So, New Mexico.
First of all, if I were a New Mexico fan, I admit I'd probably be saying all the things that some New Mexico fans are saying. Mainly that the block in the back penalty really shifted momentum in the game. I think that it was a pretty weak penalty. Granted that the NM lineman did have his hand on the BYU player's back as the BYU player was falling to the ground. The ref might not have had a good angle and could only call it as they saw it. Or the MWC really has ordered the officials to make sure BYU and Utah win every game until they meet.
Also, New Mexico had a wide open reciever on the next play that would have easily had a touchdown if the quarterback could have thrown a good pass.
Overall this was a good game on BYU's part. New Mexico had a good scheme for the game in that they didn't blitz. While that might sound funny, anyone who knows how you would normally prepare to play New Mexico would instantly recognize that by not blitzing, New Mexico threw off BYU's game plan for them.
I think most BYU fans wanted to see more points. I know I expected it. I actually don't mind though that the game turned out as it did. I think they're in a bit of a funk. They tend to play to the level of their competition. Hopefully that means they'll step up for TCU this Thursday.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Phone a friend
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game show "Who wants to be a millionaire?", this is a way for contestants to ask a friend about a question that has come up while playing. So, on to my question:
Actually, lies, I'm going to give some background first. I've submitted my information for my security clearance. I'm waiting on that and will hopefully hear back in the next couple of days. At that point, the HR department at my new job can set Sabrina and I up with a relocation specialist who will be able to help us move to Tucson. Sabrina and I have been discussing buying a home, and would like to immediately if possible. We'll definitely attempt to get prequalified, but don't want to start initiating anything until we know when we're actually going to be looking. The question comes down to this:
We've heard that you should have a minimum of 2 years working at the same place in order to qualify for a home loan. Obviously we won't have that luxury. Provided we can scrape together a decent down payment, and that our credit scores are in the excellent range, do mortgage companies lend to people who are just starting a new job straight out of college? Or are we most likely stuck renting for a period? We'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with this, though we recognize that the latest mortgage crisis might have changed the way lenders are willing to lend.
Actually, lies, I'm going to give some background first. I've submitted my information for my security clearance. I'm waiting on that and will hopefully hear back in the next couple of days. At that point, the HR department at my new job can set Sabrina and I up with a relocation specialist who will be able to help us move to Tucson. Sabrina and I have been discussing buying a home, and would like to immediately if possible. We'll definitely attempt to get prequalified, but don't want to start initiating anything until we know when we're actually going to be looking. The question comes down to this:
We've heard that you should have a minimum of 2 years working at the same place in order to qualify for a home loan. Obviously we won't have that luxury. Provided we can scrape together a decent down payment, and that our credit scores are in the excellent range, do mortgage companies lend to people who are just starting a new job straight out of college? Or are we most likely stuck renting for a period? We'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with this, though we recognize that the latest mortgage crisis might have changed the way lenders are willing to lend.
Thou Shalt Not Covet...
Ahhhh! It's 3:15 am and I have not yet gotten to sleep. Ugh. You've all heard about my sleep problems before, so I won't bore you with them. Lucky for me, Adie seems to have similar ones right now, so she's up keeping me company :D I bet you know how thrilled I am about that.
It's just been one of those weeks, you know, those weeks where you aren't motivated to do anything and you feel kind of blah. Yeah, it's one of those. I've tried all week to be productive, but I've had a hard time really getting off my read end to get anything of substance done. It's during those days / weeks when I start to get covetous. Mostly I get covetous of others' abilities. Yes, it's a dangerous game when you start playing the compare game, so I really try to avoid it most of the time, but sometimes it just creeps up on you when you aren't getting anything else productive done. So, in the interest of getting things out of my mind and hopefully shutting it off to get some sleep, I present to you a list of talents / traits in others that I covet.
One caveat before I begin...the purpose of this is not to throw a pity party for myself or receive high praise from my blog-reading friends about all my wonderful traits and abilities. I realize we are all blessed with different abilities for a reason, and I know I have my share. I am, therefore, not looking for comments or emails telling me why I shouldn't worry about this or that. I promise I am not depressed. I am writing this more for introspective purposes, mostly so I can shut off that racing brain of mine for a few hours and get some much-needed rest. Lucky for you, reader, you get to come along for my introspective ride.
So, without further ado, my list of traits I covet...
~Being a morning person - How I wish I felt good when I woke up early. I am told by my parents that I was never a morning person, even as a baby. I have always liked to stay up late and sleep in, and it isn't even so much a like as I feel physically and emotionally better when I stay up a little later and sleep in a bit. While a missionary, I did my best to follow the go to bed at 10:30 pm and wake up at 6:30 am rule. I got into that routine, but even after a year and a half of doing it, I felt fairly terrible for the first hour or so of the day. Before my mission, I was lucky to get 5 hours of a sleep a night. You'd think I'd feel great getting 8 hours a night, but it was that waking up at 6:30 am that killed me. My ideal would be to go to bed somewhere around 12:30 am and wake up around 9 am. There can be a few later variations as well, but earlier than that is much harder for me. I think my best sleep occurs from about 5 - 9 am, so I feel just about as good sleeping for those 4 hours as I would sleeping an entire 8 hours between 10 pm and 6 am. Unfortunately, productive society doesn't run on the hours that are optimal for me, so I have to adjust as best I can.
~Along those same lines, I wish I could live off of 5 - 6 hours of sleep a night. One of Brett's sisters routinely gets this much sleep and functions much better than I do when I get enough sleep. I can handle about 2 nights in a row of not enough sleep, but if I don't get a nap in or start getting some more sleep at night, I get very affected. This is difficult when I can't fall asleep at night and my daughter wakes me up early. I used to be able to handle less sleep better, but after getting married and then having a child, I seem to be more affected by lack of sleep. I notice my chemicals start to get pretty imbalanced. I had a really hard time with the newborn thing because of this, and it's one reason I am fearful to have another child. Those first 6 - 8 weeks of Adie's life were so hard for me.
~I wish I enjoyed being crafty. Ok, I am not crafty anyway, but I don't even like attempting to make crafts most of the time. I have many family and friends who really enjoy all things crafty. I like the finished products of many crafty projects, but I don't particularly like doing them (unless it's a super Saturday and I don't have to think of ideas, I can just copy them while talking to others) I have a goal of making a photobook for every year of Adie's life (and subsequent children) until she's 18. She is 4.5 months from turning 2 and I have made the cover page for the first year of her life (which I only made 2 days ago). Every time I sit down to do it I really dread it. I want it to be all cute and crafty, but I really don't like thinking of ideas to make that happen. And, ultimately, I'd rather use my time reading something about current events or politics (I know, what's wrong with me!). I think it's important for our children to have this kind of personal history about them, so I am trying to force myself to do it, but it really isn't fun for me. Isn't it supposed to be fun? Why can't I just like to be cute and crafy?
~Ok, and along those lines, I wish I had a better eye for fashion / design. I know when I see something I like or think is cute, but for some reason I can't quite get it to come together for me. For instance, we went to the park today and there was this cute mother of two there who was dressed in a super cute, but simple outfit. I know I would just never think to put it together like that, but I liked what I saw. I wish I just had an eye for that sort of thing.
~I wish I was one of those people that everyone was drawn to, you know those people who just have fun, unforgettable personalities. Please don't misunderstand me. I have wonderful friends and I appreciate them accepting and loving me for who I am. However, sometimes I just wish I was one of those people who everyone wants to invite somewhere because they are the life of the party and are so interesting. I have some friends like that and growing up I always wanted to be more like them. I have accepted my role as a nice, dependable person, and I like being that kind of person, but once in a while, I want to stand out from the crowd.
~Finally, I wish I had a more tangible gift, like a prodigious ability for music, athletics, art - something everyone can put their finger on and say, yeah, Sabrina, she does THIS really well. I do realize people who are very talented at these things put in a ton of time and effort to become so good at what they do, but many times, they started out with a little extra something in that particular area to begin with which pushed them to work harder on it. Maybe I should just work on being less lazy and I'd have more ability in those areas too, but I know I'm not the natural athlete my brother is, or the musicians that some of my friends are. They started out with considerably more talent in those areas than I did.
Anyway, it's 4 am and Adie is driving me nuts at this point, so it's time to end. I know my life is good, and I think if I am lucky I may yet get a few hours of sleep. Maybe I'll wake up less covetous and feeling more motivated to be productive. In the mean time, do any of you readers want to share any traits you wish you had? That would make feel better about being so covetous myself ;)
It's just been one of those weeks, you know, those weeks where you aren't motivated to do anything and you feel kind of blah. Yeah, it's one of those. I've tried all week to be productive, but I've had a hard time really getting off my read end to get anything of substance done. It's during those days / weeks when I start to get covetous. Mostly I get covetous of others' abilities. Yes, it's a dangerous game when you start playing the compare game, so I really try to avoid it most of the time, but sometimes it just creeps up on you when you aren't getting anything else productive done. So, in the interest of getting things out of my mind and hopefully shutting it off to get some sleep, I present to you a list of talents / traits in others that I covet.
One caveat before I begin...the purpose of this is not to throw a pity party for myself or receive high praise from my blog-reading friends about all my wonderful traits and abilities. I realize we are all blessed with different abilities for a reason, and I know I have my share. I am, therefore, not looking for comments or emails telling me why I shouldn't worry about this or that. I promise I am not depressed. I am writing this more for introspective purposes, mostly so I can shut off that racing brain of mine for a few hours and get some much-needed rest. Lucky for you, reader, you get to come along for my introspective ride.
So, without further ado, my list of traits I covet...
~Being a morning person - How I wish I felt good when I woke up early. I am told by my parents that I was never a morning person, even as a baby. I have always liked to stay up late and sleep in, and it isn't even so much a like as I feel physically and emotionally better when I stay up a little later and sleep in a bit. While a missionary, I did my best to follow the go to bed at 10:30 pm and wake up at 6:30 am rule. I got into that routine, but even after a year and a half of doing it, I felt fairly terrible for the first hour or so of the day. Before my mission, I was lucky to get 5 hours of a sleep a night. You'd think I'd feel great getting 8 hours a night, but it was that waking up at 6:30 am that killed me. My ideal would be to go to bed somewhere around 12:30 am and wake up around 9 am. There can be a few later variations as well, but earlier than that is much harder for me. I think my best sleep occurs from about 5 - 9 am, so I feel just about as good sleeping for those 4 hours as I would sleeping an entire 8 hours between 10 pm and 6 am. Unfortunately, productive society doesn't run on the hours that are optimal for me, so I have to adjust as best I can.
~Along those same lines, I wish I could live off of 5 - 6 hours of sleep a night. One of Brett's sisters routinely gets this much sleep and functions much better than I do when I get enough sleep. I can handle about 2 nights in a row of not enough sleep, but if I don't get a nap in or start getting some more sleep at night, I get very affected. This is difficult when I can't fall asleep at night and my daughter wakes me up early. I used to be able to handle less sleep better, but after getting married and then having a child, I seem to be more affected by lack of sleep. I notice my chemicals start to get pretty imbalanced. I had a really hard time with the newborn thing because of this, and it's one reason I am fearful to have another child. Those first 6 - 8 weeks of Adie's life were so hard for me.
~I wish I enjoyed being crafty. Ok, I am not crafty anyway, but I don't even like attempting to make crafts most of the time. I have many family and friends who really enjoy all things crafty. I like the finished products of many crafty projects, but I don't particularly like doing them (unless it's a super Saturday and I don't have to think of ideas, I can just copy them while talking to others) I have a goal of making a photobook for every year of Adie's life (and subsequent children) until she's 18. She is 4.5 months from turning 2 and I have made the cover page for the first year of her life (which I only made 2 days ago). Every time I sit down to do it I really dread it. I want it to be all cute and crafty, but I really don't like thinking of ideas to make that happen. And, ultimately, I'd rather use my time reading something about current events or politics (I know, what's wrong with me!). I think it's important for our children to have this kind of personal history about them, so I am trying to force myself to do it, but it really isn't fun for me. Isn't it supposed to be fun? Why can't I just like to be cute and crafy?
~Ok, and along those lines, I wish I had a better eye for fashion / design. I know when I see something I like or think is cute, but for some reason I can't quite get it to come together for me. For instance, we went to the park today and there was this cute mother of two there who was dressed in a super cute, but simple outfit. I know I would just never think to put it together like that, but I liked what I saw. I wish I just had an eye for that sort of thing.
~I wish I was one of those people that everyone was drawn to, you know those people who just have fun, unforgettable personalities. Please don't misunderstand me. I have wonderful friends and I appreciate them accepting and loving me for who I am. However, sometimes I just wish I was one of those people who everyone wants to invite somewhere because they are the life of the party and are so interesting. I have some friends like that and growing up I always wanted to be more like them. I have accepted my role as a nice, dependable person, and I like being that kind of person, but once in a while, I want to stand out from the crowd.
~Finally, I wish I had a more tangible gift, like a prodigious ability for music, athletics, art - something everyone can put their finger on and say, yeah, Sabrina, she does THIS really well. I do realize people who are very talented at these things put in a ton of time and effort to become so good at what they do, but many times, they started out with a little extra something in that particular area to begin with which pushed them to work harder on it. Maybe I should just work on being less lazy and I'd have more ability in those areas too, but I know I'm not the natural athlete my brother is, or the musicians that some of my friends are. They started out with considerably more talent in those areas than I did.
Anyway, it's 4 am and Adie is driving me nuts at this point, so it's time to end. I know my life is good, and I think if I am lucky I may yet get a few hours of sleep. Maybe I'll wake up less covetous and feeling more motivated to be productive. In the mean time, do any of you readers want to share any traits you wish you had? That would make feel better about being so covetous myself ;)
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Adie
Last night Sabrina's grandmother was at our apartment. While she was here, we took a couple of pictures of Adie wearing her glasses. We thought we'd share.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Football
Frustrating.
That's what I'd call BYU's football game tonight. This was by far BYU's worst game of the season in my opinion. Sure, the defense played relatively well through 3 quarters, but were mostly terrible in the 4th. The offense just looked out of sync all night. Way too many dropped passes by Collie and Pitta. Very little blocking at the point of attack for the run game.
A couple more comments about the game.
I felt that the KJZZ commentators were super pro-Aggie tonight. While I realize KJZZ does cover quite a bit of Aggie sports, for some reason I tend to believe that radio commentators can be as biased as they want, but TV announcers should try to be as unbiased as possible. It just seemed like every other sentence was about how great USU was doing and this and that about them. (Maybe that was just my frustration that they were playing relatively well at the end of the game.)
The bye week couldn't have come at a better time for BYU. They were flat and pretty darn awful (at least by their standards). Thank goodness USU is a bad enough team for BYU to have a bad week and still win by 20.
Retrospectively, I wish Bronco would have just let them go for it on 4th down a few more times. Instead he had them kick field goals (1 was blocked, 1 missed). No one can say he tries to run up the score, even when BYU winning by 40 would have made a bigger difference than winning by 20. I expect BYU to drop in the polls this week if people around them win (see USC).
It's funny how when your team is great you expect them to be great every week. I chimped on how BYU was the model of consistency. Every game the same. Every play with maximum effort. They play hard, they hit hard. They don't commit stupid penalties. They tackle in the open field. Well, Utah State played a great game tonight. This was definitely better than their last outing I watched (Utah). But for some reason, BYU won by 20 and I still feel like they lost.
Oh yea, one more thing, who hired these refs? I swear the ref was especially emphatic on announcing the BYU penalties, almost as if he were excited about them.
That's what I'd call BYU's football game tonight. This was by far BYU's worst game of the season in my opinion. Sure, the defense played relatively well through 3 quarters, but were mostly terrible in the 4th. The offense just looked out of sync all night. Way too many dropped passes by Collie and Pitta. Very little blocking at the point of attack for the run game.
A couple more comments about the game.
I felt that the KJZZ commentators were super pro-Aggie tonight. While I realize KJZZ does cover quite a bit of Aggie sports, for some reason I tend to believe that radio commentators can be as biased as they want, but TV announcers should try to be as unbiased as possible. It just seemed like every other sentence was about how great USU was doing and this and that about them. (Maybe that was just my frustration that they were playing relatively well at the end of the game.)
The bye week couldn't have come at a better time for BYU. They were flat and pretty darn awful (at least by their standards). Thank goodness USU is a bad enough team for BYU to have a bad week and still win by 20.
Retrospectively, I wish Bronco would have just let them go for it on 4th down a few more times. Instead he had them kick field goals (1 was blocked, 1 missed). No one can say he tries to run up the score, even when BYU winning by 40 would have made a bigger difference than winning by 20. I expect BYU to drop in the polls this week if people around them win (see USC).
It's funny how when your team is great you expect them to be great every week. I chimped on how BYU was the model of consistency. Every game the same. Every play with maximum effort. They play hard, they hit hard. They don't commit stupid penalties. They tackle in the open field. Well, Utah State played a great game tonight. This was definitely better than their last outing I watched (Utah). But for some reason, BYU won by 20 and I still feel like they lost.
Oh yea, one more thing, who hired these refs? I swear the ref was especially emphatic on announcing the BYU penalties, almost as if he were excited about them.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The Economy
So, I've held off from sticking my nose out too far into the conversations being held on this blog which I contribute to. However, I feel like people should really continue to invest some time into learning more about the economy and why things work the way they do.
A great book that I read, titled Economics in One Lesson, gives some straight forward examples of why so much of the current economic though of our general population is based in fallacy. The gist of the book can be broken down into one sentence: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
I seriously recommend that everyone take a look at it. It's a genuinely straightforward read with examples and it covers things such as inflation, subsidies, and loans/banking. It's only a hundred small pages or so, and can actually be read online at:
http://jim.com/econ/contents.html
A great book that I read, titled Economics in One Lesson, gives some straight forward examples of why so much of the current economic though of our general population is based in fallacy. The gist of the book can be broken down into one sentence: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
I seriously recommend that everyone take a look at it. It's a genuinely straightforward read with examples and it covers things such as inflation, subsidies, and loans/banking. It's only a hundred small pages or so, and can actually be read online at:
http://jim.com/econ/contents.html
Timp Trip
FYI, pictures are up over on my photo blog of my trip up Mt. Timpanogos.
http://b-rett242.blogspot.com/
Enjoy
http://b-rett242.blogspot.com/
Enjoy
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