Chances of Rain

Time Zone Confusion

2012-01-17T18:56:00.000-07:00

So I think my body wishes it was in New Zealand. I can't go to sleep at the right time. Instead of going to bed between 11pm and 1am like i usually do, this last week I have been going to sleep between 4 and 6 AM! Last night I couldn't sleep until 7am TODAY!! I'm falling asleep at the wrong end of the day!

It all started on Friday the 6th.

I was playing one of my all time favorite games: Transformers: War For Cybertron (hereinafter to be called TWFC). It was awesome, I was kicking butt and it was epic. I know what you're thinking, I got carried away just playing it for hours. Well, that's not entirely false, but it's not quite as simple as that.

I'm a member of a forum where people who like the game can go and interact. It's nice to get a feel for the people behind the Autobot/Decepticon as it were. I have been a member for a while and shared my own insights or complaints, given feedback and received suggestions. I enjoy the community for the most part and usually check it daily. A bit before Christmas one of the veterans of the forums offered to buy a game for the person who could guess his favorite game of all time, or be the closest to a number between 1 and 1000. I had a dream a bit before this that someone told me that their favorite game of all time was Diablo II, but, I thought that was kind of weird, so I guessed Mario Kart and the number 444. My cousin Phil (check out his blog here!) had been talking recently about the number 4 in Japan and how 444 was like death or something, so I just threw it down. On January 2nd I got a message when I logged into the forum that one of the members sent me a private message. I went to my inbox and it was from the guy running the contest telling me I won! I guessed the closest number. His was 420. I checked the thread and he had updated the original post to include the information that I had won, what his number had been and what his favorite game was. Diablo II... Um... that is weird. Not that he likes the game, but that I dreamt about it. I should have just put it down, that would have been pretty awesome. Not that it mattered, I won anyway. So, in order to claim my prize I had to pick a game up to a $20 value, but for him to give it to me we had to be friends on Steam (a sweet PC game hub/community that lets you keep games installed directly on your computer instead of needing to pop in the disc every time).

Now, because I was friends with this guy, who is fairly prominent in the TWFC community, I started getting friend requests from a bunch of the other veterans. Shortly after I would add them to my list they would pop up in a chat telling me how fun it is to play with me and how good they thought I was. That was pretty cool to hear from guys that are in the top 50 for the game. One of the guys that added me is from England and one night he invited me to help him with some footage he is getting for a Transformers movie he is making. He needed someone good enough to pull off some crazy stunts with him. I said sure and we got started. The first stunt he needed was for me to be Arcee (a small "girl" autobot) and I had to run toward a low wall, jump over it and turn around mid-air, throw an EMP grenade so that it hits him and then before I hit the ground on the other side of the wall "dash" (special ability) to the side and down the ramp that leads to a lower level and then cloak still in mid-air. He had to be chasing me, get blinded by the grenade, jump over the wall turn and shoot a cloaked robot in mid-air while also in mid air and still partially blinded by the grenade. I did a couple practice runs and then he said he was going to film it. We never got it right during the practice runs, but we hit it first try when he was recording. We did a bunch of stuff and a couple other guys came in to help us do some scenes with more characters. It was really fun and we got tons of stuff filmed, but then I looked toward my window and saw light coming through it....

Yep, it was morning. For Mr. England man over in England it was no big deal because he was just doing his normal thing, but I am 7 hours behind him so I should have been sleeping.

So, now I can't really fall asleep before 3 or 4 if I try. It's pretty bad. I miss sleeping at the right time.

T.M.I. Thank You Very Much

2011-12-19T11:28:00.002-07:00

You know how sometimes when someone asks you something and you give an answer, in your head you don't really know if your answer makes sense to them? So you think about what you could say to qualify what you just said so that it makes more sense or justifies your answer. Like if your grandma offers you a homemade treat and you say no thanks, you feel like there should be a reason behind your "no thank you."

Well, sometimes that happens, but sometimes you really don't need to say anything else. Please, don't go into intimate details. I really don't care, and now that you told me I can't un-hear it. Or stop thinking about it. Thanks.

I had finals last week and while those were super fun, I also got to handle finals all week at work too. I work at a school and my job is giving out tests and supervising the students taking them. It is not a hard job, but it can get pretty busy during finals. To make the experience more pleasant we will bring food to share so we can all keep our spirits and strength up. Well, one of my coworkers decided to bring a bunch of chocolate chip cookies to give to students as they finished their tests. This is a great idea and it provided smiles and happiness for tired stressed students, and if they don't want one, they can just not have one. I noticed that many students would come out and look at the tin of cookies, hand me their test and then just walk away, and I think they must not have made the connection that these were a gift for them. I then noted how offering a cookie when they came out garnered a much better response and more frequent cookie takers.

The day wore on and sometime in the afternoon, when the coworker who brought the cookies was sitting at the station with the cookies, a man came out to give her his test. Like normal she offered him a cookie and he said, "no thank you," and I thought that was it. He walked to the door as his test was being run through the scanner, and he paused, "I have a kidney stone at the moment..." oh really? please, do tell, "...and I can't really have chocolate. I have to avoid it. No chocolate for me." Ok, so I just learned that if one has a kidney stone, one should not have chocolate, apparently. Why did you feel the need to tell us that? Now I keep imagining what that must be like, searing pain, the sudden onset of xocolataphobia, the strange urge to divulge my current state of misfortune to people who offer me cookies. Kidney stones are no good I tell you, no good at all.

Chocolate chip cookies, however, are.

Image from here

Hello Again Friends

2011-12-08T20:44:00.001-07:00

Wow, it's been a while hasn't it? When did I last post? AGES ago? yep you're right, ages ago. Sorry about that.

I have been well, and that is always good. I hope that you are also well. A lot can happen in such a long time, so tell me, how the heck are you?!

Ok, my turn.

At the end of September my car overheated and the radiator was the reason. It decided that it had finally had enough and burst while I was taking a girl out on a first date. Oh, and this was while we were just heading up the canyon to look at all the beautiful fall leaves, so we were quite a ways from home. We pulled over at a nice little turnout and ate our food in the dimming light while the engine cooled. I just happened to have some coolant with me and put some more in the reservoir. We decided that it would be best to just head back and try to get home as soon as we could. We had to stop at least three times to let the engine cool and my date was all the time laughing and having a great time. I'm actually really glad she was there, it helped me keep my wits about me, you know so I could show this girl how I could handle a tough situation and know what to do and stuff. Oh, and it kept me from pushing my car over a cliff. Eventually, we made it back to my parents' house and the car just quit. Sad day. So we went to plan B. We walked to her house and watched some stuff on Netflix. I think Dr. Who and The IT Crowd were on the docket that evening.

I was now without a functional car and stranded at my home of my parents and siblings for the whole weekend. This was General Conference weekend I believe and it was nice to spend the time with my family. My date must not have gone as horribly as I had imagined because the girl I went with, who lived quite close to my parents' residence, found several occasions to join my company. I did not find this to be disagreeable and we spent nearly the whole weekend together.

Reality began to set in when I realized that I would have to get my car looked at before I would be able to go much of anywhere, including: work, school, oh yeah, HOME! Well, I got the car looked at and they replaced the radiator and that seemed to do the trick. It was mighty frustrating getting the school the previous day I can tell you!

So, school and work both kept happening, and so did seeing this girl. Huh, yep, still there. Just stalking me everywhere. Ok, not really. I was asking her out and she was saying yes, and then she'd invite me and I'd say yes, and after a while I just decided I'd had enough and kissed her in the rain. Want a romantic kiss? Kiss in the rain.

School is almost over and I am feeling like it can't really get here soon enough. Two more finals and I'll be ready to relax for Christmas.

Microeconomics and Jedi

2011-10-06T20:20:00.000-06:00

So in my microeconomics class I am learning about marginal utility and how you can maximize your total utility (or basically happiness) by using your income to purchase goods in such a way to get the greatest utility per dollar. I told my coworker about this.

I read an article about how it sucks to be a jedi. I started to really want a lightsaber. I told my coworker about this.

"I am pretty sure that a lightsaber would give me a lot of utility," I mentioned.

Without turning she said, "you're special James."

Yes, yes I am.

All Men Are Jerks?

2011-10-06T20:08:00.000-06:00

"New motto for life: All men are jerks; until proven otherwise"

~Some frustrated young woman who had perhaps a handful of poor experiences and has therefore written off 3.5 Billion individuals who MUST be exactly like the few she's met.

You know, not all guys are jerks. I'd like to express my feelings on the subject at the risk of sounding like one. Expecting every guy to be a jerk until they prove to you that they aren't is unfair. If I walked into a room and even just one girl turned into a withdrawn storm cloud inspecting me for any faults I will guarantee I'm not going to talk to her even if I can't tell why she's acting like that. Actually, come to think of it, if I did know then I would especially not talk to her! Why not accept the challenge to uphold chivalry and honor and prove myself to her? Because I dislike silly games, besides the fact that nobody likes to be scrutinized for their imperfections.

If you're expecting flaws and imperfections, how does this allow you to give anyone the benefit of the doubt? This mentality only hurts the individual who mistakenly thinks themselves the better for it. You expect failure and imperfections and will, consciously or not, find them, become dissatisfied, and chalk it all up to that guy being a jerk too. It's kind of funny how ironically hypocritical it is to hold this sort of position. You think every guy is a jerk so you decide you're going to make them prove they aren't before you...what? trust them? respect them? let yourself be nice? stop making sarcastic jabs at them? Wait... I'm confused, who's the jerk?

Ok, ok, so maybe they just want assurance that he's not flaky or rude or something before they allow themselves to be interested. (why did I jump to that angle? Well, the above quote sounds like many such statements made by girls frustrated with the current ex-man-of-their-dreams.) This has probably stemmed from a tendency they developed over time which had them becoming interested in certain types of guys, a majority of which are jerks. The "Bad Boy" with his motorcycle and dislike for authority make it seem like adventure and excitement will fill every moment. But his dislike for authority probably comes with side effects like a dislike of trying to see other points of view and a disregard for others' feelings or wishes.

I don't want this to turn into an in depth look at all the types of guys that tend to be jerks. I'd rather tell you that most guys are not jerks, it's just that the most vocal and noticeable guys are usually the ones that do whatever they want and don't care what others think. Unfortunately, that can often translate to not caring what you think. Most good guys just don't know that they need to not be too nice. It makes them look like pushovers or like they aren't directed and sure of themselves and that makes girls not feel like that guy is confident enough to make things happen. So the girl goes for the jerk who seems like he can. Guys, step up and tell her you'd like to take her out on a date, tell her which days will work for you and then ask her if either of those days will work for her. Be confident, keep your chin level and look her in the eyes. Always treat every girl with respect, open doors, don't make fun of them, keep your language clean and above all, be a man. What I mean by that is, live your life, stay busy, be productive, and be kind to those around you. Girls will notice. At least the ones who aren't still rummaging through the garbage heap trying to find something that isn't there.

Girls, please notice the guys that are kind and good. Stop thinking that arrogant pigs will be nice to you and get over yourselves.

Thank you.

1000

2011-09-21T14:49:00.001-06:00

It seems like only 86 days ago that I had my 500th page view, and today I had my 1000th. We should have a party, but not right now, I have to do my econ homework.

Thanks for making it great! You guys are the best!

Saboteur

2011-09-15T22:51:00.001-06:00

You know how you have this idea in your head, and it seems to be great, and then it kinda freaks you out that it's actually working so you step back for a second to check and see if you're just imagining things or if it really is working out like you want, and then it seems to need just a little of something so while you try to figure that out it all gets ruined?

I like to imagine something on the stove like rice. You start cooking rice and it's no big deal and then it starts getting close to being done and you decide you also want something else to go with it and you step away from the rice to prepare this other thing. Then you start smelling something burning and you wheel around and grab the rice but it's too late, it burned on the bottom. Oh, most of it is probably still ok and you might not really be able to taste a difference, but the scrubbing you have to do after dinner looms over you and you know you burned the rice.

If I had just taken the time when the opportunity was in front of me what might have happened? I really don't like those questions.

I heard an interesting quote the other day, I don't know who said it, but it goes: "A man who wants something will find a way, a man who doesn't will find excuses." I thought about this in context with one of my friend's remarks to me recently that I sabotage myself. Maybe I have a martyr complex in which I subconsciously revel in the fact that things don't work out because what I claim to want and what seems so often right there in front of me, sometimes even trying very hard to get my attention, suddenly falls apart. Maybe I don't really want it.

Or maybe I just don't feel ready so I don't let myself win the game.

I am my own saboteur.

I guess I like the smell of burning rice.

Overheating Is Bad For You

2011-09-04T01:45:00.000-06:00

Well, that's what I get for feeling like everything was actually going right for once.

My aunt and uncle are blessing their baby tomorrow about 25 minutes away and we have been having family gatherings the last two days so I have been driving down there a bit recently. However, it wasn't until tonight on my way back that I noticed the temperature gauge reading all the way over to hot on my engine. That's not good. I parked and checked and lookie there I'm leaking coolant like there's no tomorrow, but the thing is there is a tomorrow and I need my car. Did I blow a gasket or a hose or something? gee-whiz! And it's looking like the levels are reeeeally low, or maybe gone for the coolant so that's not good and I can't really go buy some in the morning because 1. it's Sunday, and B. it's 9am church I need to get to.

I am not a happy camper right now. >:-(

Hey You! You Are Amazing!

2011-09-01T20:58:00.001-06:00

Hey you, thanks for reading my blog. That's right you. I love you. You are great, you are incredible. People don't appreciate you and all you do, but someday, someDAY they will. And they'll be all like, "Man, why didn't we appreciate them more back when we didn't?! We really missed out."

You have striking features. Anyone ever tell you that? I'm serious, your eyes... wow. And you know what? You make me smile. Every time I think about you...*ding* there it is, a smile right there on my face. Because you are amazing, that's why. Speaking of smiles, you have a fantastic one, so just keep on smiling and making the world a better place.

You make my life better just because I know you.

You're such a hard worker too. I admire that. You are an inspiration to me, thank you. Because of you, I want to be a better person and give more of myself.

You are strong, you are powerful, you are beautiful, you are without equal.

So keep it up, keep being amazing, and incredible because some of us really love it that you are.

inspiration for this message from here

Man Country

2011-08-15T17:50:00.000-06:00

So, I recently moved out of my parents' house and have been in a room in a house with a few other guys and I don't really have the means to put up shelves or make things awesome the way I want to. This was fixed by my birthday present from them. My mom had come over to check out my new digs and upon talking to my dad said that I needed help putting up shelves to which he replied: So what you're saying is, 'he needs to have some tools so he can take care of it himself.'

My dad is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to construction and building stuff. When I was little if ever there was an issue with a toy or something not working I would just go to dad and minutes later it was fixed. This led to the coining of the phrase: Daddy fic-itz!! I used to be challenged when it came to talking, but I just kept practicing and now I'm really good at talking, like, I won't stop so be careful. Anyway, he knows lots of stuff and so I pretty much always know that what he suggests with tools or how to fix stuff is basically the best way to do it, or best tool for the job. They got me a toolbox, a speed square, a Black & Decker drill, a set of bits from Bosch, and a level. I have this overwhelming feeling that I have stepped foot into manhood and there is no turning back. I feel funny... Why is this happening to me? Is this real life? David, like you I have these questions but for me the effect will not subside in a few hours. I'm a man for ever.

Picture from here

Societal Terror

2011-08-11T18:10:00.003-06:00

That's right folks, I am officially a menace to society. Never thought it would happen, always imagined when I was little that I'd be married and have at least one kid by now. That's ok though, I think things tend to happen at the right times for us in our lives.

A friend of mine said a couple weeks ago, upon my mention of this impending doom, that I still had plenty of time because she had heard of someone, or knew someone, I don't remember which, who had called the wrong person and ended up talking for 6 hours with her and they ended up getting married. So, she said, just start going through the ward (congregation) list and see if you end up talking to anyone for 6 hours and then marry her. Sound advice to be sure, but unfortunately the day has come and my phone frenzy has left me no nearer to the goal. Just kidding, I didn't call every girl.. I don't know if I could handle that... There was only one real problem with her strategy: her number was not on the list as she had recently moved. But don't worry, I already have it. ;)

Yesss!!

2011-08-05T17:25:00.003-06:00

I have been needing this, and now....

IT'S HERE!

MWAHAHAHAHA

Harry Potter

2011-08-01T19:06:00.002-06:00

It has been a thrilling ride this past decade +. And since J.K.Rowling began writing the tale of Harry's adventures around 7 years after Harry's adventures started, the story was done when the books began. That is to say Harry, Ron, and Hermione were celebrating the defeat of Voldemort when she published the first book, so now those little young'uns are just about to head off to Hogwarts.

I think it's awesome how a whole generation has grown up with this epic tale of good versus evil. Good always prevails! It's not without sacrifices, sometimes great ones, but in the end love conquers all. In this case I'm not referring to romance, just capital L-O-V-E, the all encompassing enabling power in the heart that gives courage in dark times, peace in tumultuous times, strength when you need it most, and builds unity and loyalty infinitely more powerful than fear-mongering and coercion. I like Harry Potter. It is a great tale.

I'd like to thank my good friend Steph for having a Mom who has a sister that reserved a whole theater for us to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt II at 9pm opening night, that rocked. I went as Waldo dressed as Harry Potter. I liked it.

Oh and by the way, Harry celebrated his 31st birthday yesterday on July 31st. Happy Golden birthday Harry!

Just Around The River Bend

2011-07-27T21:28:00.000-06:00

So, you know Pocahontas? Not the actual person, sheesh, she's been dead for hundreds of years! I mean the overly romanticized story loosely based on historical fact that Disney produced. Yeah, it's awesome how she's like 20 instead of like 14 like she was supposed to be. I digress, Pocahontas is awesome. She sings about everything and in one song she talks about the future and all the exciting things you don't know that are coming just around the river bend.

I'm moving this week. Just sort of decided at the beginning of the month that I was really going to do it, and found a place and now I'm moving.

I don't really like packing. I remember on the mission not liking it, and just like lima beans my opinion has not changed. I don't have to pack everything though, just the stuff I'll need and the things I want to have with me... (compy this is you, and also my swords, you all can come too!)

I am kind of excited to be "growing up" and living away from my parents. It's more expensive than mooching, but I think it's time to get out of the nest. My folks have been not super excited with me having a social life that doesn't end at 10pm, and they act like if I'm not home for dinner that I'm not trying to be a part of the family. Then they ask why I don't act more grown up (what does that even mean?) or why it is that I'm not married. Um, I don't know, maybe because I get lectures for not having a girlfriend and then when I am interested in a girl I get lectures about appropriate dating practices and how I shouldn't just focus on one girl.

Time to move out, live my life, be the man I want to be, marry the woman I want to marry, go to school for what I want to go to school for, etc.

Glimpses of the Puzzle

2011-07-12T20:13:00.003-06:00

I'm going to refer to Shutter Effect in this post so if you haven't read that one, do it now.

Ok, you're back, good. What? you never left? you didn't go read that one? I'll wait...
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Ok, now you're back. Good.

So, I mentioned how sometimes I see memories of things I have never seen, and later (in the fourth paragraph) that I had feelings that what I was seeing was where I belonged. I don't really know how to describe what I experienced the other day, but I'll give it a shot. Usually, these visions are kind of ambiguous and unclear. However, instead of getting a vague sort of longing or ambiguous picture of things, this time I feel like I got a glimpse of an actual puzzle piece in it's proper place. Now, maybe this isn't like an actual "And it shall come to pass..." type of thing, but it was weird that for a moment, it made perfect sense and seemed totally comfortable. And then the glimpse dissolved like a sand painting in a gust of wind, and I was left looking at the physical world and at the object that had triggered this snapshot of a vision.

You know how when you zone out and come back by yourself (as in nobody really noticed that you were out of it and snapped their fingers in front of your face) and then for a second you don't really know what is going on or how long you were out, and you wonder if anyone noticed but was too nice to just snap their fingers in front of your face? Yeah, I did that. I don't think I was out of it for long, but it was slightly disconcerting not to know if I missed anything. At least I had retained control over my face and I hadn't started drooling or anything. Actually I'm pretty sure this little lapse in consciousness only lasted for a split second, so there really wasn't enough time for anything weird to happen, luckily.

Anyway, I have been trying to stay calm and not freak out, and have had roughly the same level of success as a small child has when trying to patiently await Christmas three days beforehand.

Our Daily Bread

2011-07-12T18:28:00.000-06:00

This morning I received news that a neighbor had passed away after his battle with cancer. He had been in a lot of pain recently so it was a blessing that he was taken home. My emotions were pretty close to the surface as I recalled the many memories I had of this exceptional man. He was a bear of a man, large and imposing, but so humble and kind you knew he would be just the right person to trust and rely on. He had always had something positive to say, and encouraged everyone to be their best.

Recently I went on a camping trip with some friends and as I walked to my friend's house I saw him and his wife sitting on their front porch. He was looking weaker and was in a wheelchair, but his eyes were the same: warm, and safe. He asked me how I was, and if I was staying out of trouble. His voice was strained with the effort of speaking loud enough for me to hear, but I could hear his signature kindness and concern in his tone. We exchanged a few words then I wished him well and he me, encouraging me, as he always did, to be my best. Those were the last words I exchanged with him.

Each day we rely on the same being for our daily bread. He makes the Earth turn, plants grow, sun shine, and rivers flow, and He does it all for us. He gives us our breath, and has placed us here to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow. My neighbor was a good example of working hard and trusting in the Lord. Then, yesterday, he finished his labors and left this world to enter the next.

I love that man. It was always easy to do, because he loved everyone and you knew it too.

Why I Choose Video Games Over Girls

2011-07-07T23:01:00.000-06:00

I can hardly even begin to describe to you how unmotivated I am right now in regards to dating and relationships in general. Actually, I'm not really a fan of human interaction right now.

I don't really know why exactly, but there seems to be a pattern of some kind which repeats itself over and over, and I think I know a few of the ingredients. Every once in a while I just lose all momentum, or energy for trying to connect with people. All I want to do is pull back into my fortress of solitude. I feel like my emotional well has but a few drops at the bottom, and I need it to rain.

I sometimes love the rain. There is a sweet serenity in the torrent of tiny plummeting droplets.

I love to love, I have said this before. Forgive the weak analogy; our hearts are like batteries and love is the charge in them. You can use the charge for just about anything but if you don't receive a charge back eventually your charge runs out. Now, from a Christian standpoint we will always be sustained by God so you should be fine in life, and yes that's true, but I just want to look at people right now. I go through times where I try, and I give, and I make efforts, and after months of it... it's still just me and my human relationship batteries are low.

Sorry, that is an imperfect analogy.

I feel like I could probably try for just a little longer and something might just be right there a few steps away, waiting just over that hill, or right around the corner. But man, I'm so tired of giving, and spending hours planning and thinking and trying and doing nice things and buying flowers and paying for everything. You know what? fill out an application for my time and I'll get back to you. And this is why I turn to video games. They love you back. I start the game, I play it, and it is exactly what I hoped it would be. Then I stop and I am satisfied and everything was great.

I don't like it when I stop caring. I want to care, I love caring. I just want someone to care back, to reciprocate. I really don't like that I feel so apathetic to the whole thing because there's this really awesome girl that I am completely impressed with, she's amazing, like, for real, and interesting and I could seriously just listen to her talk for hours, and she's gorgeous and I haven't the slightest clue why she even talks to me, but she does. I haven't called her all week. I should. She's awesome.

I feel so tired.

I need it to rain.

FOURTH OF JULY!!!

2011-07-04T11:19:00.002-06:00

Happy Fourth of July everybody, hope you get to watch fireworks and have just a grand ol' time. Be safe, and have fun!

Muah!

The Silence is Deafening

2011-07-01T20:00:00.000-06:00

After you say everything you could possibly say, the proverbial ball is most definitely in the other person's court. So, when you don't hear anything for a while it is pretty unnerving. I feel like breaking the silence, but what else is there to say? Luckily for me life keeps happening and I am still a part of it.

Yesterday a friend called me at 12:40 am and was a bit stressed about things. I did my best to calm her down and we ended up talking until 3:30-ish... What?!

I am pretty pumped about the long weekend, and hopefully there will be tons of fun stuff to do. If I don't post before then, Happy Fourth of July everybody!

500

2011-06-27T09:49:00.000-06:00

Yesterday at about 7pm my blog received its 500th view. That deserves a party. Let's all get together, that's right people of the interweb, we must come together and have, as they say, "a grand ol' time".

I'd like to thank the academy for being self-centered and having nothing to do with my blog whatsoever. I'd also like to thank a random stranger for potentially viewing my blog and making the world a better place. I mostly just want to see their reaction to being thanked. I think it would be a riot!

I'd like to thank you, my readers, and especially you, whom I have interacted with and learned from and written about. Thank you for teaching me, sparking thoughts, and helping me see the world a little bit differently.

You rock :-)

Alternator

2011-06-24T12:44:00.002-06:00

So two weeks ago my car died in the middle of the intersection directly under the freeway overpass. You know, the one with cars going every which way? Yeah, well, it just cuts out and I throw it in neutral to get over to the side where there's some space and start trying to ask someone to give me a jump. It was about 10:45 pm though, and I was wearing my fedora and Michael Jackson-esque jacket, so I must have looked kinda scary. No one wanted to help me.

It was sad.

Then this police officer pulled over and asked me what was wrong and I told him and he pulled around to give me a jump. I got my car running but it died again the moment the cables were disconnected so I figured the alternator must not be providing voltage like it should. He was kind enough to wait a while and let his system charge mine up a bit and I was able to get down the hill and to the gas station, all with a police escort mind you! That was pretty cool.

I had to leave it there overnight and get a ride from my mom back home. I called a few people the next day to see if anyone would be able to help me and had to finally call my cousin (what's family for right?) and he was able to lend a hand. I really didn't want to get towed somewhere so I instead spent that 100+ dollars on a new battery to get it home and then go from there. I have a friend who offered to help me if it turned out to be the alternator and I called him up and made plans to fix it the next day.

We went to AutoZone and got the part I needed and started in on the repair. In many a car the alternator is pretty easy to get to just sitting on the side of the engine and all you do is take off the belt, unplug the wires, remove three or four bolts and ta-DA! you're done. Then you just put the new one in and bolt it, plug it in, and put on the belt and then you're really done. And that should take an hour or less. But does anything ever happen the way it "should"? HAHAHAHAHA that is a good one, NO of course not! My alternator is right under the engine and above the A/C compressor and right behind the fan, so it's super awkward to get at. Unless I have a winch I ain't getting at it from the top and I ain't got no winch. So, the only other option is to jack up the car and get to it from the bottom which means you have to pull off the A/C compressor but not let it hang by the hoses or if they come off you'll have coolant and crap all over the place. Then you have to fit a wrench in there and blindly take out the bolts and the last bolt is sort of resting in a little groove so you have to lift the bottom of the alternator while rocking the top down and forward. By the way, your arm is in this weird position so lifting and holding and moving a heavy object is reeeeeeaaaaallllyyy difficult. Then you have to put the new one in by reversing the process.

Now, usually it is pretty easy once you have all that done to just throw on the belt turn on the engine and check everything. However, the belt tensioner, which is a little pulley on an adjustable arm that provides the tension necessary to hold the belt on and at a comfortable working tightness, was not moving. the bolt head that you would put a socket wrench on was stripped and so we had to pry the belt on using multiple screwdrivers.

And so we completed the job and it only took three hours. That's only three times longer than it "should" have taken. I drove home and was pleased that I wouldn't be doing THAT again.

I drove it to the trax station twice and to church and then I went on vacation and my car sat there for a little more than five days and then I noticed my lights were a bit dim on Monday when I got back and it started doing that same pre-dying sort of stuff that it had done the first time. I got home and cleaned the battery terminals and that seemed to get rid of the problem, a bit of corrosion had probably gotten in the way of the connection. The next day I got the same reluctance when I started the car and I started checking the voltage on the system. Turns out the battery was being drained which means I was probably running off the new battery the whole time I had the new alternator, and the alternator was probably bad! *Primal yell!!!*

Are you KIDDING ME?!

I could only hobble down to Big-O and they said they would check it for me. I was already late for work and my mom, bless her for her patience, took me to the trax station. The next morning I got the car and sure enough the alternator was bad. Oh. My. Goodness. I was going to punch something. I had had plans to go out to a movie with someone, yes a girl, and this was like throwing several wrenches into the works. My good friend said he'd help me again since we would know what we were doing this time and it wouldn't take as long. This was good because I wanted to see about catching a late showing of the movie if possible.

I had called the AutoZone and told them what was up and how I needed a new alternator, preferably one that worked, and they said they had one that they would test and hold for me. When I got there just a few hours later, they said they didn't have it anymore. Good one guys, nice. So they called the store a few miles up the road. They had one, yay! Before taking it, I asked them to test it and it failed. The guy said he had never seen that happen before, and we were like, "We have. Twice." I asked him to call one of the other stores to see if they had one and to make them test it before we drove over there and he said that he would as long as they weren't busy. I said that I didn't care if they were busy make them test it because if I walked through that door, I'd be making them test it anyway. They said it passed and we went to pick it up. So, now we were only two hours behind schedule.

The process went much the same only this time it only took two hours to do, which would have been a great thing and I could have gotten home and cleaned up before the movie, but as it was with the extra two hours tacked on I wasn't going to get home until the movie had already started. That was a bummer.

Stupid car parts not working.

Heart to Heart

2011-06-23T11:28:00.002-06:00

Letting people see the soft and vulnerable places of our hearts can be one of the hardest and most scary things to do. It's kind of funny though, because letting people see that you are human allows them to be close to you. As someone shares their thoughts, fears, joys, hopes, dreams, failures, triumphs, and heartaches, you can't help but love them even more. We are so afraid of letting people in. We need to let people in.

How do you let something go when all you want to do is hold it tighter? It's the weirdest thing to sit next to someone you love and be ok with letting them go if you have to. It's not my favorite feeling mind you, but in a painful sort of way it's kind of comforting. I guess it's not painful, more heartache-y, in a happy melancholy way. Man that's a hard emotion to describe. Sitting on the sidewalk watching Scorpio dance across the sky, I realized I loved you.

I hope I have what it takes to follow my own advice. We sometimes long for things to come back, for doors to open again and let us in. When a door closes we want nothing more than for that door to be opened to us again, we would do things differently, we would be better, we would do whatever it took for that door to open just one more time. This breaks my heart because I have felt this many times before. Many, many times. But if we stand there, holding that closed door, willing it to open, staring at its surface, wishing we could get inside, or even just see inside again, we will miss every other door God opens for us. There may even be a better door just a few steps away, wide open. Until we let go and walk away from the closed door, we can never be content without it. We will always be stuck, we won't progress, we will become fearful and uncertain about many other things, and disappointment, guilt, and endless "if only"s will weigh down our souls. Who knows, that door might open again. But if it does and all we did was stare at it the whole time and make plans for how we would change and do things right, will we really, truly be ourselves, or will we constantly be striving to be what we think they want us to be? What kind of life is that?

It can be so hard to let go. But then my thoughts turn to the most famous line of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem Maud Muller: "For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'" I think we usually use this line to describe how we feel about the doors that are closed to us, but I feel like this describes even more poignantly the doors that stand so long open, but then close when we choose not to see them. It makes me wonder, "what am I not seeing that God would that I should have?"

Relationship Answers with Shinobi Jim Ph.D.

2011-06-15T21:09:00.003-06:00

The Ph.D. stands for physically devastating, but that's just cuz I'm a ninja, I'm really supportive emotionally :)

Picture, if you will, a relationship between a guy and a girl. Pretty easy right? So, imagine that the girl dumps the guy but still wants to hang out with him because they are still "really good friends". She starts to get confused because he has begun to act like a jerk all the time. She asks him what is wrong and he gives some answer regarding some trivial aspect of the relationship that was, or is currently happening. (hint: this is not really the reason he is acting like a jerk, he doesn't actually want to address the real reason.) The REAL reason is that the girl dumped him and he's experiencing a lot of hurt and confusion as she is continuing to play an active role in his life, and he doesn't know how to deal with it. Girls may not understand why boys act this way but turn it around, if he dumped her how would she feel? Even if it were for the same noble reasons, she would feel hurt and want to withdraw. What is confusing about that?

Let's take a look at it from a different perspective, in the form of a parable.

There was a certain man who loved cookies. Cookies were wonderful things to him and chocolate chip was his favorite variety. One day he was walking through his kitchen when the cookie jar said, "Come, try this cookie, it is probably the best one I have made yet!" You see, it was a magic cookie jar that made cookies all the time, and it was good at its job.

The man reached out and smelled the cookie, it was a perfect chocolate chip cookie. He took a bite and the cookie jar suddenly snatched it back! "Hey! What was that about?! I was enjoying that cookie, and I wasn't done!"

The cookie jar looked back at the man and said, "Well, I figured just looking at it would be as much fun as eating it. See, isn't this great? You get to stand there in the same room as the cookie and look at it, and think about how yummy it is."

The man was very frustrated and really didn't feel like being near the cookie so he said that he didn't actually want to have that cookie anyway since it had too many chocolate chips (not the real reason), and stormed off.

The cookie jar thought to itself, "you know, I bet if I took out all the chocolate chips he would love to be near this cookie." So, the cookie jar ripped out all the chocolate chips and went to find the man.

When the cookie jar found the man it showed him the newly refurbished cookie in its hands and said, "look! I took out all those annoying chocolate chips so now it's just the way you wanted it to be! Now do you want to hang out with it?"

The man had a hard time expressing his feelings about the situation and wasn't about to tell the cookie jar why just looking at a cookie that he had recently been enjoying on an entirely different and more intimate level wasn't really very satisfactory.

The cookie jar was worried by the silence and thought it knew why the man didn't like the cookie, so from then on it only made chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips. The cookie jar hoped that by changing how it made cookies no one would be dissatisfied with them ever again.

The cookie jar in this story ended up changing a fundamental part of its cookies even though the cookies weren't the problem and everyone else who ever wanted a cookie would have to deal with the lack of chocolate chips. The man may have just needed time to adjust to this new way of experiencing chocolate chip cookies or maybe things would never be the same. Regardless, changing how it made cookies didn't solve anything for that situation and wouldn't help anything in the future, in fact, assuming that no one else will enjoy chocolate chips in their chocolate chip cookies is more likely to hurt any future relationships with cookie lovers.

The chocolate chips represent something like communicating openly or in a way that builds a relationship. This "chip" isn't really a problem but removing it will be. The "chip" could be any number of things that are useful in fleshing out or adding depth to a relationship. When we look back at ended relationships we sometimes blame one of these "chips" and vow never to use that again, when in fact that chip may be exactly the right thing for a relationship this time. It can be hard to allow ourselves to give a new relationship the chance to form itself, to grow in the best possible way, because we try so hard to force it to work by using the "right recipe". Some things just take time, some need a little more of this or that, but adaptation is really important.

Second Thoughts

2011-06-14T20:04:00.000-06:00

So, I was pretty pumped about letting people know that I have a blog, I got all happy when the number of page views jumped from 280 to 350 in one day, that's pretty fun. But now, I find that I don't feel as free to talk about whatever I want to because I know people are looking to see if I talk about them in my posts. I want to express myself without worrying if someone will read it and be (insert emotional reaction here). I know that people have a tendency to make assumptions and I don't really want to be the cause of misunderstanding or drama.

And so, it is with some apprehension and a little bit of defiance that I tell you now: Get over it! Ok, that was partly for me too. I read other people's blogs and it doesn't seem like they care what other people think or even get out of what they write, but to me people are one of the most important things in life and the people in mine are even more so, and I don't like being a jerk. What I write is the stuff I think about, so read it like that.

Thank you.

From here on out I'm going to pretend that nothing has changed and write like I ever did. And if you think you've found mention of yourself, take a moment, pat yourself on the back, maybe jump and shout a bit, you know, do what you gotta do, and then be happy. If you don't seem to find anything that relates to you, take a moment, pat yourself on the back, maybe jump and shout a bit, you know, do what you gotta do, and then be happy.

Thank you.

Intimidation

2011-06-14T19:14:00.000-06:00

Have you ever met someone who so thoroughly intimidates you that you simply don't know how to function as a normal human being around them? Who makes you wonder what it is that validates your existence?

Me neither.

Serum

2011-06-13T17:46:00.002-06:00

I do not believe that it is possible to be unhappy whilst drinking BYU Creamery chocolate milk. It is like an emotional invulnerability serum, protecting you from anything that isn't awesome. It's like Popeye's spinach, only, not green and not gross. It turns my taste buds into joy buds. Its luscious, creamy chocolaty-ness swirls past my tongue and down my throat, filling me with a sense of peaceful jubilation like the bubbling of rivulets trickling merrily into the serenity of a still pool.

If you can't tell I really like chocolate milk.

Avoiding Destiny

2011-06-09T21:52:00.003-06:00

It's easy to see the reasons for our frustrations in the people around us. If he wasn't so lazy... if she would just say what she was thinking... if only they would listen... I would (communicate more, say what I felt, be better etc) but he/she isn't being (honest, fair, responsible, etc.) so I'm going to wait until (X) happens before I...

I am a victim of this brand of thinking. I have thought many times that things are the way they are because of someone else and when they finally get it, I'll be able to do what I wanted to do. This does not allow me to be free, nor am I able to be completely satisfied knowing that I have done what I wanted to do no matter the outcome. Notice I did not say happy. I would be happier with my hoped for result, but by doing nothing, nothing happens. This virtually guarantees that the result I hope for will not be the observed outcome. How often will someone be able to read our minds and suddenly understand how we feel and what we want and make the necessary effort to realize OUR hopes and dreams? I'll let you answer that.

I usually get to a point where I feel like I need to "understand" what the other person is thinking, and at the same time explain my point of view in hopes that they will "understand" me and where I'm coming from, and what I'm thinking and this will be the magic that makes everything happen the way I would like it to from now on. More often,... alright, nearly every time, the product of this conversation is not anywhere close to what I pictured. Half the time it's not even very good, and sometimes it's bad. Sometimes trying to "figure everything out" really just "messes everything up" which isn't what we want which is why we tried so hard in the first place to "figure everything out". As Master Oogway says on Kung Fu Panda, "One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it." I believe this happens when we make decisions, or more broadly, act, from a perspective of uncertainty and fear. When we act out of fear it is our fear that becomes the focal point of our actions. Even though we do not want our fears to be realized and try to take actions to move away from them, they are the central influence and thus become the more likely result.

I guess what I'm saying is act out of an attitude of faith that you will succeed. With success as the understood outcome the question is no longer "If" but "how". You will not get bogged down trying to analyze and avoid everything you interpret to be undesirable, but you'll be free to move forward and create opportunities for success.

I think it's interesting how we seem to be unwilling to say what we mean in a way others will understand us. Sometimes I think we are afraid to say what we want to say because of social pressures, or because we are unsure how the other person may respond. Or how about the fact that we act contrary to what we say? I don't mean the way we all say things like, "people ought to give to charities more," and then we don't give more to charities. I mean more along the lines of maintaining continuity between our verbal and nonverbal communications. Sometimes we say "yes" but then we act like it's not something we wanted to participate in. Other times we say "no" but then we act like we're disappointed when it doesn't happen.

The topic of misdirection came up in a recent conversation I had. I mentioned how frustrating it can be when people say one thing and then act like that's not what they meant and my conversational counterpart said they didn't like that either and had decided that by not saying or doing anything which could be misinterpreted they avoided misdirecting people. Basically by being intentionally hard to read, by not actually saying or doing anything with any sort of social implication or interpretation, one would never be misread. I didn't say what I thought about that at the time because the concept was simple enough I didn't get confused until later. If you never actually say or do what you mean then no one will actually know what you mean, and will therefore misread you with any attempt to do so. So, in reality, every time someone tries to read you, you will be misread due to the very thing you do to insure that you won't be.

I'm sorry if any of the above was confusing. I suppose there really isn't just one simple explanation for the varied ways people can produce confusion for themselves and others. If I take a look at myself I see that by being overly cautious I am not actually being true to myself, I am not doing what I really mean to do and I cheat myself of my goal. Who would actually try to sabotage their own efforts? No one would consciously admit to it, but we do this all the time! Due to our past experiences we try to act in a way that will bring success to our current situation. We build a template for our actions based on the past but usually ignore the current situation's unique set of circumstances and then when we realize things aren't going the way we want we become afraid to do or say what we really think or feel. Others sometimes become confused by this type of behavior and react in a similar manner, avoiding saying or doing anything definitive which just adds to the overall confusion. Honesty really is the best policy. Honesty in this case doesn't mean to say everything that may be on your mind, don't throw away your tact, but be honest to yourself and to others by doing what you mean to do, and saying what you mean to say. It may mean that you take a moment to really think about what you want, what you want to do or say, and how to do or say it, but I feel like it will pay off more than flailing wildly through life's events, reacting unconsciously instead of consciously acting.

What would you do if you weren't afraid? You know what you're afraid of. You know what it is that holds you back, why you don't do what you want to do. In some cases you may think you don't know, or you may think that there isn't a reason, and this will usually mean that it's something you don't know how to come to terms with or don't want to admit. Good luck with that, because until you are willing to find it, define it, own it (take personal responsibility for it), and allow people to help you with it, it will plague you and affect countless other aspects of your life. What would you do if you weren't afraid? Would you try out for the team? Would you speak up in that business meeting? Would you ask out that girl everyone seems intimidated by? Would you be more generous in your communications with others? Would you be the person you want to be? When you face a challenge, will you admit defeat before the fight's begun? Or would you rise to the occasion and boldly move forward? Would you be ashamed of your shortcomings? Or confident in your efforts and plans to overcome them?

"Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." ~ Isaiah 41:10

"Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not." ~D&C 6:36

What would you do/be/say/feel if you weren't afraid?

Contented

2011-06-08T15:43:00.001-06:00

I love subway.

Food is sooo good.

I had some.

I'm not hungry.

Insatiable

2011-06-08T15:16:00.001-06:00

It happened again. It happens every day! Over and over I get these same urges. This hollowness in the pit of my stomach for more. I can't stay away. The pit grows deeper, more ravenous.

Food is sooo good.

I don't have any...

I'm hungry.

Stalkers

2011-06-07T20:33:00.002-06:00

You know who you are.

Sometimes stalkers are creepy, sometimes they can just be weirdos that don't know how to say hi but really want to and then they just hover around your periphery like an awkward satellite, orbiting you at a distance that doesn't allow for easy conversation, but is close enough to make both of you uncomfortable. Sometimes you have a stalker that you'll never find out about. And sometimes, you become friends with your stalkers :) but this can be tricky, you want to take into consideration several things before you take this step, I think you can probably think of a few things. If you can't, let's just say it has a lot to do with the amount of information they know, how creepy or normal they are around you and others, if they have other friends, or if they are anything like this. (watch from 3:30 to 5:20)

But before I go on, I hope none of you are feeling guilty right now. Don't worry, I'm a ninja. I have done lots of stalking. This was usually because I needed to not be friends with these ~~targets~~ people because ~~my sword has a hard time being nice~~ of extenuating circumstances. Just remember that the difference between a stalker and a really good friend is that you won't know you're friends with a stalker whereas you will know you're friends with your friend. Another difference is that friends are mutually interested in each other and a stalker is excessively interested in finding out everything there is to know without exposing themselves. So, if you ever find out that a person you're stalking is stalking you, you might as well say hi, you're basically friends without the friendship part, and really, it's the friendship part that is the most fun.

I love my friends. I also love you, my stalkers. But before the stalkers get too excited, remember I don't actually know you, so it's not a huge love like you have for me. Remember also that I'm a ninja and if you're the scary/creepy/dangerous kind of stalker I would strongly encourage you to get counseling before I find you. If you're the acquaintance type who facebook stalked me and found this blog, likes photography, may or may not have a really cool accent, and likes crepes, I may or may not have stalked you back,... so, let's be friends.

True Love

2011-05-31T17:50:00.000-06:00

"Maybe your first love sticks with you because they're the only one who'll receive all of you. No matter what, a piece of you remains in their heart: a piece no future lover could ever get. That piece holds innocence, friendship and pain, trial and error, that one kiss you'll never forget, and that one night under the stars you can never get back. It holds youth, and everything you thought love would be."

~Unknown

Maybe true love is learning to access that little part of your heart again, the part you gave to your first love, to let it out and give it to someone else. Not to forget what your heart has gone through or abandon what that first love meant or the people who have touched it, even held it closely, but to learn to let it expand, to encompass more than you thought it could, to grow so deep it aches with the joy and the pain and the trust and the hope and the love of all that went before. And then with that same innocence, now coupled with the wisdom gained through heartache, to give it all to another.

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T20:07:00.001-06:00

Well, May is just about over and it still doesn't feel anywhere close to summer. I went on a hike with some of the ward members earlier today and the trail was super muddy and treacherous! I mean, this is Ensign Peak, it's like the easiest hike in the world and there were a few places I thought I was going to eat it and get covered in mud, or totally have a shoe get sucked off my foot and eaten. We all made it up and back, went to lunch and got back home about 2.

I have been really wishing I had a better graphics card for my computer. Mine is really limited by it's 512 Mb memory and 128-bit bus. I thought about just waiting forever until I build a new freakish rig someday (I am eventually going to have (but not till I have a place that I won't be moving from or where I have roommates I don't trust) a liquid cooled setup with whatever beastly components I can find at that point.) but then I would sit here and be sad about my current graphics card until then and that's not fun. I found a pretty cool deal on an NVIDIA GTX 460 for $185 with a $35 instant rebate and a $30 MIR which comes to $120. Normally I would never do a mail in rebate because they are so stupid, but this one actually goes to EVGA and not some weird third party source that you never hear back from. So I thought I'd risk it, and besides I don't mind $150 for this card, it's pretty sweet. It should do much better with 1GB of memory and 256-bit bus, not to mention the 336 Cuda cores and PhysX technology, oh or the fact that it's the superclocked version. :-D oh yeah.

The Way it Goes

2011-05-24T22:01:00.053-06:00

So I had planned a date for today in the morning, because that's when I don't have work and she was available then too, and it was going to be great! We were going to go eat and then go play at her favorite little park and have tons of fun with the partly cloudy, definitely sunny most of the time, weather. I planned on picking her up at 11am so I needed to head out early if I was going to have time to get flowers! I headed to the local grocery store and traced the familiar path back to the floral section to see what kinds of arrangements they had this time. This girl loves blue, so when, in the sea of reds and yellows and pinks, I saw bright blue petals I knew that was the bouquet I was getting.

As I approached the check out lines I looked at the express lane, the one that says 15 items or less, and made eye contact with the cashier, who was just finishing up helping a customer and was waiting for them to swipe their card. She hurriedly switched off the light on her lane indicator signifying that she was no longer available for customers to come through her lane. I thought some frustrated thoughts since the other two lines had people with significantly more than 15 items in their carts and I was under time constraints. My turn comes and I whiz through the process, head out to my car, ~* It is at this point that I would like to say how much I love my longboards. I LOVE them, they are so handy! You see they are in the back of my car and when I go to the store I park somewhere where there are no cars up at the top of the parking lot and cruise in on my board. I don't like wasting time looking for a spot up close that will save me walking distance/time because the time it takes to find one close cancels the other out. Then when I'm heading back out to my car I don't have to be all slow and walk there, I can hop on and push a couple times and ta-DA!! I'm there.*~ and drive out to her place. I pulled into the circle at 10:59 and walked up to the door and rang the bell at 11:00. Nice. By the way, still mostly sunny and partly cloudy.

Her grandmother answered the door and smiled at the flowers in my hand. My date was behind her and didn't see the flowers at first, until she opened the screen door to come out. She paused and the excited smile I really like spread over her face as I handed them to her. She turned to her grandma and asked if they had another vase since the one with the roses would be too small (a small question mark popped into my head at that) and the cute old lady bustled off to find one. I waited in the entry way while my date started preparing the flowers though soon she turned and looked at me as if to say, "what are you still doing over there?" She asked me if I was going to stand by the door all day, and I took that as an invitation to follow her into the kitchen.

~* Side note: you see, young men, it is not really appropriate to assume that you suddenly have free reign in someone else's home and should therefore wait to be invited in further. Not a lot of people know that, but I will say that it will earn you bonus points with anyone over 40 who was taught this as a child, and extra mucho bonus points with anyone from a generation who expected that sort of behavior from their children ;) End of side note*~

Her grandma came back with a vase that was just on the large side for the amount of flowers in the bouquet and excused herself from the room. My date went over to the vase with the roses in it and commented that even though the roses were in water they had managed to dry themselves out. I wondered again why she was telling me about these roses which were probably from some other guy or that were just there because her grandparents like roses, but I had to admit, it was pretty cool that they had dried standing up and still looked so nice. She got the fresh flowers arranged in the vase and put them on the sill and threw away the roses and washed out that vase. And then we were off!

We wanted waffles so we went to the Red Rooster, but they had closed... sad. So we went to IHOP, but they were undergoing renovations and gave us a five dollars off coupon. So we went to the IHOP down the way and had a yummy meal. All this time the clouds got thicker and there was less and less sun shining...not cool clouds, back off!

After lunch we went to her favorite park, which was close to where she used to live just a couple weeks ago before she moved to her grandparents' house. At some point while we were there at the park I realized why she had told me about those roses. All the pieces started falling into place now that we were back in the old stomping grounds you see. I had given them to her May 9th because she had had a super long weekend and I wanted to cheer her up. That was two full weeks ago and she hadn't moved yet! She moved and brought them with her! How cute is that?! Super, that's how. I parked and we made our way to this really cool play structure. I'm going to see if I can find a picture of it somewhere, because that would be awesome.

Well, I couldn't find any pictures of the place, but maybe I'll take some. Anyway, the structure was like a cube standing on one point and had a frame made out of smooth metal poles like on a swing set and the rest of the structure was a network of ropes linked together all over the place. It was really cool and really fun. We were on the smaller one and there was a bridge over to the bigger one where we spent a lot of time. We had a race to see who could get down from the top the fastest... my date won because she's smaller and fit through the tight spaces better. Then we raced to the top... I won because I'm taller and stronger. After sitting and talking for a bit, suspended 15 feet in the air, tangled in the network of ropes, we crossed the street and walked up the hill to a dome that resembled the cube structures and climbed on that a bit. The sun had decided that it didn't want to play so we dealt with the clouds and breeze. The dome was a little less amazing so we weren't on that for too long and instead went over to part of the park that has art sculptures that are designed to be skated on, a pretty good idea I thought. She went to the top of a little protruding mound and I found a little red hollow plastic ball which I tossed to her. I missed a couple times, though she didn't really move much to try to catch it. I started walking away, once she had the ball, to go check out something else and had only gone a few steps when I felt a soft stinging in the middle of my back. Spinning around I noticed the ball rolling around near my feet and a certain girl standing on a mound a few paces away with a mischievously coy grin on her face. I picked up the ball and walked to the top of the mound just inches away from her and placed the ball in a pocket in her hoodie.

We walked around the skate park art and back down to the dome where we each playfully bumped into each other a few times. The dome was on the top of a hill so we decided to roll down and get dizzy. The rest of the time we just sat and talked, and I stole her shoe a couple times, and we played with the little red ball, stuffing blades of grass into the tiny hole.

I took her back home and went to get ready for work. Hugs are pretty nice. As I went to the train station guess who showed up? The SUN! what the heck dude!? where were you all day!? The rest of the day the sun was shining and I just shook my head.

That's just the way it goes I guess.

Go to google maps and put in the following coordinates:

40.553959,-111.999369 the park we climbed around on
40.554078,-111.998755 the hill we rolled down

Lack of Sleep

2011-05-23T13:52:00.002-06:00

So, I didn't wake up on time for my shift today... lame. I think it's because I couldn't sleep.
I went to bed at 11,
high five me,
and woke up at 12...
fell asleep at 2...
woke up at 3...
fell asleep at 4...
woke up at 4:30...
fell asleep at 7ish...
woke up at 8...
Then I was in and out of semi-consciousness for a while and then my coworker calls me and asks if I'm ok, or if I just forgot to come in. Dang. Not so much high five...

Well, I think one of the other reasons I forgot was that it was the only shift that was different than normal and I usually think to myself in church when they announce FHE, "I'll get there after I get off work."

I know I checked my schedule though, because I was making plans to take a girl on a date during the week sometime and needed to figure out what day was going to work best based on our schedules.

I really don't know what happened there.

Kung Fu

2011-05-17T19:39:00.005-06:00

So I don't even know why it's so hard for me to write things. I kinda like writing. I guess I get bogged down in the process of building something when I can't tell how long it's going to take and I might not get done or be happy with the result. That's silly though, you can always change something or put it on hold as you create it. I feel like lots of things happen in my life, but I don't really take the time to put it down anywhere. Well, I'm going to try a bit harder at that.

I can't believe I didn't write about it when it was going on, but I decided to attend a kung fu rank test on April 22nd and 23rd. I began taking Wing Chun Kung Fu at SLCC in January from Bill Smith, Si-gung of the Sil Lum Kung Fu Club in Salt Lake and the surrounding regions. It was a fun class where we were allowed to fight and yell and stuff. I really enjoyed learning kung fu and even though it was physically taxing a lot of the time I knew there was knowledge and skill to be gained so I went for it and it payed off.

I don't really like working out, in fact I almost try not to it seems. I hate feeling all shaky and tired and sweaty and smelly and like I can't move properly or breathe well. I think what I hated about it the most was the lack of mental stimulation. I know how to lift this weight over and over, I know how to do something until I can't anymore. It just seemed so pointless, the only thing all of this mind numbing repetition was for was the results of more definition in my muscles and better health. Don't get me wrong, those are good things, and who doesn't want to be healthier and have better musculature? I know I do, but the mind numbing part was just too much. That's why I love kung fu! You're learning skills not just doing something over and over that doesn't mean anything. You're doing something over and over so you can be awesome!

So, back to the kung fu rank test. BRUTAL is the only word to describe it. I have never been exhausted so entirely in such a short amount of time. Oh, it didn't feel short while we were there, but three hours isn't that long really. A three hour workout is definitely a long time though, and since it's composed of partially warm-up type things and doing precise kung fu moves the exam judges never run out of things to make you do better, more, or harder. But that three hour session was only the first half of the test, you see, there was another round of this slotted for the next day! I usually work on Saturdays in the morning so this would have posed a problem, but luckily my work was scheduled to be closed this particular Saturday so I was free... for more torture. We did more of the same, including doing a whole lot of horse stance, and then we did stations where we had to do stuff like holding containers of weight out to the side at full arm extension while flat walking down the Kwoon (like dojo) and back, going all out on punching bags doing all manner of kung fu to them the whole time, practicing kicks against targets, and attacking iron sand filled wall mounted targets. And whenever we were in line for a station we were to sit in horse stance 100% of the time practicing blocks. Then we paired up and did some conditioning (beating our arms together with a partner's or kicking each other in the ribs/shins etc.) until our judges were satisfied we knew how to condition. Then it was on to demonstrating The form, and then techniques with a partner and that was actually really fun. At one point while defending against punches my partner didn't do anything when the sifu said hai, so I actually punched him in the face. He was really good about it though, and laughed that he had just stood there. It was right in front of one of the judges too and he just chuckled and said, "do something!"

Finally the test was over and we sat on the mats in silence and waited. And waited. And then they came out and began presenting us with our rank advancements. Everyone starts out as a white sash, but after this test, if you pass it, becomes a gold sash. I'm a gold sash in the wing chun system :) It was kind of funny when we were presented with our certificates and sashes I remember thinking: "I hope I don't get called first, I want to see what I'm supposed to do," and then guess what happened... yeah, I got called first. Hahaha well so much for that, I just did the best I could and that was all I had been doing so it worked out.

The Tiger in Me

2011-05-16T17:07:00.006-06:00

I'm not even sure what I want to write about.

Emotions are powerful things. Important things. Sometimes it's important to pull yourself away from them for a moment so you can see the bigger picture. Sometimes you have to hold onto an emotion and let it fill the moment.

It's interesting how my own personal state is so greatly affected by others and the interactions of their lives with mine.

I find this to be much like a dance, perhaps a reel or something, where all persons are engaged and dancing their steps but depending on the level of effort and/or accuracy the dance may be enjoyable or rather frustrating. Many such dances have you switching partners after each set of steps. Two such are: Lucky Seven, and The Gay Gordons both of which are performed in a circle. Upon completion of the foundational steps in The Gay Gordons your partner moves to the next person and you receive a new one at the same time with whom you will now dance the original steps again. This is repeated until the music is done and is quite a lovely dance to watch (and to do if you know it! ;).

In Lucky Seven dancers take hands in a large ring and dance a few steps in unison...

after which the ladies turn to the gentleman on their left and the gentlemen to their right and prepare to weave in opposite directions, each taking the hand of the next person coming into range...

until they arrive at the seventh person and perform a behind the back spin placing everyone back at the proper positions to begin the set again! It is very fun but very tiring and you're never partners with anyone for long.

So, 'what the heck' you say? Well, let me tell you what I'm talking about. People sometimes fluctuate in and out of our lives, or perhaps up or down in the level of influence in our lives and it is like a dance. Decisions and actions taken by you or them form the steps that move you through the dance, drawing sometimes closer to some, and further from others. Emotion is tied closely with dancing and when one is in harmony with their partner and the music it is almost euphoric. When the steps are out of sync, or you stumble through the cadence of the music the dance becomes painful.

Waiting is hard to do. I hate trying to be patient for something that I really want. I'm usually not when it comes to stuff. I was interested in building a computer so I did. I like swords and when I see a really cool one I want to have it. I'm much better at not buying swords though, since there's not much to justify $200 for a thing I'll put in the corner. But I sure do like sharp shiny metal things. It's different when it's not stuff. The intangible is so much harder to wait for. I feel like my heart is saying, "Are we there yet?! Are we there yet?! Are we there yet?!" and I have to keep saying, "No. No. Look I'll tell you when we get close, ok?"

So, the tiger in me wants to pounce, but any good jungle cat knows sometimes you have to wait it out. Never let your eyes wander from your goal, but use time instead of force, and let your prey come to you.

A list of Stuff

2011-03-31T15:39:00.005-06:00

Ok, it has been a long time since I wrote anything in here. So how about a recap of recent events beginning from the last post. Well, and some stuff before it.

Began a Dungeons & Dragons game with Phillip, Stephanie, and Matt.
Leveled Up
Experienced some miscommunication
Had an awkward Valentine's day
Julie and I broke up
Kung Fu was a beast and made me throw up (but I love Kung Fu, it rocks)
Amanda got home from her mission
I got a new CPU cooler that has red LEDs and it's awesome.
I took a girl from my ward out a couple of times
A girl from my FHS class sent me a couple vibes (I'll come around to this again in a bit)
Learned some jujitsu
Met a girl that went to my junior high at the same time I did, in my same grade, who I could not remember. Let's just say she grew up... a lot.
Got her number
Went on a date with a different girl from my ward and played racquetball for the first time. totally awesome
Got a wicked bruise on my arm from Kung Fu/Jujitsu
Decided to pick up on the vibes from earlier and got the girl's number
Ordered a modular PSU for my computer that has an LED switch so I can make the LEDs blue, white, or turn them off. It's a 1000 watt bad boy
Ordered a book that my coworker and friend Renee's friend wrote called Entwined
Took out the girl from my class and had fun "ring shopping"
Received the book less than 24 hours from the time I ordered it, totally a record.
Wrote this list of stuff that happened

I don't feel like typing or thinking, so I'm done now.

St. Valenfreakintine's Day

2011-02-14T17:18:00.004-07:00

Ugh.

Issues:

My girlfriend waiting until she's going to explode before she says something's making her upset.

School.

Homework being on the chapter about love intimacy and friendship and me not having a good day in that section of life.

The fact that both assignments are due today, and they both have to do with that crap.

Horrible Timing!!!

Speaking of horrible timing, some girl I wanted to talk to months ago and haven't seen since I started dating my girlfriend just happened to be at church yesterday and what do you know we had a lovely conversation. Hints were dropped how she was not doing much for Valentine's and such. Ugh, why?! My girlfriend just had to dump everything on me on Saturday and then this girl shows up the next day. A girl I was genuinely interested in.

Once my GF dumps everything on me she feels better and wants to reconnect and for everything to be fine. I don't feel fine.

I don't want to do my homework.

Tron

2010-12-20T14:30:00.009-07:00

TRON
Legacy

So I went to see tron on Saturday and I have to say it was a thrilling ride. I really want a Light Cycle. Real bad. The technology is where the imagination was all those years ago when special effects were a trial and error process, with heavy reliance on camera tricks, and the results are spectacular. I loved it. Everything was so smooth and shiny, and the vehicles, suits, discs, and terrain were intricate and elegantly simple at the same time.

I think they did a really good job on the story, filling in the things you needed to know without making you wish they would move on, providing the characters with believable emotions and enough development you got a feeling of where they were coming from.

A tid bit of info I found pretty cool was that the costume designers wanted to make the suits actually light up and with whatever high falootin' techno gadgetry of this modern age they had they made the suits light up. I think that is awesome. I also want a Light suit.
I love the music in this movie! It's so old+new and awesome. Daft punk make a cameo in this movie and they look pretty cool I must say. Not only do they look amazing but the soundtrack to this movie is incredible, the bass is so low and the treble so trebly and the beats so head bobbing good. Then they fill out the electronica sound with symphonic bliss and the resulting audio elixir will cure whatever ails you.

I would like to give this movie a high five because it did what lots of movies try to do but didn't have to put in all the crap Hollywood usually insists must be present for a movie to be a success.

Go see this movie and you'll have lots of good fun. My girlfriend even liked it, and she's "not a nerd".

Winter Wonderland

2010-12-14T15:00:00.011-07:00

Life is a funny thing. Sometimes it doesn't let you breathe between smacks in the face and sometimes it is just peaceful and serene. It's finals right now for both my school and my work, I work at a University in Testing Services. I took my final for Psychology yesterday and basically owned it so that is a load off the mind. I still have to deal with finals for the rest of the week at work though.

Those of you I talk to frequently will know by now that I have a girlfriend. Those of you who don't know this still you're dumb because if you read the last sentence you should know this too. Anyway, her name is Julie and she's pretty awesome. As you can see she likes to dress up and in this picture is a gypsy (selfnamed Sapphira, [I added Jewel in the Night]). I'm dressed as a thief/rogue named Akos Amun Semajj (the White Falcon, The Hidden one). We went to three Halloween parties together like this and went to a masquerade party before those. The girl loves to dress up. I was surprised that I had not found out about this interest of hers before then. When she found out what I was dressing up as she told me her thoughts were "I can't be out dressed by a guy!" so she bought a corset!

We have known each other for a few months having met through a mutual friend. I started to notice her shortly afterward but eventually just took her presence for granted. During a Stake YSA activity to a corn maze I started to flirt with her and sent her a few texts later that night. She said later that she was totally confused because I didn't usually act like that with her, but she took notice and I ended up on her Radar Screen of Potential. After that I had asked if she wanted to come to a Masquerade ball and she bought a mask for it and came.

There was a dating workshop put on by Alisa Goodwin Snell on the 20th of November and it was free! So I'm a fan of free stuff and I like dating, and I also like learning new things... especially stuff that pertains to life and stuff. So I went and Julie went too, and afterward I knew that she would know what I was doing or meaning by doing certain things because she went to the workshop. That made communication 1,000,000 times easier. I guess we started being exclusive on the 1st of December and it's been pretty fun to get to know her family and to spend time with her.

Touch

2010-08-31T10:42:00.003-06:00

So, for my birthday, I received a box of crackers and a book. The book was freaking awesome. It's 'The Way of Shadows' and focuses on an individual who grows up as a guild rat (think Oliver Twist, orphans who all pack together and are governed by the older kids) and becomes the apprentice to a wetboy. (this is a quote from the book) "Wetboys are like assassins in the way tigers are like kittens." yeah, wetboys are crazy. So while I read the book I ate my Chicken in a Biscuit crackers and all in all things were good. But I kind of felt like my birthday had been kinda lame, no parties, two presents, so I splurged on myself a bit and got an iPod Touch. I like it a lot. I got a cover for it that is only a thin skin. I like that it stays the same dimensions this way but I dislike fingerprints and what not on shiny objects, so this is perfect.

I'm still alive, and having fun. I'll post something about my psychological and emotional state as regarding females in a different post, when I feel like it.

Statement: Letters I've written / time = satisfied recipient. False

2010-07-29T13:15:00.009-06:00

As evidenced by my lack of consistency in blogging I am not the best at keeping up on things in the writing department. My journal is pretty much non-existent, and I almost never write letters to the friends and family who are on missions. I LOVED getting letters on the mission and it seemed like it was forever between them sometimes.

Time moves differently in different places. Einstein said time was relative, and besides his theory of relativity, dealing with time based on speeds and whatnot, I think that time moves differently based on experiences you are living through at the moment. In my life now I wake up and do a few things, go to work, go home, play games or read a book or hang out with friends and the days slip by like a Lamborghini on the Autobahn. On the mission every day was planned out, and while the elements of each day were pretty much the same it was always a bit different. Every hour of every day was planned out and I was able to be more aware of time passing as each planned event had it's season and moved into the past in a tangible way.

It's been over six months. I've written 0 letters over that time. Correction, I've written at least one, started a couple, and written dozens in the recesses of my mind. Something is disconnected between my mind and my hand. I don't know how to start in this particular case, not that I'm all that terrific at writing letters anyway. I have wanted to say so many things but none of those thoughts have ever coalesced into tangible words and phrases, not to mention my memories of this friend of mine are very bitter-sweet. I have thoughts and/or memories cross my mind every day, which only makes it harder to pick up a pen and spill the contents of my current life to someone, who, in a past realm, played a primary role in it.

I try to distract myself from this past, my past. I don't often feel much when the thoughts dance in my mind, and if I do it's usually a nice feeling with just a little bit of a crumpled edge, like that book you love that you got mad at because one of your favorite characters did something stupid and you threw the book and then remorsefully picked it back up and kept reading. The book is never quite the same, oh the story is, and your favorite parts are all still there, but there's that constant reminder of that time you lost your cool and hurt your friend. I find it hard to stay distracted when one of the biggest reminders is one of my favorite things: Sunsets, and those don't happen EVERY DAY! The sky in general is a big one too. It is also hard that I still have suppressed feelings for her, and that I haven't had anything close to a real relationship since the crap hit the fan last year. I guess I'm a bit leery of that kind of thing and I'm still stuck on her as well.

I really ought to send her something. I don't want her thinking that she is an awful person or something, distracting her from her performance as a missionary. I don't know what will happen when I start writing, I don't want it to become a can of worms.

Blah

Oh, and all the above doesn't really help with my life right now. There's this amazing girl (smart, fun, pretty, spiritual, talented) and she likes me, which is great, I'm just having trouble (been having the same trouble for ...well a year actually) liking her back the same way. I want to, but I don't know how to let myself. I have been trying to figure that out, and this last week I have been thinking especially hard on this subject, when I received a letter from afore mentioned missionary friend this week as well. It happens to be exactly one year ago this week that all the back and forth stuff took place with her and shoved me into my protective shell. Now I'm dealing with a fresh re-acquaintance with my emotions while trying to be fair to someone else. Why was that letter sent and then received at the most inopportune time?

Power

2010-05-10T16:22:00.007-06:00

Whew! I made it through another semester. I'm kinda sleepy, but that has nothing to do with anything.

I love my computer. It has been a blast to use and it's so quick. We're friends he and I, and life is good. I have gotten a couple things for him since my last post describing the components. I got a new CPU cooling fan to replace the stock fan and heat-sink, a Zalman CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler, it's all copper and it looks like a turbine. I like that it can keep my CPU at or under 25ºC even when I am running iTunes and Need For Speed Shift at the same time for two hours. It used to get up to around 33ºC with the stock fan and heat-sink. I also got a 1TB HDD to expand my storage, but when I got it from Newegg.com it was broken, so I had to send it back but the one they sent works great!

Then just recently I purchased a new PSU or power supply unit, as I also want to upgrade my graphics card eventually, and most require more than a 400 watt PSU like the one I have now. I really like the blue light that my Raidmax 400W PSU has so I got one with a blue light. Now the typical girl would say that's why she wanted it, it's purty and has a blue light, but I'm not a girl at all so the blue light is just an ambiance thing. The manly thing is that it has more power than my current one: 700Watts =) (you can just hear Tim Taylor going "Oh oh oh!" in the background). It's manufactured by Apevia and one of the other things I like about it is that it has cable sheathing so you don't have so many squirly cables. It's not modular, meaning that you can remove or add power cables as you need them reducing clutter, but that's ok with me. I'm still on the search for a graphics upgrade, but I am sure one will turn up, though I am worried that I'll want a really expensive one... but on the bright side, it would be very powerful =) . Power is good.

Real good.

Compy 4086

2010-03-09T20:30:00.003-07:00

The title is in reference to a wonderfully funny series of flash animations from HomestarRunner. There are hours of Sbemails (strong bad is the character that answers the emails) and in the earlier ones he has an old computer and as it passes on he gets a new one, and it dies so he gets a new one, and that goes away so he gets the latest one. It starts out as Compy 286 then Compy 386 followed by Lappy 486 and then the Compe. They each get better in ridiculously minuscule ways and their features are always overly outlandish. It's awesome.

I'm building a computer. It's going to be much better than my laptop and not in outlandish or minuscule ways either. That's why it's the Compy 4086, because it's a thousand times better. Ok, well, I don't know how accurate that is... but it's safe to say this new beast will be much more awesome, in many more ways.

I issue a warning to readers: this next little bit is going to sound very foreign to you unless you know computers.

These are the specs of my new beast
AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor
BIOSTAR TA790GXB3 AM3 AMD 790GX ATX AMD Motherboard
A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
POWERCOLOR Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 512MB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with DirectX 11
Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive
RAIDMAX RX-400AF 400W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Power Supply

Inside a
RAIDMAX Skyline ATX-948WS Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

With a
Hanns·G Black 20" 5ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor

Yeah... I like. Not all the parts are here yet though, but they are on their way. :D so excited!

Deremy Forethew

2010-02-09T08:24:00.005-07:00

Well, the ball was awesome. It was a fiasco first though. My date called me a few minutes before she got home so I could come drop off the mask and give her time to do her makeup and get all gussied up for the ball. I got there about five minutes later and she was in the driveway with her car's hood up and a phone to her ear. I stepped out and approached her, very aware now of the distraught look on her face. It was pretty obvious with one look at the engine that all was not right and I stepped closer to inspect it; her voice, not quite as steady as she would like, in the ambiance. It was her uncle, a very talented mechanic who unfortunately lives in another state, and she was trying to describe the scene in front of her. It was like a vascular eruption of the vehicular mobilius or maybe an automotive arterial hemorrhage. Oil was everywhere. After talking to her uncle for a bit she asked me where her dipstick was and after looking around for a couple seconds I determined that she didn't have one. I could see where it was supposed to be but it wasn't there. More like it was banished. The part of the tube the dipstick handle rests on there at the top was blown out like the results of an explosive in a pipe. I tired to console her as best I could and she promised to be happy later and have a good time at the Ball, but shortly after I left she called with sad news. She had to take the car to the shop immediately and that meant she wouldn't be coming. :( sad day.

Three hours. That's how long I had till the Ball started. Two tickets + no date = time to call everyone you know. I called and called and called. Left messages, asked those I talked to if they might know someone... those missionary skills coming into use again ;) and no one could go. Then one of my friends called me back saying she talked to a friend of hers that lived fairly close to where the ball was being held and said she would be willing to go. Sweet! So we went and had a great time and laughed and danced and wore sweet masks.

On Sunday I went to this great fireside, like I mean one of my favorites. Ever. It was a dating counselor named Alisa Goodwin Snell and she had so many insights and tips it was mind boggling. I seriously learned some great stuff. How to convey confidence, not falling into the "too nice guy" trap, having a good "rejection plan" for when she turns you down, how to spot when they are interested, and plenty of other stuff. Here's her website. Holy cow, I have felt like I can't seem to get ahead in this stupid game and really it's been like walking around with a bow and no arrows. Now "I'm Deremy Forethew, I'm the archer!" I love it! Dang I wish more people had been there. There were so many things that she told the guys, and she told the girls a whole slew of things that they needed to be aware of. She said, "Most men know they don't understand women, but most women think they understand men, but they don't. They REALLY don't."

The Ball

2010-01-28T14:37:00.005-07:00

I will of course be updating this after it actually happens, but there's a Masquerade Ball tomorrow. I'm pumped. Every time I told anyone about it they were really excited and would say something like, "Oh man that sounds fun! I've always wanted to go to one of those!" Then I would ask if they wanted to come and they were kinda hesitant. Wait- I thought you said you wanted to go! .... grr.

I found a date to it. She's from my ward and she's cool. I liked how excited she started getting at the end of our "planning" session. I went over to her house and she tried on all the different masks I had and we figured out which mask she was going to use, what dress she would wear, which shoes, and her hair style and make-up. I know what I'm going to do so I can hardly wait.

Out of Nowhere

2010-01-28T10:30:00.012-07:00

Stuff totally happens when you're not looking. Out riding your bike, you look down or away for some reason, and then BAM!! you hit that parked car or trash can or whatever. On Dr. Who there are these creatures that look like angel statues when you look at them but really they exist only when nothing sees them, if anything does they turn to stone so they can't be killed. Oh, and they are super dangerous. And super fast, if you look away, too late. If you blink, too late. On nature programs which gazelle gets nailed by the lion? The one that wasn't paying attention just a split second longer than his buddies. Which flock of birds get sucked into the jet turbine of a commercial airliner? The ones that forget to check the flight paths and scheduled flights for the day.

Well, bad things aren't the only stuff that can happen when you're not paying attention, it's just more likely it seems. I almost expect crazy stuff to happen, I mean, I am a ninja. If it doesn't happen to me, I'll make it happen on accident,... or on purpose... sometimes.

I, Shinobi Jim, Ninja Master and recipient of the Certificate of Awesomeness have been snuck upon. Completely out of nowhere. Entirely unexpected. Starting Saturday... she popped up on my chat bar on facebook, and that's what we did. We chatted. Two HOURS later at 1:30am I went to bed, but not to sleep. My head was still buzzing. Our conversation had been... bold here and there... which made it pretty fun, and she gave me her number and said I could call anytime. Yeah, ANY time. But that is kinda hard for me, I don't want to bother people. Still I tried calling her and things didn't match up that next night, but we texted a bit. She finished off with saying she'd call me the next day.

Guess what she did... She called. Sweet right!? I was asleep. Not sweet. I called her back after her text woke me up (An entire ringtone playing didn't do anything..). We talked for a while but I had class, and then there was FHE later so she said I could call her afterward. ...If I wanted to. I wondered: "if I wanted to", guess who else sounds like they might want me to.. Later she texts me saying her activity is done, and is mine too? It wasn't. When it was, I called her and we started talking, and kept talking, through the ride home (in a car full of people who laughed and teased at what they were listening to), and continued past the point where I had to plug in my phone to keep it from dying. Then her phone died haha and she called back. So.. we have trouble saying goodbye, like we say goodnight, and then someone mentions one last thing and then twenty minutes later we're still talking. Yeah, kinda makes me think she doesn't mind very much. I don't mind either. That was a two and a half hour conversation + the 45 minute conversation we had earlier that day 3 hours 15 minutes.

Then I didn't call the next day. My reasoning on this is that we don't know each other very well, and we have never met, though we served in the same mission(she got there a transfer before I left), so I don't want to seem like I expect to have her attention every day for two+ hours. That seems awfully presumptuous of me. And that I don't know her schedule and don't want to just interrupt things all the time. I don't want to bug her.

Then I didn't call her the next day either. I kinda wanted to, but I didn't know how she would feel about that. I don't want to wear out my welcome before I even meet her for real. However, when I pulled out the ol' Lappy 486 she pops up again on my chat and we started talking again. During this "until 2am at which point my dad comes out and says it's time to go to bed" conversation it becomes fairly transparent that I don't bug her. I found out because she made up a few equations including this one: you= you don't bug me. That was the one at the end after the "it's okay to call whenever" and "6am= tired + not fun" equations plus others. I learned that I can push her buttons pretty good and we get into some spats of bantering that were really fun. :) This girl is fun,... and really pretty. I will be calling her tonight.

My favorite thing was the last six minutes of the conversation :) It was awesome.
But this isn't the place for that. ;)

but this is \/\/\/

01:51J \\ ....i think you like me..

01:51girl \\ you said it, not me. \\ hahahahha \\ j/k \\ we'll see- we'll see. \\ ... \\ there is a possibility. \\ and you?

01:52J \\ ... me what?

01:53girl \\ ! \\ oh my goodness, James. Honestly. \\ Do you like me?

01:54J \\ hahahaha \\ oh man, your buttons! \\ yes i do

01:55girl \\ you push one more button, and i'm gonna break that button-pushing finger of yours. \\ :D all in good jest, of course. \\ there, was that so hard for you to just say?

01:57J \\ :) good night beautiful girl

Minor rantings

2010-01-21T14:28:00.011-07:00

School started again. Well, it's been going for a couple weeks now, but whatever. That means less hanging out and more homework. How am I supposed to conduct a social life with a bunch of crazy things to do? Okay, so i have a pretty good social life. And no my classes aren't that bad. Actually I kinda like them. Especially the dance one.

People tell me I'm a great guy and that girls would love to spend time with me and all that, yet... no girlfriend, and no prospects. Well, not that I have tried really hard, and I'm not desperate, I know there are a couple girls that would want to date me, but really... um they're kinda creepy. So, according to the consensus I'm "...funny, smart, confident, good looking, interesting, nice, chivalrous, spiritual, talented(plays guitar, does calligraphy, etc.), goes shoe shopping," etc., but somehow, that doesn't do it. I constantly see guys, that girls I've talked to think are sub par, dating people and having a great time. So what's the difference? What makes them date-able and me not? One girl, whom I am very good friends with, told me that she felt I was the type of person she felt like she'd like to end up with, but she wouldn't want to date me if she knew she wasn't ready to get married. Someone else said something similar too. So I guess I am the goal, and I won't get a girlfriend till I get married. But wait, that's frustrating... how am I supposed to learn stuff? From NOT experience...? mmmkay.. Maybe I get to learn from all the different friendships I have and glean the appropriate knowledge from all my interpersonal relationships. Oh wait- that's what I've been doing.

I just want to surprise someone sometimes... it hasn't seemed to work in the past: Surprise. I want to talk to someone and just talk, or talk about life stuff, or just hear someone's voice for a while. I want to go shopping for fun and just look at cool shoes and pick out stuff for her to try on. That's fun. I like doing nice things and I don't get a chance other than the regular door holding or compliments.

Sorry, just a little frustrated sometimes. The only girls that like me are really young and still in high school mentally, really creepy, or really awkward. The girls I like, the smart, funny, interesting, talented, pretty ones* seem to only like jerks and showy rich guys with no real class.

Dumb.

*why yes, I do like pretty girls, you see... they are pretty, which makes them nice to look at. No I don't think that makes me shallow, you girls like your men good looking don't you? And yes, I'd like to be attracted to them in more than one way, hence the other qualifications.

Faces of Epic

2010-01-19T13:40:00.011-07:00

I have a cousin.

He is a ninja. I know, I know awesome right? Well here is the most awesome part, I am also a ninja so naturally we hang together from time to time. What is the outcome of this event? Pure unadulterated epicness!

I have a friend, he is a ninja... see paragraph B. Sometimes, well, actually, all the time pretty much, awesome happens. here is a conversation we had today:

An epic tale:
13:27James
oh, the future! What lengths we will go to for the future. Oh the plans we have made and the dreams we create for the future.
I like that... I think I'll write a song.
13:28Matt
good luck with that
13:29James
thank you
13:29Matt
youre not welcome
13:30James
Hiya!!! your arms are mine suckah!!
13:30Matt
too bad for you i already killed you with my mind
13:31James
too bad I traveled back in time and saved myself
too bad i knew what you're going to write
ha
cuz I traveled thru time again
that's how
13:31Matt
therefore creating a paradox so those demon things from dr who could appear and destroy you
13:32James
ah ha
that's where you're wrong
I thought of that and stopped the paradox from forming
You're welcome
13:32Matt
no you didnt
13:33James
oh, and in the hub-bub I had to give you your arms back at the instant I took them so you didn't feel anything.
13:33Matt
then why are my arms sore?
13:34James
well, there was a brief moment there... sorry, i wasn't perfect, but you have to admit for the amount of damage, I did pretty good.
13:35Matt
yes, you must have time travelled because as you know, yesterday i couldn't even lift my arms

So in case you're wondering, this kind of thing happens a lot, and of course when you're in the room you get to be part of the spontaneity. If you hang out with us, you will pee your pants, but luckily there are usually bathrooms nearby.

Epic things
Ninjas are epic.
And dragons are too
Swords you say? Yes,
Your statement is true.

Clowns? No,
Sorry you're wrong.
I guess you're not epic
You silly ding-dong.

Masquerades, cheese,
Christmas and mountains
Wells made for wishing
And Greek Goddess Fountains

Puppies with rail guns
Ion particle beam cannons
Link with the Master Sword
Chopping guts of one Gannon

A trillion watt stereo
Decimating a planet
And a moonwalking Michael
Though not that freak Janet

Legos? fuh real
Matt's such a smart friend
Mech warriors and starships
Ninja battles without end.

I wrote a Costanza
Wait-- now I'm confused...
OH! Stanza that's right
That's what I shoulda mused

Muse, now that's epic
If you've heard them you know
You feel indestructibly beautiful
Like you's a vampire fo sho

S'there's a template of epic.
So now go and find
Epic things all around you
And the ones in your mind.

Masquerade!

2010-01-17T16:08:00.008-07:00

The other day I had the "Phantom of the Opera" song 'Masquerade' going through my head, I guess I was just really excited about the new masks I had bought, and I couldn't think of what the words were. This is what was going thru my head: "MASQUERADE!! Bluh-muh-muh-muh-uh-pleh-puh. Masquerade..." The real words are: "MASQUERADE!! Pretty faces on parade. Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you..."

Speaking of masks though, I won the contest. :) I'm okay with that. If you look below you'll see all the mask ideas I came up with and the 'Fleur de Lis' was the voted winner. Kenn actually made one as well, though I think it would look better with some contrast like gold/silver plumes on dark (but bold) blue. As is it's two tones of gold. Still looks pretty cool.

A friend of mine and I were talking about getting some people involved in having a masquerade party, and I like the idea. Like, a lot. I am trying to figure out how and when to do it and I think having a more simple party the first time would be great, and a way to spark a little interest in a group. Yeah, you should be a part of the greatness. I told my cousin's wife and she starts getting that look in her eyes, you know that one that looks like Brain from "Pinky and the Brain" when he talks about some great idea. Yeah, that one. Only not evil, just plotting. Before long she has this plan coagulating in the neural pathways and I get a little nervous. She is a fantastic planner, it's just that she can sometimes get a little carried away, so we came up with a word we can use in case of emergencies. It's "Dominion". I like that word.

I'm listening to the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. I didn't realize that till just now, it's been going for several minutes now. You're welcome.

I got three new masks. I don't think I would have done that, but with winning the contest I got $100 and though I could have used the money in a lot of different ways, I pumped it all into masks. Hahaha, oh boy... yeah I may have a problem. I'll get help. They are pretty sweet though, and now I have four masks.

Swords

2010-01-07T14:19:00.012-07:00

Swords are awesome. I like them.

That's the one I want. I want it for my character Akos Amun Semajj.

I had a mask custom made for him too, you can see it in the first picture of the previous post.

These are the swords I have, well, the good ones.

So this is my sword I got first. It's from Musashi Swords.

And this is what my Oniyuri looks like. It's a smaller blade in a normal sized saya so as to be sneaky and trick other swordsmen. These would be carried by ninja assassins so they would look like normal samurai and walk unnoticed through a town, and then when the time came to strike, they could draw their sword faster than anyone else.

I like these things. Metal and sharpness in a beautiful form.

Mask Designs

2009-12-20T21:33:00.026-07:00

Well, it has been a while since I have put anything up and I thought now was a great time to post something because there is a Mask Design contest being held by a gifted individual Kenn Osborn. Look him up on Etsy.com he has great stuff. Here's a link http://www.etsy.com/shop/kennosborne

Anyway, I have a few designs I have come up with and will be entering them in said contest. I have decided there is almost no better place to show these design ideas than right here on the blog so have fun looking at them.

First we have a mask I had Kenn make already. It's a falcon mask for a character I am creating.

Next is a mask I drew that incorporates some pretty cool stuff. It would use some layering and would also have a veil/shroud that could extend down to the chest if so desired. The bottom of the cross would be around the bottom of the chin but the leather part of the mask would not completely cover the face so that's why I put a shroud on it. It's my Templar mask:

Next is a Midnight Masquerade mask that would look pretty good on a girl. Sort of alluring and mysterious. It is a scene of the night sky with some feathers for an accent.

Then I made a nice bright sunshiny one. This would be either a Sunflower or a Daisy depending on the color scheme. I think this one would be very fun to wear.

These next two pictures go together. I thought about what would make a fun mask, and keep a flair of uniqueness and I thought about this: each of the suits of the face cards; spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. Now, I drew each symbol as the whole mask but I also thought it would be cool to make all of them be on one mask, or make a crown for that matter. It could be the poker crown that the weekly champion could keep until the next game. I don't know, I don't play poker, but it was a thought. Or with the masks you'd have an automatic poker face! ok ok, I'll stop, here they are.

I think this next one is really cool. It's a Fleur De Lis and I love it.

ok, for some reason all the pictures since the fleur de lis won't upload right side up, i'll try another post.

Well, it refuses to be right side up, but whatever.
I went nuts on the next one, wondering how I could possibly get any more unique. And then I thought about what time it was, and then I thought about clocks and watches, and then about Switzerland and those amazing time pieces they have and how intricate the gears are, and then i came up with this mask.

This next one wouldn't upload right either, blast. It's a snake head, and I liked the tooling on my falcon mask and it made me think about scales like a snake.

And I made another one that is a bit more sinister.

I had thought a tree one would be cool with vines or a snake curled around it, and then Kenn started making those. Haha, oh well, but I still like the vine/snake idea so I drew one.

I like Harlequin style masks, I think they are pretty cool, so I made one of those too.

And finally, I thought about St. Patrick's day. This one should bring some good luck.

There we go. Those are my masks.

Wheels and Deals

2009-10-14T11:14:00.011-06:00

So, I love longboarding.

I got a longboard last year and I have had a ton of fun with it. This first board of mine is a Sector 9 Carbon Trilam Spoontail. The deck is comprised of 5 plies of maple sandwiched between layers of fiberglass with a carbon fiber 'X' running down the board. It came with Gullwing Charger trucks (black) and Race formula Nineball wheels with greaseball bearings.

My second board I started making a couple months later with a friend and we got 47" decks online and started coming up with ideas on how to paint them and what kinds of trucks and wheels to put on them. It was a lot of fun planning and getting everything. We both went with Randall II 180mm trucks, his were raw mine are black coated, and ABEC 11 Gumballs for the wheels with Bones Reds bearings. My friend got done painting and grip taping way before I did. He stained his deck a mahogany color and then put a double stripe down the length of the board in a green that matched the wheels. I liked the color and planned my own design. I wanted to leave the wood color the same and then made a single stripe that ran the length of the board flaring at both ends. I outlined the green stripe with a thin line of black on both sides and coated it all with a sealer. It looked way good and I was proud. I just needed to find a place I could get clear grip tape in long enough pieces so I wouldn't have a seam in the tape.

It took a while, a few months actually, for me to even paint the board, and a few more to find a shop with clear grip tape. I finally heard tell of a shop in the area that had a good supply of everything so I wanted to check it out. I was awestruck when I walked in, there was a ton of different types of boards and clothing and everything that makes a shop like that great. I asked about the tape and they showed me their supply. What I really wanted to know was could they tape it up right then? That way I could start riding it without fear of my feet slipping off. They said they could and I got my board from my car and brought it in. I had it put together so they took the trucks off and started getting the tape ready, but the guy didn't wipe off the deck like I asked him to. I had been doing a little cruising and there was dirt and stuff on the surface that I really didn't want embalmed under the tape for me to see forever. He went to get a cloth to wipe the deck and then got ready to put on the tape. The tape was applied and the excess cut off and then he offered to put it all back together. I was in a hurry to go shooting and everyone was waiting on me so I didn't need him to take any longer, I said no but he said he could do it really quick. I relented and said not to tighten anything as one truck needed to go on the front because it compensated for a flaw in the mounting holes. If he got it wrong I would have that much more work when I got home. You see, there was a 50% chance he would get it right, but according to that "one" theory: if there's a chance you can get it wrong it's most likely to come out that way. Of course that's what he did, and I again said to not tighten anything all the way down. He did. Actually he did more than tighten things, he sunk a screw halfway through the board. I did a little venting at that and he loosened the drill (I like to hand tighten everything so I know exactly how tight it is) and he sunk the next screw even deeper. I freaked a little and he very carefully finished up.

Well now, I am not a happy camper and I write a letter to the owner detailing my frustrations. The owner calls me and we meet, I show him the board and he offers to help fix it with some counter sunk washers. He also offered to get me a board in his shop for cost instead of retail. That's sweet. I got a Loaded Dervish for $60 off the board and then I got Paris 180mm trucks and Orangatang Durian wheels with Diamond bearings.

I'm pretty happy.

Avoid a void

2009-08-31T08:26:00.006-06:00

Since 'Shutter Effect' and my great blossoming hopes for the future I have been rocked by the frailties of good fortune and brought to my knees by betrayal and misdirection. Though, it isn't as bad as all that. I won't go in to any details but you start to realize how small the top of a mountain is once you slip off. And once you slip off, the scenery quickly changes and your focus is no longer on the landscape's breathtaking expanse but on the grating sharpness of the pummeling decent. When you open yourself up and take down your defenses you become very vulnerable, but that can be a very good thing, a very building and anchoring thing when you allow someone else to enter into your heart. However, we fear becoming vulnerable because we don't know if we will be lucky enough to have a positive outcome. It seems more often than not we are introduced to disappointment and heartache. Sometimes I get really frustrated that I can't seem to catch a break, and when it feels like I do, it's just another slippery precipice looking to throw my footing and welcome me into jagged arms, predictable, constant.

Detachment is a good friend. It doesn't hurt if you can't feel it. So I let go of my emotions, got rid of my concern, and banished my thoughts.

In nature there is a balance, an inescapable equilibrium that maintains the functions of the ecosystem. With every shift and change there is an adjustment in some other part that fills the void or answers the need. When scientists felt there were too many wolves in a particular area and recommended killing most of them off there was a drastic and actually devastating increase in the herbivore population, including deer for example. A threat, previously unconsidered, came to light: overgrazing of ranch-lands and the starvation of many domesticated livestock. A void had been created and it would have to be filled. Because it was not a natural shift the effects were drastic and would threaten many aspects of the local ecosystem. The resulting overpopulation of herbivores led to an increase of predators, and then with limited food supply and increased threat from predators, the herbivore population dwindled. Without prey the predator population struggled as well, and after a period of flailing its arms, nature regained balance having filled the void.

I am worried about this flux in my own life. I was close to what I wanted, and it was ripped away. I now have a void in a relatively vulnerable place, and I wonder what will come by to fill it. My defenses are up again but they are a little battered. They are also extremely weak against one particular force, so I have had to keep my distance or my defenses will fall. I want to keep this friend of mine, I want things to be normal, but first I need to be safe, balanced. Balance is hard when you are unevenly weighted. I can't be balanced around her, she would fill the void too easily, too quickly.

I have been having fun in my ward, not worrying about trying too hard to fix things yet. And then I met someone for the first time three weeks ago, and really started to get to know her two weeks ago, who has lived less than three minutes away from me for the last eleven years. Funny how you can know your world so well, and still not know it. I think she's really cool, and I like that I feel like we've been friends for months when it's only been weeks. I'm not sure how I feel about things at the moment, but I am a little worried that I am unconsciously trying to fill my void. I guess that's not a bad thing, I just don't want to be going about things the wrong way, or trying to make things happen when I should be less concerned.

Shutter Effect

2009-07-28T15:06:00.012-06:00

Have you ever been looking into the night sky, or maybe someone's eyes, or down an inviting country lane, and suddenly get lost in its depth, its unpredictable serenity, sent out into the incredible and unimaginable future only to be captured back into the present before you comprehend the scene? I have.

At times I have this deep ache, a very real and lovely longing for intangible futures. I see things for a moment, like specters, dancing and calling me, showing me memories of things I have never seen, and though I also see that they are not in my near future, they are there somewhere, playing hide and seek in time. I think the ache is akin to that feeling you got at the center of your heart the first time you left home for a week, and you missed your room and your parents, and even your pesky, snotty, bratty, wonderful siblings. You were probably seven or eight, and it may have been some sort of camp with your church or school, and it was fun, but it wasn't home.

This next analogy only works if you have seen cameras other than the digital kind. When a film camera takes a picture, there is a shutter that opens for just a fraction of a second, and in that moment the image is captured on the film. You can even duplicate this type of effect yourself with your own eyes. Just close your eyes for a while and then open them and quickly close them again (this will work best if you are looking out a window where there is a lot of light and contrast) and the image will seem to linger for a couple heartbeats. The longing I speak of is kind of like this, I am just minding my business living life and then, in a brilliant and fleeting flash, I see the expanse of the universe, its image and emotion burned into the retina of my soul, and the ache, while intense for a moment, slowly fades and I am left to myself wondering.

I wonder at the feelings I get when this happens, the feeling that what I saw was home. It feels like that's where I belong, not here, not in the small struggles I face today, but there, where my heart is full and my experiences rich, and my family, not my current family only, my own family, is close and our bonds strong. How is it that I can be homesick for a home I don't yet have? Things stir in me that I don't understand, my heart feels broken for not being there in that glimpse of forever, feels weak and unsuited for the task, hungry for company. It's hard to explain. I need deeper words, or to be able to write with emotion as my text instead of these clumsy symbols. So inadequate are these tools sometimes. I feel I understand what God meant when He said He speaks according to our understanding, using the language of man's comprehension.

I feel that these glimpses into the eternities, into the mind and will of God, are for us encouragements to help us on our way, to show us that there is more, to keep us from sitting still, to make sure we still dream. The breath leaves us for a moment and our hearts expand in the attempt to fully embrace the scene, and the ache comes when we find that our hearts are not yet big enough, but are hungry to become so. And the vision fades, leaving us hopeful, longing.

I want it. I don't know exactly how to get there, but I know a few of the steps. I don't know what to do all the time and I make things harder sometimes. But for now, I will enjoy the journey, the company of friends, the lessons I learn, and the joys I gain.

All Star

2009-07-23T17:01:00.010-06:00

I can't believe how excited I am about my recent discovery. I'm pretty sure that if I had a million dollars, shameless amounts would be spent on Converse All Stars. I have always loved these shoes, and they have become quite the status symbol these days, but the reason for my rekindled interest is that you can build your own shoes by using the converse website. It's pretty easy: www.converse.com and then you just go to build your own.
I made a couple different designs myself:
Black and lime green

And my personal favorite: Waldo

I think this one would match my waldo outfit nicely.

Surprise

2009-07-19T16:19:00.007-06:00

I love when it rains. It rained today for like five minutes and looked like the world was going to end for all the water being dumped, but then it was over and moved on. I missed most of it because I looked out the window and saw dark clouds, looked away and then looked back out the window three minutes later and the rain was drowning everything it could get its hands on. Then the sun came out. I love when the sun comes out.

I had a good day. I went into Relief Society after church and one girl had made cookies, so I went up to her and asked, "May I please have a cookie?" to which she replied cordially, "Yes you may." I reached for one of the enticing morsels and right as I pick it up she says, "Oh you might like this one better," pointing to a different and equally appealing cookie. I couldn't really see any difference between the quality at first but I was primarily concerned that I had already handled one of the cookies and it might be rude of me to put it back in favor of the other. I expressed this reservation and graciously she said, "Looks like you'll have to have both and see which one you like better!" I could not have asked for more kindness, after all most of the women had only received one cookie, and here I was, an intruder, getting two! I felt very special. I like feeling special, and it's something we don't do for each other enough. I'm going to try to make others feel special more often because they deserve to get surprised. I don't really know anyone that detests feeling happy, and pleased about life/things/themselves. At least I don't associate with them.

Yesterday, speaking of surprises, I got off work and wanted to surprise a friend of mine, so I found an excuse to head that direction. Luckily for me I had forgotten my sunglasses at another friend's house in the area so I had the excuse, I just needed a surprise. Flowers are always great, especially if you're surprising a girl, which was my intention, so I stopped at a flower shop along the way and picked some up, all the while enjoying the excitement of being a surpriser. I got them into my car, turned on the AC, aimed the vents at the flowers, and drove toward my destination. I was a little torn, did I want her to be there? Hmm... if she's there that could be fun to see the look on her face, but it could also be fun to leave them there and let her come home to them. Well, either way would be fun so I went on my way rife with anticipation.

I parked and carried the flowers up to her house to find her father outside working on some projects. Prior to him looking up I wondered about the rather conspicuous bundle in my hand and whether I could make it look simple and natural, like I always carried flowers with me where ever I went. I don't know that I was successful, but he didn't seem bothered by their presence, and I asked if my intended recipient was at home. I strangely hoped for both answers. He told me that she was actually in southern Utah and wouldn't be home until Wednesday-ish.

Ever watch a pack of five year olds attack those dollar store bubbles? My bubble was among those not high enough off the ground to survive the onslaught. I was a little let down having talked to her the day before and not knowing that she was planning on being absent for several days and having my plans to surprise her, turn around and surprise me. So I left them with her dad, and he promised he would feed and water them so they would be alive when she got home.

Surprise.

A friend of mine wrote on her facebook page that she needed something to do. I needed something to do too so I asked if she wanted to go get a frosty with me and that it would be a half hour commitment. I don't like usurping people when they just feel like doing a little bit of something. It's pretty fun to just do stuff out of nowhere. It was good for me.

Exoskeleton

2009-07-18T08:36:00.008-06:00

Remember biology in school? Ever seen a bug's clear, discarded shell? Seen a snake shed it's skin? All signs of growth. Creepy, disturbing signs of growth. Spiders, like other exoskeleton types, (of course excluding snakes, they are vertebrates) are limited in size by their exteriors, trapped, as it were, inside themselves. They get bigger inside than their outsides will allow and something has to give or they will suffer, and really, who likes to suffer? Not me.

Could have fooled you, eh? Yeah, could have fooled me too. I say I don't like to suffer, but I always seem to stop myself from doing what I really want to, so I get all cramped up and start wishing things were different. I don't make sense to myself at times, I doubt I make a lot of sense to others, but if you have any really great observations you feel would be helpful feel free to share them with me. I'd appreciate it.

Ever read "The Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis? Eustace Scrubb is a brat and he gets turned into a dragon, and learns things. Then he wants to be in his own body, but the only way to do that, Aslan says, is to tear off the exterior. Eustace tries a few times but even though it hurts and he's using his dragon claws and tearing as hard as he can, it's not enough. Aslan has to use his "king of beasts" claws, and trust me, they're huge, sharp, and cut very deep. The pain was excrutiating, but finally Eustace was once again himself, albeit sore and humbled.

I wonder if spiders experience pain. If so, I wonder if breaking open their bodies hurts, or if it is a relief to finally get out of the constricting, too small body. However, I don't know that there have ever been any successful interviews of any spiders on this subject, so we may never know. Even if it does hurt to rip off their very own body they do it so they can grow and become better. I feel a little trapped in myself right now, I've been trying to get out for a while, but only recently have I felt that panicky claustrophobic urge to rip myself out of me and grow. The scary thing about taking off my calloused, worn exterior is that I become extremely vulnerable. Just like the butterfly newly escaped from the cocoon, I'm helpless until I can fill my wings with strength. The spider, once freed from it's old carapace, is free to grow but can become more agitated due to its vulnerability. Attitude can be polarized with higher aggression when threatened, in order to feign invulnerability, and an increased timidness until the new outer shell is fully hardened.

The problem is I don't want to get all calloused and hardened. I hate getting hurt, and it has happened a few times more than I want to remember, but I feel like I really need to break out of my shell. I hope you realize the meaning behind that phrase now.

I plan on living my life, not just hoping for life. This is going to suck. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see what happens, and I'm a little scared. I'm moving forward, trying new things, trying old things I just haven't done in a while, working on projects, registering for classes, and daring myself to do better.

Wish me luck.

Overthinking 101

2009-07-16T10:23:00.007-06:00

So I love telling stories, I love thinking. A lot. I think that for a long time I loved thinking and figuring stuff out so much that I forgot that it's kind of important to live for real.

People have been telling me that I should have a blog.

Blog, that's a funny sort of word, it sounds like bog. Sometimes I get bogged down with my brain trying to give meaning to everything. Ugh.

I have thought about it before and have wondered if maybe it would be fun, or at least therapeutic to write out my thoughts and experiences.

I'm somewhat of a perfectionist. Therefore I have a hard time doing stuff if I am not sure that I can do it right. Thus I fail to do a lot of things. Perfectionism is a disease, like anorexia. It's hard to tell at first that it is a hindrance to life and happiness but it's just so darn easy to keep up once you've started, and the longer you keep it up, the more you think it's helping. Same thing with overthinking. I think it's sort of an excuse for not having confidence to actually deal with life. Instead you just try to think of everything that could possibly happen and most of it ends up being bad so you don't do anything for fear of not getting the one or two things you hope for. Being a ninja you'd think there would be no problem for me to get out and go to town on stuff and fear nothing, that's where I don't make sense.

A few of my closest friends, yes ninjas have friends, have grown to understand me enough to know that I am unlike most people. I think that's intriguing to some. They meet me and are like, "Hmm, just some person." and then after a half hour their eyebrows are kind of fighting eachother and then try to grab their hairline and their brains are trying to find a definition for me, and it doesn't work right away, so to cope they find an opportunity at some point to let me know I'm weird. Thanks, I know.

I have a really big, squishy, deep heart, and that sucks sometimes. Especially when you combine that with my paralyzing perfectionism and overanalyzing nature. Ninjas are sensitive, caring, compassionate, intuitive, shy people. Of course they mask that by killing stuff and being awesome. The qualities they have in public are not pretend, they are definitely qualities they possess, but there are many deep set things no one sees. The main problem for ninjas is that there are very few psychologists who are not afraid of getting cut in half, or who are awesome enough to actually help. So we ninjas are left to ourselves to figure out our issues. Don't worry though, I have made great strides recently.

I realize I am very tired of not living, and watching my happiness walk away down the beach without me. I am sick of looking opportunities in the eyes and fearing irrational things. I want to be who I am deep inside me somewhere. That guy that isn't afraid. What would I do if i wasn't afraid? I bet I would more often skin my knees, and shed tears from failure, but I bet I would succeed more.

What I am most afraid of now is that I have waited too long to fix myself and that some opportunities have forever sunk behind the horizon. I fear that maybe I am giving it my all when whatever it could have been is not all there. I feel like my life is currently a romantic comedy or maybe a comedic romance.

Or maybe just a comedy.

Let's hope it doesn't become a tragedy.

I am pretty sure my thoughts can be found in a couple songs: 'I'm yours' by Jason Mraz and 'Save' by The Rocket Summer.

Oh, and '1, 2, 3, 4' by Plain White T's is also a good one.