Shane's, Seminary, and moving

This last weekend I went up to my brother’s, Shane’s, home to visit with him and his family. Shane and his wife Becky have four kids at home: Nick, Gabe, Katie, and Mike. I drove up there on Thursday afternoon; it is about a five-hour drive. Becky was running a conference, so mainly I hung out with Shane and the kids. We mostly hung around the house. Saturday we went to see Robin Hood; great 2-hour prequel, it’s worth seeing. Oh ya, I went to visit my friend from USU, Mary, she and her husband were at her dad's in Manassas. It's always fun seeing friends from Utah on this side of the country!

While up in Virginia, I had the very special privilege to be the guest speaker at an LDS seminary, which is for high school aged students. After my brother introduced me I took the remainder of the time talking about facing, NOT overcoming, adversity. I made it clear that my message was based in reality; I was not there to tell of mystical sunshine and daisies. ‘Overcoming’ is not the word/message that I wanted to share because, while we may overcome a particular trial, we will always face some sort of adversity. I talked about five overarching themes: determination, hard work, being teachable, experience, and, underscoring the roots of reality, the value of failure. I would expound on these but stay tuned and you may see a new blog, by yours truly, dedicated to topics such as these. After the talk I had many of the students thank me; their sincerity was amazing, we have great youth!

In the lab I am trying to find a way to represent differences in MolProbity analyses for two related (identical) structures, one at high resolution and one at low resolution. This means I am comparing the quality of two very similar protein models. So, basically I sit at the computer and code (write computer code) all day. But I’m being paid and get to bike to the lab, which I enjoy immensely. The protein structure I helped with at Utah State, Mtr4, will be published in EMBO soon. I submitted another manuscript describing the software I wrote at USU, ResDe. Hopefully it will be accepted, that would be my first primary author publication!

Yesterday I moved rooms; I now live on the second floor of the house. The move took all day as I was organizing my room as I moved in. My new room is HUGE; by far the largest room in the house. I have a king sized bed and two sitting areas. I took pictures for y’all.

Looking into the room on way.

Looking into the room the other way.

Looking toward the two dormers.

Dormer 1

Dormer tw0; great east-facing window where I read my scriptures in the morning.

Looking back toward the door.

Me desk.

Me.

A wall with sconces.

Thanksgiving

I am now done with all my classes so I can write a post about Thanksgiving break. I didn’t know what I was going to do for the break until about a week before. Shane and his family decided to stay home for Thanksgiving rather than head up to Maine. So, I decided to head up to northern Virginia. However, I had a very difficult time trying to find a ride up there; I had already secured a ride home with someone in my ward. I have an awesome roommate who sent out a massive email trying to find someone going up to DC and she got a bite, I got a ride! Just like a miracle! :)

It was a GREAT Thanksgiving break! I wet up there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and stayed until Sunday. I spent a little time on a final paper but it was mostly a very relaxing weekend. We mostly hung out on Tuesday and Wednesday doing whatever; watching movies, playing video games, sword fighting (contact me for further details), etc. Thanksgiving was good; we had about 25 people there. Tyler Moselle and his girlfriend came, it was great to see Tyler again and to meet hi girlfriend! They are great! Other than that, the rest of the people were families from the ward and the sister missionaries. We had lots of yummy food; turkey, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, pie, etc. It was a fabulous dinner! We then went to see 'The Blind Side.' AWESOME movie; I highly recommend it!

Friday was really fun; we went to a Christmas tree farm. It is right by Shane’s house so the drive wasn’t like the drive’s we took to get Christmas trees in Utah. Luckily, Katie took a lot of pictures; so I’ll tell the story with the pictures.

The Christmas tree farm was up on a hill. This is looking out, off the hill.

The Family

Which tree...?

Mike cut the tree down.

We took turns pulling the tree.

The employees than put the tree on a big shaker to get rid of dead needles.

They then wrapped the tree up.
It was a great day!

We then went home and put the tree up and decorated it.

That was pretty much the weekend. Great time with great people!

Conference

So this weekend I went to visit Shane's (my bro) and his Family. I got a ride up to Washington with other students that also go to Duke and Shane picked me up on the Mall. We had a lazy weekend sitting around the house, just what I wanted.

Saturday we went to watch my nephew's, Mike's, football game. Mike was injured and couldn't play. The Tuesday before Mike's jaw had a tragic collision with his Brother's, Nick's, knee during a front yard football scrimmage. He had to have surgery to fix two fractures. His jaw is wired shut for a month and he has to have nothing but liquids for six weeks. It's tough but he's a trooper.

We then went to the Priesthood session of General Conference. It was an awesome session with great talks. I love that the Lord has provided a way for us to learn and grow. It makes me so happy!

Sunday we watched conference while Becky was so kind to give everyone a foot massage with her oils. Thanks Becky, it felt great! Sadly I had to go home Sunday evening despite the fact that I have fall break and, therefore, have no class Monday of Tuesday. The bright side is that I can get my homework done!

I hope all of you are doing great. Drop me a line and let me know.