So I'm no longer a libertarian...

I'm almost, but not quite a libertarian. I still believe in equal rights, civil liberties and limited government...but I do like some handouts!

Thanks to Barack Obama's stimulus package, the maximum amount of money for a Pell Grant went up 13%, and I finally qualified for one! Also, Federal Student Aide removed the credit hour limit for SMART grants, which as an engineering major with a decent GPA, I qualified for! That means I got more than enough financial aide to pay for tuition until I graduate! Woohoo!

As long as they give money to hard-working, productive people like me and not lazy welfare queens, I'm all in favor of handouts!

Alas, my sentiment is not shared by everyone:



Hehehe.

Like water through a Thistle...

What happens when a landslide blocks off two creeks, forming a natural dam, and that natural dam eventually overflows and results in a massive flood?

That's exactly what happened in Thistle, Utah in 1983. I remember our professor talking about this incident when I took a geology class last year. Though I didn't realize it at the time, I had seen the exact site where it took place!

On our way down to Drew's wedding in Manti, we passed by the area that used to be Thistle, Utah...a small community of maybe a hundred or so residents. Needless to say, now it's a ghost town. Interestingly, some of debris from the destroyed houses still stands today...like this submerged house:



When we drove through I was thinking "well, that's weird!"

Oh, and speaking of the Drew and Erin's Wedding, I was at their reception/open house yesterday:



What can I say? I love these kids!

Wedding Bells!

Drew Madsen, my roommate of two years, got married today in the Manti Temple. I got to watch him be married. It was glorious. Check out the happy couple coming out of the temple:



The Manti Temple itself rests upon a hill, and is the county's dominant landmark:



Beautiful, isn't it? Interestingly, this majestic temple is out in the middle of nowhere!

Sanpete County, Utah is a sparsely-populated agrarian and mining area that's dotted with tiny 200-or-so-inhabitant "towns." Most of these towns' residents are descendants of the original pioneers sent by Brigham Young to colonize the land. Driving through these towns, you really see how old everything is:



...and, most of the pioneers who settled the area were (like Drew's ancestors) Scandinavian, as attested by the ubiquity of Nordic last names:




...and outside the little towns it's just farmland as far as the eye can see:



Wow, isn't that awesome?

If squatting is wrong, I don't want to be right.

On Monday I moved out of Carriage Cove. Right now I'm squatting in my brother's house in Orem (right next to UVU, where he starts out this Fall.) I'm here until I can move into my new place south of campus...but that won't be until Friday next week.

Here's all my earthly possessions:



...and here's where I sleep at night:



I live far away from the places I like to visit, so I purchased a new bike:



My old Mongoose was kaput. I got this Diamond Back through the Wilkboard. Interesting story...turns out this old lady in downtown Provo has a showroom with fleet of 30 or so used bikes. I was thinking about buying a road bike, but I found those to be un-ergonomic, so I got another mountain bike. It's used and bit scratched up, but it'll get the job done.

This is how BYU students party!

...sitting on blankets and watching Kung-Fu Panda. The Church always organizes activities like this, so at BYU there's never a shortage of fun stuff for students to do.

So yeah, BYU doesn't really have a "party scene" in the traditional college sense. Alcohol consumption is banned under the BYU Honor Code...but banning alcohol from BYU students is like banning your dog from eating broccoli. As baffling as it seems to many outside the Church, we just flat-out don't want it...and faithful Latter-day Saints don't feel "controlled" or "limited" by the Church's high moral standards.

Good luck convincing the kids in the above photo that getting wasted and vomiting is more fun or enjoyable than what they're doing.

I can breathe now!

That's the sunset on Bulldog Avenue...the street I walk every day to get to and from school. Almost every day this summer I've made the trek up to BYU campus.

I took my last exam yesterday. It was for hydrology...a 400-level civil engineering class. We had 190 minutes, but I still didn't make it to the end. My average on the two midterms was about a D+, and I'm guessing I did even worse on the final. Still, my grade in the class (it was just posted) came out to a B for the semester. I guess everyone else did as bad as me!

I'm moving in five days. I'll have to be homeless for nine days until my new apartment (a much more modest establishment south of campus) lets me check in. This place is nice, but the rent for fall/winter is too much, the distance from campus is too great and the pool (which I used daily over the summer) would be unusable. The new place is dirt cheap ($235/mo.), is right next to campus and has high-speed internet. They're also tiny, six-man apartments...but I'll be living, eating, working and studying on campus all day, so that all won't matter.

My roommate Drew gets married in one week. Right now he's moving all his stuff to his "married student" apartment. I'm excited for him!

The Bean Museum!

My summer of non-stop school is about to come to a close. I'm done with this term's final exams on Thursday. I'm looking forward to it.

I did do some fun stuff today. I went to a museum.

Liz, this way cool girl I met in LA, was in town today for a wedding and we decided to get together. She mentioned she'd never been to BYU's Bean Museum (it's dedicated to wildlife, not beans...that's just the name!) I realized I'd never been there either, so we paid it a visit:



Turns out the Bean Museum has a lot of cool stuff, mostly taxidermy animals. Here we are with a moose:



Perhaps the most notable part of the Bean Museum collection is the Shasta, the liger:



Half lion, half tiger. It's bred for its skills and magic.