i'm not a quitter, i'm not a quitter...even though at times like these i desperately want to!!!

OMG. A horrible, no good, very bad thing happened to me this week. My thesis advisor called me and said, and I quote, "there is something wrong with the data that we've collected." WTF?!?! What do you mean something is wrong??? I have been collecting data since last January and there might be something wrong with it? That is just not possible...I was wrong. It is very possible and now a reality for me. After looking at the problem for a couple of hours we figured it out but that doesn't save all that I have previously collected.

Let me first explain that collecting data for my project is not easy. Students are required to come back five times but somehow undergrad students are just not that accountable and I have had a lot of drop-outs. Anyways, it took me 11 months to get the 40 that I do have and now that might have been all in vain.

Back to the problem, I may have lost about 30 of the 40 I have collected. One of the biggest bummers of my life. Dropping out of the project was my first thought, I'm not gonna lie. But after some inspirational words and apologies from my advisor I thought quitting is not what I want at all. So, I left the meeting feeling like whatever the circumstance I would keep plugging away.

Well, after my advisor spoke with another professor who works with the computer program that we use, he discovered that there is a chance that we can recover the data. Whew!!! I don't want to celebrate just yet but things are looking pretty positive right now. We will see what can actually be done. In the meantime, I'm frantically trying to create a "readable" (as my advisor suggested) draft to submit on the 1st of Dec. and there is a small chance that I can still propose my project before the end of the semester.

Best case scenario: I will have data for all 40 people collected thus far as well as a proposal before Christmas. Worst case scenario: I will only have data for about 12 people and I will not get my proposal in before Christmas. Either way, quitting is not the answer--even if I really want to.

Photo Op

So, this is what mamma does when we aren't home?!?! What a lush!

privacy

just so you all know, i had to set my blog to private because my mom forwarded me a link to an article saying why it's so unsafe. so, i'm just taking as much precaution as i can. i can add anyone but you guys are the ones i thought were looking at it. thanks for being my reader:) here's the link to the article:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4699330

my life flashed before my eyes

this past weekend we went down to the sand dunes with krista and her main man mike. i was not born on a four-wheeler like brandon and mike were and have not had much experience handling one in the sand so, i'm very timid. everything was going great until we (and when i say we i mean mostly mike and brandon) wanted to go to the back side of sand mountain. the obstacles back there are giant in comparison to the ones i was doing in other areas. "okay," i thought "lets try it." if i don't want to do anything i won't. that was NOT the case.

we went around the easy way but everyone wanted to go back the hard way (over the mountain instead of around). i'm thinking how awesome that sounds and that now instead of choosing which things i want to do, i HAVE to do them. anyways, i did the first thingy with such ease after looking at it for ten minutes and watching several other people do it before me. in fact, i enjoyed it. that didn't last long. the next thing was a twisty kind of thingy and i almost made it but then i started slipping back down this gi-normous hill. i braked and the bike stopped-kind of. OMG, HELP ME!! i had no idea what to do except to die. that's when i saw flashes of my life. brandon came down to where i was and grabbed the bike. we were slowly sliding down the hill together. he told me to get off the bike-say what??? get off???? anyways, i composed myself and since i trust him ever so much i slithered off. by that time mike was there holding the other end. i tried to climb up to where krista was and for those of you you have not ever tried to climb up a steep incline of soft sand, i'll just say it was better than the stairmaster. when i finally made it up i saw that brandon and mike were turning the bike around so brandon could go back down and get it up to where we were.

after that i was completely terrified until we got back to the truck. we went for another ride after that which was less traumatizing but at least i got back out there after i had such a horrifying experience.

FYI

I have had a week straight out of H. E. double hockey sticks. Mostly due to the amount of stress I am experiencing related to school. It seems that only 5 weeks til the end of the semester is not going to be enough time to complete my To Do list. I have spent this entire week focusing just on my thesis since my advisor thought today would be a good day to require an outline of my proposal. That means that I have really slacked off in a lot of other areas in my life and I certainly do not have time to catch up next week or the next week after that or the week after that. You get the picture. Plus, the holidays are coming up which I'm excited for, but it's difficult to manage holiday parties/get-togethers with school work.

I was able to sneak off to see a play last night. I usually go to all the ones they have at school because I can either go for free or five bucks. They just started a new one that was pretty funny so, I got a little stress relief there. And, since I went with a good friend, we had a little bitchfest afterwards. Those always seems to be a stress reliever for me.

And now, I'm at school running participants for my thesis and trying to tread through the tumultuous oceans of research that are either irrelevant to my topic specifically or I do not understand what the devil they are talking about. Great!! (In case you can't read my tone, that was sarcastic:)

Enough complaining for now. Must get back to the articles and opinions of so many great researchers that have come before me. In parting, I would like to leave you all with one of my favorite Halloween jokes:

Q: How do you tell the difference between witches and warlocks???

A: Warlocks have Halloweenies!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

Fall Break

Fall Break was so awesome. I think that with every break from school it gets harder and harder to go back. I am very patiently waiting for graduation day, May 2010!! Well, maybe not so patiently. Jeremy (little bro) and I went down to St. George, Utah for a little R & R since he was on break too. The drive down there took, what seemed like, an eternity. We left a day early to surprise our parents and ran into lots of other people trying to get away for the long weekend.

I had just heard about a week earlier that one of my cousins was going to be in Vegas during that week to get married. I drove down there on Friday to be there for the ceremony. It was great because most of my cousins live in North Dakota and I hardly ever see them so, the timing was perfect. Besides, I love weddings and this was no exception. Thanks, Monica and Ryan for letting me share your day! Afterwards we went to this bizarre restaurant where the waiters/hostess swear at you and talk about specific body parts (Monica, you know what I'm talking about:). Needless to say, it wasn't the first time I had seen a guy table dancing with his red g-string pulled up and his pants sagging down but it was one of the better times--ha, I'm sure you have a great visual.

So, all in all it was an awesome weekend even though Mom had a few chores for us to do. Yuck!!

brandon's favorite place on earth

of all the places he's been, little sahara state park is brandon's favorite. he used to go all the time and then of course, he got married:) we finally replaced one of the four wheelers that were stolen a few years ago and made the two hour drive down to the sand dunes. krista and mike were jealous! brandon is in the process of building a four wheeler with a bullet bike motor (kinda scary if you ask me) so, in the meantime he has to settle for borrowing one that is not quite as fast as he'd like. but, we still had fun. i, of course, am somewhat timid around the giant hills of sand. i loosened up though after awhile and did a few CRAZY things. we look forward to many more trips down there and welcome anyone who wants to go with.