Sé que Soy Hombre Visionario

Hey everyone. I hope you all are doing fantastic. Sorry I don't call. Mer just got a call yesterday from a friend she hasn't spoken to in a while. There's always that guilty feeling you feel when you're the friend being called. Like, "why didn't I care to call during all this time?" Anyways, so that's why I haven't called you - to save you from the guilt. You're welcome.

The spring quarter ended last week. I had two finals and a paper due. Usually people hate having finals on Friday, but I appreciated the extra time to study and work on the paper. It was for the LGBT Literature and Media class (not the math class, surprisingly). I wrote about how a poem we read in class described the experiences of many during the AIDS crisis. It was sad, but also surprising that I hadn't really heard about it until this class. I guess it was at its worst around the early '90s or something, so I would have been really young (I was born the same year as Taylor Swift). I'm glad I survived that class with a B. The class was insightful in many, too many, ways.

I got A's in my other two classes though. It seems like I got through the two weeder classes and will probably be relaxing up a bit on my grades from here on out. Besides being Mer's movie-buddy, I'll have several extracurricular things going on.

1. I'll still be in SAMPE. In fact, next year I'll be the vice president working with my friend, Sam, who is the president.
2. Sam and I are also planning on participating in CPSS, which stands for Cal Poly Space Systems. They're basically Cal Poly's rocketry club.
3. Also with Sam (you'll think we were dating by this point), I'll be working on what I call the Edwina Project. Edwina is the pet name that Mer's given to my Arduino. Basically, the project is a personal project, the goal of which is to launch a rocket with electrical components for data acquisition and possibly other things (such as thrust vectoring, controlled recovery, remote ignition, etc.). It should be fun. I've been thinking about starting a new blog to follow us through the project.

You may remember how last time I mentioned a competition in May. Me and my partner, Anthony, did not place. We finished making the tooling for the project, which was awesome, but didn't have a lot of time afterwards for testing. The first bridge we made came out a little dry (meaning we didn't add enough resin), and we didn't have enough time nor material to make another one. I don't think the resin was the problem, however. It was the air bladder. We had time to finish the aluminum mold, but for next year we need to have an air bladder made to fit the bridge. We tried using a taped piece of vacuum bag material but we couldn't get it past 30 psi without leaks. The bridge broke at 5700 lbs or something.

So this summer, I didn't get any kind of job. I will probably go into Mer's work next week. The call center always hires people, and they have a pretty quick turnover since everyone hates calling people all day to sell stuff. I'm pretty sure I'd hate it, but we could definitely use the money. I'll only do it part time though. Partly for my sanity, but I'm also working on a few projects. CPSS isn't doing anything over the summer, but the Formula SAE team is doing some stuff, so I'll probably work with them to get some experience. I don't know if I'll continue with them into the fall, though. I need to learn more about how to use my Arduino (it's basically a mini computer for controlling things). I also wanted to learn another programming language besides Arduino, probably C++. I wanted to do some more stuff in MATLAB as well, such as finish a program I've been working on that makes a shopping list for you after you select from your list of recipes which ones you're shopping for. That would help us with meal planning because I hate hate hate hate having to look through each cookbook to see how many onions or peppers or whatever I need to buy.

Wife and husband, fresh out of the temple

What else is going on? Since I have more free time without school (obviously), I've been able to start reading the Book of Mormon in the mornings again. Mer and I are in the Old Testament in our reading. We will be there for a very very very long time, so the Book of Mormon is nice. This morning I read the chapters right after Lehi's son's obtain the plates of brass. I was reminded of how a mission companion of mine once humorously interpreted the dialogue of Lehi and Sariah. When she calls him out on being a visionary man, he responds saying "I know that I am a visionary man," then proceeds to tell her what would have happened had he not been. It's an interpretation people might be able to relate to.

Two years later and we're still eating cake

On a more serious note, I found myself relating to Lehi, possibly for the first time. He and I are both husbands. The trek out into the wilderness must have been hard to do. Mer and I haven't even been camping together with our six person tent and queen-sized air mattress. I guess everyone has their unique challenges. For Lehi, he had this great work to do. His marriage was probably a source of joy for him and helped support him as a prophet. However, I don't think that the proportion of Nephi's writings which describe Lehi as a spouse are representative of his dedication to that role which we are both called to fulfill. I mean to say that this wasn't the one and only time he needed to support his wife. But unlike what would happen in today's sitcom I don't see him responding to Sariah with a witty comeback. I see him with a comforting arm around her while he attempts to assure her that everything will end up alright, that God will protect their children, and that beyond the current wilderness there is a promised land.

Tall brothers I could never measure up to (I'm 5' 10")

Mer and I don't have any deserts or oceans to cross, but we are having our own trials. Thankfully, our marriage itself hasn't been one of them. Some A lot of people do mention, even publicly, that their marriage is hard even before children. Of course, we don't have children yet, though that itself has been a challenge. I'd like to blame part of our marital bliss on lessons learned from my parents' marriage, but it's at least 100% due to Mer. She's such a great example of how families should love each other, and how to be cute. My wonderful wife's only desire after a long and hard day at work is to spend time with me. Sometimes I'm so foolish that all I can seem to think about is all the things that need to get done. Merilee, you are my media naranja, eres un cacho de pan, you are so good to me. It's true what they say that we cannot treat our wives good enough.

Like I said at the top, I'm sorry for not calling anyone. I'm trying to pray for more people. Part of that is because I've noticed differences as more people have been praying for us. However, it's hard to know who to pray for since we don't talk. I'm going to start calling people, but in the meantime please include us in your prayers, and give me a call! That way you won't feel guilty when I call you.

Peace (which I heard means peace)