Recent Events in Pictures

Ran a race in Moab with Josh and Erik! Our initial plan was to run the half marathon, but by the time race weekend arrived we chickened out because we really haven't been training enough to to run a 13 mile race. We only trained once all together. We ran about six miles and then headed to the nearest Wendy's for cheeseburgers... I might have been able to run it this time; I did it two years ago, but it would have been slow, ugly (even more so than the above picture) and painful. So we all signed up for the five miler which is almost as much glory for less than half the work :) And then we pigged out on post-race food and got massages from pretty girls.

We also hiked up to Corona arch and just goofed off around Moab. We got to stay at the old River Rafting warehouse where Erik worked this last summer. It was a pretty relaxing weekend.

Right when I got back from Moab, I started packing for California. We stayed with Robbie's brother and sister-in-law in Sacramento the first night and then took off for the redwoods in the morning.



Redwood trees are enormous. We drove through this one......and slept in this one. See below.

At first, only Greg and I were going to sleep in the tree. We were jumping up and down excited about how lucky we were to find this perfect hollowed out tree so close to our campground. I was stoked. We got camp set up and started to cook our foil dinners when the rain started. Turns out the tent that Jessica and Robbie were going to sleep in isn't very rain proof, so we all got cozy in the tree together. Ultimately I think we were all pretty glad we did, though Jessica didn't get a lot of sleep... We played around in the redwoods the next day. I found this really sweet log you could bounce on up and down like a trampoline. This is Robbie and I having bouncing wars.
This is a giant tree. Note how tiny Jessica is in comparison to this huge tree.
Here we are in the roots of a tree that fell over. We had a huge fight that morning as to who got to wear the pink. Jessica won. Next day we camped by the beach. Theres a giant wall of sand behind where we camped and behind that is the beach. On our side of the giant sand wall there were herds of grazing cattle.
Jessica lost her slippers in cow poop river.Jumping off a sand dune.


Ah, back to the bay area..... :)

Sunset beach. Aptly named.
Amigos.
Baywatch.

It was Greg's birthday that night and he is from the south so we took him to Bubba Gump's. We got all the desserts on the menu. I'm not smiling with my teeth here because my mouth was full of chocolate.The next morning we wandered around San Francisco. Here is Robbie inside Grace Cathedral.
We just happened to stumble upon this in Chinatown. I like to think that this is just always going on in China town. See that rope full of firecrackers? It was long and hella loud.

Mighty cool dragon. We beat this dragon into submission so that we could take a picture with it.We wandered a bunch more and met up with one of Greg's friends, who is the girl in the middle in the above picture. Some Germans took a nice photo of us that we will use as an album cover someday. We wandered into to a toy/comics store where Robbie and I picked up the latest edition of Astro City, which, if you've ever read comic books in your whole life, you should check out someday. After wandering we went to Golden Gate Park. This was sort of fun but mostly exciting for Robbie and Greg who know about plants and flowers and their names and that sort of thing. It was here that my brother called me to tell me that he is engaged. Going to marry late in May. Greg took tons of pictures that I'm not going to bother putting up. I liked this plant because it looks like chiles. Or Christmas lights.

Some delicious honey suckle that we ate. Some disgusting plant that Robbie insisted on trying because he knew it was edible. Imagine celery, but more bitter and horrible.

Of course we had to eat here before we left. Robbie and I both worked here when we were in high school.

Fast forward to yesterday, and here is us at Festival of Colors at the Hare Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork. I love the Hare Krishna Temple. If I don't get married in a real Mormon temple, I want to be married at the Hare Krishna one. I wish I had a picture of it handy. You can probably find it somewhere back in my blog a couple years ago. Its sort of like the Princess Jasmine Castle but with mountains in the background.

Now we are mostly caught up.

It just keeps on going

*Sorry for this post...It was late and I was bummed when I wrote it. I don't really feel like this all the time. A good friend wrote me a nice letter when I first posted it, and because of that I decided that I'm going to leave this post up. This is part of me and sometimes I feel like this.*

Maybe some of you that are older and wiser than me can give me some insight on life.

I read a few of my blog posts from way back when (2005) tonight and stood back from my life and thought about what it looks like so far.

If you were to plot my life from beginning to end, all twenty-one (nearly 22) years of it, you would see it like a radio signal with a constant frequency where after a certain point, the waves get progressively smaller in magnitude.

The good times come and go, the bad times take their place for a while, and the cycle continues on and on. But the more the good and the bad continue, the less effective each becomes. The good seems to get progressively less joyful. The bad seems to get progressively less nasty. I can appreciate most good things but I know they are nothing new, and that bad things will come again. I know how to deal with most bad things because I know that eventually there will be happiness and good things again.

So life loses its ferocious roar and becomes a steady hum.

I remember even back in first grade, how excited I used to get about playing action figures and ninja turtles and swords and whatever else with my friends in our apartment complex. We could play from morning until night. Hide and seek at night with the older kids in the complex was mind-blowingly incredible. Ditch and Nintendo and soccer and making forts and clubs... all of that was pure joy.
I also remember, as first grade was a particularly painful year for me at school, how much it hurt to get teased and made fun of by the second graders that shared our class. I remember wetting my pants (one of the most horrible things one can do for his social life in first grade) and not understanding what was cool or how to fit in at all. My mom worried about me a lot that year because I would come home and cry or throw tantrums because of whatever had happened at school that day. Its sort of a harsh thing to say, but that was a very terrible year, and had I understood the concept of suicide at that point, I might have tried it some days. Is that just a me thing?

Life went on and things went up and down more. The rest of grade school got better and worse. *note added after this post was written for the sake of accuracy: That's not true. It just got better. I made tons of friends later in grade school and the rest of my life. Things were still hard in school sometimes, but not that miserable again until somewhere in high school* Middle school brought all of these terrible and consuming new feelings that started to complicate my world, but I could ignore them most of the day. There was wall ball and lunch time and Animorphs and computer games over the internet and track after school. We started getting cable television free because the signal somehow came down from the new upstairs neighbors. Mom tried to have the management shut it off three times but nothing ever came of that so she gave up.

In High School there was sexuality and music and sports and movies and some understanding of politics and there was religion and meaningful relationships. Not girlfriends for me of course, but friends, male and female, who I cared about.

College brought more and more of all that...I got quite a fill on all of those things as a follow up to the taste I had in high school.

And then the waves got smaller and lately they just keep getting smaller. There are wonderful things like having a boyfriend and going camping and seeing beautiful things. Running races and dancing and delicious food. Driving with the music blaring.

But I also realize how much more important money and appearance and background and status are than i ever wished they would be. How thats what you're counted for in life even though its so difficult to control any of them. And how happy times for a lot of people become dependent on all of these stupid things. And how there are so many ugly horrible things that people do that you wish they would all just go away sometimes.

But it all starts counteracting and things are weighed against each other and stuff just comes out equal and well...its just life.

And it keeps going until it flatlines and your heart stops and you die.

So, all of you people older than me... Are things going to amaze me again? Can I ever look at something without seeing the flipside? Is there a breaking point to all this at some point or do i just deal with life until I know how to suffer through more and more horrible things until nothing phases me anymore and I can just die?

I don't know where I'm going here really. I'm not sure if I analyze things right ever. I'll think and thing again and you just get a glimpse of what I was thinking in this moment. I promised myself I would actually post what I wrote though, whether it made sense or not. So here it is.