Maybe it's just the Statistician in me...

This could be just new to me, but have any of you heard about Google Analytics? It's a service that Google does for free that keeps track of all sorts of information on your website. It's pretty basic, but still interesting. I can see it being more useful for a company website, but I enjoy it for our blog!

Mount Rainier the Beautiful!

We went to Mt. Rainier yesterday and everything people have told us about it is true. It is absolutely gorgeous! I can't get over the lush green trees, wild flowers, rivers, lakes, and soooo many bugs! I'm glad we brought bug spray, although we both managed to still get bit. It was so much fun though! It took us about two hours to drive there and we went hiking to this place called Upper Palisades Lakes. It was 7 miles round trip and it gave new meaning to the phrase "uphill both ways". My body definitely feels it today! We left our home around 9 am and got back at 5 pm - 5 hours driving, 3 hours hiking. The hike was absolutely beautiful. There were lots of pretty lakes along the way, wild flowers, and lots and lots of pine trees. The weather was also perfect for hiking! We had brought jackets just in case it rained, but we didn't need them at all. We highly recommend going to Mt. Rainier if you ever are up in Seattle. It is definitely worth the drive! Even if you aren't much for hiking, the drive itself is really pretty.

Surprisingly when we got home I had a lot more energy than I thought I would. I worked on my poster the rest of the night and Trevor read Harry Potter and straightened up the house.

Here we are on the top of the mountain at the beginning of the trail.

These are our silly faces.

Mt. Rainier

Trevor among the wild flowers.
Here's a closer look...

The hills are alive, with the sound of music!
Trevor by a waterfall.
Just beautiful!

Lindsay pointing the way we're going to go.

Sunset Lake

"Trevor... take the picture fast so I can swat this bug!"

"Eat your heart out Flagstaff, Arizona!"

How to NOT have food storage...?

So Trevor and I are leaving Seattle in 3 weeks, which means that we need to get rid as much of our food before then so we don't have to transport it back to Provo but still be able to eat in the next 3 weeks. We have had a difficult time this past week shopping and only buy food that won't last that long and still be able to eat decent meals. We are so used to buying in bulk and stocking up on things. Hopefully there won't be a catastrophe anytime soon. Because we don't have much food in our home, we came up a new recipe for dinner tomorrow night... rice, leftover stir fry, Mexican frozen vegetable mix, instant mashed potatoes, chili, yams, raisins, and coconut all mixed together. Might as well toss in the rest of the sprouts we have.

I'm making it sound worse than our situation really is (I was just joking around about that meal by the way...). We do have food, but we are just used to having lots of options for what to eat, and we don't have that right now. Anyone have any suggestions of meals we can make that aren't too expensive (food prices here are starting to get to me), too many different ingredients that result in storing more food, and still relatively healthy? I think I just need some fresh ideas for meals. We are going grocery shopping on Monday! Hooray!

Thank you Amazon.com!!!

Trevor and I have enjoyed benefits this week from Amazon.com. I think they're wining and dining us so that they can get Trevor to forgo his education and start working at Amazon ;). On Wednesday, Trevor's recruiter took all the interns and their wives from BYU to a really nice Italian restaurant (well, nicer than we would ever go to). It's funny, because we both felt that our meals weren't that spectacular, but we think we just ordered the wrong things. Although, I must say that the dessert was phenomenal! It was the best-tasting part of the meal.

Yesterday, Amazon paid for us to a Mariner's game! It was the first time that Trevor and I have been to a major league baseball game. They first had a get-together before the game with drinks and appetizers. Apparently they didn't order enough food for the number of people that were there and a lot of people didn't even get any food. Luckily we got there early enough.

Here I am standing on top of Safeco Stadium with Seattle skyscrapers in the background.


We had pretty good seats... way up in the top! It was a lot of fun.


We left at the beginning of the 9th inning because we didn't want to stay up too late and wanted to beat the crowd. It's a good thing actually, because the Mariners were losing 3-2 when we left, and the Oakland A's scored three more runs in the last inning winning the game 6-2. It was still an exciting game though. We thoroughly enjoyed it!


Saturday we are going to Mt. Rainier. We'll tell you more about it later.

Harry Potter - The IMAX experience!

So I'm sure everyone is just chomping at the bit waiting to hear a review of Harry Potter at the IMAX theater! :) Here is my take on it: (I don't feel like I'm giving much away if you haven't read the books, but if you're worried about that then don't read this)

It was great seeing it in the IMAX because the sound was amazing and obviously it had a very big screen! They also had the last 20 minutes or so in 3-D! Way cool! I have to be honest it was a little blurry at times, but I thought the 3-D part was a cool addition to the movie. It didn't have anything that was jumping right in front of your face like most 3-D movies, but it changed the depth perception and made the characters on the screen look like they were right there.

As far as the actual movie goes, I thought they did a good job condensing the entire book into a movie (they left a lot out, but they got the main story line well). I thought all the actors did a really good job and it was really entertaining. The time went by so fast I couldn't believe I had been sitting there for over two hours. For some reason, I didn't find Voldemort as scary-looking in this movie. I think the death-eaters (followers of Voldemort) were scarier-looking to me.

There are a lot of interesting scenes in the movie where, to music, they show a lot of snippets of things happening, they do a good job showing what's going on and how things are progressing in a short time. There's so much going on so quickly that you don't have time to get bored. I think the book was darker than this movie is. In the book, Harry is very angry and yells a lot in the first half. They've toned this down in the movie. Harry is definitely frustrated in the movie, but doesn't lose his temper so much.

One curious removal from this movie was Quidditch. There isn't a single reference to it.

The scariest parts I felt were at the very beginning and the end (if you've read the books, you know why). If I had watched it when I was younger, I probably would have been scared from it, but I get scared easily and have learned to close my eyes during those parts (come to think of it, I did close my eyes for a brief moment at the beginning of the movie...). I think it would not be so intense if you were to rent it and had the remote in your hand during a few select scenes (those at the beginning and end). The only other scary thing (more surreal than scary actually) I can think of is that there are epileptic -seizure-inducing sequences where we see into Harry's mind.

I guess I've been focusing a lot on the "scary stuff", but it's really not like that the whole movie. I just wanted to give a review for those who are worried about the PG-13 rating. There is nothing else inappropriate in the movie I noticed (except one brief kissing scene, but I wouldn't call it inappropriate).

Hope this helps if you were wondering whether or not to see the movie (or what to expect)!

Birthdays always come once a year...

Trevor took the GRE on Thursday and did well on it. Whew! We are BOTH glad that's over! There are just a few things left that he has to do to get his application complete. Hooray! We also found out this week that Trevor received a scholarship from BYU for next year! We feel very blessed right now.

On Friday night, we went to Red Robin for dinner. We only go twice a year--on Trevor's birthday and my birthday. We are going to Cold Stone Creamery either next week or the week after. That's another place we only go twice a year. The ice cream is way too rich (and expensive) for us to go any more than that.

After dinner, we decided that we just couldn't wait for the boxed set of Harry Potter to come out (it comes out September 18th), so we decided to go and buy the 7th book at midnight. We were going to go to Borders or Barnes and Noble, but you had to reserve it or wait until at least 1:00 am. Not gonna happen... So we saw that they were selling it 40% off at QFC (Kroger store) and went there instead. There weren't that many people there, and we were the first ones in line to buy it at midnight! We stayed up that night and read the first chapter out loud together. Then we decided to both read it at the same time, but individually so we could read faster. So Trevor will read a chapter, then I'll read a chapter, and then we can talk about it and what we think is going to happen. It's great! We are really enjoying the book so far.

Saturday was a very relaxing day for us. We didn't do a whole lot, but that was the point--it was relaxing. Trevor made omelettes for breakfast and they were soooo good! Trevor is such a good cook! I feel so blessed to have a husband who likes and wants to cook. Then I opened birthday presents (did I mention Saturday was my birthday?) and Trevor got me the "Best of the Monkeys" CD and the DVD "Persuasion" (Jane Austen). He was also going to buy me some clothes so we went shopping downtown. I couldn't find anything (at least in our price range) so we decided to go shopping when we get back to Provo or in California or Arizona. In the evening, Trevor made fajitas for dinner and hot fudge brownie sundaes with turtle brownies and Spumoni ice cream for dessert. I was in heaven! We also went to Sam's club to get gas and just walk around the store. I love to window shop so it was fun for me to get out and look at stuff. It was a good birthday all in all. We are going to see Harry Potter 5 in the IMAX theater on Monday also for my birthday. We were going to go on Saturday but they were all sold out. They even have the last 20 minutes of the movie in 3-D! We are way excited!

I can't believe we are going to be here only 4 more weeks! Time has flown by. We've really enjoyed our summer here. We are planning on going to Mt. Rainier this coming Saturday. We've heard it's beautiful.

Our internships are going well. I'll let Trevor discuss his, but mine is getting better and better the more I understand what people are talking about. I've learned so much about immunology and just how things work at the HVTN. It's also nice to start seeing some of the finished products that I have been working on this summer. I've also started to walk home from work, which gives me a good 40 minutes of walking each weekday. I'll have to take pictures and give you the tour so you can see the parts of Seattle I walk past on my way home. I was going to do it on Friday, but it was raining, and I didn't want to give you a false impression of the weather ;o). In all honesty, I just didn't want to get my camera wet.

Well, until I write again, I hope everyone has a great week!

BYU's parking adventure!

So I left my jump drive at work on accident... guess I won't be working on my thesis tonight. Instead I will post another cool link on our Blog! This is for all those who went to BYU at one point or another and had the experience of parking on campus. Trevor and I thought it was really funny. We hope you enjoy it!

This parking lot shown by the Tanner building is no longer there even. According to Aaron Miller (our cousin) they are supposedly building a parking garage for graduate students and faculty (hopefully not just faculty). Did you hear they also want to put parking meters south of campus? I stilll think the best solution is to charge for parking permits (currently they are free for all students). I'm just glad we live close enough to walk to campus...