeks. They have a few new investigators, one named Devin asked them for a Book of Mormon when he passed them one day on the street. He is from Minnesota and apparently recently moved out here for skiing/snowboarding. They are teaching a girl named Melisha who is 17 and was referred by her YW's leader. She wants to be baptized, but they don't have anything set up yet. They are also teaching a family, whose last name I don't know, but the parents are named Max and Juli. They also came up to them on the street because they are looking for help in their life right now to be able to feed their kids. He is very excited to see how they are able to help all these people. He got to go to Priesthood session of conference at the Conference Center, and said he enjoyed it very much. He is getting more and more excited about not being in India (even though he would rather be there) but he is beginning to realize that there is something he needs to help with here before he goes to India. He sent these pictures of himself and his companions. Enjoy!


As for me, I have been doing pretty ok. I was pretty stressed out for a while, but I am getting over that now. This upcoming Friday we have no school, because of Fall Break, which means I only work one day this week! Plus I get a 3 day weekend! I am pretty excited. One of my best friends (and Rob's as well) Orlando is coming to Logan for a short visit from NY. I can't wait! It has been almost a year since I have seen him, so I am sure we will have a blast.

Lindsay and I went to the movies on Friday night and watched "Couples Retreat". It was really funny. Much better than I expected it to be. We also went to the USU Hockey game on Saturday. I love hockey. I always have, and I probably always will. It is just so exciting. The game is so fast paced, full of action, and if you are lucky it gets violent! I kind of want to end up living in a town that has an NHL team, just so I can go to the games. But we'll just have to see what happens.

There are some annoying birds that live right outside our bedroom window. Every morning I get woken up to the awful sound of "cawww, cawww..." but it is way more obnoxious than I can give justice to in writing. This last week I didn't have to go to my early class, but I woke up when Lindsay woke up and when I tried to fall back asleep all I could hear was those birds. I would have just shut the window, but our room gets pretty warm with the window shut, and we don't even have the heat turned on in our apartment. We live right above the boiler room so living in our apartment is like living on the sun. haha :)

On a funnier note, I saw the FedEx guy fall out of his truck the other day at work. It was funny, he pulled up in front of the building and started to climb down out of his truck when suddenly he tripped. He did a total faceplant onto the street and then got up and tried to act like nothing happened. It was so funny. He came inside and while I was signing for the packages he asked how my day was. I said "fine, how is yours?" to which he replied "It is good, I totally almost fell out of my truck, but other than that it is fine." I wanted to tell him that I saw the whole thing, but then decided not to, because it would be awkward every day when he brings the packages into the office.

Today was Family Day in our ward and since I am on the linger longer committee I had to help get everything ready and serve the food. We had a potato bar. It was pretty good, but I didn't get a cookie. That is the one bad thing about being on the planning committee, all the good food is gone by the time you can eat.

Lindsay and I have been watching that new show on NBC called "Community". We think it is hilarious, everytime I watch it I sit there laughing the whole time. So if there is anyone out there wondering what show they should watch on Thursday nights, I have the answer. COMMUNITY!

I hope everyone reading this has a spectacular week. Enjoy life! And make sure you laugh at least once a day. It really does make life easier! :)

Life...then cycling.

Rob has now been in the Midvale area of the Salt Lake South mission for 2 weeks. He didn't enjoy it at first, but now that he is used to the area and his companions he is doing a lot better and having way more fun. They have a few investigators, but don't know if they'll get baptized yet. He says he likes it a whole lot more than the MTC, and he likes the food a lot better. (Can't imagine why!) Although he says he eats a lot of ramen, Chef Boyardee, and burritos. I don't if know if that really is better than cafeteria food. :) He said the area he is in is a walking mission, so hopefully that is keeping him from becoming a fat missionary! haha, I really do hope he is having fun with all that walking though, hopefully it isn't too much. He doesn't know how long it will be until his visa gets approved. It could be next week, it could be December. I do, however, enjoy getting letters from him weekly while he is still stateside, so hopefully he stays a little bit longer. :) I am sure he is getting geared up for General Conference in a few weeks. I can't believe it is already that time of year again. Time goes by so fast. (Mostly when you don't want it to!) Anyways, this the end of Rob's story, at least until he writes more about the stuff he is doing in his mission.

I have been pretty busy lately, between school and work. Last weekend I went with Amanda to watch her dad run his 100 mile race. He did very well, and I got to watch Amanda's cute baby for a while! None of us got much sleep, but that is how it goes. Work hasn't been too busy lately, I have just been doing the normal stuff... Answering people's questions, telling them where to send their mail, getting them their packages, renting discs to people for the frolf course, unlocking residents rooms when they forget their keys, making them new keys when they lose their old ones... It is nothing too exciting, but someone has to do it! It actually gives me lots of time to do homework, which is very good. I work a 7 hour shift and usually use about 5 of it working on homework. Thank goodness the internet in the office is terribly slow, otherwise I would probably study less, and play games and waste time a lot more. :)
As for the homework I have... it is going well. I have to this point managed to stay caught up on everything due in all my classes. I have already started to doing mass amounts of research for my senior thesis paper, and already have a pretty dang good argument. I bet you want to know what it is, don't you? I am going to wait to reveal my topic to everyone until I do a little more research and my argument is a little more developed. More details to come on that soon, but as you all know it is going to be about slavery. And another hint: female slaves... that is all I can say! :) As for my other classes, I am less stressed than I was the first week of the semester, because I was panicking for the worst case scenarios. Thankfully, none of it is quite that bad. One of my professors suggested getting an add-on for firefox called Zotero. I got it on Sunday, and already love it. I wish I had gotten it sooner! It manages your sources and does citations instantly. It also grabs bibliographical information off websites and puts them into neatly organized citations, that sit there waiting to be used. It is awesome!
I got a church calling this past week. I was hoping and praying that it would be an easy one since I don't have a ton of time this semester, and luckily I got called to the "Linger Longer" committee. We pretty much plan activities after church. It is the best calling I could have asked for, since it will won't be super stressful.

DISCLAIMER: the following text will probably be boring to some of you. If you do not like cycling, and don't care or want to learn about it, then I advise you to stop reading here. I am a cycling nerd, and unless you are prepared you might feel it is a waste of your time! haha... But seriously, you were warned!

And finally, here is my shameless plug for cycling! I LOVE cycling. I have for years, and always will. I was an original Lance fan, watched 6 of his 7 victories. (Which is good considering the fact that I was only 11 when he won his first.) There is an element of toughness to it. The only protection they wear is helmets, and that is just because they are required to. I don't need to go into why helmets are important, we all saw the helmet on a watermelon demonstration in 1st grade. haha, but seriously, they ride usually over 100 miles per day, and reach speeds of up to 30-40 mph. That is ridiculously fast seeing how there is no engine involved. They climb mountains with the steepest slopes you can imagine. And to top it all off they crash. They crash hard. They run over each other. Their bicycle flies apart from impact. They skid 20 feet down the road. They tear holes right through their uniform and through the top 30 layers of skin. They break bones. They lose consciousness. And then usually they get back on the seat and attempt to finish the race. DEDICATION. If you still don't know why I love cycling so much, then you need to watch the Tour de France in July. It is spectacular. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are brilliant, and absolutely hilarious. The fans are outrageous, most of them have been camping on the race course for days previous to each stage, and they have awesome costumes (usually). There are some important things that are happening in the world of cycling right now and they are:
*The Vuelta a Espana. One of the three "grand tours" (The other two being the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France), it is currently racing, and has 5 days left. Alejandro Valverde has had the lead for at least a week, and looks favorable to win. He is one of my favorite riders.
*Alexandre Vinokourov, another of my favorites, has returned from a 2 year ban for "blood doping." I still maintain that he was innocent, but thanks to Operacion Puerto, they were accusing and trying to criminalize just about everyone.
* Robbie McEwen, my favorite sprinter has to stay out the remainder of the 2009 season, due to an injury he sustained in late May. This makes me sad, mostly because he is getting older and probably doesn't have too much longer to race.
* Lance Armstrong has started assembling his new team. This is good news because he and Alberto Contador no longer have to pretend to like each other. He doesn't have a full team assembled yet, but he still has a few months before that needs to be taken care of, in order to be eligible for the 2010 season.
* There are only 291 days until the 2010 Tour, and that is cause for celebration!
Hope you all enjoyed your cycling lesson! :) But I know there are some of you who like cycling, so I know this was not in vain!
EVERYONE JOIN THE LIVESTRONG CAMPAIGN AGAINST CANCER.
And for those of you of who are wondering why you just read that, don't blame me. I warned you.

Week Three

So this week marks week 3 of Rob's mission. According to him he is 1/50th done. haha. I was never good at math, but I know that 1/50 is not very much at all. He was supposed to leave today to begin his journey to India, but his visa (along with all the other guys going to India) have not been approved yet. So he got sent to Salt Lake City, South. Which is funny because that is where I am from. I told him to stop by my house and my mom would give them food. Don't worry though, I live 100 miles away in Logan, so I can't screw up his mission. :) He is pretty excited to be done with the MTC though, and I don't blame him. It seems pretty boring. He sent some pictures in the email this week from his MTC days.


Look at them all pretending to be busy studying! haha





Anyways, I was pretty excited to get another letter from him and was definitely happy to get a few pictures too. Hopefully he will have fun in the Utah mission, it will definitely be awesome for him to get to India, he will finally be somewhere completely out of his element. Plus we will all get to hear more interesting stories.

Meanwhile, I am going on week 2 of school. I have read 6 novels in the past 2 weeks. They are the last 6 books in the Cirque du Freak series. They were really good, although the 12th one was a little disappointing. They have also finally released the trailer for The Vampire's Assistant (the movie based on books 1,2 and 3 of the series) I am way excited for the movie to come out. I had to finish reading those books because my classes have a lot of homework and now I won't be tempted to read them instead. For those wondering what classes I am killing myself with, they are:
Family Finance (relatively easy, upper level credit! yes!)
Criminology (also upper level, but much more difficult than Family Finance)
20th Century American West (upper level history course, interesting subject matter)
History of Atlantic Slavery (upper level history, tons of reading...)
and last but not least, my Senior capstone course, in which I will be writing my senior thesis on a topic that relates to Antebellum Slavery. I haven't decided what mine will be about quite yet, although I have an idea. I am sure I will be living in the Library this semester in order to complete this. :)

My job is still going very well. Compared to all the jobs I have had in the past it is by far the easiest. I get along very well with the people I work with, and we have a lot of fun. It still hasn't been payday yet though, which makes me sad... :( But I should get my first check soon! yay!

As you can tell, Rob and I are both doing very well. I will try to keep updating this with stories and details from our lives, but I feel that once Rob gets to India and once I am deep into this semester, everyone will be way more interested in Rob's stories than mine. Mine will be detailing my research and homework, while his will be interesting tales involving spicy food, exotic animals (maybe), and some of the most beautiful and also most depressing looking scenery in the world. I hope that life is going well for everyone and want to say thanks for reading our blog! :)

What's what in the world of Staci and Rob

Rob left last Wednesday, the 12th, to go on his religious mission to Bangalore India. His area will cover the Southern half of India and Sri Lanka. If he ever makes it to Sri Lanka he will give a special shout-out to Himanthi's family. :) He is currently in Provo, Utah doing his training and in a few weeks he will leave for India. He is so excited to get there because he wants to eat spicy food. Really spicy food. He is finding that he is a lot more confident than he ever thought he would or could be, and is really excited to be able to share what he believes with people who are eager to learn. He says he hates the food at the MTC (the training facility) with all his heart. I don't blame him. Cafeteria food is always terrible. And you know it is horrible when Rob says it is bad. He is like a goat, he would eat a tin can if he was hungry enough. haha. He likes his companions a lot and he really just can't wait to get out to India.

Meanwhile, I have moved back to Logan with Lindsay and we are in for some fun times for sure! I started my new job as a receptionist in one of the on-campus housing offices. It is probably the best job I have ever had. I can wear whatever I want, so long as I look somewhat presentable. :) I can also eat, play on the computer, do homework, read, pretty much whatever I want, so long as I help people when they come by the office. Definitely a change from my last two jobs where they worked my butt off. School starts on Monday, and I am taking 15 credits. Since I am a senior they are all upper-level classes. I really hope I will survive the semester. This will by far be the hardest one. I am really looking forward to my Criminology class. I was quite disappointed today when I could not find my Bruce Lee poster. It was awesome. But I guess I will find it eventually.

For those wondering about the name of our blog, it is obviously just our names mixed. Lindsay came up with it! It is referring to the fact that this blog will update our friends and families with information about both of us at the same time. This is the easiest way to do so, since calling, writing, emailing everyone can take a lot of time. I will try to update this everytime I get a letter from Rob, and hopefully he will send pictures so that you can all see what he is doing. If anyone wants to know how to contact him let me know, and I will tell you how. He would love to hear from everyone, but just remember that he is super busy and won't be able to respond immediately. And for those wondering, yes we are still together, and yes I am going to wait for him to finish his mission. It is going to be a while until he gets back, but we love countdowns. It seems to make things go faster.
The countdown stands at 720 days, until August 12, 2011.
However that is a very large number of days, so countdowns are also running for other events. Such as the release of the movie of my favorite book. The Vampire's Assistant comes out in 62 days. The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics begin in 174 days. The 2010 FIFA World Cup begins in 293 days. The 2010 Tour de France starts in 315 days and is the event I am looking forward to the most. (Besides, the Tour in 2011 and Rob's return.) I may be crazy, but I love counting down to events.
I hope you all enjoy this fun way to stay up to date with the things going on in our lives. Because it is so much fun for me to update this! haha.