My time in Colorado

As you most likely know, I spent this past week in Colorado for my grandfather's funeral. Grandada, as we all called him, died on Sunday, July 27. The funeral was outlined by Grandada himself and included a bible reading by each of his grandchildren, a few songs and short sermons by Dad and Uncle Jim. It was really a nice service and did some work to take the attention off of Grandada and put it on God, which is exactly what Grandada wanted it to do.

Beyond that I will hold off from summarizing the whole week, but instead will discuss a few things I learned/had confirmed during the week.

1. I have a huge amount of respect for Grandada. Obviously he was a topic of conversation during the entire week and I learned a lot. One of the most telling things I learned about him is in this story. Like many males in that time, he was drafted into the military during WW2. Early in his time in the Navy, all of the soldiers at the camp were given jobs but they unknowingly skipped Grandada. He didn't get a job, and did not speak up for 3 weeks. During that time he sat in his tent and read the bible. Then at some point he wound up on a work crew. There are 2 things about that story that impress me. First, given that he was a young man in a foreign country with 3 weeks of nothing to do and no one keeping him in line, he could have gotten into trouble off base. Instead he sat in his tent and read the bible. The second striking thing to me, well, is that the story may be the worst thing I know about him. Think about that. How many of us could claim that the worst thing people can think of about us is that benign?

Also, at one point I called and talked to some of his acquaintances to inform them of his passing. The conversation that stuck with me was with the head of the beekeeper association in Colorado Springs. She could not stop talking about Grandada's contribution to their organization. Getting to see a bit more clearly about how much of an impact he had on people and how he was appreciated by them, even those outside of his family, made me proud to be his grandson.

2. OK, away from the sappy stuff. My family is crazy. I picked Elizabeth, one of my cousins, up from the Denver Airport. While we were talking together on the way back down, we decided that eccentricity was a strong genetic trait for our family (yes, including us). Uncles Nelson and Bob, my grandmother's brothers, were there along with Nelson's son Mark. They had some of the most bizarre conversations you could imagine. One day these brothers were talking about sex amongst themselves. The rest of us did not want to hear these 70-80 year old guys talking about sex so we stayed outside until the coast was clear. Another time Mark came outside and told us stories about his childhood, mostly composed of odd things he did which got him in trouble. I think my favorite story was that while he was inside, he decided the best thing to do would be to light a firecracker. Then he realized he wasn't sure what to do with it, so he stuffed it through a small hole in the window screen and let it fall to the ground. Only, it never made it to the ground but instead landed on a 70 year old pastor who was walking by and blew a bald spot into his hair. Then there was this time when he was 8, and with his older brothers filled balloons with paint. They went out at night, hid along the side of a road, and decided to throw the balloons at the next car they saw. When the car came, his older brother gave the signal to throw the balloons. Mark was the only one who obeyed because the others in the group had realized the oncoming car was in fact a police car. One more story included them arranging to have a dump truck full of manure dumped on a neighbor's driveway (along with the bill on her doorstep). While I won't go into the stories, rest assured that younger generations of my family have not remained immune from the craziness.

3. Amy and Elizabeth are great. They are 2 of my cousins who are around my age. I have much less time to be around either of them than I'd like, but I always enjoy their company. Also, their presence, in addition to Erik's while he was there, helped make the whole process much more bearable. A funeral is never easy, but to have some comic relief at the appropriate times and people to go out with and talk to was very helpful.

New Apartment

I am currently in the process of moving to a new apartment. While it is taking a good amount of time and energy I am quite excited to be moving. I realize most everybody reading this knows about my old apartment, but I'm going to describe a little about it anyway.

First of all it has around 315 square feet. My kitchen was big enough to hold the stove, but the refrigerator needed to be in the living room because there wasn't space for it. During my first week living there it rained heavily and leaked thru the roof, flooded the 3rd floor and soaked my ceiling as well as some of my freshly moved in possessions. Not really a warm intro. I was doing OK and fairly comfortable when I was studying for my USMLE Step 3. Then I looked up and realized I was not alone. Instead, there was a mouse sniffing around my shoe. I put up traps and ultimately caught 6 mice during my time there. Then at one point one of my windows broke and it literally took 4 months for them to fix it. With all that, it should be no surprise that I am glad to be moving out.

The place I'm moving to, on the other hand, is very nice. It's about 3 times the space, which of course having lived in a small place for a while I don't have nearly the furniture for it. I now have a kitchen and am excited to be able to actually cook and bake again. I even have my own washer and dryer. Now of course I am moving to a nicer place like this in part because I thought Becca would be living with me this coming year and instead she will be spending most of the year living in Sacramento. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy having a nice place.

Becca's Graduation

Last weekend I went down to Tucson to go to Becca's graduation. Her Dad, sister Jen and brother Jon all came down for it as well. We all got down there Thursday evening. Friday Becca and Jen went to get their hair done, leaving her dad, Jon and I to fend for ourselves. We did the ever manly thing and went shopping..... Fortunately the males in Becca's family are no less nerdy than I am, so we spent the time looking at electronics. Our main visit was to BestBuy where we looked at cameras, TVs, and games. Then it was lunch time and I recommended we go to Sweet Tomato, the salad bar restaurant. I recommended a salad bar restaurant?!?!? What had Becca done to me? We go out on a manly shopping trip and end up at a salad bar restaurant. :) Actually, Becca and I have been there a couple times and it is really quite good. Then we met Becca and Jen downtown and dropped her car off where we would need it later that evening to get home following the after-dinner festivities. Next the 5 of us squeezed into her dad's rental car, a Ford Mustang, and went back to her place to get ready for the night.

Once ready we took pictures, then Becca and I were dropped off at Ryan's, one of her classmates, so we didn't have to squeeze into the mustang all dressed up. Her family was then to drive themselves to the event. That would have worked great except, instead of driving the the golf resort and spa where the graduation was, they drove to where we had left her car. Then they got lost a bit on the way to the golf resort and spa but did finally make it.

The graduation was really nice. The food was quite tasty. We had plenty opportunities to take more pictures. Then they gave out awards to some of the residents and gave the residents a chance to hand out awards to the faculty. Once dinner was done and people got up and started mingling, a band started playing. The band was made up of 2 of her classmates and some of her faculty. They played a lot of covers, and did a wonderful job. Many of us were out on the dance floor during much of the time. Near the end they played 'Paradise City' by Guns N' Roses. I wouldn't have mentioned that except that early in the song Becca leaned over to me and said that she didn't know the song, or for that matter anything else by them. I was a bit surprised probably because most people I grew up with could sing parts of at least 3 Gun N' Roses songs. You guys agree?

Following that we all went out to the limo. For a bit we thought it was a Hummer limo, but it was actually an Excursion limo. It was still pretty cool. The limo took us downtown where we hung out at a bar, chatted and played pool for a couple more hours then made our way home.

Wow, that was longer than I'd anticipated. I'd considered having a second part to this blog but I think instead I'll wait and post another entry in the next day or so.

Engagement

I know most of you have already seen the comment on facebook and/or talked to me about it but I still wanted to do a blog about getting engaged. That and I needed to post picture of the ring do you could see it. The pictures are from Becca's sister Jen who has a good camera that she could effectively focus close-up with. Thanks Jen!

So I flew down to see Becca on Saturday last week and proposed. We had met at Sprint to get new phones together, then went back to her place to get ready for dinner. After getting dressed I proposed so that she would have the ring at dinner. For dinner we went to a very nice French-Mexican restaurant. It's sort of an odd combination but basically it was French with a few Mexican shrimp thrown in.

The next day we went on a hike. It was about 7 miles round trip and took us to a place with an extremely nice view of Tucson and the surrounding area. Becca wore the ring on the hike and at one point noted that her finger had swollen some and she couldn't get the ring off. She got a bit more swollen during the hike to the point that part of the skin on her finger was sticking up towards the diamond. We tried to get a picture of the swelling but we didn't manage to get a good one. The swelling stopped there though, and after we had a nice, healthy lunch at the Sweet Tomato (that salad bar place I've mentioned earlier that I was nervous about but we both ended up really liking) the swelling was gone and she could again take off the ring. So now we know that maybe she shouldn't wear the ring on hikes/other strenuous activity. Considering that neither of us have much experience wearing rings we hadn't anticipated that. Are the any other times you guys have noticed that you needed to take off your rings to prevent swelling. One person told me she should have taken hers off during the last 2 months of pregnancy, but thats all people have told me.

Now I think all my family knows. I just told my parents yesterday who thought I was getting engaged this past weekend instead of the weekend before. So I was engaged over a week before they knew.

As far as when and where our wedding will be, that is still a topic of discussion. The only thing we know for certain is we want a small, simple wedding with immediate family only. I will let you know further details once they are ironed out.

San Francisco Bush-man

I know this is late, but I still wanted to post this from my trip out to see Becca in Sacramento. One day we went with her dad and brother Jon to San Francisco. Becca, Jon and I went walking around the shopping areas around the piers. There was a guy there startling people as you can see in this video. And he got paid for it! People would walk by, get startled, and drop money in his can. Others would just watch him startle other people, laugh, and drop him some change. Apparently this guy does it all the time because we told Jen and her husband Alan about it and Alan had seen the guy there too. Maybe I joined the wrong profession. Now I'm running around taking care of kids and parents who don't always appreciate me when I could be making a fine living startling people. :)

Visitations

Becca and I are currently sitting in the Sacramento Airport waiting for our flights back to our respective homes. We had a good trip. On Sunday we went on a hike to Feather Falls, which is a beautiful 640 foot high waterfall. It was a 9 mile hike of moderate difficulty. However after 9 miles of just about any difficulty I end up pretty tired, which I suppose is kind of the point. I took a video of the falls too just for effect, but I took it's sideways and I don't know how to rotate the video 90 degrees. Any input on an easy way to do that? I have had other times I wanted to and have never figured out a good way to do it.

Then on Monday we went ring shopping and purchasing as noted in my last blog

On Wednesday we went up to Donner Ski Ranch to go skiing. It is a pretty good place to go skiing. There were a lot of slopes at our ability level, it had recently snowed so we had nice fresh snow to ski on, and it was not too crowded so we had plenty of space on most of the runs. The next day we went to Squaw Valley which was the home of the 8th winter Olympic games which were held in 1960. There were 27 events and 30 countries represented. It was the first televised Olympics and the first to use a computerized system to determine the winners. We took a cable car up to the top of the mountain where there was a nice display about the Olympic Games. We had talked about skating on the Olympic Ice but did not due to time constraints from an incoming snow storm. We were there for a couple hours then left to get back to Sacramento before the storm picked up.

I got a bit of a laugh leaving the hotel before going to Squaw Valley on Thursday. We knew it might be snowing, so Alan (Becca's Brother-in-law) had put his chains in the car in case we needed them. We didn't end up needing them but in the morning there was frost and we didn't have a scraper and we ended up using the squeegee. I just thought it was a funny contrast to find myself in a car with snow chains in case of severe snow but no scraper. :)

Ring Incoming

This week both Becca and I have vacation and we met to spend the week together in Sacramento. I will try and do a few blogs to describe the events of the week, posting a few pictures along the way.
Today's blog doesn't have any pictures though. Instead it is about one of the main reasons we decided to spend this week in Sacramento. As many of you know Becca and I have been talking about getting engaged and, more to the point, trying to decide which ring to purchase. We intend to eventually live out in this area so we wanted to purchase the ring from here so that it could be serviced and insured through the same jeweler. Becca and I had looked online and decided which rings we were interested in. She had then visited one of the jewelers in this area who carries rings we liked, but at that point the jeweler did not have the specific rings in stock for viewing. After that we had asked the company to order the rings so that we could see them on Monday. On Monday we went in, had a look at the rings and picked one that we liked. Then Becca left so I could pick out the diamond on my own and pay for the ring. That way there is still at least a little suspense about what it will look like. I should get the ring within a month. When and how will I propose? Still working on that. And besides, Becca reads this blog so I couldn't say anyway.
If you're highly anxious about it I can tell you how to see the ring.
Guess that's all for the night. I'll do another blog in the next day or two.