Officially

So even though I have known for almost two months that I was going to officially finally graduate, I didn't want to jinx anything until I had the proof in my hands. Well, my diploma finally arrived so I feel I can finally say that I am actually a graduate. Whew! Heavy sigh of relief. So here is a picture of the most expensive piece of paper I have ever owned.


In case you can't read it I have been awarded a Bachelor of Science in Health Education Specialist (My degree is actually in Health Education with an emphasis in Community Health. Not sure why they wrote it the way they did. Oh well.)
Here are a few more pictures.

Diploma Cover

Inside of Diploma

Since my graduation date was in August and ceremonies are only held in May and December I had the option of walking before I actually completed all my classwork (which, call me superstitious but I felt like that would jinx me even more. As it was I finished my internship hours and got all my papers in just two hours before the final deadline!) or walking this December after I had been out of school for four months (which seems a little anti-climactic). So I have basically decided not to walk this time around, which I am ok with. I would have had to buy a robe and pay money and sit through a boring ceremony and be in Logan in the freezing winter and not really have any classmates graduating with me. Plus I've never really been one for pomp and circumstance, so all in all I am ok with the decision. I figure that I will walk when I get my master's degree, which for right now is the plan. Assuming that I can find a job that will give me experience in health care, take one or two more prerequisites, and get accepted into a PA program. It may be awhile before all that happens. So for now I am just focusing on the job part.

Anyway, I am glad to finally be caught up to all my friends that I started college with: ) It only took an extra two years! I don't think I will ever get caught up in the marriage and babies categories, which at this point in my life I am quite ok with : ) I like being in the honorary aunt category.

One more thing. Since I didn't go out for the whole robe and ceremony deal there are no pictures of me on "graduation day." So I thought I would share this picture instead, which is a picture of a photo (got that?) that hangs on the mantle in my parents' living room. On the right is me sitting on the A, and on the left is my grandpa (my mom's dad) standing next to the A. He was the first USU graduate in our family (in engineering) and I am proud to be part of the legacy.

Utah State Hey! Aggies all the way! Go Aggies! Go Aggies! Hey Hey Hey!!!

A Weed By Any Other Name...

Would be Crocosmia. Or Montbretia. Or any number of other local names, such as Copper Tip or Falling Star. The following is a picture of said "weed"


Personally, I think it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, a while ago Elise asked me if I could identify this flower that she saw frequently in the northwest on her journey from Washington to Virginia (that's the state, not DC...long trip!), or if I knew a way to identify things from their pictures. And since I still don't have a job (what is the deal with "experience"? Does education count for nothing?! I mean, I can't get a job without experience and without a job I can't get experience. Something's gotta give here! Also, why the arbitrary amount of experience? Is 2 years absolutely necessary or can I get by with 20 months? Not that I have 20 months of experience because, oh yeah, nobody will hire me because I have no experience! Do you see the problem here?) and my only other project at this point in time is peeling wallpaper in my room (now officially the second biggest bane of my existence) I decided to see if I could figure it out.

I started with a google image search for red flowers but that quickly went nowhere. So then I figured that it was probably a wildflower so I searched for "red wildflowers of the northwest" which miraculously got me nowhere :) However, it did turn me onto Flickr. Flickr is kind of like a cross between Facebook and Photoshop where you can edit your pictures and share them with other people. There are photo sharing groups on Flickr for pretty much every subject that you could possibly be interested in, from llamas to babies falling asleep in their food. (Actually, I can't attest to those two groups in particular because I didn't really search for them, but I would still say there is a pretty good chance they exist.) In this case I found a group dedicated to shooting and sharing pictures of wildflowers. And while I still didn't find a picture of this particular wildflower I did notice a few conversations going on in the comments section in which people were asking the very question Elise had. Namely, how in the world do you identify something solely from its picture?

The answer: flowerguide.com. It is a site run by a floral company or something and they have common flowers listed in alphabetical order with a written description of color, size, shape, other names, etc, and a photo of each. Fortunately for me, Crocosmia is fairly high in the alphabet :)
At any rate, once I found the site it only took about 5 minutes to identify the flower and a quick trip to Wikipedia to learn the following facts about Crocosmia:

• It is a member of the Iris family (Probably my second favorite flower, after California Poppies. In case you were wondering.)
  
• It is actually native to South Africa
  
• They are usually Orange or Red in color
  
• The flowers are hermaphroditic (Mostly I just thought that was a cool word and didn't know it existed so I thought I would share it with you)
• The name Crocosmia comes from the Greek Krokos, meaning saffron, and Osme, meaning smell. Apparently they smell like saffron.
  
• They are actually an invasive species in the Pacific Northwest of the US. In other words, they are a WEED!!

I was kind of surprised by that because I think I would much rather have these growing in my front yard than the dandelions that like to make their home there. But weeds they are, since apparently they can choke out native flora and fauna. (Sidenote: Flora and Fauna mean plants and animals respectively and always make me think of Flotsam and Jetsam, which you might be surprised to learn are not just evil hench-eels [hench-eels. HA! I love it!] in Disney's The Little Mermaid, but maritime terms for wreckage left floating in the sea after a shipwreck (flotsam) and cargo thrown overboard by distressed ships and either sunk or washed ashore (jetsam). Also, they are a heavy metal band from Phoenix, Arizona, but that's not really my thing).

Anyway, I think they are quite beautiful and wouldn't mind if they decided to invade Utah. As it is, we get invasive species like cheat grass, which is not only plain and boring but also presents a fire danger in the summer. I think it would be much cooler to look out into a field that you thought was on fire and find that it was actually the bright reds and oranges of these "weeds."

In conclusion, weeds are just expatriate flowers out roaming the world, experience is overrated, and wallpaper will be the preferred decoration in hell and scraping it the preferred method of torture.
Also, I would like to suggest the name Montbretia for any friends or family of mine who plan on having children or are currently expecting. After all, a Montrbretia by any other name would smell like saffron :)

Mold Surgery

That would be the literal translation for plastic surgery if you were to translate it from the original Greek. But don't worry, it's not the yucky green stuff that has an affinity for proliferating in unclean bathrooms (like the one in my basement, cough, teenage brother, cough....) That would make for some pretty unsanitary surgery. Although, on second thought, mold is the original antibiotic so maybe it wouldn't be too bad? I mean, gross for sure, but maybe not lethal. At the very least un-beneficial. So moving on.

Anyway, plastic surgery gets its name from the Greek word for "to mold" (which on second thought doesn't really clarify....hmm.) Well, let me explain. The term "plastic surgery" has been around much longer than the stuff water bottles are made of. Plastic, both the surgery and the name for the material are taken from the Greek word "Plastikos" which means "to mold" or "to shape." It was first practiced over 4,000 years ago (I can't believe that surgery existed that long ago, not to mention plastic surgery, but apparently it did) in the form of skin grafts and such.

The history of plastic surgery in the US begins in earnest around 1830, when surgeons began to repair cleft palates. After that it got a big boost from various wars, especially World War I, due to the various non-lethal injuries that soldiers sustained. There were a lot of advances in skin grafts and burn treatment at that time and in 1931 the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons was formed. After that it was pretty much history. The shift from reconstructive (repairing birth defects or injuries) to cosmetic (purely for aesthetic reasons) happened slowly but got a big boost in the 1960s and 70s. Nowadays when you say plastic surgery most people (well, at least, I) think Hollywood glamor/beautification. But even though the glamor aspect is probably more common, the repair aspect is still important and still practiced.

As I was looking up the various types of surgery offered, I realized that the idea of beauty and glamor is pretty subjective. I was amazed to learn that among other things, plastic surgeons can

• Turn your outtie bellybutton into an innie (But not the other way around. Interesting sidenotes that I learned about bellybuttons: Did you know that there really is no reason for it to be one way or the other? The doctor can't make it be an innie or outie when you are born by tying or cutting the umbilical cord a certain way. Actually, tying is a myth. They put a little plastic clamp on it after they cut it to stop any residual bleeding and then they just let the cord fall off on its own. This usually takes about a week or so, but it can actually stay put for 3 months or more! About 85% of people are outties but nobody really knows why)
• Etch a six pack on your abdomen,
• Enhance your calf with implants (Is the plural of that calves? Is that confusing to anyone else?)
• Shorten your second toe if it is bigger than your big toe (or if you just happen to think it's too long. Whatever)
  
• Implant hair from your head into your eyelashes
  
• Fork your tongue
• Make your ears pointy like an elf (also pin your ears back if you were born with pointy ones that stick out)
  
• Create dimples if you don't have them
• Bedazzle your eyeball (seriously, they implant a little jewel just under the conjunctival layer of the eye...because, you know, that wouldn't be at all irritating. Can you imagine allergy season? Ugh!),
• Create a permanent nose piece for your glasses!(This is actually more of a piercing but it was so interesting that I had to include it here.)

It is also possible to alter people's Asian eyes to make them look less "ethnic", which understandably upsets quite a few people, and fill in holes in your ears from piercing. I think I would have that done because I never wear earrings anyway as I am allergic to most of them. You know, if I had extra money lying around. So pretty much I am going to go through life with holes in my ears :) I can live with that.


I used to be very opposed to plastic surgery (At least for aesthetic reasons. Cleft palate repair is a different story), but now I am not so sure. I mean, I would still say that eyeball bedazzling and tongue forking are on my list of surgeries that should never be done, but I am somewhat less opposed to other procedures. I think this is because I just recently realized that one of my nostrils is bigger than the other. Really. It's kind of weird. I always hated school pictures because when I got them back it looked like I was flaring my nostrils, or you could see up one of them, or sadly, in one picture you could see a shiny rim of snot around the edge. I never figured out that the problem was with my nostrils and not the photographer until after I was out of school. Though if I had caught it earlier I could have avoided the head tilt they always make you do that just ended up emphasizing the larger nostril!

Anyway, after realizing this, I am more sympathetic to people who are self conscious about certain aspects of their appearance and I can understand their desire to change those things. I still don't know if I would ever change my nose, because I feel like it is a part of my heritage. My grandpa on my mom's side gave it to me and I have grown rather fond of it, large nostrils and all :)

But I do think that celebrities should be limited in the procedures they have, or be forced to disclose them. (Maybe not the embarrassing ones. There are lots of those and I have refrained from mentioning them here. But if you are curious look up labiaplasty on wikipedia.) Anyway, I think that this would serve two purposes. The first is that it would prevent things like this from happening:

(Love MJ, but the nose makes me sad.) The second reason is that it would prevent the rest of us from feeling bad about ourselves and our imperfections. For example, celebrities who have had children and sell ab workout videos would be forced to disclose their tummy tucks so that the rest of us wouldn't have such unrealistic expectations. (I'm sorry, but once your skin is stretched out like that, only one person in a million can go back to a flat six pack without the help of a surgeon. If you happen to be that person, congratulations, but don't try to sell me on ideals that I will never reach.)

So there you have it. More than you ever wanted to know about plastic surgery. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get my beauty rest. It's a lot cheaper than plastic surgery : )

As Promised

Well, I am back from vacation and have been for awhile but I am just now getting around to updating the blog. Funny how when you have basically nothing to do you get basically nothing done. You would think that the few things on your "to-do" list would get crossed off pretty quickly but you'd be surprised. Hence the delay in posting, despite having been home for two and a half weeks now. Anyway, as promised, here are some beautiful (well, sort of... I am not really a great photographer) pictures of Island Park Idaho.

Here is some beautiful Idaho wildlife

Ha Ha! Just kidding. That would be my brother Scott messing around with the camera. Please don't tell me you can see the family resemblance :)

This one is my brother Kyle, covered in dust after taking the 4-wheeler to the top of a mountain

These are my roommates (:)) enjoying a kayak (or kyack according to the rental brochure) trip down the Big Springs river. Don't let the jovial smile fool you: Dad later tipped mom's kayak over while she was still in it. Too bad he didn't count on it upsetting his balance and dumping him into the icy river too :)

Me and my sunburned self. The coloring on my shoulder is not a camera trick. I really did get burnt.

A view from the Big Springs river

Some real Idaho wildlife. I really wish I were a better photographer. At least there aren't any random old people in this one though :)

Sunset in the woods

Some blurry wildflowers. I took lots of pictures of wildflowers but a) pictures don't really do them justice and b) my pictures especially don't do them justice. I didn't find the little flower symbol button on my camera that is specifically for taking pictures of flowers until I got home :(

This is a little river that we had to go around on the 4-wheelers.

And that is pretty much it picture wise. We also went into Yellowstone park and swam in the Firehole river, which is fed by geysers and so is not freezing (I highly recommend it), drove to the top of Sawtelle mountain and enjoyed the cold, windy view, almost ran into a moose on a 4-wheeler (I mean I was on the 4-wheeler. The moose crossed the road in front of me), saw much wildlife including the moose, bats, a frog, bald eagles, a buffalo, elk, rabbits, fish, and some bugs, and overall just relaxed and had a great time. Now its back to the grind... for everyone else. I am kind of on permanent vacation until I find a job. So its back to the hunt for me!

Vacation

First off, let me just say that for a place as beautiful as Island Park Idaho, I am surprised at how few good pictures there are of the place. Perhaps I will have to try to remedy that this week, since that is where I will be. Hooray!


Seriously, this was one of the better pictures I could find. And there are random old people in it. So you will just have to use your imagination and pretend that it's me in the picture. Or maybe just that there aren't random old people in it. In the meantime I will try to remember to take a few good pictures while I am gone to post later.

I will also have to post about my mad dash to graduation, plastic surgery (in general, I mean. I haven't had any. Though a week in a bathing suit might be all the convincing I need...), and the dumb project I started. I should have plenty of time to do that when I get back, being as how I am now unemployed: )
In the meantime, enjoy your week. I know I will!!

Procrastination

So this is just a short post to say that I never do seem to learn my lesson about procrastination. I have known for a few weeks now that I would be in Logan on Aug 3rd (Um yeah, tomorrow) to give a presentation for my final class before I graduate, but have I let anybody know about this? Have I given anyone time to plan on me coming? Of course not. And my logic is really stupid too because I think to myself, "well, I don't want to inconvenience anybody or make them feel like they have to let me visit them, so I will just tell them later." It's moments like these that I think I wouldn't be surprised if USU decided I was too dumb to let graduate and maybe make me take a few more communication classes or something. It might not be a bad idea.

At any rate, I will be in a presentation meeting from probably 3-6 or so but after that I am free for a few hours before I have to drive back home. So if anyone a) reads this before then, b) is not already busy and c) wants to see me then give me a call and I would love to see you. I am not really sure who is there this time of year except a few people, so just give me a call. And no pressure. I may finally learn my lesson about procrastination.

Speaking of which, I received a question about plastic surgery, oh, about a month ago and still haven't gotten around to answering it. But I promise I will. Eventually :)

If I'd have known it would take that long I would have adopted!

Well, I am happy to report that I survived the rest of the rain. And so far the heat hasn't seemed to affect my brain too much either. I was tempted to try to bake cookies using only the heat inside my car after seeing it done by Primary Children's Medical Center as a way to teach parents not to leave their kids in the car. But I am far too impatient to wait 2-3 hours for chocolate chip cookies. Instead I decided to read up on avocados.

Here is a picture of the avocado plant I started growing. (Its the tall one. The vine-y one at the bottom is apparently a begonia. I highjacked the pot from my mom. Mostly because I didn't think the avocado would grow.)

Much to my surprise (which shouldn't really be a surprise at all considering the fact that seeds were made to go into the dirt and grow into plants) it grew. And grew some more until it grew a stalk and some leaves. I was very pleased by all this because the conventional wisdom on growing avocados is that you have to stick toothpicks into the avocado and suspend it over a mason jar filled with a solution of water, French truffles (which are not chocolate...that's another story), and platypus egg yolk. Then, if by some miracle your avocado pit sprouts, you can pot it in a mix of Saharan sand, Scottish peat, and crab guano and grow it in a temperature controlled greenhouse at approximately 2,147 feet above sea level. In other words, it's an arduous process. Which explains why they can charge a dollar for a tiny, unripe avocado at the grocery store, I suppose.

So anyway, I was really happy when all I had to do was stick the pit straight from the avocado into some garden variety potting soil and voila: Avocado tree. With visions of delicious ripe avocado dancing in my head I took to the internet to determine how long it might take for the tree to bear fruit. Now, keep in mind that I am aware that I am impatient, but I was not expecting miracles here. I'm thinking a minimum of 2-3 years before the little sappling pictured above gets big enough to hold fruit without snapping itself in half. And I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is 15 years!!!!

Really? I can't even sign onto a two year cell phone contract or live in one apartment for more than nine months at a time! How am I supposed to care for a glorified houseplant until I'm 39 years old!?! I didn't sign up for this. I mean, if I wanted that kind of comittment I would have adopted. At least kids start doing impressive things before they turn 15. All my friends' kids are about a year old and they're already crawling and eating solid food. Is it too much to ask for an avocado tree to pick up the pace a little?

Actually there is one other option. It involves stem cells and a trip to Madagascar...Just kidding. It is almost that involved though. Apparently you can graft branches from a mature avocado tree (which are obviously very plentiful in Utah) onto the slowpoke tree and get fruit after about 3-4 years. From what I have heard about grafting it is not a job for a layperson, which means that I would have to pay a professional to do it, which means that in addition to being faster, adoption would likely be cheaper too!

For now I think I will just let it battle it out with the begonia. If all else fails I can just leave it with my mom (something you really can't do with kids, adopted or not). She has too much guilt to intentionally kill a plant so she might just keep it around for another 15 years. If so, you all are invited to my 40th birthday party. I'll be making a killer guacamole.