insouciance

As life goes...

2010-03-27T19:31:00.002-06:00

So, this blog doesnt know that I am married...

but THIS one does

mayjunefun

2009-06-13T11:08:00.005-06:00

This is just a random assortment of cool stuff we have been up to in the past month or so. A lot happens in a short amount of time... the greatest understatement of the last 2 months of my life :-)

We went up to Amber's friend's family's cabin up in Aspen Grove one night after work/class sometime back in May. We played pool, foosball, and watched a movie. It was good times. Samber dominated the gaming, but there have been rumors of a rematch.

Amber's friend, Carissa, and her bf Nate. They are awesome. Carissa provided the connections with the cabin.

One beautiful spring night we hit the provo river trail for some moonlit longboarding. It was to date the most fun I have ever had on that trail. Good run...

Our awesome shoes.

A night out to Demae to take advantage of the tues night special on sushi... ono kine grinds, brah. We both love this stuff.

She is beautiful.

Later that evening... we decided to dress matchy matchy.

I must have been wearing heels...

St. George

2009-06-13T10:50:00.005-06:00

So, back on the weekend of May 17th, Amber and I went down to st. george and I met her family. They were a lot of fun. The weekend was full of love, hiking, cake pops, and r&r.. there was also a little star gazing, some movie watching, and lots of food... and driving. We had a blast.

We headed down on Friday right after I got out of the MTC and she got out of class. We were so excited! I was happy to be taking my car on its first road trip with the most beautiful woman in the world. She (the car) was happy to provide the service.

Love it... Paris hilton, take notes

We hit up Tuacahn in St. George for some sat morning hiking. We drove down with Amb's cousin, Cory. He was a cool kid and a good chaperone :-)

Repping two times... BYU and HI.

I love the southern utah red rock. so beautiful.

The action shots.

A precursor to wedding cake on the face. love it.

She is going to have to do some practicing if she is gonna stand a chance come 21 aug.

In the first place we went down to st. george so Amber could throw a wedding shower for her good friend Kaeli. In the end, that was still a big reason why we went down, but became secondary in my mind to spending an incredible weekend together.

the color of your energy

2009-06-07T12:40:00.008-06:00

Here are some updates via pictures and a few words. If a picture is worth 1000 words then if I wrote a lot in addition to the pictures, I think it would be overdoing it, so here you go...

The trifecta made its way to the city of sin for a weekend to go see the Flight of the Conchords perform at the Hard Rock... it rocked... hard. But really, the best part was the Las Vegas Temple. What a wonderful experience it was to go there and get away from the horribleness that is sin city.

It wouldn't have been right if Weebz and I didnt take a second to throw a shaka with the big ali'i, King K.

One of the highlights for me was a visit to the temple is St. George. Just a week prior I went to this temple with Amber... we will return in 74 days ;-) Can't wait. Going to the temple and I'm gonna get married... schmee la la.

There she is. Amber and I went with her good friend (and now my good friend) Jenny, and her fiancé Landon to a ranch in Fruitland, Utah. If you don't know where that is, neither did I. But it is out past Heber on the way to Vernal.... so there you go. We had a great time. Jenny's family has a beautiful ranch out there and so we did ranchy type things for the weekend. Picture this...

There you go... there are a few updates on my life and the goings on therein. It's been a lot of fun these past few weeks. Time flies fast... almost as fast as life changes. I am a happy man. Just look at that smile ^^^

a motor carriage

2009-05-04T23:29:00.003-06:00

checkit. my new mode of transportation.

This has really switched up the game of life for me. besides winning crazy amounts of style points, i am no longer trapped in the bubble that is provo. i can leave whenever i want... gas is great with this car, the stereo pumps my tunes, and i can ease up on being a pro mooch. i can go back to the way things were when i was an amateur.

short on time

2009-04-21T09:02:00.005-06:00

...but not on love. I love these kids... a few more of my bestest friends off to go do some good in the world. The shaka is brought to you free of charge 60% of the time, all the time.

this semester = pau. That's right people, PAU! It's time for summer love, late mornings, tanned faces, and hammocks. I couldn't be more excited.

a good run

2009-04-19T18:16:00.004-06:00

never really thought the last 8 months would be what they have been = insane.

ended up in a ward i never wanted to be in, with roommates i never wanted to live with, in a situation i never asked for... but who ever does? as it turns out, it hasn't been all that bad. I have learned a great deal and ended up finding a lot of perspective about things.

I got to spend a lot of time around a very wonderful man, Bishop Green. I learned a lot from his example and he helped me change a lot of things about myself... rubbing away at those rough edges i have all over. I branched out and met about 167 new wonderful people to add flavor to life... and I learned to stop and smell the flowers every once in a while.

there is nothing more constant than change.

losing sleep

2009-03-31T00:18:00.006-06:00

Here I am... could be sleeping but I'm not. I recently discovered some new music via pandora that is worth losing sleep over. One particular song I would like to share with the blogosphere is by a band called PlayRadioPlay! and they are wonderful. 'scalled "We've Been Searching the Sky" and i love the music... the lyrics are perfect, too. How many times have I felt this way?

If you pick up the pieces I’ll put them together
Only time can be the glue
Only time will let them dry

Only you and me inside my head
Time and time again
These talks turn to stone
These talks turn to stone

And when they dry we will be ready
Only time can keep your heart steady
On beat
On beat

We’ve been searching the sky for answers
Look to the stars so that I feel small
And my problems don’t seem so big

The last stanza is particularly poignant. Interestingly enough, just the other day I was sitting here thinking about how badly I wanted to be able to traverse the heavens. I found myself scouring the innerwebs for a background picture for my laptop that I could at least look at and pretend I could escape to space. Here is what I found...

and here is the song...

Hare Krishna

2009-03-30T13:35:00.005-06:00

A little colour in popular culture. This one's for you, all you Spanishforkians. A great time every time.

Except for the fact that there would have been color powder permanently junxin my slr, i would have loved to do some real Fo-tag. The sun was just setting over the west of the valley and it was beautiful. imagine a scene something like this...

Now it is time for me to get back to doing something productive

utopia

2009-03-27T10:26:00.002-06:00

i had a perfectly wonderful enigineer moment this morning in one of my classes. As a preface to what the prof wanted to talk about he polled the class.

"How many of you have had a cd player break, and after its broken... or maybe even before its broken... you took it apart to see how it worked?"

There may have been 2 out of 30 people there that didnt have there hand up. In that moment, I put my hand up in all of its bigger-than-yours glory... and in a dramatic moment in perfect oneness, we looked around at each other

proud

to be engineers. (oh man, did you feel those shivers, too?)

"The Female to Male ratio among Engineers is approximately 1:e^-88 which contributes to their dwindling numbers in the wild. It is a common misconception that there are no female engineers. This is not the case. They simply look so alike as to be utterly indistinguishable. It's the beards."

mmmm pie

2009-03-27T10:04:00.004-06:00

Actually... this is accurate information, right here...

So this week in my cooking class, i built me a pie. apple pie. we had to take the junx home that we built and bake them ourselves... so i did... well, not even. i pawned off the baking to the friends across the street. you know the ones, the chronic liar, the macfixit friend, and quite contrary. they are good friends. anyway... here is the result: pure granny smith awesomeness.

sniff sniff... oh yes.

i have to say that the oven mits really make this picture

the stars were purely inspired creativity

keeping up with the joneses

2009-03-23T20:52:00.004-06:00

What makes you compete? What is your sense of competition, or what brings competition out of you?

This is the question I left the paragon of byu classes with today. What makes me compete, or what do I compete for? I think in the general sense of competition I am not very typical. I don't care if I lose things too much when I am playing... whether it's a friendly game of bang or a vicious game of charch ball. I dont mind losing. If BYU is playing, it's a different story. I don't care what sport, we had better win... but I think that is more of a sense of pride and identity than that is a sense of competition. Then again, what is the root or source of any competition. I think most would argue that pride is at the center of any competition, so perhaps that argument doesn't hold weight.

As for the monnies of the world... i don't care much. I mean, who doesn't want money? but I am not huge about what I am wearing or competing to keep up with the latest fashions. I don't have to be blingin or have many of the things of the world to feel good about myself.

If I have to compete to win over a girls heart, forget it... If I have to "get in line" to get a date with a particular woman, then I am almost immediately turned off. I don't want to be just another follower of a pretty face. In most cases, those types aren't too interesting to me in the first place... if she is just a pretty face, I'll leave her to the summer sales types... they seem to like them.

Academically, I have very little sense of competition. I don't have to score higher than everyone else or have a higher GPA than my friends to feel good.... that might be because I am so far out of that competition that it is no fun, but I would claim that I was never in it in the first place.

None of the above is to imply that I have self esteem problems or that I don't try to apply myself in everything that I do... that's certainly not true... It's just, in the normal sense of competition (being bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, etc.) I am hardly competitive at all. I can enjoy competition, but that doesn't define me as competitive. However, none of this is to say that I have no inherent sense of competition of some kind, because I do...

I have to be in the know... I don't like to feel intellectually inferior or uninformed. I want to be right all the time and I want to know the answers when people ask me... don't confuse this with academics, though it is similar it isn't the same thing. I want to know what is going on in the world around me... not necessarily the WHOLE world, just my world. I want to know why things are done the way that they are and if they aren't done the way that I think they should be done then it's almost as if I compete against the way things are*...

Maybe that's it... maybe it isn't so much people that I compete against as much as it is entities. I compete against whatever I feel is a false principle.... whether or not it really is, I am going to compete against it.

Anyway, I don't really know it what senses I am really competitive. Those who know me well could probably point out other areas in the which I have a sense of competition... but this as far as I got with it...

*also, i want to have more music than you, bigger hands, and nicer laptop (nerd).

yokwe monin

2009-03-17T20:51:00.003-06:00

I woke up plenty early this morning before I had to get my butt to work. This was especially nice because I got to do a few wonderful things... one, watch the sun rise over the mountains, ahh what a sight...

secondly, i got to clip my nails, always refreshing... and c. i got to eat my breakfast cereal in the little sunspot made on my living room floor through the blinds. all wonderful reasons to wake up earlier than i really needed to.

bring the change of the seasons, i plead.

academic laziness

2009-03-15T14:53:00.008-06:00

So... looking at the way things are going in the world and such, I have no desire to get out of school right now... or any time soon for that matter. I know I probably shouldn't have such a lax attitude about it but thats the way it is. I dont think its the only factor into my lack of urgency or desire to leave provo, but it certainly is part of it. Things i wont do:

take spring/summer classes

miss the next snowboarding season because of school

sacrifice my social life for schooling

go a semester without taking a class for fun

paint my toenails

go a day without smelling the roses of life

I have always felt that college students are the biggest leeches of society. We take, take, take and dont give much back. deal with it. because you said that we cant get a job without getting a degree... and since it demands so much of our time and attention, we dont care to do much outside of gain our education and have fun while we do it. we wont give much back while we are in college, so dont expect it and you wont be disappointed. we are society's most promising investment at this point, so just take it easy....

The Aloha Mission

2009-03-08T16:33:00.002-06:00

I have never really been jealous of the missionaries that I teach. They are going to the mission field and have a crazy 2 years slash 18 months of life ahead of them. I would love to have some of those experiences again, but I understand that my time has come and gone... therefore I never really let it get to me... and then I taught a district of missionaries headed to the blessed Hawaii Honolulu Mission. Oh those lucky, lucky missionaries. They fly out this Tuesday morning and I wish with all of my heart that I could be on that plane with them... here are a few things that I am sad to miss...

1. The look on their faces when they see the islands out of the window of their jet for the first time.

2. The smile on their faces when they sink their teeth into their first Melona Bar.

3. The kick in the pants their mission president gives them as they walk out of their first mission president's interview.

4. The scared look on their face the first time they go a' tracking.

5. Their first Hawaiian morning waking up bright and early to smell the yellow hibiscus.

6. When their heart skips a beat as they wake up thinking for the first time "I am in Hawaii? I am in Hawaii!"

7. When #6 finally subsides and they realize they are VERY far from the cushiness of the MTC.

8. The overwhelming feeling that shortly follows when you realize you dont know ANYONE... including the kid who is kneeling at his bed next to you.

9. Their first hawaiian meal.

10. Their first interaction with a Hawaiian Sovereigntist.

11. Their first lesson with someone in the mish.

12. Meeting their sometimes crazy ward mission leader who thinks himself to be the mission president.

13. The excited response in sacrament meeting when someone greets the congregation with a healthy "ALOHA!"

14. Their panicked response when they stiffen up like a board when some kapuna in their ward gives them an Aloha kiss.

15. Their first baptism.

16. Their first district meeting when they have no idea what LARCs, NIs, PIs, CIs, Os, WMs, or RR/RCs are.

17. Their confused reaction when they find that no one really wears grass skirts or coconut bras.

18. Another confused reaction when a local speaks straight pidgin to them. "You no talk da pidgin kine, o what haole boy?"

19. Their first experience eating fresh fruit straight off the trees.

20. Their first Hawaiian sunset.

21. Their excitement when they get thrown a shaka from some locals for the first time.

22. When they realize hows silly the tourists are wearing their aloha shirts.

23. Their first time using the "hui!"

24. Their first fast Sunday when they have so little energy working in the heat on an empty tank that putting one foot in front of the other is a miracle with every step.

25. Their first pday hike in paradise.

26. Their first comp inventory with their trainer. "You got beef? No, you? No... pound it!"

... I could go on and on forever... anyway. I love these missionaries and I love my mission. The fact that they are going there just blows my mind. We had a cool experience together yesterday when I said goodbye. We were huddled together in a little tiny circle, just the 6 of us... and we quoted the mission motto together:

"We are grateful to serve in the Hawaii Honolulu Mission: The Aloha Mission. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is our message, love of God and others is our motivation, and obedience to the commandments and mission rules is our strength. By sharing the gospel with others, we can give them the "ha", the breath of life, even eternal life. ALOHA!!!!"

We said it loud and proud... one generation of missionaries connected with another. Them and me united in a love of our mission and the people there. We topped it off with a screaming loud CHEEEHOOO! They were so excited and I am so excited for them.... oh to be on that plane Tuesday morning.

'O a mai oe, sole?

2009-03-03T21:16:00.004-07:00

That is the question, right? How are you?

A very nebulous questions... more like a greeting than a sincere question meriting a valid thought-through response. and yet we still ask it.

I had a little discovery recently about the question and often the response that you get. This is assuming a few things are in play. This is in the context of my life... so you are getting a little mormontowne bias. I found that when you ask any lds single in the ptown area, girl or guy, "how are you doing?" the answer they give you is not really so much the answer to the simple howzit. Instead, they answer you as though you asked "how is your social life?"

school could suck or be awesome (is there an in between?), work could drag on forever or flippin rock, homework could be mountainous or nonexistant, and they (we) mostly dont care about that junx. the real question is, "how is your social life?". even deeper than that however is the answer you get from those of your close friends that you ask our little question to. Then normally the question seems to have been "how is your love life?".

walk around campus any day of the week... listen to the snippets of convo that you can catch as you pass those walking around you and what are they talking about?... i give you a few choices...

love (or some degenerate form of the same)

school (mostly complaining about it)

church (again, remember that we are in mormontowne here)

work (lastly, because not everyone has a job or one worth talking about)

in order of likelihood. am i missing anything major? i submit that i am not.

As for me, I am doing GREAT! Tanks for axin'

adventures

2009-02-28T18:54:00.003-07:00

So I was reminded of an awesome Christmas travel experience that I felt to blog about.

Christmas 2008 traveling = good times. I had work that kept me in ptown until Christmas Eve. When I checked the weather in the morning of my flights things were looking ominous. When I actually got in the air, it got even worse. Flights were being delayed all over the place. The pilot came on and did the whole "we are going to adjust our flight plans to avoid turbulence" thing 3 or 4 times. I had a connecting flight in NY JFK that I was supposed to catch that was going to take me home to the Philly arpt. When we finally landed (after listening to some 4 hours of horse feathers/postal service) it was just minutes before i was supposed to catch my connection. Whatevs... i dont get too stressed about traveling. You can get anywhere from anywhere... picked up that motto in high school and it has seemed to work well for me ever since.

So landed in JFK.

Pilot: We are going to have to wait for a tow-in to the jetway. It should be about 5 minutes.

20 minutes later and after 4 or 5 times that the tow-in cart thingy missing his trajectory with a 777 behind him, we were finally ready to get off the plane. I grabbed my carry on (thank goodness i didnt check any bags) and ran to catch my connection.

all for naught. see if i ever do that again.

connection was delayed

5 minutes later connection was canceled... something about the ages.

so the black-lady voice on the loudspeaker (dorothy, you are not in ptown anymore) tells me to get in line to get a hotel room nearby or make some other arrangements.

cell phone mom... she tells me a hundred things that common sense already told me but makes it seem more life-or-death... moms are good at that.

finally after about 30 minutes of lines i get to this lady that tells me i could have just talked on the service phone with delta (boooo, delta)...

yadda yadda yadda, eventually i get a voucher for a limo ride to philly... some 3 hour drive away, and a ticket refund from delta

ENTER GUS

so in the whole process i meet this amazing greek dude named gus. he spoke some broken engrish and had a really cool life story... of course you wouldnt know that from face value. when i met him he was busy swearing at the black-lady voice. he wasn't getting the help he needed. nobody was patient enough to deal with him and the communication barrier.

so i walked up and cut him off and said, "sir, (GUS!, he adds) Gus... you and i are in the same boat, let me speak for the both of us and ill get us home." from listening to his dilemma he and i were both trying to get to philly...

so i take him and through the same process that i had just went through, got him a voucher and a ticket refund from delta.... we call the limo people and they are an hour out of JFK... so more waiting. turned out to be great though...

ENTER INDIAN DUDE

so as Gus and i are sitting there waiting for the limo which turned out to be a van, we meet this indian dude... i wish i knew his name but i cant remember. he had quite the story... lost his luggage on his way home from a business trip in paris, had been flying around the world trying to get home for christmas taking this and that connection after dozens of hours of delays and flight cancelations... your standard what-you-should-expect-for-holiday-travels experience. good times.

he was in surprisingly good spirits.... it was christmas eve, he had a cheery disposition. i dont even think he was christian, just a good dude. or maybe he spent the last four and a half days swearing a blue streak and realized it didnt get him anywhere.

ENTER LOPEZ FAMILY

four of them. parents and two kids... same boat... broken engrish... fed up with life. come sit and wait for our "limo" with us.

ENTER BEYONCE'S BACKUP SINGER

so then this beautiful black woman walks up... super nice... way too nice, even. same boat, waiting for our lovely limo service. find out later that night that she was coming from europe on a tour she was doing with "a friend" which turned out to be your friend and mind... beyonce (as seen on tv)

ENTER LIMO DRIVER

this guy hated the world. he had the classic new yorker accent mingled with whatever broken engrish he had in the first place... i sat shotgun next to this guy in our van... got to hear him cuss out the traffic and make sexual innuendos the whole evening... once again... toto, where are we?

So.... take this mess of people... and me... put them in a van and drive for 3 hours... great night.... some of it was interesting... sometimes just irritating... sometimes entertaining... and sometimes i was just grateful i could speak english as well as i can. and in reality, its not even that well. I listened to Gus try to get $50 on his pay-for-the-minute cell phone like 3 times. each time he would get put on hold indefinitely and then hang up. it gave the irate driver something else to swear about... foreigner unity. love it. Beyonce's friend got delivered right to her front door, and the rest of us were off to PHL to meet whomever was going to be there to take us the rest of the way... thank goodness my night was blessed with paul and brian. we made good time...

come a little past midnight, i was home. it was a wonderful evening

all in all, it was everything i dreamed it would be... a great adventure full of surprises. and in the end i made it home just in time for Christmas morning. nothing like a little culture to spice things up.

friendly advice

2009-02-24T00:42:00.002-07:00

I have wanted somewhere to belong here on the interwebs.

I wrote a paper about women having control over men. Easy to write, there is a lot to say about that.

I looked at the night sky tonight and saw some cool clouds. Wish I had my camera to take a picture.

I came home from the library after being escorted out by some Coldplay at the scheduled 11:45. Liberation.

I came to closer to figuring out the meaning of all things. Firstly and lastly, keep trying. That seems to be the answer.