[Unnamed town] with [gross stuff]

Hi guys, its Eli. I guess I'll follow suit and give an update.

First of all, I miss you guys. Every time someone asks me about the MPH at BYU and whether or not they should apply, I always include a plug for how close you become to your cohort. And, even though I don't express it much, I do feel like you guys are some of my best friends. It's actually kind of sad, but a group of great friends wasn't anywhere on the list of things I expected to gain from going to BYU for my masters. But looking back, it has turned out to be one of the greatest outcomes.

By the way, when is the next cohort bonding time? We are free most weekends (including Fridays)!

The family is doing well. Tanner's latest sentence is "more please" and answering "yes" and "no" questions. Do you want cheese toast? "Yethsssthsp" Do you want some water? "No no.." I took Tanner to the zoo today while Sara was at the temple and even with all the things to see at the zoo, he chose to sit in the dirt and play with sticks. That's my boy!

Our calling in our ward is "to be good examples." I don't know what that means, but we've taken it to mean "feel free to enjoy your Sundays with no meetings for the next five months." I love Salt Lake.

Story time. Well, its going to be a different type of story. I am going to be as vague as humanly possible so I can keep my job. Here goes: Work at the [job] is going well. Lately I have been working on a project trying to get a small town in Utah back on its feet. The [unnamed town] is located downgradient from a former [precious metal] mine. Over the past [lots of] years, leftover [dirt] from the mine has hitched a ride with flash flood waters and made its merry way down into the town. By the way, the dirt is not just any dirt, it is laden with immense amounts of [gross stuff], a chemical that is very bad for you. Well, [gross stuff] is now everywhere in [unnamed town], including in ditches where children play (the ditch water has [gross stuff] at a concentration 200,000 times the allowed level in drinking water. I have been charged with writing a very long document describing the health implications of [gross stuff] contamination. My job is to analyze all possible pathways of exposure to [gross stuff] and to make recommendations for the people of [unnamed town] and other stakeholders. Well, one of these pathways is that children could accidentally ingest water while playing in the creek. During a recent meeting with the stakeholders, including [mystery representative] from the [government agency founded in 1970 that Judy knows a lot about], our team made the case that [unnamed town] is in dire need of cleaning up and that [government agency] should probably be the one in charge of that. Well, the [government agency] responded that a cleanup was completely out of their budget and impossible to justify given the number of people living in [unnamed town].

And, this is the kicker. And I kid you not, referring to one of the many pathways of exposure we have documented, [mystery representative] from [government agency] declared, "If those kids are dumb enough to drink [gross stuff]-laden creek water, they should have died at birth."

Guess that's what we're up against. Needless to say, after the meeting, certain people that I know did not have very nice things to say about certain people who said those certain things during the meeting.

No news on the med school front... still waiting to hear from U Colorado, meanwhile juggling pros and cons of living in Virginia vs. Vermont for the next 4 years. Should be hearing from U Colorado March 30.

Anyway, I sure miss seeing you all daily in the lab. Is anyone going to the DHS lunch on the 26th?