One (or eight) hot cars

So I haven't posted forever, which I am aware of, but I also don't care that much because I am working hard in school and focusing my efforts on things of higher priority on my list. My day consisted of leaving for school at 8:45, spending almost 6 hours in class, watching a car fire, then spending another hour and 15 minutes in class, then finally getting home at 7:15. What's that you say? You want to know more about said car fire? Well, here is a movie (I did not film it; it's too long but the best part is from minute 2 to 3ish so just skip around as necessary). Please ignore the ignorance of the commenters of this movie.



I saw the car smoking as I walked to class but it just looked like someone's radiator had overheated. Once in class I heard the firetruck siren and exclaimed, "Oh my heck, that car really was on fire!" More than half of my class proceeded to run out into the hallway to the window with the best view. I feel bad for saying it, but cars on fire were the coolest thing I've seen at school.

Here are two links to the story on the UVU Review website and the Salt Lake Tribune's website.

Happy Halloween!

I don't know what I am (a ballerina? a missing model from America's Next Top Model? an evil queen? a girl who didn't know what to be but did cool makeup and wore black?). It looks cool and scary right? Thanks for the pictures Rachel! (The little bear is my sweetie nephew Chai).

I'm in!

I have been waiting to officially share the news because I didn't want to jinx anything but now everything is all clear. I have been accepted to the school of secondary education. What does that mean exactly? It means I'm on my way to being a teacher. You're saying "but it's only your first semester!" Well, you are correct. But, since I'm planning to finish in a short 5 semesters, including a jam packed summer, I needed to get going.

I met with the secondary education advisor at the beginning of September to make sure my planned schedule would work. I was originally planning on applying in the spring to start my education classes fall of 2013. He said it would work but that I could apply for spring semester and get started sooner if I wanted to. And so I did. I turned in my application by October 1, had my interview on October 3, and got my acceptance letter on October 10. Today I got fingerprinted for my background check, on Friday I take a pre-assesment to figure out what I already know, and on Monday the 29th at 12:01am I register for classes. I'm so excited!

An Evening with Lois Lowry

Yes, for real, I finally got to meet my favorite author Lois Lowry. This post is going to be kind of long because I'm so excited to write down everything I learned from her and to share it will all of you. I was hanging on every word. My wonderful local library hosted Ms. Lowry as a speaker and then had a book signing. I invited my lovely mom to attend this event with me because she is reading Number the Stars with her elementary school reading group.

The most unflattering picture of both of us but the best one I got.

Ms. Lowry spoke for about 45 minutes, had a short question and answer portion, and then signed books. My mom took wonderful notes while she was speaking which I will now summarize with the help of my awesome memory. Everything may not be exact so don't quote me without further research, but I'll try to be fairly accurate.

Lois Lowry while speaking. Unfortunately it was a night of unflattering photos. Anyone want to get me a new camera?

On October 3rd Son, the final book in The Giver quartet, was released. The purpose of Ms. Lowry's visit was to promote that final book and give us some insight as to how all of the books came about. The most common question she gets from readers is "How did you come up with the idea for The Giver?" It came about when she asked herself what she always asks herself before writing a story, "What if..." Ms. Lowry had been vising her aging and forgetful father in a nursing home in Virginia. She and her brother had given their father a photo album with pictures from throughout his life to help him remember things, including his favorite car, a Chrysler 300 that cost $3000, the same amount as her first year of tuition at Brown. While looking through the album he saw a photo of Lois' sister Helen with Lois. He remembered who Helen was but wondered what happened to her. Lois had to tell him that her sister had died. When he heard this news the grief and loss was as if it were the first time he heard about it. A few moments later he came across another photo of Lois and her sister as teenagers and again wondered what happened to Helen. Ms. Lowry repeated that her sister had died. Again, her father reacted as if it were the first time he had heard the news and was grief stricken. While she was driving back to the airport to go home to Boston she asked herself "What if there were a place where you could control memory? Where you could obliterate any frightening or sad memories?" And the basis for The Giver was created.

The character came to her as a twelve year old boy named Jonas. Whenever she thinks of a character they have a name when they come to her. She doesn't have to look up names in the phone book; her characters are born in her imagination with a name. The book had to take place in the future where a perfected community was possible. In the first few pages of Ms. Lowry's books she lets the reader know what the book is about and introduces a problem. She usually starts a book knowing the beginning and vaguely knowing the end but she makes up the middle without an outline because she likes surprises along the way.

Ms. Lowry hadn't planned on writing any sequels. The Giver was to be a stand alone book with an optimistic ending. But kids didn't like the ambiguity of the end. They wanted a concrete answer about Jonas' fate instead of imagining it for themselves (she then blamed TV for the loss of imagination).

The second book Gathering Blue also started with some "What if..." questions. What if a community didn't have the technology to make things better? What if they regressed and didn't have any technology, not even electricity? It is set in the same time period as The Giver but the community is totally opposite. Gathering Blue gave Lois Lowry a chance to let everyone know that Jonas was alive and well, even though it doesn't come right out and say it.

Ms. Lowry always liked the character of Matt in Gathering Blue. The third book Messenger becomes his story as a teenager.

Once people were satisfied with Jonas' well being, they wanted to know what happened to the baby Gabe. And so Son was written. Although it answers questions about Gabe it focuses on his mother's journey to find him. Ms. Lowry told a true story about a family whose four year old son went missing while camping in Maine. No trace of him was ever found. The loss of a child and never knowing what happened prompted Lowry to write Son from Gabe's mother's perspective. The working title of this book was actually Birth Mother but was changed to Son before publication, partially because Ms. Lowry didn't think any boys would read a book called Birth Mother (she was probably right).

So that's the story of The Giver quartet. Here are a few other interesting things I learned while she was speaking:

• Only 5 authors, including Lois Lowry, have won the Newberry Award twice.
• Autumn Sky  and A Summer To Die are autobiographical. 
• It is easier for her to write a girl character.
• Her son died in a military aircraft crash.
• She started as a photo journalist.
• The cover of Number the Stars is a photograph she took when she did portraits of children.
• The sled at the end of The Giver is supposed to have a fantasy and magic about it.
• Her favorite character in all of her books is Matt.
• Only the natural objects in The Giver have color, an apple, flowers, the girls hair, his eyes. Man-made objects didn't need color.
• The Giver can be read as a religious allegory, or not, depending on what you bring to the story. 

My all time favorite thing that she said while speaking was, "You're reading a different book than the one I wrote." She elaborated by saying that everyone brings different parts of their own lives to a story and they will have different insights because of it. I hope I will remember that when I'm an English teacher and that I will help my students have close relationships with the literature they read.

So after all the talking was the book signing. We had to wait for about an hour before it was our turn. I was so excited to be so close to such a literary master.

I'm almost there with my armful of books!

Oh! It's her! She's signing my books! It was a thrilling moment.

I can imagine she was super tired by this point. I was so appreciative of her time.

My mom got even more books signed, again, for me.

I am now the proud and grateful owner of The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son "For Emily, Lois Lowry."

Please remember that what I have said in this post is based on my memory and my mom's notes. Please verify any information before you claim it as fact. If you'd like to read more about Lois Lowry, you can visit her website here.

Who is your favorite author, favorite book, and why?

I Contributed to Science!

At the end of June I blogged about having "Adventures on the Mountain" and mentioned the endangered Boreal Toad. The pictures that I took are now in the Monty L. Bean science museum collection!

The yellow card goes in a filing cabinet as a physical record of the specimen. There is also a computer program with all the information available to anyone with internet access. It hasn't been updated since my specimen was entered but should be sooner than later. I'll post a link when it's available.

Normally when specimens are collected they get preserved in ethanol and placed in the jars. You can see some of them in the background of the picture. It's really gory to see all those dead reptile and amphibian bodies. Our photos were safely wrapped in paper towels and stored in the same kind of jar. In a hundred years when some herpetologist studies bufo boreas he or she will know that on June 27, 2012 there were some on Manning Meadow. Yay! I helped science!

"Om"brella "Hand"le

When Doug and I went to the Natural History Museum of Utah a few weeks ago I also made it a point to stop by the campus surplus store. When I lived in the dorms at the U, I found the most amazing store you could ever imagine. It sells whatever is left over on campus that people don't want anymore. They have tons of computer stuff, furniture, and even stuff from the hospital. It's the thrift store of the U. And it's amazing. I could have spent hours looking at stuff. Unfortunately our parking meter was only free for 20 minutes. But during those 20 minutes I found the coolest umbrella I've ever seen. Feast your eyes on this.

Yes that is a hand as the "hand"le. My family thought it was creepy. I can't find anything else like it anywhere online. I would love to know who made it and its story. As fa as I can tell it's either the "om" hand position or the "okay" sign used in diving.

What do you think? Any ideas on how to figure out where it came from?

For my Grandparents

My grandparents, especially my grandpa, really like sunsets. The other day when the sky lit up I grabbed my camera and snapped these pictures for them. Enjoy.

Happy Ramadan

My calendar has informed me that today, July 20th, is the first day of Ramadan. Ramadan is a Muslim religious observance. You can read more about it here. While I am not Muslim, I think it important to know about other religions and cultures.

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. The past ten days haven't been particularly busy, I just haven't gotten around to writing anything. Actually, now that I think about it, I have been busy. Penny had a vet check up where they informed us that she should have a broken tooth removed. We opted to let it's remains fall out on their own and check for infection until they did. We had a birthday celebration for my dad. We went to a funeral for my great aunt and visited with my grandparents and uncle who attended the funeral. I got a really bad summer cold. And we went mini golfing. All on top of work, pets, and daily life. No wonder I haven't written.

I also have been busy with a second blog for my sister-in-law who is serving an LDS mission. I only write once a week, and basically just copy and paste whatever she emails to the family, but it still takes time. If you'd like to read it, the address is http://sistahbrown.blogspot.com.

The next few days I'll go into detail about some of the things I've been up to lately. I have a renewed vigor to keep this blog updated.

55%

I'm more than half way to my second bachelors degree and I haven't even started school yet. Second bachelors degree you ask? When did this happen?

Beep, beep, beep, I'm backing up to explain the whole story.

I graduated from high school in 2006 and started college at the University of Utah that fall. I started out majoring in Psychology. I decided I didn't like it enough to make a career of it so I switched my major to Economics. I graduated with a BS in Economics and a minor in Psychology. I had plans to get an MBA and ideally own a small retail business. It was a great plan.

Then I worked at a small retail business. For the most part I really like my job but I do not want to be burdened with everything that comes along with owning and managing a business. I want vacations, I want to be able to sleep at night without worry about my store, I want to spend time with my family. I also want to make a difference in the world. Don't get me wrong, small businesses are very important to the economy and make a difference that way. But I want to make a difference to people. I want to inspire people. I want to help people be better. I want to share what I love with others who are forced to listen to my opinion can then learn to love it too.

I want to be a high school English teacher. In 6 weeks I will have my last day of work. 4 weeks after that I will be in school again. 5 semesters after that I'll graduate. I am 55% of the way done and haven't even had a class at my new school. Luckily I don't have to do any more general education. I get to jump right into the English program. It's a big step but I would feel very unaccomplished and unhappy if I didn't do this.

A huge thanks go to my sweet husband and mom for supporting me in this. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to get it right and end up doing what I love.

A Movie Starring Penny

Penny is 13 weeks old today. Here is a movie of her playing with her squeaker bone. Enjoy.

Penny: Our First Day

At 5:00 on Monday, May 14 Penny the Keeshond puppy joined our family. Penny was born on March 16 in Tennessee. We drove to the airport and picked her up at the American Airlines baggage office.

Yes, I took a picture of the sign. Don't judge.

While I was patiently anxiously waiting for Penny to arrive I stopped by the odd size luggage pick up area. While I was there I saw this nice man unloading parcels. AND I SAW PENNY'S CRATE IN THE BACKGROUND!

There's a man who is super happy to be at work... not.

Penny was carried in by the baggage thrower through a door next to the odd size luggage area. I was so excited to finally see her and she was excited to see us too.

I love when you can see her tiny puppy tongue.

While Doug signed for her I got lots of puppy kisses through the bars of the crate. She was so happy to see people! I think she traveled really well. She didn't throw up and she only had a tinkle in the back corner of her crate and no puppy poops. I was expecting her to be a little messy when she arrived so it was a pleasant surprise that she wasn't.

Doug set her down to dry off his fingers from all her kisses.

On the way to the car Penny couldn't have been happier. She kept licking Doug's fingers. She looks really small in her crate but this is the size she'll need when she's grown up. I think it was nicer for her to travel in a bigger one. When we got the car we gave her some cool water which she happily drank. Then I wanted to take a picture of her and ended up making this movie instead:

Since Penny had been in her crate for most of the day, we brought a box and a blanket for her to ride home in. I held it on my lap in the backseat while Doug drove.

Riding home.

She had such a long day that she ended up falling asleep. She was so cute on my lap. I couldn't stop smiling.

A sleepy puppy

When she woke up she started whining a little and looking out the window. Doug pulled over by a nice patch of lawn at the Orem community hospital and we took her out. We were happily surprised when she went to the bathroom! She's already smart enough not to go where she sleeps.

A happy girl with her happy puppy.

We stopped by Petco on the way home to get her a name tag. It has her name and my phone number on a little heart shaped steel tag.

Relaxing on the lawn

We gave Penny some good exercise around our front yard when we finally got home. She liked watching the cars and finding seedpods in the grass. She would nose around until she found something fun to try to eat. I pulled more foreign plant material out of her mouth than I thought was possible.

 After a long and happy day Penny played with her squeaky bone. And I made Doug film a movie of it:

We had a long first night. Penny didn't like sleeping in her crate and whined a lot. Once she was asleep she was okay. She slept in about 4 hour shifts. She has been a lot better about being in her crate today. I think she realizes that we won't leave her alone for too long and that she's safe there.

What do you think of our sweet girl? Do you have any suggestions for training? Any ideas on how to help our cat Biscuit adjust well?

Keeshonden

Doug and I are adopting a sweet little Keeshond (pronounced kayz-hond) puppy. Her name will probably be Penny, but that could change. After months of research we decided that a Keeshond will be the right dog for us. They are a medium size intelligent dog. They like to please their owners. Most Keeshonden are bred as show dogs but Doug found a breeder that specializes in family dogs. Our sweet little puppy will be coming to us on Wednesday, May 16. Below is a video of her daddy.

I don't know if our puppy will try to talk to us but I know she'll be cute. 

We have been reading so much about training. So many people I talk to only know about training that uses punishment for bad behavior. I've had people tell me to use a rolled up newspaper to wack her on the nose when she doesn't listen. Other people have told me to make sure to rub her nose in her feces if she has an accident so she'll know it's bad. From everything we've read, those training methods will only teach the dog to fear you.

We are going to use positive reinforcement. If the puppy does something good, she gets rewarded. If she does something bad we say "NO" within 3 seconds of the bad behavior, replace the bad behavior with a desirable behavior, then reward the new good behavior. This way the dog will learn what's expected, instead of learning to be afraid to mess up around you. If she does something bad when we're not around we should ignore it because she won't remember what she did bad and won't understand why she's being punished.

We are going to be crate training so our puppy won't be given free roam of the house. She will be in her crate to sleep and eat. After eating and sleeping she will be taken outside to the bathroom, as well as other times throughout the day. As soon as she comes out of her crate she get's an opportunity outside to go potty. Only after she goes will she be allowed some play time outside of the crate. Some people think it's mean to "lock" up your dog all the time but it will help her succeed with house training. She won't really be locked up a lot, just when she's sleeping, or needs some time to herself, or when we're not home. It should help us avoid accidents and set her up to succeed. After all the videos we've watched and books we've read usually a bad dog is the result of a bad owner. We're trying our hardest to prepare ourselves to be good owners.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions I'd love for you to comment.

Graduation!

Congratulations to my super hard working husband Doug. He graduated on Friday with a B.S. in Biology from Brigham Young University. Woo Hoo! I'm so proud of him. Huge shout out to his sister Rachel for making a super awesome snake lei. Doug worked a lot with snakes and reptiles during his undergraduate research. Here are the best pictures I got, unfortunately they aren't very good. Someday I'll have a better camera.

Dougie wore a blue shirt so I was a little easier to pick him out of the crowd

That's probably the Dean of the College of Life Science

That fuzzy dark blob is Doug walking to pick up his diploma.

Yay for Dougie!

The photographer had a slight problem with Doug's amazing height.

We got a little tired of taking pictures...

Grandma Brown Minestrone

Traditional Minestrone is an Italian soup made with a hodgepodge of whatever ingredients are on hand. There are a lot of good metaphors for life but I think minestrone is one of the best. You take what have and mix it together and get a flavorful existence. Until August 2011 my knowledge of minestrone was imparted to me by The Olive Garden. Until that fateful day... During a balmy afternoon in Groton, Connecticut I had the most amazing minestrone I'd ever consumed. It contained the Lima beans of working for a Jewish family washing dishes and doing chores for twenty-five cents. The essence of tomatoes of saving those hard earned quarters to go to the Spaghetti western at the local theater. An older brother and four sisters were the oregano, basal, and rosemary that seasoned childhood days full of play. The salty broth was tears in a father's eyes when he couldn't provide enough meat for dinner during the Great Depression. The bitter eggplant of having to share a rubber ball with the landlady's daughter following the threat of eviction. There are many more unrecognizable but essential elements of this amazing soup; A hodgepodge of memories stewing together to create the minestrone of Grandma Brown's life.

Grandma Brown March 2012

Grandma Brown and her children Janet, Paul, and Ed

Grandma Brown passed away on Friday night April 13, 2012. I am so happy to have had the pleasure of meeting her and having a small sample of her minestrone.

*We really did eat minestrone while we were there, and it was amazingly delicious.

Yep, the first post

I've been meaning to start a blog for awhile. I just never got around to it. But today is the DAY! A lot of things are changing in my life and I want to keep track of them. I'm going to use this blog to record craft projects, post pictures of pets (including a new puppy in May), and just write how I'm feeling. I don't expect it to become anything fancy. Just a small hobby. I'll keep you posted!