Weekend notes

All weekends should be this good.
It started on the right note with a condensed version of The Tempest at BYU with Matt and Tricia, followed up by a fun evening at their home. Instead of driving back to Salt Lake late (which I have done many times but prefer not to), I stayed at the family house and had a fun midnight conversation with Dad, which I've done more the last few months than any other time in my life, including when I was a teenager. I went to bed a lot earlier when I was a teenager. Something's wrong here.

Saturday morning was Lyndsey's baby shower in Salt Lake. I'm very excited for Lyndsey to have a baby next month but I'm selfishly sad that I won't get to see her at work any more while she's on maternity leave. Who am I going to joke around with in R&D? Everyone should get along with their coworkers as well as Lyndsey and I get along- J dubbed us the R&D twins a while ago because he never saw us apart. That was mostly because when I was training Lyndsey had to show me everything, but we do enjoy the times when we're in the lab together and we can talk while we work.

Since most of the people at the shower were from the clinical lab and they mostly do fluorescence in situ hybridization, abbreviated FISH, the party had a fish theme which was great. There were big fish drawn on butcher paper up on the walls of the house and Swedish fish to eat and we played the game where you go fishing and get a prize depending on what fish you catch. By far the best baby shower I've been to.

At the shower, Em invited me to go to Epic Summer 2009, a film festival featuring short films that people put together about their epic summers. It was fun to watch- I especially enjoyed a film called "Superfly" which featured a sport where people use windpower from giant parachute-kite devices to get some good speed and serious air on skis. It reminded me of kiteboarding, a similar sport that David introduced me to this summer where the kite is used to power someone on a surfboard (and when I say he introduced me to it, I mean he told me about it, not that I tried it). It was fun, but it also brought slight pangs as I realized that summer is almost over and I don't feel like I did anything epic. But that's not really true- I went to New Zealand and had some very unexpected "adventures" there, I climbed Timpanogos for the first time, and I've had some other adventures that don't really belong on a public blog . . . not the kind I would ever have asked for but I think I've done well with them.

Anyway, today was a great day for reminding me that I love the people in my ward. I'm the chorister in Relief Society, which doesn't give me huge opportunities to meet people through my calling, so I decided a while ago that part of being the chorister is to make people happy while they're singing the hymns. Consequently, I try to smile and make eye contact with as many people as I can while I'm conducting, and it's interesting to me how many people don't ever look up during toe songs. It's also interesting to me how many people look either bored or glum. So I'm hoping that if they happen to look up and see me beaming at them, it will cheer them up and give them reason to think about the words they're singing and realize how powerful the messages in the hymns are. This also works to my advantage because when I meet girls in the ward, they often will say, "oh yeah, I see you leading the music in Relief Society," and it makes me glad that I smile when I'm up there so it gives them a favorable first impression of me. I would love to be known in the ward as the girl who's always smiling.

After church, we had a ward mingle (singles' wards are great) where we were served snow cones and cotton candy. Don't ask me why. I have no idea. It was kind of entertaining- I don't know the last time I had a snow cone. But I did today! So I can check that off my list of things to do for the summer. Kids, summer is winding down and it's both sad and exciting. Change is always sad and exciting. But I'm trying to hard to focus on the exciting aspect of it and let go of the sorrow. What's in the past is done and can't be changed- all we can do is look to the future and use the past as a springboard for a good future. And I think the future will be good.