November 8, 2015

This semester has been so intense that I have not been writing in my journal. Today is Stake Conference, and we got out of church at 12, giving me plenty of time to write. My ward begins service at 2 pm this semester. This semester has been very intense. I have only been able to get ahead of my assignments for one week, letting me go to sleep early. I have not been able to workout. Jessica and I like to work out together, but we can't spare the time. I worked out once during that week, when I was ahead. Working out doesn’t take that much time, if you can schedule it well with everything. A focus of this semester has been to seek a job or internship for the off track. I want to live in Portland, Oregon over the winter to be closer to Jessica. I have been interviewing and applying to as many jobs that I can in the construction field. We decided have thanksgiving with the Ledesma family because I have a couple businesses that I want to visit that I might be able to work with.

My friends wanted me to supply a turkey as I have been in the last 3 years by winning the turkey trot, but I don't know if I can because I have not worked out hard, since I have been friends with Jessica. We started working out together the first semester that we met, and I coached her in running after concluding coaching a cross country team. I couldn't work out in the spring because I was the track and field coordinator, and that position took too much time.

This lack of working out has made me weak, and I get aches. For a few weeks, I felt bloated messing with my diet. One night, my stomach was hurting, and my shoulders were aching. It was messing with my sleep. It was not a worst situation to live it, but it was miserable. I decided to start taking care of myself. I worked out that one time. I have been feeling better. I told Heavenly Father that I would begin taking care of myself better, if he would take away my ailments. I also had a big sliver in my thumb. It is not a big deal.

When I reached out to grab a framing stud for the first time early in the semester in my finishing systems class, I got a gigantic sliver. I pulled out the big chunk of wood, and I didn't realize until a couple days later that a sliver about a centimeter long was pretty deep in my finger, and the skin already healed over it. I trusted that my hand would heal itself, so I didn't worry. It was not until last week or so that it recovered. The sliver surfaced my skin, so it can be easily pulled out. It could not be pulled out because the wood did not hold together, so I looked up what I can do on Google. An article said that if I made a paste with baking soda, the sliver situation would be made simple. I did that, and the sliver disappeared. My finger finally healed a couple days ago as I picked off the scab.

My finishing systems class has taught me so much. That class is funny because in the beginning of the class the teacher said that some people may think that this is their easiest class, but it is the most demanding class of my semester. One of the assignments from this class is way more difficult than the midterm of my project management class. I learned framing, roofing, siding, dry walling, fascia and stuff like that. We just put a door unto our miniature house.

My BIM class has one gigantic project, but my progress has been slow. My first proposal for the project was rejected because it was too big of a building. It would have been too expensive and elaborate; plus, a mall is not ideal for Rexburg. I had to restart on the project, and I lost my flash drive, so I lost about 3 hours of work. On top of that, my laptop just died yesterday, so I have to restart again. A rendering is due Tuesday, so we can practice photoshop. The class has been funny because the teacher always says that half of the class should be for working on modeling our building on Revit, but we have only been given like half an hour during class thus far.

Last week I was stressing out, fearing that I may lose my temple recommend because I have not been keeping up with my tithing. Since I was in Heber for only 5 weeks or so, I figured that I wait to pay tithing in Rexburg. I got confused with my check information said that the amount that I have been being paid, and I paid tithing on my net income. I had to figure out how much taxes were taken out of my paycheck. I tried to reverse engineer it to calculate it, since I only have the information of my last paycheck. I basically stayed up late for no reason because I just asked for my year's information from my workplace in the morning to double check my calculations. I got all of the official information and figured it out in the morning. I wanted to figure out my tithing as quick as possible because tithing settlement begins for my ward in two days.

Jessica and I have been working like crazy this semester, so we haven't been able to go on many nice dates. We go out to eat once in a while. We eat lunch and dinner most every day together. We try to go to the temple each week, but Jessica always wants to sleep in. We went to Lindsey Stirling's concert at BYUI. It is a most inspiration performance.

A few weeks ago a tried to do Twitter on my personal account, sharing it on Facebook because I like to be real with people on Facebook, since I was not writing in my journal. That didn't last long. I started followings the world news again on Twitter, and I like keeping up with that.

Jessica and I went to give blood on Friday, but Jessica didn't prepare sufficiently to donate. I donated blood just fine. Jessica was on a chair to donate blood, and I was going through the process to get ready. When I was ready, Jessica was gone. I thought that she may have donated quickly. I donated quickly. Jessica came to explain that she was not hydrated. She did not sleep a lot the night before. She has not eaten enough this morning, her veins are hard to see, and nurse said that she may have to stick her a few times before she finds the vein. She saw the complete process of my donation, seeing how calm that I was. There was another girl freaking out, and she was having a very hard time donating blood. The blood was not flowing well, since her anxiety was causing her veins to close. Jessica said that she might do that, and she would faint and other things. I told her not to say that because she doesn't know what will happen when she donates. It was a good experience for me, and I had no problems. I think that my experience could be hers, since she saw my experience. I think that the perspective that you have known the donation process will be your experience. Don’t make this life's experience worse than it is.