Out Our Window

This is the view from our hotel room window at night. I thought it was pretty cool, since I'd only seen Time Square on TV.

Live From New York

My Dad asked for a trip to New York for his 50th birthday, so we are spending the Thanksgiving break in the Big Apple. This is my first trip to New York, and it has been a lot of fun. Our hotel is right on Times Square, so we were able to eat breakfast in our room while we watched the parade. Here is a picture of the Snoopy balloon as he went by. I think this one might be Katherine's favorite.

We ran down to the street for a minute, but we couldn't really see much, due to the crowd. We did however manage to snap a photo as the Beethoven float went by.


Then we went shopping at a Christmas market on Bryant Park (some park not too far from Times Square). They had this cool little shop that had all kinds of figurines made out of metal scraps. Star Wars fans such as myself would enjoy it at least.


I will let Katherine talk about the rest of the day, if I can get her to write now. We are pretty tired. We did a lot of walking.

Done!

I took the GRE early Saturday, and I am glad it is over. One less thing to worry about. I think I did well enough that I won't have to retake it... I don't think I could get a much better score than I did, it was higher than I did on all the practice tests I took. Lucky.


For anyone who hasn't taken it, and cares, the GRE is what they call a "computer adaptive" test. This means that as you answer questions the computer decides which questions to give you next based on whether you get the question right or not. Supposedly, if you get a question right, the next one will be harder. If you miss the question the next one will be easier. In addition to this, they tell you before you take the test that you may get a section of questions that will not be graded, but instead is being used to try out new questions. You will not know which sections are the real, graded sections, and which are the trial sections. These two facts combine to really mess with your head.

For my test I ended up getting two Quantitative sections. The first one I had seemed incredibly difficult, and I was sure I had bombed it. The second one seemed really easy for the most part. I'm still not sure which one was the real section, and I spent the whole test going, "Oh man, this question seems too easy. I must not be doing very well." It wasn't that much fun. Anyone out there who still has to take it... I feel your pain.

Fashion Show, Fashion Show, Fashion Show at Lunch

After the Body Worlds exhibit Katherine and I went to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. We are way ahead of the game this year. Anyways, it turned out to be a great trip for her... she got some fancy new duds. So here is a little fashion show/photo shoot of her new stuff.















First, here she is in her new winter coat. We are headed to New York for Thanksgiving with my family, and she needed a good coat for the trip. Luckily the Gap was having a sweet sale (30% of the coat!).

When asked what she calls this particular pose, the subject responded "Waiting..."

And that isn't the only thing this lucky girl got at the mall the other night. She also got a new cardigan that she plans on wearing for the family photo shoot in Boise over Christmas break. She found this nice little number at Shade.

Another classic pose.

Her last purchase of the night was also another item from shade. The "Scoop Neck Half Sleeve" was a killer bargain at only $5.00. She just couldn't say no. I have to agree with the description on the website. This shirt truly is "butter soft."















Anyways, she had a good time and got some sweet new clothes. That's why she loves me today. And here are a few other great shots from her fashion show.

Body Worlds 3

For date night on Friday, Landon surprised me by taking me up to Salt Lake City to see the Body Worlds 3 exhibit! The title of the exhibition is "The Story of the Heart." I thought it was really neat. But then again, I really enjoyed my anatomy lab here at BYU. Let me tell you, if we would have had these plastinated cadavers in our lab, I would have learned everything much easier. It was really cool to see the clean dissections without the mess due to hundreds of students poking around with their probes.
I thought the figures doing different activities were pretty sweet, as well as the narrative about the heart. Some of the activities included a hurdler, an archer, a male gymnast balancing on three wooden balls, a female gymnast on the beam, "lovers" (not inappropriate, I just can't think of a better way to describe it), a woman kneeling, ice skaters, a ski jumper, a javelin thrower, and others. I also thought the sagittal slice of the severely obese person was interesting. In most dissections, the fat is removed. I will never forget the time in lab when my TA showed us a cadaver they were working on that still had the fat in it... I can see something like that being a useful health promotion tool.
The story of the heart was very educational, informing of the dangers of smoking, why we should exercise, and why having a positive attitude helps foster a healthy heart.
It was a great experience for me... Landon on the other hand had a harder time with it. But he knew I wanted to go and loves me enough to have taken me.

6 Months

Our 6 month anniversary was actually yesterday, but oh well. I love you, Boo.