So this month, I traveled from SEA>DEN>SFO>DEN>ATL>ROC>DET>SLC>CAN>SLC>SEA in just 19 days. Most everyone has heard what a spectacular trip I had visiting my sister's family in Denver, interviewing in San Francisco,visiting my brother's family in Rochester, and then going to Cancun for a week with my parents but here are some highlights of the trip, from West to East. In the
Pacific Time Zone, I interviewed at Genentech, an extremely successful biotech corporation flush with cash. I had an absolute blast chatting with the Dixit Lab. They study inflammasomes which are little molecular tripwires that alert the cell that the sterile inside of a cell has been compromised by bacteria or viruses and to activate the adaptive immune response. It was a super long day of interviews with 14 people in row with an hour break for me to give a seminar. I had a gnarly head cold and with so much chatting, I was totally spent by the end of the day (10 PM). The thing everyone told me is how much money they have. It's not the draw but I hear that money is nice to have from time to time. I mean, they literally have their own bus system. LITERALLY! In the Mountain Time Zone,I visited my sister's family in Denver and of course saw my parentals in Orem. In Denver, we had Easter dinner and dyed Easter eggs for FHE. Now that's what FHE should be!
We also went and ate at a giant hot dog nestled among the Rocky Mountains.
As is evident from this picture below, eating at giant hot dogs is what America is all about.
The best part was really just hanging out with my lovely sister and watching her be the most spectacular mom. Also, watching Gene Kelly and Judy Garland sing and dance about pirates, especially where the dastardly Black Pete pirate turns out to be her fiance and bows awkwardly by swinging his leg out and around, was pretty good too.
In the Central Time Zone, the lovely peninsula of the Yucatan can be found. There's buckets of sand, it pours sunshine (and rain too, but the warm sweet kind), and there's a serving of flan at every meal. Heaven on earth.
In the Eastern Time Zone, I spent time with a beautiful princess,
the Blue Arrow superhero,
and a charming little court jester whose job is clearly to make everyone laugh and smile with his infectious giggles and grins.
We played frisbee golf, hiked to some waterfalls, stopped at a Mennonite market (incredible good stuff to find), and sampled way too much of Jeff's Nutmeg Cake. (I want the recipe pronto my brother!). "Thanks" can't begin to express how grateful I am to the entire gang for letting me come disrupt and bother them all!!!
This is what I was singing (out loud) during my trip to the cannery today. With demand through the roof, the Humanitarian Aid of the church has dispensed with food storage canning assignments and gone straight to production. The Kent Cannery is in charge of producing all of the tomato sauce for the effort. The tomatoes are grown in the sunny suns of the Sacramento area, turned into tomato paste, packed into oil drums, and shipped up to Kent. Up here, we pipe it into a huge mixer and just add water. It's then piped to kettles and brought up to 185 degrees and then aliquoted into cans for individual use. I usually get the job of packing the cans into the drums for autoclaving which gives a great core workout. This time, I got assigned to the lids, a semi-stressful job since you also have to move the cans into position at the same time or the system will jam. (For realsies, I turned my back to grab more lids and a can slipped under a bar and jammed the line, the sneaky devils.) Anyway part of the process is a rotary tamper that pushes excess sauce out of the can before its sealed. This means that tomato sauce is pouring onto the floor and splattering over anyone who is close. In this case, me! Tomato sauce was lapping up and over the top of my slippers. I had a great time though I wish I had worn my rain boots! 
