Tonight Shannon and I went to her co-worker's, Ming-Tzong, house for a nice Sunday dinner. Her children were there, who are all around the same age as Shannon and I. One of her sons works for BYU police as well as city police in Sandy, and man he had some good stories. Just a word to the wise, don't pick your nose or do anything else on campus that may be embarrassing even if you don't think anyone is looking, because there are thousands of cameras inside and out. The campus police save all the funny tidbits for later. Anyways, after dinner he gave everyone a little self-defense training and gave Shannon and I a can of pepper spray as well as a kubotan, which is a small self-defense weapon keychain for close-quarters. He gave us some good training on how to use it if we are attacked, but in all reality I question its effectiveness. I realize that having and using it is a lot better than nothing at all, but I can think of something else that is a lot better (a concealed gun). I am glad Shannon has this stuff, but I think for it to be effective in actual practice you need quite a bit more training and strength to fend off an attack.

Friday night started out relatively boring, mainly due to the fact that my wife took me to her brother's high school cheerleading exhibition. I myself would never bother choose to be a male cheerleader, but my wife and I support her brother, Joel, in his endeavors. The exhibition played out as normal, a few cheer routines from the cheer squad, a couple of risque sexual-themed dances from the drill teams. You know, the usual. But at the end of the last routine where Joel was catching one of the flyer girls, he got nailed in the face by the girl's elbow as she came down. His head was knocked back violently but he played it cool by cupping his nose and causally walking off the mat. But I knew something was up, judging by the impact. My wife and I jogged over to him and saw that his cupped hands were filled to the brim with blood and his nose was gushing blood from both inside and out. After cleaning up the mess and stemming the blood flow as much as possible, we went back to his house for a checking with his parents, then off to the hospital. When the X-ray came back, the doctor stated that "this the the most broken nose I have ever seen!" His nose bone was completely sheered off and pushed back a good amount. This was quite interesting, and after the swelling started to increase he looked like Lord Voldemort. We all got a good laugh at that. The break was so bad that the doctor dared not set it and referred him to a specialist, who he will see on Monday. Exciting night!

I took the big plunge this week and signed the next 8 years of my life away to the Army. As described in many of my past entries, I have been in somewhat of a pickle because the Army had offered me the scholarship but I was waiting to hear back from the Air Force as to whether or not I received their scholarship. I couldn't just wait forever to hear back because the Army has a 2-week decision period, and if you do accept or reject by the end of that 2- week period, the scholarship is automatically revoked. So on Friday the 2nd, I had to make the choice to either accept the Army scholarship, or reject it and bank on getting the Air Force scholarship. In essence, that was a $500,000 bet. I decided to play it safe, so I signed with the Army. Even though I would have rather gone with the Air Force, the Army is basically the same only without the Air Force culture (which is a little bit more laid back and relaxed). And to be honest, I am not sure I would want to be part of an organization that never meets its deadlines. The notification deadline for the Air Force scholarship was February 17, and they have yet to release anything. The Army, on the other hand, met their deadline. I like it when people/organizations actually do what they say they are going to do. So now I am in the Army!