Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

This week began half way through, due to labor day, and ended abruptly as well. Rebecca had Monday off due to a company holiday, which is a good thing because we spent our labor day driving home from the redwoods. We knew she also needed Friday off, so to make up for Friday in advance, we had planned that she would work extra long hours the remaining three days; this plan quickly dissolved when we weren't able to get her into work on Tuesday until noon. Between getting myself moved into my studio on campus and other problems, it turned out to be a long day.  read more »

We had quite the week, I'll say that much. We are now California residents...we both have driver's licenses, the car is registered and we thought of a new mnemonic phrase to help us remember the new license plate, and we even have a local bank to our names. Well, to Wayne's name, since I didn't have a "valid" government photo ID (at that point I had a paper CA license and my old UT license, which the CA people told me would be valid but the lady at the bank wasn't convinced).  read more »

Well, for those of you who didn't know... we moved. How's that for Captain Obvious?

Two weeks ago (was it only that long ago?!) we finished packing up most of the house. We had planned to load the truck on Tuesday with some of our church members' help and we wanted to be mostly packed up before they came. We like efficient moves where everything is ready and we only need manpower to move things from our apartment into the 16 foot truck. How did we ever get enough stuff to fill a 16 foot truck? I don't know. I blame unsold artwork which clutters our lives.  read more »

Sorry we didn't write last week. We went to Oregon for the weekend!  read more »

The past two weeks have been an adventure and a half. The first week we flew out to San Jose for a very productive trip full of interviews, beaches, visiting schools and apartment hunting. Then we quickly shifted gears and Rebecca went for a week up in the mountains to a church girl's camp while I stayed home and tried to stay sane without her.

Rebecca had three interviews this time in California. One of them was with the same company she interviewed with last time, but in a different department. All the interviews went really well and she's already received offers from two of the companies and waiting on the third. While Rebecca was in her interviews, I visited SJSU to get a feel for the place and the people. It just makes me so giddy to be going to grad school. It's like I'm finally able to dedicate myself to art and not be punished for it; instead of failing my classes because of art, I'll do well in school.  read more »

I really can't remember what, if anything, we did this week. Neither can Rebecca. But she's too stressed right now because she's all that's left of the young women's presidency. The first counselor suddenly moved, the secretary has been release this past month and called as Primary president and the president just had her kid 3 weeks early. So while she's preparing her lesson to teach all the young women (and will be for the next month), I'm exhausted because the heat last night wouldn't let me sleep at all.  read more »

So a lot of this week was spent working on editing my thesis once I got comments back from my advisor and second committee members. I even spent a good chunk of the 4th just working on that. It was hard to fall asleep at night a couple of nights, trying to turn my brain off on what else I wanted to add and include. I almost have a final draft now...just a few more comments that my advisor sent yesterday that I'll wake up bright and early tomorrow to work on. Now the trick is getting the defense scheduled when my whole committee is in town!  read more »

Now that school is out and Rebecca has been waiting for her advisors to get back her thesis draft (with comments), we spent this week working on our personal projects. It seems like almost every night I was editing my film and watching and re-watching it until late in the night, while Rebecca absorbed herself in writing a graffiti writing recognizing program, like what was used by Palm handheld devices. She was able to complete this project by Thursday evening, whereas I'm still working on my film.  read more »

Yay! This week was momentous - Wayne finished his last classes and last finals ever here at BYU (of course he will have teachers and books...just at a different school....), and I finished my first draft of my thesis. Definitely a cause for celebration this week. Plus, we were finally successful at making ciabatta bread. Yay.  read more »

Rebecca is still trying to convince 25+ people to take her survey. Unfortunately, close friends and relatives shouldn't take the survey because they might give "biased" results; but you could tell all your friends to take it! :)  read more »