One Year

As Josie can attest, I intentionally and unintentionally keep track of random inane things such as my car's gas mileage (I have the excel sheet to prove it), how much money I've found on the ground so far this year (also included in a excel spreadsheet), and so on. I really like looking at numbers and could analyze and compare football and baseball stats on ESPN.com all day (I once had a excel spreadsheet for this...). Anyways, now that you know this incriminating evidence of my nerdiness, I might as well show you my latest set of information that I have been keeping track of (once again, a spreadsheet).

As of today, it has been one year since Josie and I were married. It feels like we have been married longer than that, but the last year has flown by. During the last year, we have moved a lot and lived out of suitcases quite often. We both graduated from college and moved to a foreign country. Since we have been on the go a lot, I was curious to figure out how many different places we had stayed the night. Our first week being married, over a span of 5 nights, we stayed 5 different places. Overall, this is what I found about where we've stayed (more or less in Chronological order).

Idaho Falls Hotel	1
Las Vegas, Nevada	4
Salt Lake City, Utah	1
Preston, Idaho at the Larson’s	6
Idaho Falls at the Ryan’s	6
Lincoln, Idaho at Aunt Terry’s	136
Airplane over the Atlantic	1
Budapest, Hungary	3
Hotel in Kaposvar	20
Austria	4
Germany	2
Czech Republic	2
Kaposvar, Hungary apartment	179
Total	365

I found that in the last year, we have stayed 36 nights in a hotel (10% of the time!), crazy. Also, as of June 25th, we have been married longer in Hungary than in America, that must make us a Hungarian couple. I am looking forward to year 2's stats and hope to regain our status as an "American couple."

I am enjoying married life and feel really lucky to be with Josie and to have a job (two things I doubted I would ever have). I have learned some things this last year including the following:

- Who Fred Astaire is.

- That when Josie likes what she is eating, she sits up straight by quickly raising one shoulder at a time until her back is straight.

- It is never too late for cereal (I already knew this I guess)

- Going on trips is more fun with a wife.

- That movies are to Josie as football stats are to me.

- That musicals are to Josie as playing catch is to me.

- That Josie is more talented than she lets on.

- That I find myself doing weird, dumb things just to hear Josie laugh.

- That Josie likes playing games, doesn't care if she wins, just likes playing.

- Josie looks as good in the morning as she does when she goes to bed (I always look like I tried to fight a tornado during the night.....and lost) She has found the secret how to win.

- Josie is unassuming, easy to please, and the little things in life make her happy. Lucky for me.

- "It's a Wonderful Life" is a movie, and a good one.

- Jane Austen's words are another language that I have yet to decipher.

- Josie can fall asleep anytime/anywhere, especially if we are in the car.

Obviously this list is not comprehensive, just little things I have learned. Happy 1 year anniversary to us.

It didn't take me long for me to make my first mistake as a married person. It was actually my first step out of the temple and right onto Josie's dress. 

Dome Work

Here is a little update about the Dome progress. 

The Dome is scheduled to be finished on September 30th. We are scheduled to fly home to Idaho on October 24th. We will get home a few days before Josie's brother Dallin gets home from his mission in Philadelphia. We are pretty excited to see our families. Josie's sister, Jessica, is expecting a baby girl any week now and hopefully we will get back in time for the blessing. 

Back to the job....

Things are starting to wind down on site. Our scope of the work is all but done; subcontractors are finishing the interior painting of the Dome, installation of the conveyors and head-house, and dirt work on the outside.

We are starting to send home American employees, and will continue to until only Josie and I are left. We will be the last two to come home as I close up the bank accounts, pay any due invoices, close apartments, sell back vehicles, etc. I don't really see my work subsiding until I am on the plane.

As of two weeks ago, we had 8 apartments, 5 vehicles, 4 bank accounts (2 EURO, 2 Hungarian Forint), 3 office containers, 7 equipment rentals, and 35 employees.

Next week we will have only 4 apartments, 3 vehicles, 1 office container, 1 rented crane, and 15 employees.

So it is definitely winding down. Time has flown and I've learned a lot. Every day I learn some new nuance of some weird Hungarian labor law or contract laws. I have learned which questions I wished I would have asked 6 months ago, and will be able to use it to my advantage in the future. 

My favorite part of the job is keeping track of the money. We have made over 1,500 transactions (cash, debit card, credit card, and bank transfers).

I built an excel spreadsheet to track the petty cash expenditures and love reconciling the cash box every few days. 

For all other transactions, the company uses a software called ViewPoint to keep track of every purchase. My job is to make sure that each receipt is paid, scanned, and entered. I specify which account is debited and which phase of the project the expense should be coded to. 

This not only allows me to balance our books, but also provides the company with useful data for future bidding and job tracking.

Okay that's probably enough, you can wake up now. 

Here are some pictures of the Dome progress as well as a youtube video link of the job site from February - May 14.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31tRxIurwf4

If watching a construction site doesn't inspire you, maybe the music will....

This is my "corner office." It technically is in the corner, but I share the "office" with 6 other people. Usually my desk looks like this.

Sometimes when our site engineer took a day off, he asked me to take pictures of the site for our daily logs. I took full advantage of this opportunity to get out of the office and found some fun places to get some cool shots. The picture above is ten stories up (193 steps to be exact).

This is a picture from the top of the tower above. You can see the blue crane that we have rented in the middle of the dome floor.

May 14 - Dome Inflation day. I brought Josie to work with me this day to see the "airform" be inflated. Below, If you zoom in on the top of the tower to the left of the dome, you will see Josie and I watching the action. (The red arrow shows where we are.)

Here we are from the other side. The dome is almost inflated (it took 59 to fully inflate). From the time it is inflated, it takes about two months to foam, tie rebar, and shot-crete the inside until it is solid.

Inside of the dome after inflation. 

The best looking construction worker in Hungary.

A few hours after inflation.

Our subcontractors had a party after the inflation. It was held in the Sugar Factory's cafeteria and this is me dishing up what I later found out was liver. 

The foam being sprayed onto the airform.

During the shot-creting process: Two holes in the top of the Dome make the cool beams throughout the day. The only way to get into the dome is through a single doorway with an airlock to maintain pressure. After the foam and shot-crete, the inside of the dome is very dark and dirty.

 A worker spraying shot-crete.

This is ME spraying shot-crete. It is what I would imagine holding a fire hose would be like. My little office arms had to work harder than they are used to, and I only sprayed for 30 seconds. Overall, I can't remember the exact number, but over 50 tons of shot-crete was sprayed on the inside of the dome.

The finish of the shot-crete and hole cut into the top, and a random Hungarian worker.

I took this picture in July, the first day that the inflators were turned off and a big hole was cut into the top of the dome.

 I took this picture just last week. The head-house is being installed and soon a conveyor bridge will connect the head-house with the existing silo to the right.

Graduation Trip Day 4: Vienna, Austria

July 28^th 2013

(Remember that Jeff's comments are in red, Josie's in black. There are also links that you can click on to see more information and pictures. They are in red and are underlined when you put the mouse on them).

            After the long day of walking yesterday, we slept in.

            Then we left Prague and went back to Vienna. This time, we went to see the palaces. First was Belvedere. Very cool looking. We didn’t go inside because it was Sunday and we weren’t sure if we had parked in a proper spot.

It took a few times... 

At least half of this picture looks good...

We love windmills! It reminds us of Idaho Falls.

The first stop was Belvedere Palace. It's gorgeous, but we didn't end up going in because we didn't want to buy tickets and we were worried about our car getting towed or something. It's a pretty place.

We first walked to the front gate and around the front pond.

We walked around behind and saw the long decorated gardens leading down the hill. It was sooo hot that we decided that pictures would suffice without walking all through it.

Next we went to find Schonbrunn Palace. It took forever to find parking, we didn’t have any Euros, couldn’t buy food because the shop wouldn’t take visa, and it was still incredibly hot. However, we both found our good attitudes and walked through the gardens of Shonbrunn. I had been there before with Jessica on our Europe Tour. The grounds are huge and it was very pretty. But we talked about what we would do if we had land and money like that:) My face was red—not because I was sunburned.

The main palace is shown below. 

Behind the palace are the biggest gardens I have ever seen. Statues line the garden on each side and flowers are grouped together to make designs in the grass. The whole thing is probably a 1/4 mile long. Also, as part of the gardens is a zoo, the oldest zoo in the world.  

At the end of the gardens, you come to a hill with a zig-zagged route up to the Gloriette on the hill. 

From here, you have a wonderful panorama of Vienna and also of the whole Palace and gardens.

            We left for home after getting food and gas. I read and finished “Leadership and Self-Deception” one of Jeff’s books. I hope he enjoyed listening to me read. It was a very enlightening book. Poor Jeff has done too much driving; but he plans excellent surprise trips for his “li'l wifey.”