...To talk of other things.

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. I love that poem. Although the actual version from the book Through the Looking Glass, is much more disturbing than the version from the animated movie Alice in Wonderland, which is still among my favorite animated movies.
They say that the Walrus and the Carpenter represent religion and the oysters represent everyone in the world. Obviously, the Carpenter represents Christianity in all of it's forms. And the Walrus represents all eastern religions, Buddha because he's fat (even though that is just a Buddha and not the real Buddha) and Ganesha because of the tusks (he obviously doesn't have six arms like Ganesha but you get the point). It appears to me that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) had some issues with religion. He was actually a deacon in the Angelican Church and at the appointed time to become a priest he requested to remain a deacon, which was against the rules and he could have been expelled. However, they let him stay as a deacon. He often wrote in his journal that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner. So clearly he had some issuse, but who knows what they where. It is all left up to your own speculations.
Then there was the drug contraversy about the book Alice in Wonderland, with the consumption on mushrooms and other "growing" and "shrinking" foods, and of course the hooka smoking caterpillar. This very well could be the result of hallucinogenic drugs. During the Victorian age a lot of these drugs were commonly available from your nearest grocer. It was legal and a lot of them were common pain killers of "the aspirin of the era." Notwithstanding, there is no conclusive evidence that he used those drugs. It's all just the Anti-hippy people's speculations from the 1960's.

You may all wonder why I posted this on the blog. Well there really is no reason, it's 7am on a saturday morning and even though I would like to be sleeping, I can't. I'm getting used to getting up at 4am everyday to go to work at 5am, but I don't have to work on the weekends. And since I can't sleep and Brianne is still sleeping, I figured I'd look at everyone's blogs and then I decided to post myself. I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about Lewis Carroll's (only his pen name) writings.


~Joshua

Brianne's First Blog!

Hello all. This is my first attempt at blogging. I was a little hesitant at first because I really don't have anything interesting to say. But today I was bored so I thought I would try this and see what all the fuss is about. I am going to blog about our apartment, because as far as I know, none of you readers out there know what it looks like. I'm still in the process of getting things decorated. I'm actually really excited to do this. Once everything is done, the place will look fabulous!

To begin, this is the lovely view from the front door. You can't see (but you can certainly hear) the highway that is only a few yards away from the building we live in. It's not as bad when all the windows are closed but we can't stand going for very long without the windows open during the summer. So we choose to suffer.

This is our living room in its current state. My plan is to someday get rid of the futon and crusty (although comfortable) love seat. The table that the TV is on is actually a coffee table. We found a TV stand at IKEA that we are going to get once we make it up there. I'm also planning on taking the birthday cards off the shelf and replacing them with some more black and white photos.

This is our table we got at IKEA. It's pretty small but it's great for now. We got the whole set for $120. You can also see the wonder food shelf in the background! It's tacky but we don't have enough cupboard space in the kitchen for our food and everything else. Our kitchen is very small.

This is a view of the kitchen from the living room. It gives you an idea of how small it is. Basically, the kitchen ends where the picture ends.





Here is another view of the kitchen. That little space of counter in the corner is pretty much all of the space I have to cook. I manage though.



This is the bedroom. As you can see, we have a walk-in closet (which I LOVE). There really isn't much to the room besides the bed and the closet at this point. Eventually we want to hang a shelf over the bed and put some bamboo and tea light candles to give it an Asian feel. I would like to point out the number of throw pillows on the bed (this is for you Debbie). They rarely make it back on to the bed in the morning, but it looks pretty good when they do.


Last but not least, this is the bathroom. The cupboard under the sink was really the only storage we had, so we got the shelf that goes over the toilet. It's pretty nice. You can also see that it is small. A lot of things in the apartment are small, but it works when there are only two of us! I hope you enjoyed the tour of our apartment. Now that we're getting the hang of this marriage thing and things are settling down it's really starting to feel like our home.

Trip to La Grande

Last weekend we went home to La Grande. Because Taylor recently passed away I wanted to go see Lady. I also figured that I could take pictures of her since I have a new camera. We left after work on Friday and made it home without any problems this time. We watched the BYU game on Saturday and ate pizza. We worked on out thank you cards too. We got about half done and ran out of cards so we bought some before the game and worked on them during the game. On Sunday we packed up our things and headed back to Corvallis. We stopped at Multnomah falls and hiked part way up. We took a few pictures. We got a good one of us two with the waterfall in the background. It was a pretty good weekend.

New jobs, new opportunities

I figure since I'm now a blogger I should take the ball and run with it. By now you all know that I have a new job. I'm not exactly sure what my new title will be but I'm assuming it will be Manager, Human Resources and Safety. Jacob, my predecessor, is leaving at the end of this week. He has taken a job in Silverton, OR at a meat packing plant. It's called BrucePac. They are paying him a lot more money than he was making here at ********* ****** *****. With his new baby he figured he should take the job. I was offered his job a couple days after he gave his two weeks notice. I talked about it with Brianne for a couple days and finally decided to take the job. I'm going to be incharge of seasonal labor, working closely with managers to make sure the farm and food processing plant are well staffed. I'll also be in charge of safety working with SAIF on workers comp claims, and with OR-OSHA to ensure occupational safety at ********* ****** *****, *** (I was asked not to put the name of the company in this).
This does mean that I'm working full time and I'm no longer a student. But that will change. I'm looking into getting an online degree from the University of Phoenix in Business Management. I'm hoping to start classes by January. This means a lot of new changes for Brianne and I. I'll be making more money for one, and we'll be insured for another. We figure this is a great opportunity for me/us and such opportunities don't always come around a second time.
Since accepting the job I joined the social network of http://www.linkedin.com/ which is a social network for business professionals. I figure I should starting making contact with people I know so that I have chances to move higher up. The sooner I start the better off I am. So if anyone is already on linkedin.com they should look me up and add me as a contact.
Sorry everyone, I don't have any pictures of work I can post with this. I hope to bring my camera to work someday and take pictures of the plant and our fields so all of you can see the where I work.


~Joshua