Well, I know I have been horrible at posting on here (its been two months and nine days). I'm not entirely sure anyone reads it besides my wife, but hey, its like a journal I suppose.
So, this post goes out to possibly my only blog follower: Mrs. Aimee Sharon Hemmelgarn Smith.
I don't think I tell Aimee enough how awesome she is. Right now it is one thirty in the morning and she is at work selling baby clothes to crazy people so I get a minute to talk about her.
First of all, she is a teacher. Not just any teacher, mind you, but an elementary school teacher, a.k.a. saint. I was reading her blog and I watched the video on there and couldn't help but think how true that is. I don't know how Aimee has the patience to be with dozens of eight year olds for hours at a time. I get tired of a few minutes with kids, but she loves it. For this reason I am convinced that my wife will be the all time greatest mother. I have a lot to learn from her in the parenting department, I'm sure.
Secondly, I work until eleven o'clock every night followed by a forty minute drive home. I obviously get home quite late. However, Aimee has to get up at near the butt-crack of dawn to go inspire young minds (see above paragraph). Even though she knows she is missing out on one of her favorite things: sleep, she still will stay awake with me and listen to me whine about my pathetic job and how anal I am about school. I don't think anyone has been so willing to sacrifice their sleep just to hang out with me. (My mom always would wait up for me and we would talk when I got home, but I think she would have rather been sleeping.) So, night upon night she gets something like 5 hours and change of sleep and its all my fault.
Thirdly, I'm neurotic. I change my mind pretty much every fifteen seconds. I am not talking about with small decisions like what flavor of ice cream to order, either. I am talking about what I am going to do with my life and where in the world I am going to drag our little family. In fact, Aimee said she would be willing to go to Fairbanks, Alaska with me to graduate school where the average daytime high in January is -2 degrees Fahrenheit. Simply put, Aimee is from Arizona and that she would say something like that means a lot to me. Since we were married I have probably changed my mind a dozen times. For now, I think I'm pretty sure about what's going on, but we'll see.
This certainly is not a comprehensive list and I could probably go on and on and on and on and on. For those of you who know Aimee like I do, you will agree that she is awesome.
Beaner, I love you and thank you for everything!
So, I'm hometeaching for the first time in the new ward, and after we're done, we are making the rounds about the neighborhood. Apparently my companion is quite the social butterfly. We stopped at a neighbors house and they start talking about this triathlon they are doing the next weekend. So, my interest is peaked and I decide, what the heck, I can do it. So, last minute registrations and goggle buying and here we go.
I think it is a bit of an understatement to say I was kind of nervous. The only training I had was on my bike, so I was not worried about the bike part. I hadn't been in a pool for months and none of that was lap swimming.
They call this one a beginner triathlon. It's in reverse order and its a one and a half mile run, 10 k bike ride and 200 yard swim. I ran the mile and a half one time before the actual race. Bro. Allen let me run with him during the race, so I felt like I had someone to pace myself off of. My home teaching companion was gone. We didn't see him the rest of the race.
I felt pretty good when I had actually finished the run and never had to walk. I was about middle of the pack so not bad. I was looking forward to the bike section the most because I knew it would be my best part. I got a great start. The entire 6.2 miles, I only got passed twice, but passed a lot of other people. The first person to pass me was an old man, which is a bit of a morale killer, but he obviously knew what he was doing because he didn't just pass me, he blew by me. The next time I got passed was a couple of girls. I tried not to focus on them and just kept peddling the same speed. They only got about 10 feet in front of me then I caught back up. You can see them a ways behind me in the next picture.
I finished the bike with flying colors and on to the drowning.
Like I mentioned, I haven't been in a pool much. I dove in and did about 3 strokes of freestyle and thought I was going to die. I promptly started into the breaststroke. The rest of the 8 laps were spent flopping back and forth from breaststroke to some weird hybrid craziness on my back because I couldn't breathe.
Luckily, I didn't drown. I did have to stop swimming and ask Aimee if I had done enough laps cause I apparently forgot mid swim. 
This picture is Aimee's favorite. She already has it on her blog, but I figured what the hey.
After the race, I'm watching the board and I'm waiting and waiting and I never see my name go up. Finally It comes up and it says I'm listed 15 out of 18. I was a bit bummed, but I figured I hadn't done any training so it's not all bad. After the shindig, I went to look at the board and they had put my name in the wrong place. I actually finished 8 out of 18 in my age group and 18th overall. I was pretty proud of myself.
Of course I didn't win anything in the drawing because no one in my family can possibly win at drawings unless it is my dad and that is a guaranteed grand prize. But, I'm glad I didn't drown and now I look forward to actually training and doing another one.
Wow, where to start. This has been a whirlwind summer of academic overwhelming. The end of this summer officially marks 5 semesters of non-stop class-taking. That equals almost two years with almost no time off. I feel that next summer will be reserved for avoiding classes at all costs.
I am proud to say, however, that I survived Organic Chemistry II. I actually did quite a bit better than I expected.
I also was accepted into the Bioscience Ungergraduate Research Program which should be an adventure in and of itself. I'm sure there will be more about that in the future.
Right now I have a week off until fall semester starts, but during that week I am writing lab reports from the last two weeks. I am up to about 35 pages so far and just a couple more to go. Not too shabby, eh?
This summer has also been a re-awakening of sorts as to what I want to do with my life. After lab one day I was standing around talking to Dr. Gray and a few classmates and we were discussing all of the hoops one has to jump through to get into medical school. Now, for those of you who don't remember (or didn't know in the first place), after much internal struggle I had finally made up my mind that I actually didn't want to go to medical school and wanted to get a Ph.D. in biology instead. Well, all the talk about med school after class made me second guess my previous decision and I began to panic. This was not just a little panic either. I mean I was on the verge of breakdown.
So, after class I pulled out my computer and began looking at different medical schools and comparing them to graduate schools and trying to figure out what my life had in store for me. I said some little prayers to see if I could get a hold of myself. Well, my prayers were answered and I decided that I had, in fact, made the right decision to pursue the degree in biology. Crisis averted.
Now I started panicking because I really don't have much time to get ready to start taking GREs and applying to different schools so I set out to find my schools of choice. And, after much deliberation, I found my dream school.
You may recognize this little building from a film called "Good Will Hunting." If not, it is the dome of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm not entirely sure if this little dream is realistic, but I'm going to try anyway. My GPA is good enough, so we'll see if they like me. Of course there are some other little schools I would like to apply for such as Harvard, Yale, UC San Diego, among others, but there's always a preference, right?
So, the next year will be devoted to obsessing over a little school called MIT and probably trying to kiss up to whoever I can to try to make it happen. Wish me luck!
On another note: I saw the Declaration of Independence this weekend and it was awesome.
This morning bright and early we got up to go for a ride. Aimee hasn't been on a bike since she "had a bad experience" when she was 14. I'm super proud of her though. Last night she and I rode about seven miles and today the group did eleven. So 18 miles in less than 24 hours. Nice job Beaner!
There were some funny things of course. Aimee's bike was way too big so she couldn't touch the ground. Thomas (on the very left of the picture) stopped without taking his foot out of the clip and fell right over. I almost did the same thing and almost took Aimee down with me but luckily I got my foot out just in the nick of time.
After the eleven miles, Jory, Steve and I felt like we could do a bit more. We took off up around the new daybreak temple. We had a couple of good climbs and an awesome downhill. A mini-van with a poodle in the front seat almost turned right into us. Steve lost his hex wrenches out of his saddle bad and they survived after being run over several times. But after all was said and done the three of us did almost 23 miles today.
It was a great morning.
So now, for at least a moment, I am on the top of Jess's list. Take that.
So this weekend, we took what could possibly be our last drive to Boise to visit the Hemmelgarns. For those who didn't know, they are moving back to Utah. It is about time, I say. So, we took some pictures of the mother's day stuff, some family pics, and some of the memorable things about the drive to Boise that we have taken countless times.
This is classic Lydia.
When you can get a picture of Erin not scowling, you need to take advantage of the opportunity.
Shanna looks amazing. This is one of my favorites from the trip.
HAMMETT!!!
This is my beautiful wife Aimee enjoying the ride home. Probably singing to Queen and the Eagles. Love it.
I'm going to miss those trips to Boise, but Hemmelgarns, welcome back to Utah.
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