Mrs. Rich

A little over a week ago I took a Friday off and was able to go in and see Sarita's classroom. Here's a picture of her.

A Few More Songs

I like to listen to Pandora.com at work sometimes when there are less analytical things to be done. I've found a few songs that I enjoy from this station and thought I'd list them with links to YouTube:

1- The Sounds: Painted By Numbers
2- Tegan and Sara: Back In Your Head
3- Metric: The Police and the Private
4- Peter Bjorn and John: The Young Folks
5- The Sounds: Dance With Me
6- Tegan and Sara: Call It Off
7- The Bravery: No Brakes
8- The Killers: Spaceman
9- Teddybears: Ahead of My Time

As A Man Thinketh

"A noble and Godlike character is not a thing of favour or chance, but is the natural result of continued effort in right thinking, the effect of long-cherished association with Godlike thoughts. An ignoble and bestial character, by the same process, is the result of the continued harbouring of grovelling thoughts." - James Allen in As A Man Thinketh

As A Man Thinketh is a wonderful short treatise on how our thoughts affect our lives. I found a free ebook copy online here. It is a quick read and definitely worth the time.

Obama's 95 % Illusion

Not that I think McCain's plans are all that great, but here is a great article explaining how Obama's "tax cuts" are going to work.
Obama's 95% Illusion

Here's another article that is also an interesting review of a book that came out recently. I just hope that voters have rational expectations about the candidates in the upcoming general election.
Here's looking at you, kid

Jesse's Top Ten Songs of the Moment

I thought maybe I'd just list some of the songs that I've found recently that I enjoy.

1. Human - The Killers
2. 155 - +44
3. Above and Below - The Bravery
4. An End Has a Start - Editors
5. Eyes - Rogue Wave
6. Bruises - Chairlift
7. Lazy Eye - Silversun Pickups
8. The Funeral - Band of Horses
9. Kids - MGMT
10. Whatever You Like - Weird Al

I don't really like Weird Al, but considering the economy right now I thought the song listed was pretty good.

Build a Yummy Cake

Here is a tasty cake recipe that has been requested:

1 box Devil's Food Cake mix
1 small box instant chocolate pudding
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 cup water
1 cup sour cream

optional:
2 cups Crisco
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 cups chocolate chips

Mix dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix and cook according to cake box instructions.

Futon!

So quite a while ago I thought that it would be a good idea to buy a futon off of Craig's List. It was pretty nice but very light colored and I decided that it needed refinishing. It was quite tedious, but with Sarita's help I stripped it and then started to restain it. The whole project took a couple of months, and yes that is the futon being stained in our kitchen. Sarita was very patient with letting me use the bulk of the floor space in the kitchen for so long. Here are some pictures.

CA and AK trip

We recently went on a two week trip that included driving down to Rancho Cucamonga, CA and then flying up to Kotzebue, AK. It was a blast. Here are a few pictures from our trip.

(Jesse out in the tundra with Kotz in the background)

(Jesse and Sarita at the beach)

(Shuster family picture)

(Shuster family picture)

(Sarita on the four wheeler)

(Jesse operating heavy machinery)

(Sarita at the beach)

(Jesse with a tree)

(Sidenote: a few years ago we were playing Trivial Pursuit and one of the questions was how many trees are in the Kotzebue National Forest. The answer was 1. We saw 2, and this was one of them.)

(Jesse at beach fire)

(Sarita and Willaby at beach fire)

(Willaby roasting marshmallows)

(Sarita flying a kite)

Father's Day

So I'm not a father yet but Sarita built me a cake for Father's Day anyway. It was absolutely delicious.

Joey and Katie's Wedding

A lot of people took a lot of photos at Joey and Katie's wedding back in May but here are a few pictures that we got that I thought we good.

BYU Graduation

I know I should have posted these a couple of months ago, but here are some pictures from Sarita's graduation. She graduated with Honors with a degree in English Teaching. Since graduation she has accepted a position teaching 7th grade at Elk Ridge Middle School and now she is studying for the GRE which she has signed up to take August 14th.

Hooray for Hulu

Before the writers strike in Hollywood, Sarita and I were getting into Season 4 of The Office. Since the strike, however, we've needed to get caught up on a few episodes that we missed to get back into things. The two things I don't enjoy about watching television shows is that you have to plan on being available at a specific time to watch the new episodes and there are way too many commercials.

Well, for those of you who would prefer to watch shows with fewer commercials and whenever and wherever you want, there is a fairly new web site called hulu. It was started as a joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal and has been gaining momentum picking up content to more shows as well as movies. By visiting this site Sarita and I have been able to catch up on the TV shows that we've missed, with limited commercials, and we might not even go back to watching things on TV.

Park Visit

Sarita and I recently went to visit a little private park around the corner from our house where they have ducks, geese, and goats. My favorite was this tiny black and white goat. It was pretty cute. I think it would be fun to someday have a house with enough land to have some animals.

New Paint and Decorations

I finally got around to hanging our new mirror and pictures up in our family room and painted our kitchen green. It might seem like a risky color scheme to have a red living room with a green kitchen but it looks fantastic I think. I would have put up more pictures of the kitchen, but you can hardly even tell it is green.

My Mini City

I'll try to post something more substantial soon I promise (we're painting the kitchen green and have finished decorating the living room so I'll have to post pictures.

In the meantime, come visit my mini city of Sarjenia. The site is done by some French company and for each unique visit per day the population increases by one and you can see the city be built. Absolutely no strategy and pretty pointless but entertaining to some degree nonetheless.

Running

Sarita and I have decided to participate again this year in the Wasatch Back Relay (more information here). To sum it up, it is a tremendously long relay race with 12 people on a team. You each run 3 legs of the race at about 6 miles a leg on average. It's not for a while but we'll put pictures up after we run. Last year it took us around 28 hours or so to finish.

Last year I distinctly remember never wanting to run the Wasatch Back again, and here we are. I've already started training though and my runs are much longer than they were last year. Sarita has been pretty busy getting ready to defend her honors thesis on Monday so she hasn't been running with me yet but I'm sure I'll talk her into going with me soon.

I've been curious about how far I've actually been running so I created account at http://www.mapmyrun.com/. I guess I've been running about 4 miles and have been going a few times a week so I think I'll be ready by the time the relay comes.

Free Credit Scores!

So every year you can get up to three free credit reports per person (from the three main reporting agencies), but these do not actually give you your score. Now there is a site that is in beta mode that allows you to track the actual score daily. I've heard good reviews and it seems pretty accurate. As always, I would suggest extreme caution with divulging personal information, especially critical information such as social security numbers, but the site is legit and should be safeguarded as well as any of your banking information. (You do have to give your ssn so that they can track your credit.) The company is called Credit Karma. Here is the link:

https://www.creditkarma.com/