Why Isn't My Wife Bionic?

Yesterday, Robyn had Lasik surgery.  If you are unfamiliar with the procedure, what they actually do is they cut a flap of your eye and then fold that flap out of the way while a laser cuts off little bits of your cornea.  The intent is to reshape the cornea so that it will better focus light on the retina.  When this is achieved vision improves.  The whole concept is really quite miraculous.  They can actually restore a person's vision.  Robyn has already noticed that her vision is better than what it was before even when she was wearing her glasses.

There is only one problem with this whole process.  It sounds really gross.  I'm very glad that I was born with excellent vision because I'm not sure I could go through with it.  You actually lay there wide awake while they prop open your eyelids and cut away a flap of your eye.  I admire Robyn for going through with it.  The only way my mind can cope with the fact that they cut open her eye is to pretend that her eye is just some sort of mechanical device that needed an upgrade.  I have no problem imagining them just doing a routine upgrade on some optical equipment.  But if that's all they are doing, I think we should have splurged to get some fancier equipment.  I mean it's really cool that she can see, but wouldn't it be cool if she could shoot lasers out of her eyes like Superman?  I mean if they couldn't do destructive lasers they could have at least given her a laser pointer like Locutus of Borg.

They could have given her X-Ray vision or the ability to see infrared.  Maybe night vision or even just having her eyes glow at night.

Do you remember after Spiderman was bitten by the radioactive spider?  The next morning he woke up and noticed his vision had been corrected. (By the way, that's a way easier strategy than having your eye cut open.  I'll take radioactive spider over surgery any day.)  He tried putting his glasses on and noticed that now his glasses made his vision worse.  Robyn had a similar experience.  She put on her glasses and noticed that now that her vision is normal her glasses make her see funky.  So with Spiderman that was the extent of the improvement to his eyes, he didn't get laser eyes or X-Ray vision but at least he got other cool powers like spidey sense and the ability to fling webs.  Robyn got no additional powers.

There is one additional thing Robyn got.  Since they wanted her eyes to be protected, they gave her some super cool glasses to wear while she's sleeping so that nothing accidentally touches her eyes.

I'm pretty sure that looking that awesome is a super power.

Baby Steps

As most of you know, Robyn and I have not yet replicated ourselves in the form of a small child.  I feel that making people is a large responsibility.  I felt that we should take baby steps.  (This can be interpreted as small steps like a baby takes, or as steps towards a baby.  Because of my kindness I will allow you to choose which way you take it.)  My first idea was that we should get a puppy.  If the dog lives, there's a good chance a human could survive with us.  Robyn didn't like the puppy idea.  She says they breathe funny.  (I suppose because they pant.  But I think there are plenty of things that breathe more funny than dogs.  Fish, for example, or lobsters, or crocodiles, with their noses just barely sticking out of the water.  What about  mermaids, they don't have gills but still breathe underwater, what is that about?)

So we've come up with some excellent baby steps.  First of all, we've planted a garden.  We weed it, we dig about it, we dung it.  What more could we have done for our garden?  The garden is surviving quite well.  We have such glorious things as cilantro and corn (pictured below) as well as squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, basil, watermelon and other glorious things.

After finding some success with our garden. We decided to expand our horizons. Since Robyn doesn't like mammals, we decided that insects were the way to go. These are our little guys.

When they grow up they will be painted lady butterflies. They've survived so far. If they survive to adulthood I think that will be pretty good evidence that a human could survive with us.

But the most important baby step is kind of a big deal. We've been trying to keep an actual human alive. Of course, we haven't fully adopted him, but we invite Jared William over for frequent dinner appointments. The picture below is of him when he was a child. It is designed to fool you into thinking that we are caring for a child rather than inviting an adult over for dinner. Please be fooled.

P.S. Isn't he precious?

The Rest of the World

The farthest I have ever been out of the United States is a few miles beyond the Canadian border.  It was on a family trip where we went to Niagara Falls and then crossed the border and had dinner at a restaurant in Canada.  I wouldn't have known we were in another country except that there were signs that told us so.  It's not like the culture was different or there was a different language or anything.

So needless to say, I have very limited experience with other cultures.  That is why Robyn and I have been planning a trip to Europe this summer.  We are going to visit Germany, France and Switzerland.  We've been planning it for a few months but this past week we got our passports in the mail so we are totally legal now.

When Robyn started listing things she wanted to see they included The Louvre, The Musee d'orsay and Sainte-Chapelle among other things.  Basically, Robyn wanted to experience much of the culture.  When I started listing things I wanted to experience I started with crepes, bratwurst, Döner and chocolate.  As you can see, I mostly want to eat awesome food.  I later added other things to my list, these include:
1. The Catacombs under Paris, where I can pretend to battle the undead. (Unless it turns out the dead are rising, in which case I will actually battle the undead.)
2. The castles of Germany and France where I can pretend to defend from orcs.  (Again, unless orcs show up, in which case I will actually dominate orcs)
3. The cathedral of Notre Dame where I can pretend to be a hunchback (unless I actually grow a big lump in my back, you get the idea)

So, we've discovered that Robyn wants to experience culture and I want to eat good food and pretend I'm in a novel or video game.  But I have been working on my French.  I've memorized a very important phrase, "Je voudrais un carafe d'eau." which means, "I want a pitcher of water."  One of my friends that has been to Paris many times tells me that that phrase will save me hundreds of dollars at restaurants, because if you just ask for a glass of water they will charge you for it, but they won't for a pitcher.  He says if I don't use that phrase I should probably take up drinking alcohol because wine is cheaper than water.

My german isn't so good though, I told Robyn she was in charge of German.  The only German phrase I know is, "weggehst kleinen hund und halt deinen mund."  I only know this because when my mom was learning German she read a book about a dog that wouldn't go away.  All the characters kept saying, "weggehst kleinen hund und halt deinen mund." which means, "go away little dog and shut your mouth."  Robyn told me I'm not allowed to say that to anyone except for small dogs that are loud.

As you can see, my knowledge of other cultures is very poor.  That's why we're taking a great journey to see some of the rest of the world.  But don't worry, I'll make sure we eat some good food.

Sunbeams Strike Again

Today was an important day in history.  You see, Robyn is in charge of girl's camp for the Young Women in our ward, so she hasn't been teaching the sunbeams with me because she's been involved with planning girl's camp.  Girl's camp will be this week so starting next week I will have Robyn back.  She's much better with them anyway, so it will be good.  For my final time without Robyn I had Cameron come be my teaching partner because he is great.

The children were particularly amusing today.  During singing time, which is the time when the sunbeams sit there and find anything to do besides sing, one of the little boys put his hand on my stomach and said, "You're fat."  I did my best to look offended but one of the other boys saw his hand on my stomach and decided he wanted to rub my belly.  So he gets up from his chair and comes over to rub my belly.  I thought it was hilarious, and this is why I am not a good primary teacher.  My first instinct is to laugh rather than tell them they need to stay in their chairs.

One of the little boys has a "future missionary" tag that he wears every week.  I asked him if he was going to be a missionary someday.  He said, "No, I don't like missionaries."  I told him I was a missionary once and he said, "I changed my mind.  I want to be a missionary.  I like missionaries."  I hope this means that he thinks I'm cool enough that if  I was a missionary once then they must be cool.  More likely, he just didn't want to offend me.

Another time, one of the children pointed to my mole and asked why I had a ball on my face. I told him it makes me pretty, because all the big supermodels have moles. He looked at me with a look of disdain, as if to say, "You really don't know what you're talking about."

The best scenario of all probably won't be funny to read.  I wish I had a picture.  We were learning about feelings today.  I had the kids show me what they would look like if they were happy, or mad, or sad.  At one point, I asked a kid to show us what he would look like if he was in love.  He got a far off look in his eye and a crazy grin.  I'm pretty sure he must have been in love at some point.  He captured it perfectly.  These kids know more than they let on.

Hardcore, Again I Say Hardcore

This weekend we took a trip that gave a new meaning to the word hardcore. 

Entry: hardcore
Function: adjective
Usage: "You're not hardcore unless you live hardcore."
Definition:  Kind of like what hardcore used to mean, only more so.

As you can see, there is a new meaning to the word hardcore.  But you might be wondering how the word came to mean something even more hardcore than it used to.  Well, let me explain.

We took a trip on Friday and Saturday to Arches National Park.  We left Friday afternoon and returned a little over 24 hours later.  In those 24 hours we packed in so much stuff that the very meaning of hardcore was not able to describe what we did, so it had to expand.  In those 24 hours there were about 8 hours of driving, 8 hours of hiking, 3 hours of sleeping and the rest of the time was divided between eating, using the restroom, hunting for a campsite, watching Jared and Emily fail at communicating, learning about cryptobiotic crust and considering the impact of silence.

We started with a midnight hike to Delicate Arch.  I've done this multiple times before, but this time was the most amazing.  The moon was so bright, and the arch was absolutely beautiful.   Robyn's photography skills captured the arch very well.

The next day, after getting to camp at about 3 AM we still wanted to get an early start (because the number of passes to the fiery furnace is limited) so we were at the visitor's center at 7:30 AM.  We ventured into the depths of the fiery furnace where we discovered that Robyn and I were the cutest couple.

But Jared and I were a close second.

We then ate lunch and again ventured out on another hike to landscape arch.

It was amazing, but by that point, the hardcore nature of our trip was catching up to me.  Having hiked twice as many hours as I slept, I was about to die.  I felt like Frodo and Sam as they crawled to the top of Mount Doom.  I almost crawled back to the car.  Luckily, I was not accosted by Smeagol or any equivalent enemy.  I can just imagine how difficult it must be to have your finger bitten off after a journey like that.

Anyway, I made it to the car.  I sat down and within minutes drifted off to sleep as we began the journey home.  My dreams reflected the fun that we had.  I was with great people.  I had seen amazing beauty in nature.  It was truly hardcore.  But I guess it's true what they say (and by they I mean Jack Black), you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore, and the journey of the arches was way hardcore.

The Ten Days of Jeff

Everyone is familiar with the twelve days of Christmas. It's the epic story of someone's true love who decided that Christmas was much too awesome to be contained in one day. They then proceeded to spend 12 days giving gifts that consisted primarily of birds and indentured servants.

The ten days of Jeff are similar in the following ways:
1. They were organized by my true love
2. My birthday, like Christmas, is too epic, it can not be contained. So it spills over into 10 days

The ten days of Jeff are different in the following ways:
1. My true love gave me zero birds
2. My true love gave me zero indentured servants (lords a leaping, drummers drumming, etc.)
3. It only lasted 10 days. She said that's because it is 2010. I'm excited for 2040 when we can have the 40 days and 40 nights of Jeff.

It was a fabulous experience. My true love made me feel very special. The best part is that all of the things she did were much more awesome than what the receiver of the 12 days of Christmas got. The gifts in the 12 days of Christmas were:
12 partridges in 12 pear trees
22 turtle doves
30 french hens
36 calling birds
40 golden rings
42 geese a laying
42 swans a swimming
40 maids a milking
36 ladies dancing
30 lords a leaping
22 pipers piping
12 drummers drumming
 
I don't know where I'd put all those birds, and I really don't know where I'd put all those people.  Here is what I received (or will receive, because some of these are still in the future) in the 10 days of Jeff (these were not all from my true love, family and friends helped too.  But my true love was the main orchestrator):
7 new books
3 new DVDs
1 jug of chocolate milk
6 reeses peanut butter cups
1 pack of reeses cookies
7 home cooked meals
3 meals at restaurants
2 cakes
4 cupcakes (thanks Kayli)
1 plate of cookies (thanks Cameron)
1 trip to the aquarium in SLC
1 trip to Moab (thanks Jared W)
1 blog post tribute to me
 
As you can see, my true love made the Ten days of Jeff truly glorious.  She's setting quite a precident.  I hope I can make the ten days of Robyn equally as awesome.

Thank you my true love!  Thank you also to everyone else who helped make my birthday amazing this year.