I really can't believe how fast the time goes when one has a job; you think you'll have time to catch up on things on the weekends, but then you have errands to run or stake conference or you go out of town! To unceremoniously wrap up my last post, my birthday only got better. After work Matt and Chaune and the crew (sans Christian) took me out to dinner at Amici, a really quaint little Italian dive with great food. I got insalate caprese and gnocchi with cream sauce, both of which were fantastic. And to top it off, I got presents! I wasn't really expecting them to get me anything, especially because they're really frugal, but they surprised me with a board game (Wits and Wagers; you bet on all the play...aaaarrrrghh!!! Safari just quit on me and I was almost done and had typed five more paragraphs! The autosave didn't kick in either! Oh well, time to quickly type what I remember of my post...ers' guesses to numerical questions), an iTunes gift card, and best of all, one of those cards on which you can record a few seconds of anything you want!
A little background. A few weeks ago it was Aunt Chaune's birthday, and Jakob asked me how to say happy birthday in Chinese so he could say it to her. I told him, "Shengri kuaile!" and he proceeded to imitate me. However, he kept getting the tones wrong. He wanted to say a second tone and a fourth tone for kuaile instead of two fourth tones! That was very irritating, but after a lot of coaching and coaxing, he and Chelsey got it down. So I opened up my card, and the entire Fjeldsted family shouted from within, "Shengri kuaile!", of course with the wrong tones! So now I have some bad Chinese to make me smile whenever I need a pick-me-up.
I left on Thursday evening for Maryland to see my brother Andrew's graduation. He's been attending McDonogh School, a boarding school outside of Baltimore, for the past two years, playing lacrosse. In recent news, he got into BYU and is going to play lacrosse there! Awesome! My plane was delayed an hour, so I didn't get in until after midnight. Early Friday morning, Andrew, Daniel, and I left for the school first so I could meet the school carillonneur and practice for a bit before the ceremony. It was my first time at McDonogh. The school is truly beautiful. It's situated on a large tract of rolling farmland with fields and woods, at the center of which is a campus of Federal style brick buildings, some very large. Many of the faculty live in houses right there on campus, and they all know each other. I can't imagine a more picturesque location for a boarding school. I played the carillon for half an hour as prelude music before the ceremony started and then for a few minutes afterwards; Mr. Lyon-Vaiden (the carillonneur) even got my name on the program! The service itself was very nice. The guys who were graduating were all dressed in jackets with the school crest on them and pants and school ties, and the girls had white dresses with bouquets of flowers. It was held outside on the lawn, and it couldn't have been better weather. It was sunny with some big white puffy clouds, breezy and warm but not too warm. Best graduation ever.
Saturday we went into D.C. as a kind of birthday outing for me. We went to the National Portrait Gallery and saw many famous portraits of notable Americans, including Joseph Smith and George Washington! They have the famous portrait of the Prophet Joseph, and many paintings of President Washington, among which is the famous life-size one of him standing in his office. Afterwards we went out for dim sum - this place was legit! It still had the carts; the servers push around carts with hot, fresh dim sum and other dishes on them so you can take whatever you want and it's always just been cooked. The shrimp ones were soooooooo good! And the gailan (green vegetable) was heavenly! Mmmmmm...best meal of the last three months, hands down.
I came back to Minneapolis Sunday night. It was a short trip, but I really enjoyed seeing my family and Maryland and our house and getting to play my piano! It may be the last time for a few of those, at least for a while - my parents have put the house up for sale, so I probably won't have a reason to go back to the East Coast for a while, sadly.
This week at work has been really great. I'm finally getting acclimated to the office culture and used to everything, and I feel like I can contribute a lot more than I could a few weeks ago. My main project at the moment is putting together the financial operating plan books for the senior leadership - basically I go through all of the business and geography accounts for Medtronic and assimilate the data into a readable format, then put together binders that only about 5 people in the company will receive. I have access to all the financial information of a Fortune 200 company! So basically I know as much about Medtronic's finances as anyone in the company, and I've only been here 6 weeks. I promise I only use my powers for good. Seriously, though, it's very interesting being able to see how the company manages its money. I go to meetings with Dr. Oesterle (the man who got me this internship, Vice President of Medicine and Technology for Medtronic) occasionally, and one I attended last week was really cool. It was a ten year strategic planning meeting for Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management, the largest and oldest business unit at Medtronic, and I was the only one of about 20 people in the room who wasn't a senior executive for the business, which would be a Fortune 500 company just by itself! Intimidating. It's humbling being able to have experiences like that, and I've really learned a lot in the short space of time I've been here.
Matt and Chaune took the kids on their summer road trip vacation yesterday, so I'm left alone in the house for the next 3.5 weeks. Exult or go crazy? Maybe a little of both. It's nice in some ways, but I was enjoying having playmates on demand and coming home most nights to home-cooked meals. I have at least one thing to keep me busy, though: importing all of these CD's onto my computer! I bought that set before my mission and it sat in Maryland for three years. I reclaimed it last weekend and now I have 170 CD's to import and organize and catalogue. Fun! I'm listening to lots of Mozart, believe me.
Well, hopefully I remember to do this again soon so you don't have to read an interminably long post such as this again.
English title: Graduation? Not mine...
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