6 Things you may not know about Chris

I'm done with finals, Rick and Susy (my in-laws, who just got here yesterday), are out visiting Chris, and Michi is at work, so I thought I'd sit down and post to my blog. As an answer to Cherie and Amber's blog postings, I will now proceed to tell you about six things that you may not know about me.

1. I enjoy math and engineering. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not just in it for the money, I really thoroughly enjoy doing pages and pages of math and engineering problems, taking word problems, making them fit into the mathematical relationships we've found that model physical phenomena, massaging the algebra and calculus so that it all works out and then plugging it into mathcad (really expensive math program) or excel and making it all work. I find it fascinating and highly rewarding. I love that (you may want to stop reading here and move on to #2 because this might get boring) when I look at a pot cooking on my stove my mind's eye sees the electricity heating the coils due to their natural resistivity, causing them to raise to a temperature that emits red in the visible spectrum so we can visibly see that they're hot. Then the conductive heat flow transfers that heat into the walls of the pot which in turn transfer it to the water, which flows in a convection cycle to circulate the heat throughout the water until it gets so high that the energy in the water overcomes the bonds between the water molecules and they release into the air as water vapor. Then, after my soup is done the fact that when I blow on it to cool it off the majority of the cooling doesn't come from my breath but rather that I blow the water molecules away from the top of the liquid and so to compensate for this, more water evaporates, but in order to evaporate the molecules need to take energy from somewhere and so they take it from the water around them and so the water in effect transfers the heat to the molecule and then pushes it out into the air. I think about this stuff all day, and I know I'm a nerd, but I just find it so darn cool. Case in point, my favorite test question of the year was the following. There is some stuff dissolved in water. At a certain point in time, the dissolved stuff starts to form a spherical crystal in the middle of the water, find a way to model how fast the liquid around the crystal has to travel towards the crystal so that the crystal can grow (here is the equation I had to use to do it). I'm such a geek and I know it, and I'm sorry for anyone who actually read through all of that.

2. I want to be able to do everything. I'm completely in awe of Brent because of his really cool handyman skills and the fact that he can build almost anything. I envy Jon and Cherie and Amber and Brent because they can all do such cool things with photoshop and video-editing software and the only photoshopping I've ever done is with microsoft paint. Papa Grimstead can just look at a car and it almost fixes itself. I want to do all of those things and it frustrates me that I can't, I know the resources are out there so I can teach myself, I just don't find the time to.

3. I am a hopeless recluse. I like people well enough, but if given the option, I don't spend time with them. During the three weeks Michi was gone I hung out with Julianne and Kyle once or twice, Brad Beaufort (one of my best friends) once, and once with my boss because he invited me over for dinner. Other than that, I did homework, worked, went to school, talked to Michi and otherwise spend my time at home not with other people. Thank heavens I married Michelle, otherwise nobody would ever see me or hear from me.

4. I have a terrible memory. I always thought I had a good memory until I got married. Since then it has become clear to me that I don't ever remember anything. People's names, faces, what day it is, if my car lights are on, where my keys are, where my wallet is, what we're doing this weekend, what we did last weekend, if I've showered in the past week (just a joke, that one I remember), what Michi told me to pick up at the store, that I have to go to the store, that we've been out of milk for a week and a half (this happened while Michi was gone), the list goes on and on. It's a serious weakness of mine.

5. I can't not finish something once I really get into it. You know that line from the last X-Men when they're talking about the juggernaut and they say that you can't let him build momentum or there is no stopping him...I'm like that in a completely different way. If I start a school project or homework assignment or reading a book it takes something that is hard scheduled to stop me from getting it done. Normal daily activities such as eating and sleeping no longer exist as options. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but I'll stay up and fast for like 12 or 14 hours if I really get into something and not even realize I haven't eaten or slept.

6. I hate environmentalists. I am an avid supporter of protecting the environment, but every time I hear about global warming or acid rain or the ozone shrinking this intense anger wells up inside me and my blood starts to boil. While I appreciate people's concern about these issues, it bothers me that people feel that they are experts when the only basis for their opinion is their own personal agenda and they don't have a clue what they're talking about. It's the equivalent of me walking into a professional Russian Ballet company and offering up my opinion on what should be done because I once watched the movie Center Stage with my little sister. Not only is there a language barrier going on, but I don't even know the difference between first and second position.

Anyway, those are some things that you might not have known about me, I hope you enjoyed reading them (again, I apologize to any of you who got really bored reading the first one). Citing point #3, I'm not going to be tagging anyone because all the people I know that have blogs have already been tagged.

- Chris

First blog post

Welcome to Chris and Michi's blog...I got jealous of everyone else having a blog and so I created this so that I could be as cool as everyone else. So now you can all follow the life and times of Chris and Michelle Hoeger.
Currently, Michi is off in Germany eating chocolate and sliding down icy shoots at 80 miles per hour and dealing with all the ups and downs of being a luge athlete. I'm getting swamped by my classes, but my last class is on the 14th and finals are the week after that, so I'm almost there. I miss her terribly and can't wait until she gets home.
I've posted a few pictures below of what we've been up to over the past couple of months. The first two are of Michi's graduation, the next two were taken during Julianne's wedding and the last one was when we went out with the Sea-Doos on Utah Lake.