Food and Figures

After my last post I developed a lovely cold that persisted for five days. I never fully recovered from the last cold and this one was just as persistent. At least this time I wasn't coughing all the time, but I had a sinus headache and no energy for days. Terrible timing when my thesis due date is getting closer!

Conveniently, Saturday 13 of September I was fully recovered to go out to a tea party that my friend Josie Mackie had organised. Dressed in our tea party finest, we had a photo scavenger hunt and then had herbal tea, milk, and yummy snacks. To add to it we all brought an "un-birthday" gift which we played a game to distribute. It was a great afternoon and a wonderful way to enjoy the fine worth after being cooped up for 5 days.












The following Sunday was bright and sunny so Matt and I decided to walk to church (which resulted in a blister later). It seemed like such an awesome day until I realised I was asked to give a talk for sacrament meeting! The first speaker was already up and I made eye contact with the bishop to confirm that not only was I next, but that I forgot! Quickly I looked at my e-mails to see what the sacrament meeting theme was (I choose the hymns to fit the themes in advance), and was relieved to find that it was "favourite conference talks." I hurriedly looked at last General Conference and found a couple of talks that I really liked and had good notes from - thank you technology!! The first speaker was an old man who they thought would take half the time and ended up taking 10 minutes! Since our Relief Society president was just released they had the old and new president give their testimony to fill up the time. I still had 20 minutes and used all of it up speaking from my own experiences and how they applied to the conference talks I had chosen. Although it was not as fluid as I would have liked, I know the spirit guided me and I don't know that I could have done better had I prepared more! In case you wanted to know, I used parts of "Spiritual Whirlwinds" by Elder Neil L. Anderson and "What Are You Thinking" by Elder W. Craig Zwick from the April 2014 General Conference.

Heavenly father made the structure of the tree so intricate and resilient because he cares about them, so imagine how much more he cares about us! (Racheal Laugery's comment from my talk)

This last week has been quite eventful. I ordered a Ninja Mega Kitchen Blender set to try out for 30 days. I really wanted a big blender that can completely break down frozen fruit for smoothies as well as to make sauces and things. This way I can see if it can do all I want to. Taking this to heart, I've made daily protein smoothies, homemade oreo ice cream, basil pesto, and pineapple juice for TGIF's Jack Daniel's sauce. So far it has been a success, but I am not sure it's worth the money ($500 AUD).

Jack Daniel's steak and homemade french fries

My cooking theme for the week doesn't compare to all the figures I have been making for my thesis this week! So many figures and plots and tables and diagrams (samples below) to make anyone go crazy. I am a little less than three weeks away from turning in my final printed thesis and the clock is ticking! I met with Jennifer and confirmed a lot of the figures I needed to include, but I had to redo a lot of them to make them thesis ready. Not to mention I needed to find the best spectrogram examples of my vocalisations and make those pretty enough to include. I also had to do more statistics - it never ends!! I met with my awesome biology stats guy (Drew Allen) who helped me figure out a bunch more stuff. After three hours of work and about to finish up my last question or two, my R statistical program decided to quit. I lost everything from that three hours and a little of the coding I had done earlier! Blahhh!! I spent the next two hours in a study space re-creating everything - I must be getting pretty good at R. One test took me most of that time because I couldn't get it to work and had to constantly google search examples.

Just when I think I had figured it all out, these two guys randomly asked me if they could borrow my computer to print out Conception Day tickets from their e-mail. As a little background....Conception Day is basically a big event to celebrate with lots of drinking from 12pm onwards. Both of these guys had obviously been drinking a lot and one of them openly admitted he was drunk, but I saved everything and helped them out. The drunker one had to give me his gmail address and password because he couldn't read anything on the screen. The other guy when he found out I was from the US asked me if I knew anything about Oregon State University in Corvallis! Crazy! It turns out he is going there next year and apparently is mostly planning to party. Although I did my undergrad there I am certainly no help with the party scene. Nevertheless I gave him my e-mail if he had questions and the other drunkard was so happy to get his tickets he gave me a hug (twice).

After all of that I hoped to meet with Drew again to confirm I did things correctly, but he was gone. When I got home I just got straight back to working on cleaning up my figures and getting the labels perfect all the way until 10pm! This morning I got up early since I didn't sleep much constantly thinking about labels and figures and writing. I am definitely in for a long three weeks!

It's not all stressful and frustrating though. Every morning I get to wake up with this cute guy:

Matt also recently built cat shelves to help Shade get to the window....

It's actually quite a difficult task when you can only use command strips to hold the shelves up. Shade loves it!

Tonight I am going to a Relief Society activity and tomorrow is my 3-yr anniversary. No special plans to celebrate 3 years of marriage, just hanging out with friends. Is it bad that each year I can't help but think "Wow, we made it another year!" Marriage has been quite rocky to be frank and although I love Matt with all my heart he can be the most frustrating and annoying man I know. I cannot say I married my best friend, but I can say after 3 years, he is the only person I want to share everything with. When it comes to movies, music, random videos I find on Facebook, and random daily occurrences (like the two drunk guys), Matt is the first person I think of to share it with because I know he'll appreciate it as much as I do. After 3 incredibly long years, he has BECOME my best friend.

So long for now! If there is a massive gap between this post and the next one I am obviously working hard at finishing my thesis! It may be due in three weeks, but my supervisor needs time to go over it!

The Bake Sale

The last couple weeks have been filled with two things. Statistics and baking. 

To cover the boring stuff first, I'll explain a little of my statistical dilemma. After collecting all my data on different tiger vocalisations I needed to do tests to determine how well my measurements help predict each tiger call. Additionally, I needed to find the probabilities of all my observations based on the measurements. After multiple days of working with two people that are very knowledgeable in biology statistics in R, we were able to perform the tests I needed and relevant plots! Now I just need to recreate some more plots and figures and get to writing!

Besides the many days of stressing about getting my statistics done, I also had a big bake sale to worry about. Our stake organised a fundraiser to help our youth raise money to go to what is called "FSY" (previously EFY - especially for youth). Each ward young men and young women had to come up with something to sell and we decided on baked goods. We didn't know what other wards would have or how much we would need so we guessed. Our plan was to bake with the youth Friday night before the activity, but knowing we would not be able to get a lot done in one day each young women leader prepped and baked a lot in advance. Friday I ended up cooking from 2pm to 7pm at home, then 7 to 9pm with the youth (which there was actually only one youth and a whole bunch of leaders), and then from 9pm to 11pm. I made orange cake, no bake cookies, snickerdoodles, apple cake, and cupcakes. I started worrying I didn't make enough so I got up the next morning at 5:30am, went to the store, and baked more cookies until it was time to go. 

The day of the fundraiser it was raining and I assumed the sales would occur indoors but when I arrived everyone was outside under canopies. Luckily another bishop had provided our ward with a canopy so by the time I got there we had cover. It rained most of the day and when it didn't we had cold winds. I was proud of our youth getting up early and manning the car wash in the rain!

We ended up having so much food! The issue was that many of the other wards had big meals and a few had baked goods as well. One ward in particular had a member who made professional cupcakes. Needless to say we didn't sell many cupcakes. We earned about $400 and overall the stake made around $7700! It was a big success as a stake and hopefully will help many of the youth to attend the FSY in January. Our ward luckily has few youth and we are able to help all of them to go. 

Sunday was Father's day and we provided all the leftovers of the sale to the families in the ward. Unfortunately, I still have the majority of the apple cake and my body is not enjoying all the sugar. Did I mention I also made cinnamon rolls? They didn't turn out right so I didn't sell them, but now I have too many sweets!