Sunday, July 29, 2012

Neil Diamond

For Christmas I bought my mom tickets to Neil Diamond. Seven months of waiting ending last night when we saw him perform at Rio Tinto. Neil Diamond has fans young and old, and it was fun to watch everyone dancing and having a good time. He sang the classics (which are the only ones I know), including a subdued and more Monkee-fied version of "I'm a Believer" (with the former making it quite the lovely love song). The biggest hit was "Sweet Caroline", whose chorus (which is awesome) was repeated about ten times. And each time the crowd gave it their all. My mom had a blast, even though I wasn't the best company that night.




Friday, July 20, 2012

Old Foto Friday

This should've gone with my Amazing Spiderman post... Lindsay and I at the end of our year at Snow College, hittin' up the local movie theater to see Spiderman. May 2002.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Commuting Constant

Disclaimer: this post is going to geek-out on some travel/transportation related concepts that I find interesting.

I used to live 3.8 miles from work. It would take me about 10 minutes to get there. I now work in Bountiful, which is an 11.1 mile distance. Despite being 3 times farther, it only takes me 20 minutes to get there (by car, by bus is a whole different story). The reason behind this is speed. My route to Myriad was by local streets, dotted with lots of stop lights and a speed that rarely went over 35. The route to Bountiful, though, has a large chunk of highway where I can cruise anywhere from 50-60 miles per hour.

This concept of speed has allowed people to live farther from where the work, but without largely increasing their commute time. When travel was mostly done by walking, people needed to live close to where they worked. When cars came along, that same 20 minutes once used for walking could be spread to a farther distance since the car could travel faster. With freeways and increased speeds, the distance is now increased even more, allowing housing to be built farther away.

I remember learning this, but it was cool to have it applied to rel life and verify it. :)

Friday, July 13, 2012

Happy Birthday Jorge!

My oldest nephew, Jorge, turned 13 on July 12th. To celebrate, he spent the day at Lagoon with his best friend and mom and favorite aunt! It was crazy hot, but we braved the heat and rode every single new ride Lagoon has gotten in the past ten years. The Spider was my favorite, Wicked was wicked, BomBora was lame, Samurai was crazy, the new Air*Race was so-so, and the JetStar is completely awful. We got wet on Rattlesnake Rapids, drove like race car drivers at the Go-Karts, drank lots of water, and had a blast doing everything! Happy Birthday Jorge!


I used to be a pansy when it came to rollercoasters, but I was fearless!

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Last Day

Friday was my last day at Myriad Genetics. I started there almost three years ago as a temp on a month assignment. I had only temped once before when I first moved to New York, but when I had returned to Salt Lake and was jobless after almost four months I was willing to take anything. The month assignment kept getting extended and extended, but without an official offer of a job. When I had reached my end, knowing that I needed to work where I was an employee and could get benefits and holiday pay and all that, my boss offered me a permanent position.

It's hard leaving a place where you are comfortable. I very quickly, after various people had transferred or went on maternity leave, became the senior person in the department. I was recognized as an expert and go-to person for questions and problems. After various projects, I was given more autonomy over projects that allowed me to work with various important individuals and departments in the company. I remember wondering if I'd ever have the knowledge my co-workers had when I started, and then one day it was just there.

Now I'm moving on, where my knowledge is useless and I will be the new person. I won't know the answers or who to even ask. I'm very excited to start my internship with Bountiful City, but am a little nervous for the change. I'm the type of person who does not change jobs frequently because I like being comfortable--I worked at Wendy's starting in High School and worked for them for about five years total, I worked at Walmart while an undergrad for almost three and a half years, in New York I worked at J. Crew for over a year, and now Myriad for almost three years.

Change is scary for me, but it must be done to move forward. I'll always appreciate my time at Myriad, and love that my co-workers had an ice cream party for me for my last day.

Friday, July 6, 2012

The New Spiderman

Ten years ago when the first Spiderman was released I was finishing up my first year at Snow College. I loved the movie and developed an instant crush on Tobey Maguire (this was before I had matured and realized that tall skinny guys with beards is where it's at). The sequel was better than the first and I listened to the soundtrack on repeat for months. The day I graduated with my Bachelor's my mom, sister and I saw Spiderman 3 and it was awful.

When I heard they were considering a fourth installment with (no longer attractive) Tobey Maguire I balked. When I heard they were instead going to make a reboot, only 5 years after the last one, I was openly skeptical. But then they announced Andrew Garfield as Spidey. Swoon. I developed a crush on him after The Social Network. He has kind of amazing hair. Just sayin'.

My mom, sister and I saw The Amazing Spiderman on the Fourth and it was great! It was of course better than the third  Spiderman, but also great entirely on its own. The transformation of Peter Parker into Spiderman is done really well, with a nice backstory/mystery of Peter's parents and what happened to them. Peter's love interest is Gwen Stacy instead of red-headed Mary Jane Watson and I like the switch up. I know it's a departure from the comics, but I like that Gwen knows Peter's secret and they work together to stop the Lizard. I do not like love triangles and I hope they keep it out of subsequent films.

Garfield is really great with the emotional scenes; when he's trying not to cry my heart melts. When Peter is trying to ask out Gwen I squirm with him. He also plays Peter  less as a nerd-nerd and more as a cool-nerd. The action is great too, as director Marc Webb tried to stay away from CGI as much as possible. The Avengers might be more dazzling and wham! bam!, but The Amazing Spiderman is just as good. I look forward to the following films.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Happy Fourth

A few pics from my fabulous Fourth:



 

Blog Template by YummyLolly.com