Shoulda Been an English Major

Hey all...

I'm back in SLC and after spending Thursday and the entire weekend being abysmally and horrifyingly sick, I'm mostly well again. Looking for a job, trying to get all of my stuff together, and my life in order before moving away.

I took a "Find Your Major" Quiz for the hell of it to see (post-graduation) what I should have majored in. Thought it was quite entertaining to find that 3 of the top 4 majors were some of the only ones that I didn't actually try doing my first couple of years. And that's impressive, because I went through quite a few majors before settling on chemistry.

Here are the results:

1. English
2. Chemistry
3. Dance
4. Mathematics

English, dance, mathematics. Riigghhht.......

Google Trends

Recently found out that google tracks the searches made according to region and city and has made this information available to us all at http://www.google.com/trends

Did some investigating and found out that Salt Lake City and Minneapolis citizens are searching for some odd, surprising, and not-so-surprising things.

Searching for Snow:
1) Salt Lake City
2) Denver
3) Boston
4) Minneapolis
5) Melbourne

Searching for Swimwear:
1) Salt Lake City
2) Brisbane, Australia
3) Sydney, Australia
4) Melbourne, Australia
5) St. Louis, Australia

Searching for Biking:
1) Denver
2) Salt Lake City
3) Vancouver
4) Auckland
5) Calgary

Searching for Pornography:
1) Delhi, India
2) New Delhi, India
3) Chennai, India
4) Salt Lake City
5) Mumbai, India

Searching for How to Make Meth:
1) Oklahoma City
2) Edmonton
3) Portland
4) Minneapolis
5) Los Angeles

Searching for How to Make Bombs:
1) New Plymouth, New Zealand
2) Aukland, New Zealand
3) Perth, Australia
4) Adelaide, Australia
5) Brisbane, Australia
Note: Both Salt Lake City and Seattle were the only American cities to make the top ten on this list

Searching for Wedding Rings:
1) Salt Lake City
2) Oklahoma City
3) Phoenix
4) Minneapolis
5) Portland

Searching for Dance Dance Revolution:
1) Salt Lake City
2) Orlando
3) Minneapolis
4) Chicago
5) St. Louis

Interesting results to say the least. I find the fact that good ol' SLC scored highest on both Wedding Rings and Dance Dance Revolution. And find it perplexing that people in New Zealand and Australia seem to care a lot about how to make bombs. Are there a lot of bombs that go off there? Interesing...

Salt Lake City Favorites

The Christmas lights on temple square have had me thinking about all the things I love in Salt Lake. Thought I'd actually make a list of my favorite things that I get to enjoy while living here. Here's my top ten in no particular order.

1) Everything outdoors. In the summer there's so many places to go biking, camping, hiking that it's out of control. In the winter (brrrrr...) there's always skiing.

2) Cocoa Cafe. 300 E. 900 S. One of my favorite places to go and do homework or read a book by their very toasty fireplace.

3) The downtown library. I could write an entire series of blogs on everything in the library that I love from the children's section to the overlook at the top of the building to the art gallery on the 4th floor.

4) Cathedral of the Madeleine. Gotta love those bells (You know you love them Ben).

5) Memory Grove/City Creek Canyon.

6) Temple Square. The tabernacle, the temple, and of course, the Christmas lights.

7) The waterfall up Big Cottenwood Canyon.

8) Abravanel Hall. Ummm...hello. The symphony. Need I say more?

9) The Gallery Stroll every 3rd Friday of the month.

10) The Farmers Market every weekend during the summer at Pioneer Park.

Ah, it's Christmas Time!

As much as I feel like living in Salt Lake is sucking the life out of me, I really do love Salt Lake City. There are so many things here that I love. The lights on temple square every Christmas are hands down one of my favorite things here. And now that I live just down the street, I get to see them every time I walk out of my house. Lovely! And I don't have to worry about crazy down town parking if I want to go see them because, hey, I can walk. Took some pictures last night and I really liked this one. The tree still has some leaves on it, so it looks especially red.



Also, on a completely different note, this is Jill, me, and Danny hanging out on Mars. We're supposed to be lost (that's why no one is looking at the camera) and clearly I didn't read the sign that said to stay on the trail. Whoops...


And Jill, Sam, and Danny on the moon:

And for the especially good news of the day - I went to talk to the Chemistry Undergraduate Secretary today and I found out that I do not have to take my senior comprehensive tests next week. Instead I'm scheduled to take them after finals. And she's letting me take them in a different order than most people take them in. I'm taking the Physical and Analytical ones the first day followed by the Inorganic and Organic ones. This is good because I'll probably need that extra time studying for the organic test. But to ease my fears, she said if I happen to fail it, I can take it again. So no worries.

Suffocating

I need to move. I feel like I'm suffocating.

Weird Self-Portrait

Although this is my last semester, I have unfortunately put off a couple of classes that I should have taken as a freshman or a sophomore. One of these classes is Physics 2 lab. Possibly the lamest class ever with the exception of Physics 1 lab. It doesn't help that I actually took Physics 2 about 2 1/2 years ago. But alas, I am forced to go for three hours a week and pretend that I really care about that class in the least. This past week we were doing an experiment with electrons inside a glass ball. I took this picture because we were trying to measure the radius with the mirrored ruler in the back. The picture didn't actually help with that, but I thought it was a kind of interesting picture anyway with myself reflected in it. Sort of a weird self-portrait.


A recent picture from the top of City Creek Canyon (one of my favorite places to go biking):