I spoke too soon...

So my house almost burned down just now. Well, kind of. It could have anyway. Around 9:40 we hear someone knocking on our door. We look around confusedly and I pick up my cell phone just in case we have to call 911. My dad opens the door to some stranger dressed in a target uniform.

"Your tree's on fire!" the man informs us.

"Thanks!" my dad says as he runs out back. The back of our house faces a busy street and gigantic pine trees in enclaves off of the street hang over our backyard and touch our house.

We all follow my dad to the backyard where he hurriedly connects the hose and shouts for the nozzle and a chair. He yells to have someone call 911, which my sister does. Apparently someone had decided to throw their cigarette out the window as they were driving by, and it hit the pile of pine needles and debris at the base of the tree, which then caught fire. There are some other nice people out back beating at the flames trying to put them out. We thank them, and my dad jumps up on a chair and sprays the hose down into the flames.

My family all grabs chairs and peers over the wall to watch my dad at work. After a minute or so of water, the flames subside and the fire truck shows up.

"Thanks for doing out job!" they say. The firefighters dig around the tree to make sure that no more embers are concealed. After they pronounce it safe, my dad turns off the hose, and they leave.

Whew. A close call and an exciting night

A few things:

First: Thanks to bystanders who call 911, help out, and inform others.

Second: Thanks to the wonderful men and women who serve our community as firefighters and put their lives on the line for others.

Third: I have an amazing dad who doesn't loose his calm and knows what to do in the face of an emergency.

Fourth: We were really blessed- if it had been windy so flames spread faster, daytime so you couldn't see them, or later at night with no one driving by, our house could definitely have caught fire.

Fifth: Please don't throw cigarettes out the window. Put them out and dispose of them properly.

Sixth: Don't blog about how everything's good in your neighborhood, because you never know what might happen next.

Everything's good in the neighborhood

Today was a lovely, bright Sunday. There are no more cop cars or helicopters, which is a good start. There hasn't been anything in the news about the incident last week, which I'm definitely happy about because that means that nothing major happened.

My living room is still stacked with boxes that are half emptied, and I've done about a dozen loads of laundry since I've gotten home. I've got about 3 more to go, and then laundry freedom! Well, for a week. Slowly, but surely I'm getting settled in.

spell-check

So my sister was venting to me:



Her: "The class of 2011 is the dumbest class ever! Guess what they did for their spirit week. They filled the halls with 'sophomores' signs. Spelled "S O P H O M O R E S". Can you believe that? Who's that dumb? Seriously!"



Me: "How do you spell sophomores?"



Her: "'S O P H M O R E S' of course!"



Me: "Check this out." (pointing to a google spell-check)



Her: "Oh."



Me: "I'm totally blogging about this."

Manhunt continued

So updates on the manhunt mentioned earlier:

My sister (the same one who raced an ambulance home earlier so she wouldn't have to wait for it) just came back with updates. She walked over to the scene in flip-flops and pajamas and talked to the news crew. Apparently there's a man with a gun in a house surrounded by SWAT etc.

I swear I don't live in the ghetto.

Also, my sister mentioned that she's seen more of our neighbors outside with their kids today than ever before. Apparently they were keeping their children sheltered in the backyard until the gunman came out.

Little brothers can save the world!

I think my brother's hilarious. This is what was on the computer when I went on to check my email:

Turning the TV off
Little Tommie was up all last night watching the Late Late Show. That next morning Tommie had a test and flunked. TV is addictive this has happened to poor Tommie. If TV wasn’t on Tommie wouldn’t have flunked that test and many other things would have gone better, such as he wouldn’t have wasted that electricity.
Rather than sleeping, people across America stay up all night watching TV comedies. By doing this people decrease productivity and increase unhealthiness. By cutting the number of hours TV is broadcasted, people would have better jobs grades and lives.
People claim that they need TV at night for the news because there at their jobs when the news is on. The solution to this problem is simple, go online and then read the news on the latest topics faster then they say on TV and on there are no commercials.
By doing this people would save electricity two ways. One, the people watching the TV would be asleep, not using the TV antenna and the TV itself. The companies who broadcast and receive television signals would not be broadcasting. This is a good way to end climate change.
This is a good way to start building a healthier and overall better America. Now let’s reverse the Tommie situation and stop watching TV at night to save America and the world.

I'm definitely persuaded. Let's save America and the world everyone!

Party... Chemistry style

Some of my chem friends decided to get together to watch a goofy movie after our finals ended. I was looking forward to some nice relaxing chill time. It was definitely fun and entertaining (my friends even more than the movie- one knew all the words and two sang along sometimes), but not quite as relaxing as I had expected. People commented on the laws of buoyancy violated in the river-floating scene, debated over whether the gloves the characters wore were latex or nitrile, and disputed the presence of carbonyl peaks in the clouds. Call me a slacker, but I'm totally okay with not mentioning chemistry related topics while watching a mindless movie after finals.

Actually, I lied. That was probably my favorite part: the nerdy jokes. That's why I love those people- their simultaneous coolness and nerdyness and total self-acceptance. While watching that movie in a basement classroom of the chemistry building, I realized I'm definitely going to miss them this summer- nitrile gloves and all.

welcome back to vegas, with a bang

Provo this morning before I left: (77 degrees)

It was a perfectly warm and sunny spring day. The birds were warbling away among the leafy green trees dotted with flowers. As I walked down the sidewalks lined with freshly mowed grass, I passed smiling students excited to graduate in a few hours. The only flashing lights I saw were the tow trucks looking out for unsuspecting parents picking up their children.

....6 hour drive through the dusty, windy desert......

Vegas when I got home: (96 degrees)

As my family was finishing up dinner, we heard a slew of sirens rush past the back of our house. We ran out back to see a police helicopter circling our neighborhood My dad (who had just left) called the house and told us a cop car had just turned onto our street. We retreated back inside. My brother grabbed his BB gun and took the dog out front. "Don't go outside with that BB gun while that police helicopter's out there!" my mom shouted at him. My brother came back inside (unscathed) and we've all returned to life as normal while listening to the helicopter and cars chase some villan in our neighborhood.

That's a Vegas "Welcome Home!" all right

Finals

Finals are upon us as of tomorrow. Wow.

My roommates and I are all coping with it in different ways. Two of my roommates who have 7 am finals are studying hard trying to cram the last bits of information in before it's too late. Another roommate of mine has been asleep for well over an hour. I'm procrastinating and writing a blog.

I guess we all deal with stress differently...

Eating vs Blogging

So Anthony told me that eating was optional and blogging was essential. That was the general idea of his argument to try to get me to write a blog post after I told him I was too busy with doing things essential to life, like eating. Well, I disagree with Anthony's conclusion; I think that eating is essential and blogging is not. I decided to research some stuff to prove him wrong.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-a-person-sur

I came to these conclusions:
- If I went on a hunger strike with water allowed, I could probably live about 5 weeks.
- If I were trapped on a desert island with neither food nor water, I would probably last 1 day consciously, because I would go to sleep and not remember the rest.
- I would not actually ever give up food because I love it too much. So, unless I'm ever forced I guess I'll never know how long I could actually survive without food. I think I'm quite all right with that.
- If I weren't able to blog for the rest of my life, I would still have a happy and successful existence.
- Blogging and eating are not mutually exclusive activities, so I decided to make both Anthony and myself happy and write this post while eating a moist peace of carrot cake from Kneaders.

So I figured I'd give this whole thing a try. Now isn't that an exciting first blog post!