The Epitome of My Existence

This literally just happened, and it was so perfect, so very much the story of my entire life that I couldn't help but write about it, even though it's being posted to a place where I imagine virtually no one ventures.  But that's ok, because someday when I'm older my kids will either find my random thoughts and happenings interesting, or I'll force them to read this.  Either way, one day, my story will be told.  So here's how it all went down.  On my last day of work at Solution Support I decide to leave a few hours early because it's dead, plus I really just don't want to be there anymore knowing that on its way is a job offer to a much more prestigious and better paying job.  I get home, have some lunch and watch some TV.  Not a super exciting day granted, but it certainly beat answering phone calls and trying to work with a computer that freezes every time it attempts to process a piece of information.  Carrying on, at about 4:40 I decide it would be nice to go swim around in the pool for a bit, get at least a little exercise for the day.  I'm only out about twenty when I decide that swimming is tiring and I'm going to go back to the fairly lazy day I had been leading.  When I get back I notice that there is a missed call and a message on my phone.  Lo and behold it was my soon to be employer calling to make a job offer.  Great, right!  One would generally think so, but what happened is this, the call came at about 4:45, just a few minutes after I left to go swimming, I got the message at about 5:05, just a few minutes after she had left work.  Not just for the day, not just for the weekend, but because we're in the glorious state of Utah, Monday, the 25th, is a holiday so she won't be in and she's taking Tuesday off.  Which, of course, means that I now have to wait until Wednesday to get the job offer instead of getting it today.  Had she called at pretty much any other point of the day I would have joyously answered the phone, but she managed to pick the only fifteen minute window during which I wouldn't answer my phone.  You really can't make this kind of stuff up!

The Desert Swamp

By reading the title of this blog one would most likely come to the conclusion that I was purposefully using a juxtaposition of two entirely different types of ecosystems as some sort of social commentary, one would be wrong in making this assumption.  I am in fact referring to the absolutely beautiful region of centralish Utah known as the Escalante.  Just a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to traverse terrains so diverse I couldn't have fathomed such a place existed.  We started out doing a little day hike through the lower calf creek to come to a gorgeous waterfall.  Then the real adventure began!  We started out backpacking from the car in search of a place known to our "all knowing" guide as the notch.  Unfortunately it turns out that this location is slightly difficult to find at night so we ended up sleeping on the side of a dirt road.  The next day we did some bushwhacking through thorned bushes, fun, to arrive at a little pool of water known as blue bodies.  Without really considering where such a name would come from I took the 15 foot jump into water and nearly froze death.  it turns out that the body of water is so named because if you spend any amount of time in it you will literally turn blue!  We then basically scaled the side of a cliff to climb down to the bottom of yet another waterfall.  But here's the catch, we were backpacking, and therefore had to climb down this cliff with backpacks on.  I for one love nothing more than scaling up and down rocks, but to add a 40 lb backpack gives you a whole new challenge to deal with, but have no fear, none of our group of 8 died.  Looking back it wasn't all that bad but I'd be lying to say it wasn't at least a bit nerve racking.  At the bottom of the waterfall our guide, Jamal, showed us a natural spring coming out of a rock through which we filled up a billy can and made some kool-aide.  It turns out that some subscribe to the idea that loads of sugar is a great idea during long hikes, but who am I to judge, I defer advice to those who are more experienced, and thus I partook of the deliciousness.  Others were not as enuthiasastic about the amount of sugar and were a little more reserved in the drinking of the kool-aide.  From there we hiked along the upper calf creek, or rather through the creek. Without a doubt my favorite part of the entire trip.  Absolutely beautiful scenery, natural cooling in that you are walking through water, and shade built in not only by trees but by cliff walls as well.  I kid you not I could have just gone all day in such conditions.  At one point we even stopped at a little beach for a little R & R as well as some lunch.  Unfortunately all good things must come to an end.  Eventually we climbed out of the glorious creek up into a freaking desert.  Also important to note at this point is that Jamal decided to give us a heads up that the odds of running into a rattle snake at this point was very likely.  It is also important to note that I have a ridiculous phobia of snakes.  Needless to say, yet I'll say it anyway, I spent the entire time across the desert in a paranoid state looking for snakes.  Then finally at the end we ascended up one of the most ridiculous hills ever.  By now the day was coming to a close and it was a quick trek over some rocky terrain to cowboy cave.  Cowbay cave, the camping location for the second night, was unfortunately already taken by some boy scouts with whom we crossed paths a number times throughout the trip.  After some aimless meandering we found another suitable spot to set up camp and call it a night.  At some point during this second day however I managed to pick up some sort of illness from one of the other guys on the trip.  Looking back I should have heading the warning and not have drunk out of the billy can after he did, unfortunately I decided that my immune system was impenetrable and suffered the consequences the final day.    This last day started off with a short hike to a little sandy area where we enjoyed a rousing game of backpacking volleyball.  This consists of a net made of two sticks stuck in the ground and help up by rocks with a rope tied between them and a foam ball.  The plan was to do guys vs girls but since the numbers were 5 and 3 I was sent over to help out the ladies, because lets be honest, I'm pretty much amazing and they needed all the help they can get.  Thanks to my amazing volleyball heroics we managed to put it in the win column and head on our way.  This is where the swamp part of the trip began.  I never would have imagined a swamp so close to where there was desert and rattlesnakes, but there it was, and through it we went.  Attempting at one point to bushwack our way through, but to no avail and were forced to turn around and found another way around to another little body of water, this one however with a 40 ft drop into the water.  After watching numerous boy scouts jump as well as almost everyone else in the group go for it I finally decided to man up and jump.  It was a pretty exhilarating feeling and it gives you just enough time to think, "when the heck am I gonna hit the water?" when BANG you plunge into the depths of the pool.  I must say that it was a ton of fun, but once was plenty.  In fact after jumping my friend Victoria aka Vicky T, told me that she hated me because she was the only one that hadn't gone at that point and figured that she now had to because every else head, chalk one up for peer pressure!  It was there at the 40 that we had some lunch, which turned out to be some of the best mac and cheese I've had in my life, and then continued on our way for the final stretch of the journey.  This stretch consisted of a bit more ridiculously hot desert and then hiking in and around sand creek.  I say in and around because you end up crossing the darn thing like 25 times, I believe we actually lost count after a while, 25 is of course a fairly high number.  Towards the end of sand creek you run into one last natural spring, by far my favorite, which envigorated me to finish the trek, because it should be remembered that I was at this point feeling like crap from being sick.  The final leg after the spring was along the Escalante river and ends by crossing it one last time.  The joy of seeing the car in the parking lot at the end of the trip is truly indescribable.  Since I've never had a child I can of course only speculate, but i would imagine that my joy in seeing the car could only be surpassed by the joy of having a child, and only maybe.  All in all the trip was a delight and I'm now sold on the idea of backpacking.  Thanks to all those who joined in the adventure and put up with me for 3 straight days.

Graduation and the inevitable unemployment that follows

Just a couple of weeks after my last post a glorious and momentous occasion occurred, I graduated from college with a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering.  For years and years I worked hard to achieve this goal which would instantly lead me on to a better and prosperous life.  In the future I'm sure that those things will follow, but the immediate impact has been more like nothing ever happened.  Why is that you may ask, well it turns out that despite having graduated, employment is in no way guaranteed.  It also happens to follow that if you don't have a job, the degree which you just earned doesn't actually make you any money!  Strange, I know, but still true.  Sure enough down the road I will start working a full time job and be rolling in cash as the eligible bachelor that I am, but until that moment I have one large problem staring me down day after day.  It's a simple enough problem, boredom.  For years and years I have always either had a job or was in school, and at many times, both.  However, I am now doing neither of those things and have discovered that I simply don't have enough hobbies to fill the time.  I had always been under the impression that while not having a job would be fairly terrible because of a lack of income, it would at least, if nothing else, be fun.  There's just one gaping hole in that philosophy, I'm the only unemployed one.  All of my other friends are working or taking classes during the summer, and many of them are doing both.  Which simply leads me to numerous days during which I'm home by myself for an overly long amount of time.  Fortunately there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel and I appear to be nearing a job offer for a company a few hours north of here.  That of course means that I'll be a few hours north of all of my current friends, but hey, if worst comes to worst, there's always the weekends.  Finally I guess the moral of the story here is that the grass isn't actually greener on the other side, it's just a different shade of green.  Being able to enjoy your own brand of green is what's going to make life awesome!

Physics and Chemistry

Being that I'm a Chemical Engineering major, and in a few short weeks will officially be a Chemical Engineer, I thought I had a pretty solid understanding of physics and chemistry.  However I recently discovered an anomaly in which mixing shredded potatoes and flour creates a very sticky and moist mixture.  I feel as though it is important to note that an important step in this process was drying the shredded potatoes.  So imagine my surprise when the fairly dry mixture of flour and potato slowly became thicker, liquidier, and stickier as I added more flour.  That's right, adding flour to a dry mixture made it liquidy and sticky.  I have absolutely no explanation as to why such a ridiculous thing would happen, yet there I was, may hands getting more and more covered in a gooey potato/flour mixture.  Absolutely fascinating.  It seems as though the lesson to glean from this, if there is in fact a lesson to be learned, is that sometimes our best understanding of things is inadequate to explain some of the little splendors of life.  However after eating the delicious potato dumplings that were made from this mixture I sure am glad that they exist.

Disappointment

Being a fairly large fan of BYU sports I was quite thoroughly excited for the big sweet 16 game tonight, the first one BYU has been in in the past 30 years.  Like any good sporting event the entire game was a gigantic roller coaster ride of emotions.  The sadness of being down 10 early, and the excitement of rallies making up the large deficit.  All of it was simply glorious with the high point probably being when regulation ended in a 68-68.  Unfortunately after this point it was all downhill as the overtime was not BYU's time of glory.  Rather we started to show fatigue and were pretty much dominated on both sides of the court.  Well this got me thinking about a philosophy about pessimism that I had recently heard.  Basically if your optimistic you'll either feel validated or disappointed, if your pessimistic then you'll either be validated or pleasantly surprised.  Logically then, it makes more sense to be pessimistic than optimistic.  While this is a hard argument to dispute, something in me just feels as though that can't really be the best way to go.  Had I been pessimistic the whole game I would have missed out on the wonderful roller coaster ride during the game, and lets be honest, since we lost the game the roller coaster of emotion was definitely the best part of the whole thing.  I think it has to do with the necessity of opposition in all things.  If we are pessimistic and the worst we feel is validated, then we never really have anything to make the good times seem that much better.  The opposition of being disappointed is what makes the highs so very high.  I don't know about other people, but I do know that when I'm on cloud nine I want to be as high up there as I can possibly be.  And the only way I see to be able to do that is by being optimistic and putting myself out there time and time again. Sure the lows will hurt, but the highs will make it worth it every time!

The Happiest Place on Earth

Well it's been a while since I've posted anything, and I thought that now would be as good a time as any.  Unfortunately I really don't have anything on my mind about which to ramble on for a while.  Therefore the idea that I'm running with is just writing and seeing where my mind takes me, a dangerous adventure for sure, but hopefully it turns out to be a fun ride.  In fact that itself made me wonder why it is that just starting to write with no plan in mind gives you ideas.  It happens every time without fail.  I could sit around thinking for hours and not come up with anything that I would ever really want to write about, or I can just start writing anything and like magic a fairly decent topic comes out.  It seems to work with anything, from blogging to writing essays for school, just start and the rest will come out.  So Disneyland, it's a pretty awesome place.  Just this last weekend I had the pleasure of taking my first trip there, and what an experience it was.  I do feel, however, that I may have missed out on opportunities to go at the right age.  To my parents credit, they did take me and the rest of the family to Disney world, but that was back in 93 when I was only 8 years old.  Honestly, that was probably a better time to go than at 25, except that the problem remains that I have an absolutely horrible memory.  So while I probably had more fun with all of the childish things involved with Disney World, I can honestly only remember a very small number of them.  And that raises the question in my mind, when is the ideal time to go to Disneyland/World.  I realized this last weekend that I was too old for the majority of rides and things happening there, a lot of them were simply slow and not very exciting.  Even a ride like space mountain doesn't really carry the pizazz that one is seeking at an amusement park.  However, if you go when you're too young, then years later you can't remember the experience that well, other than it occurred and it was a great time.  Well then, when was it that I stopped being into shows like Doug or the Rugrats, and started to focus on more mature entertainment?  To the best of my recollection, which may I remind you is not very good, it was right around the time of becoming a teenager, say 12 or 13.  I think that this would be the ideal age to go and visit such a Theme Park.  In this stage you will still be excited about meeting characters, or at least people dressed up like the characters, and all of the other childish happenings which are going on, and hopefully remember it a little better.  But then again, as I was walking around Disneyland there was one thought which I had repeatedly, that it would be so much more fun to have gone with my niece and nephews.  Perhaps, then, the best time to experience Disneyland is when you are there to enjoy the pleasure of seeing someone else love every second of it.  Maybe the best reason to go isn't a selfish one of having fun yourself, but seeing loved ones eyes light up as they get to say hi to Mickey and Buzz Lightyear.  Personally I thought Disneyland was a wonderful place but now that I've been there and can remember what it's like, I'm even more excited for the day when there are little Travises (or perhaps Travi) running around that I can bring with me and enjoy their enjoyment!

Nostalgia

As I got in my car after a full day of school something strange happened, a song from my childhood randomly came into my head.  This wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that I was doing absolutely nothing that should have made a mental connection with Air Supply's Here I Am (Just When I Thought I Was Over You).  Had I been thinking about a girl that would have been one thing, but I wasn't, I was thinking about an upcoming road trip to California with some friends of mine.  So here's what I think happened, I was extremely excited about all of the plans for the trip coming together, and it was that high level of excitement that put into my mind something old and nostalgic, which just so happened to be an Air Supply song.  However, the second that song came into my head the excitement quickly turned from being about California to being about an old song that I hadn't heard in years being all of the sudden in my head.  It was stuck in there so much that even as I played other music on the way home, I was still singing Air Supply, and loving every second of it.  So the real question is why in the world was I so darn happy about an old corny love song?  Of course the answer to that question is nostalgia, it reminds me of being in the back of my parents van with the whole family taking a trip to Long Island to visit relatives, of a simpler time when responsibilities didn't really exist.  Well, I started to think, does this mean that what I really want is to be a child again, living under my parents roof without any sort of a care in the world. While that does sound nice at first, the answer is a resounding NO!  Goodness I couldn't imagine how terrible it would be to be 12 again, to not be able to just leave to do what I needed to, to not be able to just drive to the store, or get home at whatever hour I please.  When I visit my parents house for a week I start to go crazy having to check in all the time and what not.  So it's not that it makes me think of a happier time, because I'm fairly certain that I'm much much happier now than I was back then.  So what is it that makes me giddy about feeling like a little kid again when I see robots fighting each other, or think of an old family favorite song?  It's probably just one of those mysteries that we may never really know the answer to, but as a scientifically minded person, that kind of crap just isn't going to cut it. So here's my hypothesis as to why such a thing happens.  It occurs because of a blending of present and past.  As the best things from the past come into the future we start to subconsciously imagine a world where childhood and adulthood blend together with all of their individual magnificences.  We briefly, but truly, live in a world where we don't have any responsibilities holding us down, but at the same time we have all of the freedom which we could ever hope to have.  The nostalgic effect is merely the mind blending all of the good it has ever known into one temporary reality, and it's absolutely awesome!

Mulligans

To anyone who plays golf casually, mulligan is about as beautiful a word as any.  For those who aren't familiar with it, it is basically just a fancy way of saying a do-over.  The great part about a mulligan is that you get to take another swing and it doesn't count against you.  A mulligan is the epitome of a second chance, as it basically erases the existence of the previous stroke.  The reason that mulligans are on my mind in the dead of winter is that I was recently watching a TV show and that particular episode was entitled "mulligans".  The show had the golf reference because the episode took place during a golf tournament, but the true reason behind the naming of the episode was that in the end a son forgave his father for having left him and his brother as children, after having sworn that he would never do so.  Essentially he gave his dad a mulligan.  Interestingly enough this got me thinking about a certain friendship with someone that didn't end on great terms.  While watching this show I started to think about how things had ended and about second chances.  Then, later that night, I received an E-mail from that exact same person, apologizing for the way things ended up.  To be honest, had I gotten that message a day earlier I probably would have just dismissed it and been frustrated, thinking to myself that there is no way this person deserved any sort of second chance.  But it didn't come the day before, it came that exact same day, just as this issue was on my mind.  I mean c'mon, there is absolutely no way that something like this happens purely out of coincidence, right?  So I decided that I needed to follow my gut on this one and give my old friend another chance.  What happens in the end, I honestly have no idea, but there is one thing that I do know, such things don't happen by accident, and the best type of do-over is a mulligan, where the first time is completely erased from memory and the record books.  Give it up for second chances.

Cross Country Skiing

Exciting news in the life of Travis Zurcher, I have now learned a brand new sport, cross country skiing!  Granted it's not the most exciting sport of all time, but when you consider some of my other favorites like golf and baseball I guess it kind of fits right in with what I'm all about.  Anyways, finally something that got me outside and enjoying the snow for the majority of the day, not an easy task, I must admit, but definitely accomplished.  So now the question is this, could I be convinced to become a winter person.  A very interesting thought indeed seeing as since as far back as I can remember I've never been a fan of the snow or winter.  Sure as a kid I would make snowmen and snowforts, throwing snowballs at friends and having a good time.  But I always remember suffering through winter to make it back to the glorious days of summer.  In fact many times I recall people at the end of summer saying that they were excited for winter and were done with all this hot weather for a little while.  I also recall thinking to myself that such a thought was ludicrous because summer was in every way better than winter. "But you can always put on more layers in the cold, you can only take off so many", someone would say to me in defense of winter.  Right, because there's nothing I love more than putting on two shirts, a sweater, a jacket, scarf, gloves and a hat just to be "comfortable" outside.  And I also am skeptical to the fact that such amounts of clothing is in fact comfortable, because to me shorts, a t-shirt and some sandals is the ideal amount of clothes.  Too hot?  Try going inside in the A/C for a little bit, or maybe you can take a dip in a body of water of sorts.  Here's an idea, in the summer the shade is much cooler, relax in it while sipping a nice lemonade.  So what's the point, well at first it was to analyze whether finding enough fun winter activities could change my mind about loving summer so very much more, but now it seems quite obvious to me after my rant about how much better summer is.  No amount of fun winter activities will ever change my mind because summer is just that much better, period.  Even if I were to discover a plethora of fun filled wintery stuffs, the absolute best solution is a week or so out of the year where I visit somewhere cold, and then head back to some hot wonderous desert where winter is only a fairytale.

Assumptions

Today during Econ 110 Professor Kearl started off by making an assumption in order to simplify economics.  This, to me, seems like a perfectly reasonably thing to do since I know very little about economics and to attempt of study of the most intricate details right off the get go would be nothing but futile.  However, it appears that many other people were not able to grasp this very simple concept of making assumptions to simplify a system, even if this assumption is not entirely true.  In this instance, the assumption was made that people were self-interested and would therefore ultimately act in the fashion that would help them to acquire as much as possible.  While this assumption is obviously not 100% true, it is, in general, a very good guideline as to the roots of people's behavior.  That's why it's an assumption, and not a rule of economics.  But for some reason every couple of minutes or so someone would come up with some hypothetical situation of people not acting in a self interested manner.  While this was quite frusrtating to me, the fact that people couldn't understand the purpose of the assumption he was making, it was also very entertaining.  This is because every time someone gave a situation where people were not acting in their own self interest, Professor Kearl showed them why they were in fact wrong every time.  A mother staying at home with a child, not self interested?  Why yes it is.  That mother is staying home because it would cost more to hire a full time nanny than she would be able to make going to work.  The best choice for her is to stay at home to take of the child.  Point Kearl.  The industrial revolution, people went into terrible working conditions, this most certainly was not to their benefit, right?  Wrong again, no one forced people to leave their farms, they left because in the end it was a better decision, certainly not the best but obviously better than farming, or they wouldn't have left the farm.  Point Kearl.  This continued literally the entire class and was fascinating to see people continue at it, when time and time again, the point when to Dr. Kearl.  In the end, this made me think about other classes where similar assumptions are made, and I realized that they are all technical and science classes.  So it must be that all these people have not had many, if any at all, science classes, or this concept would not seem foreign, but instead blatantly necessary.  At first I thought more people need more science to understand this concept better, because making assumptions to simplify things that are occurring in life is a very useful and helpful tool.  But as I continued to ponder on the outcome of this solution I realized something very important.  If more of these liberal arts type people are in my science classes, then I would have to deal with the stupidity all the time, and not just in one class.  So in the end the current system is probably the best one and I'll just sit back and enjoy Dr. Kearl making people look stupid.

The Science of Religion

I just finished reading a really great article by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.  It was an excerpt from a speech that he gave about a year ago at Harvard Law School in which he outlined three fundamental premises of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  It was an absolutely fantastic article and I recommend you give it a read, you won't be disappointed.  The cluster of truth, as he called them, that really got me thinking was the threefold sources of truth about man and the universe:  science, the scriptures, and continuing revelation.  To me this is very interesting as the general concept about the interaction between science and religion is a negative one. Most people see science as a way to show that religion is incorrect and that we do not truly need religion in our lives, that they are inherently in opposition with one another.  However, as Elder Oaks explains, this is not the case, but they in fact work with each other in obtaining more knowledge about life.  It is my thought that, despite popular belief, God himself must obey the laws of science, that is to say that he must follow them.  Please note that I am not saying that God is not all powerful, because he most assuredly is.  What I am saying is that as a song I learned growing up says, knowledge is power. Since God is all knowing, he has a grasp of the sciences much more advanced than anything we claim to be able to understand or to model.  With such great knowledge he is able to take advantage of the laws of science, and use, not circumvent, them to accomplish his great design.  It seems to me that the more we learn about science the more it truly proves just how amazing God is as he is able to use the laws of nature to his benefit.  But if we truly think about it, what we do as humans and science is the same thing.  As we understand science better we are able to accomplish things that people even only 100 years ago wouldn't even be able to fathom.  For example, how would you be able to explain to a person in the 1800's the concept of blogging, there is no way they would be able to grasp such a concept of a virtual connection allowing people to post their thoughts and opinions in a forum where people from around the world could have instant access. My guess is that if you were in the right place and time you would probably be burned at the stake for being a witch for talking about such ridiculous things, although I suppose that would be more considered the wrong place and time.  So imagine what an all knowing God could be able to do with his understanding of the laws of nature, things that we can't even begin to understand how exactly they work.  Some of the biggest things I can think of are the resurrection and the atonement of Christ.  How one man can suffer for all of the sins and sorrows of the world doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, but that's only because I have an imperfect knowledge of the science of the universe.  What I have come to understand though is that God does understand how it all comes together in the end, and that's why the other methods of learning are so important.  If it weren't for the scriptures and revelation we would not be able to figure out that there is a resurrection after this life.  Thankfully such wonderful knowledge has in fact been revealed to us along with many other things that will help us with our eternal salvation.  It is my belief that as our understanding of science improves, so will our understanding of God and religion because truth is truth regardless of the source.