All posts by Joshua

Fads in Our Lifetime

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We like making lists, and a fun one that we recently came up with is a list of fads that we’ve seen in our lifetime. There are so many crazy things out there! We thought we’d share, and feel free to contribute others. Enjoy!

Paige is a Grown-Up!

Big Events, ,

Hooray for Paige! She has arrived, in the sense of adult achievement: she has graduated from college with a fantastic degree and a minor and has turned that education into a great job at a fast-growing company. “For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow…” :-)

Paige's Done With School CakeAs of December 18th, Paige finished her very last final at Brigham Young University and completed her Bachelor of Arts in English Language with an Editing minor, and did so with flying colors. (Magna cum laude to be exact!) Congratulations Paige! Even though “official” graduation isn’t until late April, we had fun celebrating her completion with a fun cake, inspired by Cake Wrecks. So now she is a professional editor, writer, and English language expert, whew!

Paige on her first day of work
Paige on her first day of work. Isn't she so professional looking?

What’s better than graduating and getting your degree? Putting your degree to work in an awesome job! After speaking with a couple of representatives of a great children’s software company at a BYU career fair and working through a (slightly lengthy) recruiting and hiring process, she was officially hired just before we left for Christmas vacation, and she started after the New Year. She was hired as a writer, and has already written one children’s story that was illustrated and will be used in the software. She also works with different departments in facilitating language translations, writes blog posts geared towards the education market, and uses her design skills to work in InDesign and more. She really enjoys the job and her co-workers, and keeps busy helping the children of the world learn English!

So there you have it, Paige is all growned up now. I know Paige is awesome, you know Paige is awesome, so way to go Paige!

Service and Rejection

Just Life, Other,

“Do a good turn daily!”

That’s what all good Boy Scouts memorize. And yet, sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Such was the case when we went to donate blood at the Red Cross Blood Drive the other day.

Josh had not given blood in a long time, because after having lived in Belgium for several years, there was always that crazy mad-cow disease problem. However, having recently checked with a Red Cross worker, I learned that everything should be okay.

We marched forth confidently at our scheduled time of 4:30 to give blood, only to read about a rule in the pre-donation manual stating that if you have lived in Europe for a cumulative total of more than 5 years, then you are out of luck! I asked a worker about this, and the first answer was that I would be fine, that it was just a malaria issue, and my countries (Belgium for four years, France for two) were not on the list.

However, after speaking with the second worker that verified my responses, the news came out: five years in any European country excludes you from ever giving blood! Noooo! (For the curious, the reason being that mad-cow disease, which was an issue back in the 90’s, is a neurological disease, transferred in blood, that can only be tested by taking a slice of your brain. bummer.)

This is the official indefinite deferral letter from the Red Cross. In other words, Josh is never allowed to give blood, EVAR!

So instead of giving blood, I was given a affidavit stating the reasons I could not ever give blood, and had to sign it to show my understanding. I also got a nice “Indefinite Deferral Letter,” shown here, also stating the same. By this time, Paige had already given blood. The plus side? I still got to eat the snacks… :)