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.