It is official. We no longer live in Utah. We are currently in a hotel in Page, AZ en route to Mesa via the Grand Canyon. We left our empty house in Riverton around 2pm yesterday after a busy day of cleaning, servicing the car, loading our POD and packing the car. Some neighbors came over to help clean and brought a steamer and a carpet cleaner so our house is the cleanest it has ever been. Much much cleaner than when bought it. To give you an idea of the transformation our house has undergone I’ve created a web page showing before and after pictures. Some highlights include our vinyl fence, central air, remodeled the bathroom, painted all but one room (some twice). Replaced the newel of our staircase, replaced fridge, replaced stove hood with a micro hood, replaced most of the light fixtures and door handles, fixed the sprinklers and switched them from culinary to secondary, added a swing set and replaced sand box and much more that I can’t think of right now. Everyone we talked to this week made sure to tell us how much they noticed we had done for our house, the neighborhood, and ward activities. We hope we can have a big impact on our new ward as we hope to be in our next home for 6-10 years (maybe more).

Stay tuned for photos from our visit to the Grand Canyon today. We also meet with the owners of the home we’re buying to sign the contract and begin escrow. We are scheduled to close on Feb 7.

byu v michigan state

We had fun at the game. Too bad BYU lost. Jackson loved it and we even got to ride TRAX to the game which was fun. The seats were nice because we were right above the Portal so no one was in front of us for Jackson to bug. He could just lean on the wall and watch the game….AND, luckily, there was an empty seat next to us he was able to use although he didn’t stay seated much. So we used the seat to hold our popcorn.

It’s not much yet but it is a start. I need a ton of practice and then maybe some professional equipment but it is my goal to be a professional photographer. It may never become a full-time gig but I want to learn more and improve and be able to do awesome family portraits, senior pictures, sports photography etc.

If anyone has suggestions on how I can accomplish this I’m open to your ideas. My plan is to read up on different techniques, practice on my family and whoever will let me take their picture and slowly acquire the necessary equipment to take great photos. I’ve also looked into possibly taking courses from the community college. I’ve already read 4 books from the public library and I’ve learned how to use a lot powerful features on my camera. I don’t have an SLR camera (which is pretty much necessary to be a pro) but I have a fancy digital camera where I can change aperture, iso speed, flash strength, etc. and have better control of the photo. I also am pretty handy with photo editing software.

Here is the site I created to post my best work. http://www.stubblefields.org/micah/WebAlbums

Let’s see. It has been a week so I thought I would update the blog. Might as well keep the content here fresh so everyone in the world will know exactly what is going on in our world.

Commuting
Work is going well. The commute is a beast but I’ve been able to listen to the book of mormon on the ipod while I ride the bus and trax. I’m able to listen to about 15 chapters per day so I cruising right through. I’m in 3 Nephi right now. Here is how my commute goes on a typical day.

6:45am ride my bike to the bus stop
6:52am catch the bus to salt lake
7:30-7:40 arrive downtown and walk to nearest trax station.
7:43am take trax up to the UofU
8:00am arrive at work

The process to get home is a little trickier.
4:35pm walk to the trax station
4:41pm take trax to downtown
4:55pm arrive downtown and run 2 blocks to the bus stop. I can usually catch the Riverton bus right then. The first few times I saw the bus pull away as I was walking to the stop. I decided to take track to the next station to get ahead of the bus and I’ve been able to catch it every time I’ve tried.
5:40pm arrive in riverton and ride bike home.

If I miss the 4:55pm bus the next one doesn’t come until 5:17pm and I get home a little after 6pm.

I’ve driven a couple time and it isn’t that much faster especially when there is traffic because the bus goes slightly faster than everyone else in the HOV lane. The best advantage of driving is not having to worry about timing transfers. The advantages of public transportation are that we don’t have to buy a second car, bus fare ($54/month) is cheaper than gas would be (probably $80/month). I also don’t have to worry about driving which is very nice. I hate driving in traffic but if I’m just riding I just enjoy reading a book or sleeping. Which reminds me. One day on the way home I fell asleep on the bus and when I woke up we had already passed my stop and we were on our way to Herriman. I ended up about 5-6 miles from home and Sarah had to come pick me up.

Wilife
In other news. I was contacted by WiLife this week because they are being acquired by Logitech and I was able to exercise the stock options I had. I’ll make a few bucks off of the acquisition and possibly more later. It will be interesting to see how they progress under a big brand name like Logitech. I think that will be huge in getting into different retail space and to get some marketing dollars working for them.

Ron Paul
Also, this week Ron Paul had his money bomb on Tuesday. $4.3 million in 1 day! Wow! I hope this just gets the momentum rolling. There are still a lot of people that haven’t really heard of Ron Paul. I don’t agree with him on every issue but I’ve never seen such transparency, consitency and moral stability in any candidate. He’s running on a very strong platform. He’s not your typical politician. He’s NOT running because HE wants to be the president. He’s running because he loves the Constitution and wants to restore constitutional principles in our government. He’s a true conservative and would work to defend our freedoms.

Photography
I’ve always loved photography but have never made an effort to really learn how to take good pictures. I really enjoy beautiful photos. For some reason I’m getting excited about the possibility of becoming a professional photographer. I think it is something I could do on the side and really enjoy. I can see myself doing Senior portraits, high school/college sports, child portraits, maybe even family pictures and weddings. I’ve looked into taking some classes at SLCC next semester but the location and time might not work very well. In the meantime I’ve checked out some books from the library and I’m learning all about exposure, lighting, lenses so that I can start taking professional quality photos. Another aspect of this profession that I would like is the digital photo editing. So if you know anyone that would like their picture taken for free I’m looking for practice so I can build a portfolio and then start charging people.