Just wishing everyone a happy Easter!

The last month in a nutshell - A big nutshell

This last month has been an interesting month. Angie has been having problems with her left eye. About a month ago it started getting blurry. She said that it sometimes happens when she gets migrains so she didn’t think much of it, but those usually only last a few hours and after a couple days she thought she should talk to someone about it. So we went to the doctor and he told her to go see an eye doctor. We did (it was the same eye doctor who wasted an hour and a half of his day trying to get contacts into my eyes years earlier. He was really smiley and nice. He told her that her eyes checked out 20/20 and that what it could be is optical neuritis, which is a swelling of the optical nerve. He said it usually last around 4 weeks. We could have her head scanned to be certain, but since we’re not insured the doctor said we were probably fine waiting it out and seeing if it gets better. So it’s been 5 weeks now and angie hasn’t noticed any improvement. She tried to call the eye doctor again this week but he’s out of town until next week. Its really been slowing her down. She can’t watch movies or read very long or even look at the computer for extended periods of time. She says the brightness outside gives her headaches etc. Which is a shame because its been so nice out the last couple of days. We go for walks about every day and we like to play Frisbee a little, but can’t do it for too long. Everyone is keeping her in their prayers and she’s been given two blessings. The rest is just up to her I guess.

We had an awesome trip to southern Utah with Josh, his kids, jake, annie and two of annie's sisters. It was lots of fun. we went to goblin valley and little wildhorse canyon. we camped under a moonless sky and even had dutchoven dinner! we had some late night coyote problems, but besides that it was all fun and games! It sure was nice to get out and adventurize a little bit.

I’ve been getting pretty anxious about graduation. I have only 3 weeks left and I have been searching desperately for employment. I’ve applied to about 6 places, most of which are only seasonal summer jobs or internships. I’ve applied to positions in Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado, Flaming Gorge, Cedar City, and am just finishing up an application for an internship in Washington state. I’ve really had to jump out of my comfort zone and talk with all my GIS instructors to try to get some letters of recommendation or permission to use them as references. It’s been good for me. I only hope I can get something arranged for this summer. It’s a really hard economy to be graduating in. I heard from someone in one of my classes that students graduating this year will make less in their lifetime than any other graduates from the last X amount of years. Bummer. I guess money can’t buy you everything anyways, right? I’m really hoping I am considered for the Grand Junction or Puyallup, WA jobs. They’re both GIS internships that would be really great for me and give me some excellent experience. Some of the other jobs were just field tech jobs where I wouldn’t be using GIS hardly at all. The cody WY position is a full time assistant planner salary job with their planning and zoning division. That would be awesome!

For angie’s 30^th birthday I bought her Lost Cities the board game. She wanted Dominion but its been out of stock everywhere (even online) since Christmas and if you want to buy a used one online it costs $150!! So that will have to wait, but Lost cities is really fun. We’ve played it a few times with family and with our neighbors the Rodgers and had a good time. 

I got to teach my first Hunter Education class this last weekend. It was fun. I taught it with 2 other students from my Living With Wildlife class and we taught 7 other students from the same class. Angie's cousin Jackson was one of the students. It went well and was really a breeze. I wasn’t planning on teaching any more than the required one, but I may since it was so easy and a pretty good time.

Conference was last weekend and we drove to Kaysville for priesthood session. Mom and dad come along with Deborah and Steven. They had all just come home from Italy just 2 days earlier. It was fun to see them all and to talk about their trip. 2 days after priesthood there was a 6.3 earthquake in central italy that toppled a bunch of old buildings and killed 90 people or so. We were glad they were out of their. Becky and david said they felt it in the middle of the night, but that it wasn’t big where they were and they went back to bed. Sunday after dinner Janet had her traditional conference quiz. I scored the lowest of anyone besides grandma, but I still got a consolation prize of raspberry jam J

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

To celebrate Saint Patrick's Day and to honor my Manx heritage, I sacrificed half of my beard last night to make way for some nice 19th century Caledonian chops. What do you think?

...don't ask

Fun with the Scouts at the Cabin

This weekend we had a scout outing at the cabin. It was lots of fun, dad met us there and helped out with everything, that was really nice of him. We played capture the flag, went sledding had some good food and slept cozy. It was a great little trip and the scouts all had a blast. Thanks again dad for your help!

what do you think?

okay, family and friends, i need some encouragement (but also your honest opinions and suggestions).  this is an idea that's been rolling around in my brain for awhile. i wanted to make some celebration banners but i wanted to be able to change the message without having to make an entire new banner. so i eventually came up with this. each flag has a button on it and each letter is on a smaller felt flag with a button-hole on it. so you can button the letters on and off, changing or personalizing your message. i thought it was the most ingenious idea and felt so clever.  :) i've been working on bits and pieces of it when i've had a chance and today finished my prototype. after i hung it up all i can seem to see is how the flags don't lay perfectly straight and the letter flags don't lay perfectly straight on top of the fabric. i just keep picking it apart. here's where i need some encouragement. 

that's okay, right?! that's what gives it personality and character. it's not going to be perfect. these are things i already know. i think. i just need to hear it from some others besides myself. anywho, do you think people would buy these? that was my hope.  please let me know what you think!

Who, me?

It's true. As of about 2 weeks ago, Daniel James Callister is a certified Utah Hunter Education Instructor. It took a few weeks of classes and a shooting and written test. Nobody bothered to ask if I've ever hunted, so I didn't bother to tell them.

I'm in a class this semester called "Living with Wildlife" and one of the requirements in the course is to take hunters education. There is also a service learning project later in the course. The instructor said that if anyone was interested we could go the extra mile and become certified as hunter ed instructors. If we did this we wouldn't have to worry about the service learning project. I thought, what the heck.

The shooting range pictures from our last post were actually just before my shooting test. I wanted to practice a little before the big day and was able to talk Angie into coming along.