Our ba....I mean toddler

Our son has started to walk, finally. I know what you're thinking--we're in trouble now. I don't really see that as the case; at least not yet. He will be 15 months old next week. He was 10 lbs. when he was born and has been the size of a child twice his age his whole life, all thanks to my genes in the mix. Let me tell you, it is tough carrying around a tall and skinny, but heavy, baby--especially when kids his size or smaller (that are older) are walking. So finally, these last couple weeks he has gone from walking little and mostly crawling to mostly walking and crawling only if he fell, trying to walk. He has been fun to watch grow up and develop; I can say that now that my wife's and my arms are getting a break from having to carry his dead weight everywhere.

Sickness is not fun....

especially when it is your wife. She has been sick for the last week,  and, for the most part, I think I've done a pretty good job holding down the fort here at home. I don't have many cooking skills, but I gave her everything I had while she wasn't feeling well. Because she's hooked on veggies, I even made her a stuffed pepper with ground turkey and melting, gooey cheese. I was so proud of myself for being creative.

Luckily I, nor the baby, have gotten what she had. I think that's because I don't get sick easily and the baby was getting her anti-bodies from her milk. So, in closing, all is well, or at least getting there as she is feeling better today.

I'm addicted

My wife thought it would be fun to sign up for the free month trial of Netflix (the streaming plan). We signed up the day before Thanksgiving, and by Friday, the day after, we had watched about eight movies; that doesn't beat the record, I'm sure, but it beats our record. Needless to say, it has been fun, especially since we don't own a TV and the only way we watch movies is on her laptop; however, now her DVD drive is screwed up or worn out--because of all of the movies/Gilmore Girls episodes we've watched on it--and it skips a lot during playback which is really annoying. With Netflix, you just hit the play button, provided the movie is available to stream. It has been fun, I just know we would get nothing done if we had a membership on a regular basis.

This Blogging Assignment

I have to admit that this blogging assignment hasn't been half bad. I dare say it has been fun; although, I can't say for sure that I will continue to write in it after this semester, but it has been fun. Who knows, right? I'm a numbers guy and so far I have had more fun in my writing classes than my science/math classes. Kind of strange how that works huh? I guess future semesters will be interesting as I get further into my major. I will say that I still prefer a multiple choice test or a test like that to an essay test. I can't write when forced like that. I like to do that at home on my own time, when I am able to work on it a little here and little there, and let what I want to say, or how I would like my writing to flow, to develop in my head for a while. I've noticed an improvement in my writing and it has been good for me to learn the basics like grammar, etc. to help improve my writing.

Time

It is getting to the point in the semester where there is never enough time for everything that needs to be done--at least it feels like there isn't enough. What if classes started every two months, wouldn't that be nice? Forget the idea of loading up your schedule all at once, no more mid-terms, or other assignments or tests coming all at once for all of your classes. Why not start 2 or 3 classes every two months? Then the assignments and tests would be staggered instead of all at once, there would be shorter lines for finals, and other tests in the testing center, because the entire university wouldn't be trying to take a test at the same time, just the few who signed up for that four-month class period. It would help you get your degree done faster. While classes are ending and getting harder, other classes would be just beginning and easy for now. it would be a constant flow of learning instead of stop and go with the semester's as they are with breaks inbetween. and if you did need a break, just wait and couple of months, finish the classes you are in now, and then sign up for more once they are done.

I don't like how everything comes at once in all of my classes. When I realize I have a test or a big assignment in one, it turns out its the same story for all of my classes. Oh, if I were in charge....

The Real Story

Another week has passed and, once again, I have nothing specific to write about. Towards the end of the week, both my wife and I got sick, because our son got sick earlier this week and gave it to us in payment for his care. Oh, the joys of parenthood.

I learned something pretty cool, at least to me, in my religion class. We are studying the New Testament, and in this semester, we only go over the gospels. My professor explained that in scriptures, descriptions are deliberate when they are included in the text by their authors. Have you ever thought about what Eve looked like? Was she blonde, brunette, tall, short, strong, anorexic, etc.? The reason we don't know is because her physical description was never included by the authors of the creation and Garden of Eden stories. A description of what Eve looked like is not important--almost irrelevant--therefore, the author chose not to include a description of her in the text..

With this concept in mind, we discussed the birth story of the Savior as described in Luke 2, and more specifically the traditional picture we have of the stable, manger, and swaddling clothes. Why were the descriptions of the inn, the stable, the manger, the wise men, etc. included?

A stable in the time of the Savior and in Bethlehem was a cave, which they would put animals in and partially cover the opening with rocks to give them protection in the night. The manger was not a cute little wooden object that most of us put on display each Christmas season with our nativity scenes. It was a trough carved in stone, sometimes simply dug out in the side of the cave where the herders and shepherds would place food for the animals. The swaddling clothes that Mary placed the baby Jesus in after his birth were strips of fabric, not a blanket or quilt like we use today, to swaddle the baby and keep him secure. The use of strips or pieces of fabric was also the way that dead bodies were treated and wrapped with embalming agents (such as myrhh--gifted to the Savior by the wise men). With this more historically accurate image of the birth story, we are able to see similarities in the place of birth and also of death of the Savior. The author of Luke painted the picture that this baby, the Savior of mankind, was born.......to die.

The descriptions are there for a reason, the scriptures are not a best-selling novel that the authors put as much description into the text as possible to make it more interesting--no, the descriptions are there to help us understand the symbolisms and lessons that the authors, and ultimately God, would have us learn, and it is up to us to take note of these things as we read and study the scriptures ourselves.

a.k.a. Life

I don't have anything specific that I wanted to write this week. I think it is because I've gotten to the point that when it is the weekend, I check out of all things school. I don't have any dates that I can write about, I don't go to any parties; the weekends are for family at this point in my life. During the week my schedule, and my wife's schedule consist of what one of us can get done while the other watches the baby. I didn't think that this type of a routine would be so difficult--that is until I lived it. I wish that things could be different. I wish that, instead of my wife being done with her master's, that I could be the one done with at least my bachelor's and she could still be in school.

I think the hardest thing about all of these "wants" and "wishes" is that everything had to be the way it is now, or else I would have been in a completely different place, or stage, in my life. I can wish all I want for things to be different, but what I really need to do is just accept, and appreciate more, the way things are. If my wife weren't finished with her master's, she probably would have been younger. If she were younger, she wouldn't have been working at BYU for as long as she has, thus allowing me not only the opportunity to study here, but also to get a free education like I am. While I was in high school, my school district had several programs at each high school, and one school that was a vocational school. I was able to get college credit while I participated in one of the programs, and had I not gained those 30 credits hours in high school, and enrolled in a plumbing apprenticeship program here in UT after my mission, I would not of met the requirements needed to transfer and apply to BYU, let alone be accepted--even with my wife being a full-time staff.

I could go on and on about how the puzzle pieces have come together and how doors were opened when we, or I, thought that nothing could be done. It is amazing to me how much we are cared for and watched over by the Lord, even on some of the smallest, and simplest matters in life. I know I don't show or communicate enough gratitude as I could, and that is something I plan to work on. It's crazy to think how much we get wrapped up in trivial things, a.k.a. life, and how easy it is to take things for granted.

The Lord has had His hand in my life throughout many aspects as I look back. The greatest time of all is finding and marrying my wife. If either of us had not of served our missions--she to Paris, France, and me to Campinas, Brazil--we never would have met and obviously would not be married today. I knew before I went I my mission that I would learn throughout my time in Brazil why I had to meet the particular people that I did in each of my areas, and that I had a responsibility to meet specifically them. I always thought it was for the few people that I was privileged to be an instrument in their conversion, but it was more than that.

My wife was working here at BYU and I was living and working up in Salt Lake City after my mission, and even though we only lived 40 mins apart, we never would have met each other if it weren't for a member in the last area of my mission, named Joyce, who randomly found my wife's email address on her mission website. Joyce was trying to learn English and French, and she wanted to write someone who would be willing to help her. After several months of emailing between Joyce and my wife, and also between Joyce and I, I emailed my wife because Joyce thought we would be good friends.We found out that we lived so close, and two months after the first email, we met and three weeks and a day after that first date, we were engaged. There was no other way that my wife and I could have found each other except by this member thousands and thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

The Lord does know us; He does care about us, and He does want us to be happy. Everyone has received blessings from Him, and I hope that we can all remember His hand in our lives and show/tell Him how grateful we are for those blessings and guidance. I know I need to.

Something Fun

I've been ranting and raving a lot in my posts, so I've decided to post something a little more fun and "cute" as my wife would say. We have a one-year-old son; actually, he's 13-months old now--big difference I know. I've decided to post some pictures of him. I'll admit, I am partial. I think he's the cutest baby ever.

I'm Converted

I'm converted to the fact that the more correct and professional you write the better off you are. I know I've done nothing but harp on the management that my wife and I deal with, but it's true! I email him a nice, professional, error-free(as far as I can see) email, and he emails back some incoherent three- or four-sentence email that is vague, shows lack of thought, and diminishes his credibility as a professional.

The things we've been learning in class are important! With the experience I've had this semester alone, no one can convince me otherwise that knowing how to communicate and write in a concise, clear, and professional way is invaluable.

Do you prefer pizza, or Wendy's?

This last week I had the opportunity--and the class assignment--to by someone lunch. Our air conditioner went our last week and this week on Monday, a guy was there--after much headache with the complex management--to replace our condenser(the part of the a/c that's outside). So, in appreciation for him coming on a rainy day, I bought him lunch. He was very appreciative, but I got a large pizza and an order of cheese bread, and I think he only had two pieces of pizza. I can't say it was a great experience, but I was good for us to show our appreciation in another way besides words.

Another Attempt To Use Grammar In My Communications

My wife and I are the on-site managers for the complex in which we live. For the most part, this job has been perfectly fine with only a few hiccups in the process. However, this week we had a rather severe issue come up with our own apartment, and we were met with and unsavory result in our experience with management and getting the issue resolved. The following is an unedited email/letter voicing our concerns with how the situation was handled by our "supervisor." I will admit that I did not write every word in this letter; however, I did write the majority of it and passed it on to my editor, a.k.a. my wife, before the final edition was published.....er...emailed.

Oct. 1, 2010.

Suzette,

I am writing you to express my concern with the way our recent air conditioner issue was handled by Kasey. As you know, we had problems with our air conditioner at the beginning of summer. Our first problem was resolved with Kasey's assistance in a timely manner. Our most recent problem, however, was handled very inefficiently and has caused us great frustration.

Emily and I each contacted Kasey on Tuesday before the close of the business day to inform him that our AC wasn't working. I gave him specific information about the problem and my opinion on possible solutions. He told us that he would make a call and have someone there on Wednesday. On Wednesday, Emily and I stopped by the office to encourage Kasey in person to get someone out as soon as possible to fix the AC. He assured us that someone would come that day or the next. That evening before the close of the business day we emailed Kasey again since no one had come, and he told us that a man named David would come on Thursday. (Please keep in mind that each day we expected that someone would really come; thus, we arranged our schedules to ensure that Emily or I would be home at all times.) When no one came on Thursday, we contacted Kasey again via email. He said that no one had time to come until Friday at noon and that "a company" would also be cleaning the duct work when they came. When I asked him which company we should expect, he told me he didn't remember their name. That is when we called you to ensure that someone would indeed come on Friday. The reason why I am frustrated with the way this maintenance issue was handled is because, from my perspective, Kasey told us that our issue was being addressed but it obviously wasn’t. Even if he had known on Tuesday that he couldn’t get someone out here until Friday and he had been honest and forthcoming about it with us, then at least we would have known and would not have had to hope each day that someone would come and would not have had to follow up with him each day about whether or not someone was coming. His lack of professionalism and honesty in this matter is disconcerting, especially since it means that we had to inquire about this issue every day and finally had to call you in order to get something done even though we know that we are supposed to work with him for such issues; so we now feel that we always have to call you if we want something done (i.e. our checks, the bicycle racks, the trees, and now our air conditioner). What was Kasey doing all of the days prior when he assured us each day that he had already called someone about this issue—did he really feel that he needed to lie to us about this instead of telling us that he hadn’t really called anyone or needed to discuss the matter with you first? I understand that we are not the only tenants who need help and that Kasey is very busy, but why did he mislead us for several days about people coming instead of telling us the truth?

I think that part of the reason that Kasey did nothing is perhaps because he thought, "it's just an air conditioner--it's not a big deal not to have it working for several days when it's now October, right?" Well, if it were just Emily and me that would be true. (We lived in another apartment that didn't even have AC and made it through an entire summer and Emily was very pregnant at the time!) The reason we are so adamant about getting the air conditioning fixed now is because we have a 1-year-old son that has a severe skin condition called eczema. We have worked hard over many months to control his problem. We have found that when he is exposed to extreme fluctuating temperatures/summer heat for prolonged periods of time, he breaks out with a rash that covers practically his whole body. This is our concern--our son--a helpless, nursing baby. This is why having an air conditioner to regulate the temperature in our home is so vital to us. To live in a place where we pay to have air conditioning and then not to have it function properly for almost a week when it's 85 degrees outside and approaching temperatures similar to that in our apartment during the day and 85-90 degrees inside our apartment at night is unlivable for our son.

While I do appreciate your efforts in our behalf, it is aggravating to learn only today, three days after we made the original maintenance request that nothing can be done until Monday(almost a week since we first contacted Kasey). Changing out a condenser is a 2-4 hour job, and if Leo or someone else had been notified to come sooner than today, we would not have to go through the weekend in the 3rd floor oven we currently call our home.

I know from experience that when a compressor goes bad, the best thing, and often the cheapest thing to do, is to replace the entire condenser. However, just so you are aware, if the issue of the white dust that is rapidly plugging our filters is not addressed also (which will not be solved by what Leo plans to do on Monday) it will continue to put strain on the AC and furnace which will undoubtedly result in additional, necessary repairs and purchase of equipment or parts in the near future. I hope that this issue will not also be ignored or delayed even though our air conditioner will (we hope) technically be fixed as of Monday.

I am appreciative that something has finally been done and we are truly grateful to you for your help with this matter. Indeed, we have asked Kasey for help many times over the last few days and we have not meant to be pests, but rather hoped to help him by reminding him of our needed assistance and keeping him informed that no one had come in case he really had called someone and needed to know that they didn’t show up, as the manager. If our efforts to get assistance are in vain and we are told that we can’t call companies ourselves for help with such things, what are we to do but be frustrated and forced to call others besides Kasey for help?

As the on-site managers, we like to tell potential renters that the management responds in a timely manner to all maintenance requests. I'd love to be able to say that again soon.

Thank you for your consideration of the thoughts I have shared and your assistance in this matter.

Sincerely,

Andy Belnap

My attempt to use proper grammar in my daily writing

I participate in online discussions on Apple Inc's website for their iPod Touch product. It's a user-to-user forum where you can ask questions and try to get help from fellow users from around the world.

My attempts to use proper grammar have not started this year with my MComm class--it really started last fall with four classes requiring papers to be written throughout the semester and my wife, who is an English major, becoming my editor and giving me some insight. I will say, however, that MComm's focus on grammar has helped me understand grammar a lot more than I did, and I have become more confident as I try to use more punctuation and other grammar in my writing.

While I was in the MTC in Sao Paulo, Brasil, a member of the branch presidency told my district before we left that in order for us to become fluent in Portuguese, we had to make 50,000 mistakes in the process in order to learn and refine our language skills. I submit, just as this counselor said, that in order to become "fluent" in grammar, I also must make mistakes in order to learn and improve my writing skills.

The following is a post that I wrote in the Apple iPod Touch forums in response to a user who reported issues with alarms not going off as they should. She later reported that the problem had reversed itself, but she did not know what she did to fix it. I'm sure there are still many mistakes in this post; however, I also know that there are not nearly as many as there could have been because of a few simple grammatical changes I've made in my writing.

"I accidentally replicated your problem this evening. My voice control didn't make it's normal ding and an alarm didn't play its sound; however, I figured out why it did this. 

What you need to keep in mind is that there are three volume levels that are controlled separately by your iPod: 
(1) the built-in speaker
(2) headphones(when they are plugged in)
(3) paired Bluetooth audio devices

If you unplug the headphones, turn the volume down completely for the built-in speaker, and then plug in headphones and adjust the volume, the volume is still off for the speaker, and is consequently off for alarms--and the voice control ding as I discovered tonight--and they won't play/sound even if you are listening to music or a podcast with headphones. 

It used to say speaker when you adjusted the volume without headphones plugged in, but it does say headphones when you adjust the volume when headphones are plugged in. The volume control for paired Bluetooth devices, I believe, is new with iOS 4(at least that's when I noticed it). It also doesn't say anything when you adjust the volume. The key is to remember that the three volumes are controlled separately--which ever you are using at that time. 

Hope this helps explain your problem."

What do you think?

Do you think it's broken? It sure feels like I would imagine a broken bone to feel like and it looks plain ugly, so it has to be broken, right? I've never broken any bones before and I'm not an expert, but I will say, with as much confidence I can muster, that I did in fact break my toe.

To tell you the truth, I was pretty surprised at how easy it was to break. I've taken a lot of falls in my life and played a lot of sports when I was younger, and since I never broke any bones, I always figured it was harder to do than I thought.

I can blame this one on my inconsiderate neighbors who keep thinking that they are better than everyone else. See, my wife and I are the On-Site Managers for our apartment complex. A week to two weeks ago we saw that a stair had broken on one of the only two staircases in the complex. Fulfilling our responsibility, we let the main office know about it and they came and blocked it off with caution tape and started the process to get the step replaced. Well, some jerk tenant, and believe me thats the nice name I've come up with, keeps cutting or ripping the caution tape down every day. On Wednesday while I was home during the day with our son, I thought I heard someone pull into the complex and was making noise on the end of the building with the broken step. I stood up quickly and hurriedly went to slip on some shoes to go and see if I could catch the ^#&%* tenant in the act and swung my foot right into our coffee table.

Needless to say, I did not find anyone outside and my toe is now damaged. Thank you jerk tenant!

History of me, myself, and I.

For those of you who know me-of which I am sorry-I am not writing to you now. I wanted to write a little bit of my history. Hopefully, I won't go on and on to the point of boredom.

I was born in Salt Lake City, UT, but I was raised in Phoenix, AZ which is where I call home. I may call it home, although, as I currently live here in Provo, UT, I don't believe I will ever be going back to Arizona, unless it involves the pursuit of a career. I served a mission in Brazil and while I was away my family decided to move back to Utah, also in pursuit of a career, so when I finished my mission I didn't really have a choice but to come back here where they were. I am glad I didn't fight this. I was able to meet my wife through a member and a friend I had made in my last area in Brazil. She had been emailing my now wife trying to refine her English and French language skills with my wife since she served in France. After a few months of communication between the two my friend, that I was also keeping in contact with during the same time, suggested that my wife and I write because she thought we would be good friends. Good friends we have become! We've been married for a little over two years now and we have a son that will turn one year old this month. It is amazing to me how fast time flies when things are right.

Well, that is enough for now. This short history is enough to give you a little insight into who I am and where I've been. Future posts will definitely let you learn more about me. I know, I've already got ideas for my personality and opinions to run wild!

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get. For now, this will be the theme of my blog. I am sure that as this semester passes I will continue to add gadgets and other cool things to the blog to make it "cool"; however, for now it is WYSIWYG.