Ariziona

 
 
 
 

Things You're Not Lucky Enough To Experience

The other night Anna returned home from her 13 hour work-day a little fatigued. I studied late into the evening at our desk, located just a few feet from our bed. The desk faces away from the bed. Anna's calming breathing patterns were beckoning me to bed with more force than the Siren's calls to Odysseus. Then she got up and wandered to the kitchen. She evidently grabbed some bread and went back to bed because I could hear her munching on bread crumbs. Then, she was asleep. I went to bed shortly after. That morning we woke up covered in bread crumbs. Our arms and legs were grating against the dried grain in the sheets like sand on a beach. She fell asleep before she could finish her snack! Anna rocks. She works so hard at her job that it prepares for some of the funniest fatigue moments at home after her shift. I hope someday, when I'm on call, I can work as hard as her. You rock banana!

Road Cycling

Anna and I have found a new hobby we both love to do together. We have fun getting frustrated in tennis, running, canoeing, football, etc, but it's nothing but love in road cycling. Two weeks ago her parents and I teamed up to get her FELT road bike and we have biked almost 150 miles together since. We love planning our day around a sunset ride in Tucson. We are riding for pleasure now, but look forward to training so we can keep up with the Dad, the Kaelbaerers, Rich Boyer, and maybe the Johnsons during El Tour de Tucson this novemeber. One hundred miles around the greatest desert on earth.

Beaches

As a history major, I feel I should be more aware of past and contemporary events. But I am always confusing the Hundred Years War with the War of 1812 with the French and Indian War, etc. However, I have two dates I always remember, without even trying: June 6th and July 3rd. June 6th marks the anniversary of D-day and July 3rd of the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg. But it's to June 6th that I want to blog. One of my favorite quotes by Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I think was Burke means is that ball can and should always be in the court of the good. No movie, narrative or photo can make any of us understand what it feels like to step off the ramp of a boat to plunge into cold water holding a hundred pound of ammunition and gear, only to face a storm of oncoming enemy fire. In those moments, I can only imagine you don't think about anything. You just move. And I guess that's what inspires me about D-day and Gettysburg. These men were so disciplined they turned off all emotion of just moved forward. I remember learning in high school from Mr. Helsel, my history teacher, about a man who wrote in his journal the morning of Gettysburg: "Today, I died." How do you write that, close the book, put a piece of salt pork in your mouth, and then walk out into a field displaying more carnage than any other American war combined? But the men moved, and good, I believed triumphed. D-day and Gettysburg were terrible in the number of casualties, but I believe they saved the lives of countless others because of the objectives accomplished. Can you imagine what it must be like in the next life to sit down and talk with a soldier about his or her experiences in combat? I imagine may of these soldiers are or will become effective missionaries in the spirit world if they accept the Gospel. They, more than anyone, will testify of how the Atonement can redeem man's folly.
The above pic is me and Anna walking the beach at Caesarea. I don't think we'll ever be called to charge Normandy. But in a lot of ways, we can look to those who did charge and remember, sometimes the only good course of action is to keep moving. At the end of the summer, Anna and I will spend a week on the beaches of Balboa with her family. We have a summer of Boards studies and Nursing school before that. To study for the boards requires a 10 hour daily commitment for 6 straight weeks. I have a sweet little cannon that has a place reserved on my study desk to remind myself, in moments of doubt, that I need to keep moving. My good buddy Aaron up at BYU noticed how I barely mention life as a medical student on our blog. Well, I'll mention a little about the transition from second to third year. Each student must take, and pass, a national boards exam. If you don't pass, you can't proceed to your third-year clerkship. At any given moment in May or June, you can walk into a medical school's library and as you pass the study rooms you will find medical students studying flashcard, lectures, notes, and powerpoints from 7 am to 9pm. Each student will usually find his or her niche in the library, and by the end of the six weeks, I suspect there is enough dandruff, pulled-out hair, bitten finger nails, and soiled table tops to build a huge castle stronger than Camelot. So while it is not comparable to D-Day or Gettysburg in any philosophical or realistic view, the concept is the same, just keep moving. I can never complain. I have Balboa at the finish line.

RTM

I'm studying on the bed. Anna is asleep. She has worked 32 hours in the last 24 hours and is exhausted. As I just glanced at her I noticed that she is in deep REM. But her little toes are twitching up and down just as fast as her eyes are scrolling left to right. Anna has a case of Rapid Toe Movement (RTM).

Am I rubbing off?

I've always been the clutzy one, from awkward injuries to gravity issues, I'm pretty much the epitome of accident prone. I've been pretty good about accepting it--even embracing it. But I have a new struggle: I think it's rubbing off on my husband!
Tuesday I got out of class to a phone call from Spencer, saying, "Hun, I lit the apartment on fire." Turns out he had wanted to make a sheet cake. He thought a "sheet cake" must be baked in a cookie sheet. So he mixed up not one, but TWO boxes of cake batter, dumped them into a cookie sheet and put it in the oven. Of course, as the batter baked, it rose and dripped all over the bottom of the oven, eventually catching fire! With smoke pouring out of the apartment and the alarms going off like crazy, neighbors gathered around to see what the big deal was. I came home to Spencer scraping the bottom of the oven (he offered me the pieces of what he scraped off, sweet thing) and a masses of black strewn through the kitchen (frosted). It was too cute...A for effort/for not burning down the whole apartment/for cleaning it up/and for letting me be the onlooker, rather than victim, for once!

Genius Bar

This morning I noticed a crack on my macbook casing. It was an open wound, awaiting the next spill of diet coke. I told Anna about a protection plan I purchased with the original transaction over a year and a half ago. You know that feeling you get when you want everyone to feel exactly how you feel at that moment? That was the urge I felt, and still feel, when I calmly rode my bike up Campbell Avenue against "red flag" wind (I'm not familiar with this weather term, but the Tucson weathermen use it often) to the Apple Store. I walked in, straight back to the Genius Bar and handed my laptop over with nothing more than my name. No ID required. No proof of purchase required. Just a body, computer, name, and time to pick up. To make a long story short, which is what Apple is so good at in the first place, my laptop is back on my lap. All of this, hassle free, in one afternoon. Actually, I don't want everyone to feel how I feel at this moment, because all the mac users feel this way all the time anyway, but it makes me kind of want to create a home video of the experience and send it to Dell Corporation Customer Service. Why the rage? Just ask Anna how much fun we had setting up her new Dell these past few weeks. Sorry, I have to go now and figure out how to run "Activex" so I can get rid of the nagging fear that Anna's Dell is under constant threat of a virus. If that were a wise virus, however, it would house itself as far away from a Dell as possible because at any given moment that house of a laptop might go flying off a third-story balcony. Happy April Fools!!