May the Fourth be with you!

This post is just because of the day.  Hope you are all have a great Star Wars Day!



























And this is because I am love many things and think this is a great picture.

 

A Gentleman among Scholars

                I really don't know how to start this post.  I think what I am going to need to do is start writing and see where this goes.  My grandfather Malcom Allred passed away Thursday April 11 in his home ½ hour after bluey my parents and I left to have diner.  I am glad that I was not there to see the last moments of his life.  When we left he looked like he had moved on in everything expect his heart was still beating and he was still take in air with his lungs.  He was ready to move on and it seems that he waited till we were ready to let him move on.  When we left I went in, kissed his forehead and told him “have a good night and we love you grandpa”.  That was the last thing I told him and I am glad that I did.  I put as the heading on this post “A Gentleman among Scholars” because that is what Grandfather Allred was.  Ask anyone who knew him and he was a true Gentleman.  Not the Gentleman’s Gentleman who is Jeeves.  No, grandpa would be able to teach Jeeves how to be a Gentleman by the way he lived and the way he held himself at all times.  He held a great respect for females and would always show them kindness.  The love that he has for his wife Grandma Allred is what I am striving to show for my wife.  I am still working on it but as I told bluey last night I want to be known like grandfather was known.  

                A little history about him (http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/hjnews/obituary.aspx?n=elwood-allred&pid=164192898&fhid=4507#fbLoggedOut) (this is the link to his obituary) that I was able to learn.  First the obituary tells about where he was born so I am going to tell a little about him right before the war and a little during the War.  He was in Burley Idaho when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor and Grandfather told me that he really wanted to help and fight but he was too young at the time.  He did not look it but he was too young.  While still in high school there were a few times those he was pulled over by the MP because they thought he was dodging the draft.  He told them that he wanted to join but was too young at the time.  When he was the right age he was drafted along with several other boys from his town and they were taken down to Ogden where there was a base there.  He was did not want to go to Europe, he was willing to go anywhere but Europe.  Also at first he wanted to be in the air force and be a pilot but he was too tall.  To be able to fly a plan then and even now you cannot be over 6 feet tall.  Grandfather was about 6’5” or 6’4” so he could not fly a plane.  Well while he was at the base and waiting for his turn an officer walks into the room where they are and asks for a volunteer to take a message to someone else on the base.  Grandfather volunteered and he told me that he later learned you don’t volunteer but this time it worked out for him.  The person he took the message to was the person over the navy at the base.  They got talking and grandfather said that he thought that it would be cool to be in the Navy.  The officer said you’re in (this is when grandpa found out who he was) and asked if grandpa knew of anyone else who wanted to be in the navy.  Grandpa did know a few others who had come down with him and they all ended up in the navy.

                He served on USS Iowa for most of his time but for a little bit he also served on the Battleship Thompson patrolling up by Alaska.  When he was not on the Iowa or the Thompson grandfather was in the occupation forces in Japan.  I asked him one time what he thought of the Japanese people now and also then and he thought about it for a bit and he told me that he never really hated them.  That to me shows the love that he has for everyone.  While in Japan he got to walk around Tokyo.  Japanese people would come up to them and ask if they had any food with them.  He said that they would take the sea rations that they got of the ship and take it with them and give it to people who needed it.  They really were not supposed to do that but they did not worry too much about it.  He has two memories that sand to in his mind while he was there.  One of them is a time that he wondered into a music hall and the people there were tuning the grand piano that was in the hall.  When he first told me that the joy he had on his face was one of joy looking back on it because he was able to find such beauty in a country that had been destroyed.  The other story is when he was trying to see the emperor’s palace that was behind a wall.  He later found out that you are not supposed to see it but he did not know at the time.  He found some tall buildings (10 stories or so) and went into one of them and was turned around by two MP who were huge by grandfather’s standers.  He then went down the block a little bit and found another building that would work and when in and got out to the roof.  He was looking over the side to see if he could see the palace when he heard yelling from the street below.  There were some Japanese police officers pointing up to him trying to get and then then some MP burst out of stair doors and grabbed him and pulled him away from the side.  They thought that he was going to jump and really did not want that to happen.  Grandfather found out why when he was taken down and outside a car pulls up and General MacArthur gets out and walks in the building grandfather just left.  Well now we know why they did not want a jumper. 

                 I love the stories that grandfather would tell.  With his story telling he lived by a rule, “If it is worth tell, it is worth making better”.  There were a few times while we were visiting where grandpa would tell a story and afterwards grandma would shake her head and say that she had not heard that story till half way through and think I was there I don’t remember it like that.  That is not saying that his stories were made up but they were made better.  You will find that in all of the Allred’s who are part of his family.  I love my grandfather but know that he is in a better place.  I will miss him but can look forward to seeing him again.  We love you Grandpa!!!

Going Ons

               I am sitting here listening to the Hobbit sound track with bluey and I don't have any idea on what to write.  There are many things that I can write about so I am going to have to thing about it.....
Well school has started just over 4 weeks ago and it is crazy as always.  I have 4 classes this semester and all of them are over 100 students.  That is what happens when you are taking classes that are required for a lot of majors.  Chem 1110, Psy 1010, Stats 2300 (Business Stats), and PE 3000 (Dynamic Fitness).  All of them are the basics for many degrees and it happens that they are all needed for a per-Physical Therapy degree (go fig).  They are fun for the most part and for my dynamic fitness class I am working out 3 times a week now for the class and then twice a week with bluey so I am getting a lot of exercise in.  Things are going good in all of my classes but I am going to need to keep up with them or it will end up like the other semester where I fall behind and then try to do all of the work when it is too late.  Not fun at all but for some reason I keep doing it.
               bluey and I have been looking forward to this month (Feb) because we get to go down to Provo for LTUE (Life, the Universe, and Everything) and spend time with are family.  I don't know if I have talked about books at all yet but both bluey and I are book addicts.  We love to read and we love to get new books.  Our Grandfather made us a book shelf (which we love a lot) and when he brought it over and we put our books on it we had already filled it and then for some reason kept getting more books.  We have started to collect the books by Robert Jordan "The Wheel of Time" series as well as the rest of the of the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.  We have been able to find them for a very good price on Amazon.com.  I am in the last Mistborn book right now (Hero of Ages) and am really loving it.  Thinking about Jordan and his books growing up I never thought I was going to own his books let alone read them.  I had heard that they are good books but also I had heard that they were never going to end as well. I had heard a little bit of the story line and knew that it was a very complex story line and that it was going to take a lot of books to finish it.  I used to joke that the only way that he was going to end series with how much was going on was to have the world blow up, but I was wrong.  bluey is reading the first book again and I know that I am going to pick it up some time in the future because we have started to get the books.  I have many more books to read before I get to Jordan but I will get there. 
    Well I hope the ramblings of my thought were not too bad and hopefully I am going to write a little more later.  Have fun with Life!!

Reading a good book.

    I just read Twilight (I know I am a few years behind the hype) and I loved it.  Before any of you get on and tell me how bad or amazing the movies are, I don't care.  I have a feeling it is going to take a long time before I see the movies and I read the the book and did not see the movie, there is a difference. 
     I loved how well it was written and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the books.  I would recommend the books to anyone who likes a book that is well written.  (I am told that "The Host" by Stephenie Meyers is much better and I will read that one also)
   I have wanted to read Twilight for a long time but never did partly because everyone was talking about it.  I can say that the first person I know that did read it was my sister and she found the books very early one. 
    Also I knew I would like the books when my brother told the family that he was reading them.  He read them at a time that people that it was strange for a guy to read it because it is a romance  and guys don't read romance novels.  I know she liked the books because they are well written books and the story is a very good story.  The take on vampires is really different and for the first 1/3 of the book Stephenie did not hint that it was going to be a romance with vampires. 
    I am okay with a romance novel that does not have all of the crap in it.  I loved the book Matched by Ally Condie and that is a romance with a twist as well.  All in all I loved Twilight and am looking forward to the rest of the story (as soon as I barrow them from my brother). 

Not very good at this

I have had this blog for some time now and this is only the 3rd time to write in it.  I am not very good at this at times.  So what has been going on since I have last written?  Well I have almost finished the fall semester of school and I have been looking for a job for about 8 months now.  I was let go by Converges in March and I have been looking ever since than.  bluey and I have counted it up and I have applied for about 50ish jobs and have had about 18 interviews.  I have one today and also another one next Thursday so we will see what happens with the job search.  In school I have been trying to learn French and it has been really hard to get it down.  bluey served her mission in France and Switzerland so she already speaks French. We are taking the class together so I can learn and she can help me.  She is not going to take the 1020 class for a few reasons.  1-She does not want to go over the basics again, 2-we really do not like the teacher and how she teaches and 3-bleuy needs room for her other classes.  Just for anyone out there who might teach a class of any kind, do you laugh at a student who makes a mistake.  Our French teacher did that to a student who already speaks Spanish and was trying to learn another language. He would answer a question and say it with the Spanish saying and she would laugh at him or say rather rudely that we are not speaking Spanish we are speaking French and then not help him get it right.  Needless to say he has not been coming for some time now.  There are a lot of people who don't come anymore, when the semester started the classroom was full and now it is barely half full.  It should not be this hard for a 1010, most of the people have never taken a language class or they did but it was in Jr. High and it has been so long that they don't remember anything they learned.  bluey and I gave her a bad rating on the forms that the school sends out and my brother has recommend talking to the department head about this teacher.  I am not looking forward to taking the 1020 class because it is taught by the same teacher and it has not been fun to go to the class most days.  My other classes have been going better than my French class so that is a good thing. So I think I am going to end there for now but I will try to be better at writing on this blog.
Well have fun with life.
Ian