Jumpin' on the Bandwagon

I've been struggling trying to think of a new fun post, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and tell you a bit about us. This questionnaire has been floating around many of my highschool-friends' blogs.

1. Who is your man? Miles
2. How long have you been together? Married 2 ½ years
3. How long did you date? 10 months
4. How old is your man? 25 now?
5. Who eats more? I’ve figured out I eat about ½ - 2/3 what he eats, and he’s usually done in about ½ the time as well.
6. Who said "I love you" first? I did.
7. Who is taller? He is, though we are both pretty short. We always tease each other that we don’t realize how short the other is until we see them with a group of other people.
8. Who sings better? I think I have the pitch and Miles has the volume! Sometimes I have to shhh him while singing hymns in sacrament meeting at church.
9. Who is smarter? Definitely him—he’s the one getting his PhD!
10. Who's temper is worse? Temper? Neither one of us really has a temper, but I’m the one who gets irritated first.
11. Who does the laundry? Usually a combined effort. I need his muscles to carry the very full hamper to the coin-op.
12. Who does the dishes? Miles, but he REALLY likes it when I help.
13. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Me, there is no way we could ever switch. We’ve tried a couple times, and neither of us could sleep a wink!
14. Who pays the bills? He pays the “bills,” but I do the shopping.
15. Who is better with the computer? Yeah, that would be Miles—he is currently designing and building a website from scratch for us. Keep an eye out, we will be posting to that site soon!
16. Who mows the lawn? No one. The grass at our apartment complex is like 12” high right now!
17. Who cooks dinner? Me. Miles claims it’s because I’m good at it.
18. Who drives when you are together? He does. We’re a relatively traditional couple when it comes to that. He’s also very good at always opening my car door.
19. Who pays when you go out? Whoever gets the debit/credit card out first.
20. Who is most stubborn? Usually me, but Miles has “opinions” about certain things and will not budge!
21. Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? I want to say me, but it’s probably him.
22. Whose parents do you see the most? Mine, even though we live equidistant to both now—6 hours to St. George, and 6 hours to Mesa.
23. Who kissed who first? Miles kissed me first, though we have different ideas of how the details played out.
24. Who asked who out? He asked me out, because I had a car.
25. Who proposed? He did, kneeling in the snow. It was a total surprise! How romantic ☺
26. Who is more sensitive? If you mean more emotional—then it’s me. Miles is way more sensitive to my needs than I am to his.
27. Who has more friends? Probably me, but he's better at making friends
28. Who has more siblings? He does.
29. Who wears the pants in the family? Well my nickname for Miles is "Pants" (shortened from his full nickname of Turkeypants) but that doesn't mean he WEARS the pants in the family. Like most of ya’ll we feel pretty equally yoked.

Bakersfield

Michelle came up with the fun idea to take a quick trip to Bakersfield this last weekend. Now I know what some of you must be thinking, "Why in the world would they want to leave the beautiful weather and coast of Irvine to visit the hot, barrenness of Bakersfield?" Well for those who don't know, and are probably the ones asking the question, my family and I lived there for six years (while I was in junior high and high school). Since my family now lives in Arizona, I haven't had any reason to visit Bakersfield since I left for BYU seven years ago.

It was Michelle's first visit and she wasn't too impressed. Sure she thought it was fun to put places to all the stories that I have told her about, but she thought overall the city was pretty ugly. Now, it doesn't fair too well with air quality but that's not its fault (Bakersfield lies at the bottom of the San Joaquin valley and accumulates all the smog from Sacramento and San Francisco), but all the oil rigs don't help either.

We visited my old house. While there we caught up with the Hemingway's, a neighbor family in our ward.

Next, we went to my high school. West High Viking pride, yeah!

CSUB swimming pool. This is where I swam throughout high school. All of our swim practices and almost all of our swim meets took place in this pool.

The LDS ward building we attended. It doubled as the Stake Center. Here we had church, seminary, dances, even performances.

Western Warehouse. This is were my dad worked and was the reason we moved to Bakersfield.

Those were the major attractions. Besides that, pretty much all we did was eat.

Dewar's is a well known ice cream and candy shop in Bakersfield. We had a black and white, bought some chews, and even a t-shirt for me.

Michelle has a bad habit lately of leaving her door open when we walk away from the car. I was able to catch it on film.

On the way home we made a stop at the Los Angeles Temple, another first for Michelle. By the way, this is Michelle's accidental "artistic" shot.

My SUPERMAN

Well, after reading over many of my friend's blogs, I thought it was now my turn to spotlight my husband. He really is my Superman! Moving away from friends and family has reminded me how awesome my husband is. He is the most caring, spiritual, loving, handsome, intelligent, and loyal man out there. And I know he will make the best father to our children! He is my closest friend and my silliest playmate. I am the most comfortable and my best self when I am with him. I love my Mr. Handsome Turkeypants.

Farewell to Graduate Studies

Well now that we made it to California and have our computer set up I can finally post about a memoir that I wrote up about working at BYU's Graduate Studies office. I started there in December 2004 as a Special Projects intern (pretty much a glorified front desk back-up). When we got married, April 2005, they promoted me to Data Analyst. As Data Analyst I grabbed statistics from the University database and made up reports for BYU's administration. It was a great job and really pushed my limits. I loved working at Graduate Studies.

When I was getting ready to leave, Bonnie asked if I would be willing to write up something on my experience working as a student at Graduate Studies. It turned into a memoir…of sorts.

Working @ GS
A tongue-in-cheek memoir by Miles Pomeroy
My experience working with Graduate Studies has turned me into a nerd. At least this is the way that my wife likes to phrase it. I see it more as enriching my understanding of various algorithmic protocols designed to cultivate the extensibility of aggregate collaboration orchestration; with a few parties to spice it up.

If I were to ask myself, “Self, what is the best thing about working at Graduate Studies?” I would most enthusiastically respond, “The parties, most definitely.” The parties have brought us together as an office. They have introduced the lowly intern in the backroom to the perky secretary at the front desk. In a phrase, forgive me if I am being too cliché, we work hard but we also play hard.

The atmosphere of the office has greatly benefited from an abundant diversity. We have straight arrow, spartan types like Janice, Sarah, Meg, and Cathi; who are balanced out by easy-going, loquacious types like James, JeNeal, Jared, and Terilee. We also have quiet, benevolent types like Claire, Breann, Derence, and Christijan; who are balanced out by loud, vivacious types like Amy, Kevin, Bonnie, and Jolene.

Seriously though, I have been very impressed by the amount of trust I have been given as a student employee. Both James and Bonnie have let me take the reins on all of my projects. They have not micromanaged, but have given me a vision and then allowed me the opportunity to create the reality as I see it.

I have had the opportunity in this position to learn many skills that I previously did not have. My supervisors gave me time to increase my depth in Access, but also to explore mysql, html, php, and css. I believe that I have been able to use these new skills to improve my value to this office.

I have felt an equal with the full-time staff. I have been treated as such and believe that I have tried to perform as such.

Family Pictures

Well, I did not intend to post two entries in one day--but I forgot about these family pictures. Miles and I decided to get some fun "family pictures" taken now that we've been married for more than a couple years. We're just getting a little tired of the wedding pictures hanging on our wall. So, we had a friend (an armature photographer) take a few. We hope they captured a little of our personalities. Have a look!

Miles' Birthday Weekend that We Spent at Laura's Wedding

We have now spent 5 days celebrating Miles' Birthday. Starting on Thursday, we had a little party at our friends' house, the Shades. Another couple, the Turners, were there as well. Miles hates cake, so we improvised and put all 25 candles into a stack of Krispy Kreme donuts.



At this party, I also gave Miles his present from me--a brand new suit, shirt, tie, and belt. I know it doesn't sound exciting, but he really loved it. And he looks good!






On Saturday, his REAL birthday, we actually went to St. George to attend a wedding of a high school friend. But even during that busy day, we were able to squish a little birthday time in for Miles. My sister and I went to the store and surprised Miles with a very chocolaty chocolate cake (which he doesn't like at all--my sister was just craving chocolate).

While in St. George we had a lot of fun with the family. My little nieces are adorable! They are my favorite people to visit! Look at little Avery!







My younger brother Danny and my nieces love playing in the water. You'll notice they didn't have their swimming suits with them, but that didn't stop them. Instead they just borrowed a couple T-shirts from their uncle Danny.

For the wedding, my sister wanted to do my hair in these steam rollers she had. They were pretty cool. You just set the curlers on the steamer for 5 seconds, roll your hair, and take them out 30 min later. I looked pretty silly for awhile, but got many compliments later. It was definitely a fun-filled birthday weekend!

Graduated and Movin' On!

Alright, after we sent out our graduation announcements, we had a ton of people reply and ask what our plans were from here. So, here's the update for anyone who wanted one...

Both graduation commencement and convocation went VERY well. Vice President Dick Cheney gave a great speech. Also, President Gordon B. Hinckley, Elder Bednar, and Elder Scott were all there in attendance. President Hinckley didn't speak, which I was actually happy about. I think if he had, it would have overshadowed the presence of Dick Cheney. Miles' entire family came down for commencement and convocation. We had a BBQ/picnic for both of our families after convocation of Friday. Everyone got along surprisingly well. We ate fat hamburgers and played some mean bocce ball.


So, now that we've graduated from BYU, here's the plan. Miles got accepted to UCI for a PhD program working with embryonic stem cells. So, we will be moving to California in mid to late June. He will be starting a rotation summer quarter. We will be close to the beach and Disneyland for at least 5 years. Wahoo!