An open space in a forest.

My Mom talking about my Grandpa.

2011-09-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

Someday, when I get where I'm going, we're gonna have a good little reunion.

"When he was younger, he was always making or mending or trying to fix things around the house. He loved to drive down town and as he put it "park and watch the funny people go by". If he was running errands he would sit in the car for ten minutes just watching the people on Main Street before he got out of the car.

Always with Pithy things to say, m like, "That lady should have washedthat bad taste out of her mouth before she came to town" or one of my favorites when he saw a really fat guy " He gonna be a big boy when he grows up.

Or sitting at a stop sign. "Just because I stopped here, they shouldn't have called the whole town to pass in review""

2010-03-07T20:14:00.000-08:00

Heading to California tomorrow with my sisters, Lois and Lynn (I'm trying to get used to calling her Lynn because thats what all her friends call her, but to me I think she will always be Lyndee) I'm so happy about this trip. Can't wait to be by the ocean and in California again. We're going to see Wicked while we're there and I'm excited about that. I think Lyndee is going to be one of those girls who gets obsessed with this show, she'll love it so much. And Lois, my wise and always cool older sister, will appreciate it I'm sure.

After Wicked, my plan is to go work for Rand Paul's senate campaign in Kentucky. I may be picking up a few fellow campaign volunteers on my way across the country. Hopefully thats the case, as it would be a good opportunity to meet some cool new people as well as split the difference on gas money.

Speaking of gas, I don't think I've ever mentioned my sweet new car. Its a Blue Chevy Cavalier that runs on both compressed natural gas and conventional gasoline. That means driving is extra cheap around Utah (93 cents per gallon) and in many other places. Robbie and I recently went all the way across Wyoming and down to Colorado on about a buck per gallon.

I love this new car. It was a big decision for me, as I had to finance it through a loan, and I hate being tied down to obligations like that, financial or otherwise. But I guess some obligations are necessary and helpful in life. In this case, I feel so much freer with a car, even if I have to make a monthly payment. No more being tied down to bus schedules (it was taking me about an hour each way to get to and from work - a little over 3 miles away...which was fine to longboard or even walk to until it started snowing..) Now my schedule is freed up and I have the means to leave the state, or even the country if I wish out of my own volition. What a nice feeling.

The car has about 21,000 miles on it now. It started with 16,000 in December. I also had a new sound system and speakers installed inside as the first radio head unit was very limited in function and quality, and my back speakers (the factory installed set) were torn and made a horrible noise. The day I had all that installed, and every day after since, I've felt like there are no other material things I really want in life. I mean, I can always think of things that would be nice, but I also think I could be happy the rest of my life with a roof over my head, a bed, access to learning...and my 2003 Chevy Cavalier with a working radio and ipod hookup. What a feeling to be driving and listening to music.

After the Rand Paul campaign, I conjecture that the future will branch out into three optional paths. Even then, I think two of the paths will curve around and eventually meet the first. The first path is the military. The second path leads to more politics and campaigning as an actual paid job until the end of the 2010 campaign season in November, and the third takes a detour to South America or some other place for a while until I feel like my life is so void of structure that I simply have to get into the military or I find something else to do or die trying.

I love life today. Love my family, love how perf

Have you ever seen Doogie Howser? Josh got me started watching it recently. I love this show. Its so wholesome and has such great messages and characters. And it reminds me of the fun, cool, fascinating, embarrassing, and innocent parts of being in middle and high school. I'm on episode 12 of 97 so far and I intend to watch all of them.

Also, watch Undercover Boss. The 7-Eleven episode with Igor. I love that guy.

A shout out to Jessica. Glad you came to visit Robbie and I and glad you watched year of the dog and then ate a bunch of meat at taco bell with us afterwards in a show of solidarity against obsessed animal lovers. And glad we got to go to the Bombay House too, because that place is so damn good. As is The Chocolate. Man, that was so much amazing food. And glad you are just you, striving to do whats right with a good heart.

As a final note, this last weekend I dressed up (with help from the Hale Center Theater costume department) as the Mad Hatter and went to the premiere of Alice in Wonderland with just a few of the best people I know. My costume was incredible, I played up the character, put on an accent, did the lazy/queer Jonny Depp walk, and won the costume contest. And my friends sure do know how to make me feel like a big deal. Thanks, friends.

2010-02-26T01:13:00.000-08:00

Can't sleep.

Josh left. He's in China now. Makes me a little sad. Why can't I just be happy about it? Don't know.

And just feeling more and more tied down to here and this place and this job and these dollars. AGAIN.

Almost all ready to join the army, but having second thoughts. Took the ASVAB and DLAB and got very good scores. They'll pay me to learn whatever language I want - not just Arabic - which is nice. Strangely I'm sort of excited about boot camp. Sounds like a fun challenge. But apprehensive about being tied down to the establishment for the rest of the 4 to 6 years... No extensive traveling...No study abroad...no spur of the moment do whatever I feel, move where I want to be kind of things. I know it sounds like not much to some people, but for me thats everything. I especially want to be free to be where Josh is when he's done with China. Or hell, maybe even move to China. I've seen plenty of the States, and after just one email from Josh which I've read about 4 times over, China is sounding pretty good.

An education and structure and a paycheck are important, I know. But I just can't bring myself to care about them.

Jonny and Lisa came to see me at work today. That was nice. I love the Peay's. I wish I had time to tutor Jonny still instead of wait tables. That kid makes me really happy.

Maybe its time to put some miles on my car? Gotta sleep on it.

Felt like writing something tonight.

2009-10-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Utah, finally.

I've probably left out more of what has happened in my life this past year than I ever have since starting this blog. Just too much personal stuff and too many people who know who I am that read this blog. It doesn't quite feel like my own little corner of the internet anymore. Maybe another blog is in order...or just a journal.

Suffice it to say, this summer had some of the worst and best moments of my life in it...times when I wanted disappear completely, but also times when the world felt like my playground again. Someday, perhaps I'll write more about things that happened, but right now isn't the time.

Being back has been a lot of crazy and a lot of wonderful. A few of the highlights:

1. Snow Patrol concert with Robbie and Meg. Such cool music and videos. I want to go to Belfast, Ireland. And who knew you could create the entire universe out of Origami?
2. Hitchiking failure with Robbie and Evan that turned into a documentary success. This is why these guys are two of my best pals. Video on facebook forthcoming.
3. A date with Dawn up the Canyon. It actually turned out to be a date almost to Vernal, because I took a wrong turn and didn't notice for about 90 miles. We drove over 200 miles in all, but I think we were both where we wanted to be. Dawn is the best. And dinner and gelatto in Heber was pretty nice too.
4. Climbed upon my sister's roof to think and scope out the view. Also climbed on Robbie's roof.
5. Mom accused me of doing drugs (one of the few things I actually HAVEN'T ever done aside from inhaling pot smoke hitchiking back from Ohio)
6. Lots of "serious" talks with a whole bunch of different people.
6. Got to see Josh in TWO plays. And even got INTO a play with Josh - A Christmas Carol at the Orem Hale. I'm Fred. Don't know crap about acting and only very little about singing, but if it means getting to do something with Josh, I'll just have to do my damnedest :)
7. Two interviews for jobs down here. One at the In-N-Out opening in Orem, (I used to work at In-N-Out Burger in high school, and as lame as it may sound to work at a burger place, In-N-Out is one of the finest companies I've ever worked for. They pay well and treat you right and its fun) and another at Telos, a residential treatment facility for teenagers which would be a great job for someone who hopes to be a teacher. With any luck I'll get at least one of those.
8. Constantly working on a top secret project. I can't tell you about that.
9. Went to Park City with Robbie and Andy and Caitie and Laura. Beautiful canyon views, learned about "shabby chic" and how that should be my style. Also, Caitie and Laura are two of the funniest and most genuinely good people on the planet. I wish more humans were like them.

All in all, I'm trying to make the best out of life. And usually that works.

A Skagway Farewell to the last cruise ship of the season

2009-09-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

This whole night was so much fun:

Couldn't miss out on the opportunity to do this:

Incidentally, the last cruise ship of the season was bought out by Olivia Cruises (read a horde of lesbians) and they were LOVING it. They all started singing "Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!" and even chanting "Skagway! SKagway!". Happy times. :)

Throwing Rocks into Mead Glacier

2009-09-21T19:03:00.001-07:00

The night I first rode a motorcycle.

2009-08-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

My buddy Canyon came to visit me in Skagway on his way back from riding his motorcycle to the Arctic Ocean. He started in Utah, so thats a lot of riding a motorcycle and I'm thoroughly impressed. I want to pull a Motorcycle Diaries with this kid someday. Learn more about Canyon here.

Riding out to Dyea. Beautiful and awesome.

The next day, I somehow got Canyon to let me ride his bike for the first time in downtown Skagway.

After this one, I tipped the bike after trying to turn a corner too fast. I didn't really have "stopping" down yet. We later learned that I bent the rim on Canyon's bike which caused a slow air leak in the tire. Oops. I felt pretty bad, but fortunately Canyon was very very cool about it all and his first priority (after making sure I was okay) was making sure I got back on the bike to conquer any doubts I might have about my ability to ride. And thats a testament to what a stud Canyon is. And no worries, he got the rim fixed and made it back to Utah in one piece (if you haven't checked out his blog already.)

Busted a hole in my jeans, as well as in my shoe and lost a shoelace.

But I still want to own a motorcycle...

Feeling stuff.

2009-08-08T23:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my emotions are pretty fucked up. I wish I could just manufacture feelings sometimes. I sure do try, but even if I manage to put other people at ease, I never feel quite right inside. Sometimes I wish I could feel one thing, but I feel something completely different, like my emotions are colored coded wires that were plugged into me by a color blind old man.

This manifests itself in all sorts of ways in my life. I was going to give some examples here, but I've decided to instead just be vague instead/

I'll want to feel excited or extroverted, but instead I feel indifferent and alone. I'll want to gush happiness or pride in someone else, but instead I just feel my own self esteem cut down. I'll want to feel secure and grounded, but instead I feel unstable, unsure, raging. I'll find myself wanting to be silly, and for the first time all day I'll have nothing silly to say.

On the flip side, I usually feel excited and happy in a disaster. I like being extroverted and making friends with people who aren't comfortable in their own skin. I'm always hilarious when it doesn't matter.

Maybe this is a result of my upbringing, or maybe its some kind of genetic flaw. Maybe I have the wrong attitude about stuff. Maybe I have the wrong perspective or maybe there's a divine order to things that I'm going against. Maybe I'm surrounding myself with the wrong people. Maybe I'm bipolar. I don't know, but I'd like to know how to fix it and just feel what I would like to feel at the right moments. Does anyone know how to do that?

The Men That Don't Fit In by Robert Service

2009-07-17T23:06:00.000-07:00

There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

The Quitter by Robert Service

2009-07-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy to blow . . .
It’s the hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now that’s a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
"You've had a raw deal!" I know — but don't squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit, it’s so easy to quit.
It’s the keeping-your chin-up that’s hard.

It’s easy to cry that you're beaten — and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight —
Why that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout,
All broken and battered and scarred,
Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.

Alaska the Second

2009-06-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

SKAGWAY, LOOKING DOWN BROADWAY TOWARDS THE LYNN CANAL WITH CRUISE SHIP ON BROADWAY DOCK. HARDING PEAKS/GLACIER TO THE RIGHT.

SKAGWAY LOOKING NORTHEAST. CANADA IS ABOUT 20 MILES UP THAT ROAD.

4th OF JULY. FIREWORKS SHOT OFF BOATS IN THE CANAL. AMAZING

I WORKED LUGGAGE CREW A COUPLE OF TIMES. THIS IS LUGGAGE BEING PULLED ON TO LAND VIA A TUGBOAT.

LOWER DEWEY LAKE

BETHANY AND I AT THE KONE COMPANY, MY JOB ON FIRDAYS AND SATURDAYS.

KONE COMPANY

CANYON CAME TO VISIT FOR A WHILE, LET ME RIDE HIS MOTORCYCLE. HUNG OUT AND WENT TO HAINES ON THE FERRY.

I haven't blogged in a long time for a lot of reasons, so I apologize if this blog seems like a book that skips several chapters. I'll try to be be comprehensive...or at least make up for it later.

I just got fired for the first time (wrote this the beginning of July). I'm up in Alaska working again, and summer here has turned into a series of dilemas. The kind that build character I guess.

I loved my job up here. I toured mostly 50 and 60 somethings around Alaska and the Yukon in a tour bus that we were supposed to call a "coach". Really the only difference between a "bus" and a "coach" is that a coach has a bathroom onboard, which I got to clean out at night - but aside from that and management politics, the job was great. I had an engaging, entertaining, and funny tour going; I learned the history of everything in the area very well, and people liked me and thought I was funny. I even got good comment cards from the people in my groups when they went back to their cruise ships at night, which is something they have to go out of their way to do.

But it all went wrong. Here's how:

As part of my job description every time I picked passengers up or stopped to let passengers off for any reason I was required to get out of the bus, open a luggage compartment, and remove a step stool to put out in front of the stairs for any of the elderly people with frail knees or what have you. I dutifully performed this service for my passengers, but occasionaly I would forget to put the step back into the luggage bay after all of my passengers had boarded. Once in a while, a little old lady would remind me about the stool, still sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and I would get out and fetch it. Other times I would remember it just as I started the engine of the bus. But twice, I completely forgot.

You see, the problem with these step stools is that when you get back in the driver's seat of your bus, you don't see them in the rearview mirror (which I always checked) as you're getting ready to leave again. They're much too short. Incidentally, you don't feel them either, when your bus quietly overtakes the feeble aluminum legs and turns the step stool into a flat piece of useless garbage.

So I ran over two step stools early on in the season. You have to understand that EVERYONE who drives for Holland America (or any other bus company up here for that matter) runs over a step stool, but most people simply don't report it. They discretely throw the thing away after the deed has been done, steal a step stool from upstairs in the mechanic shop or from another bus in the yard, and no one knows any better. The mechanics just have to keep replacing step stools that mysteriously disappear overnight.

My folly was in reporting my smushed step stools to the safety manager. I filled out "incident reports" as required by company policy. It didn't seem like a big deal either. I would get stern warnings, (an overly common occurence when one is working for Holland America) and wouldn't think anything more of it. If anything, I thought that perhaps the managers would look on me as someone who was reliable and honest.

Silly me.

The nail in the coffin came about a week ago when I was pulling out of the bus yard and allegedly scratched the mirror of the neighboring bus. I did not see, hear or feel anything when this happened, but another driver, Carolyn, reported that she had witnessed it happen. I'm not going to deny that it happened....sure enough there was a scratch on the backside of her left mirror with blue paint on it when I checked that night. There are hundreds of scratches on most of the mirrors in the bus yard, but the blue paint indicated that it happened recently. And I was the bus parked next to it pulling out of the bus yard...but it struck me as odd that there were no marks on the outside of MY bus to prove that there was any kind of contact. And the mirror had a scratch but did not move. The safety manager even came out with a camera to take pictures and mentioned the same things. But I got blamed for it anyhow.

The night this happened, I was again unphased. It all seemed pretty harmless to me. I kept getting scheduled for tours the next few days and did a great job on them, until on Monday night I noticed that my name was missing from dispatch for the next day. Shortly after I noticed, I received a phone call from one of the dispatchers saying that I had a meeting with the head dispatcher, Melissa Logan, the next day at 10:30. I was naively unaware of what the meeting might be about. I was pretty sure I was in trouble for some mundane thing (as I mentioned before, you always are when you work for Holland America...just ask Robbie or Evan) but as I said before, this company is in the business of stern warnings about stupid crap.

Much to my surprise, I went into the office on Tuesday morning at 10:30 AM to find Melissa Logan AND Steve Funk. I don't know what Steve Funk's title is at the company, but I do know that he is some kind of regional company officer for the driver guides and that everyone sort of treats him like he's God, so much so that he seems to think that about himself too.

And then Funk laid it on me. Logan just sat to my side quietly. I was being "let go" for safety reasons. I had been involved in three "accidents" with my "coach" and according to company policy, that is grounds for terminating employment regardless of my clean driving record.

I mentioned a few things to Funk in my defense, like some of the other "accidents" that had occured this year that never resulted in termination of an employee. For instance:

1. Matt Johnson, on a highway tour to Dawson City in the Yukon, missed his lunch stop and decided to turn around on the highway. Somewhere in his however-many-point turn on the narrow road, he got half of his coach stuck in the mud and half of it stuck in the traffic lane...with 40 passengers on board.

2. Alyssa ran the side of her coach into a stop sign. A STOP sign. With 40 passengers on board. The paint and metal on the side of the bus is now all scratched up and indented very visibly. Again, 40 passengers on board.

3. Twice drivers have been reprimanded for stopping in the middle of the highway and letting passengers out of the bus to go take close-up pictures of bears. BEARS. HIGHWAY... !?!?!?!?!

4. This girl named Sarah last year tried to swerve when she saw a moose on the road and ended up rolling an E-model coach (a $500,000 vehicle) with passengers on board. She still works for the company. People say this is because last year, Holland America was severely understaffed. This year they are way overstaffed...and looking for reasons to fire people.

This list goes on, but I think you get the idea. After I mentioned a couple of these things to Funk, he asked me "Were you or were you not involved in three incidents in which your coach collided with another object?" I told him I wasn't even sure if I was. He said it was company policy that he not allow me to drive any longer this season. I told him I thought that it didn't make a lot of sense but that the decision was up to him and not me and I tried to stay very respectful throughout the whole thing even though I was a little outraged inside. I shook his hand on the way out and then ducked into an alleyway to call Josh.

In brief, I was in limbo for a couple of days deciding what to do. Wasn't sure if it was worth it to stay in Skagway and just find another job and place to live, or not. I made a few other phone calls, looked around town, and talked to some of my friends here. I considered going home to join the military finally, living here in a tent for the rest of the season, hitchiking to another part of Alaska or anywhere I could find a job, and a host of other options before everything stabilized again.

Its been about a week since I got fired now. I have a new job working for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad in their giftshop/cafe thing. I HATE retail jobs with a passion. I'm just not that kind of gay at all. I've probably never mentioned on here that I once had a job at Express for about two weeks before I decided to never go back. I hate folding crap and I just don't care about style or cut or size. I have to work very hard to manufacture a sense of urgency in a place that sells clothes or gifts or anything like that because I could just care less about any of it.

But, its a job. And I guess I can handle it until the end of September... and the people I work with and the management seem to be nice. I guess its sort of the opposite of Holland America: Crappy job, decent management. Someday I'd like to have both. And while I'm dreaming of ideal job opportunities, I'd like to do something I care about. And something that allows to me to learn about things that I care about.

And thats all for this installment. Here are some more pictures.

YAKATANIA POINT
CRUISE SHIP ON THE RAILROAD DOCK
ICE FLOATING DOWN THE YUKON RIVER NEAR DAWSON CITY
DAWSON CITY
DIAMOND TOOTH GIRTIES IN DAWSON

SKAGWAY ON MY FIRST OR SECOND DAY? I LIVE IN THE YELLOW/BROWN BUILDING BEHING THE WHITE ONE ON THE LEFT
MORE OF SKAGWAY AS IT LOOKED WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED

DRIVING THE BUS FROM PROVO TO SEATTLE

Jonny's book report

2009-04-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

Update

2009-04-02T11:10:00.001-07:00

I've gotta write in this thing just for the sake of chronicling my life. I've written a few posts that I just haven't published, but nothing about what is generally happening in my life.

This post has taken me a long time to put up because my life has a lot of sad right now that I don't know what to do with. I don't want to share it with people I know. Part of me doesn't even want to post this on here because I don't want to be viewed as insecure, depressing, or unstable. But maybe I just am those things right now. Its not that I'm sad all the time, but a good portion of it, and sometimes it starts to leak out in real life and I hate that. I think I feel much more neurotic right now than I've ever felt in my entire life. I just looked up the word neurotic to be sure, and its the exact description of what I feel...just anxious and obsessed and compulsive about a lot of stupid things.

I'm white-knuckling it through the rest of school. I started out the first half of calculus turning in all my homework, I got a 99 on the first test, a 90 on the second test. No grade lower than a B+ on quizzes, and only for stupid stuff like forgetting a negative sign or not completing the chain rule. I was on top of everything and actually feeling like school was something I could do well again.

Unfortunately, I've now fallen back into some old habits and attitudes towards my education. I got a 74 on my last test because I didn't complete all the homework or do enough studying. I was busy getting ready and being excited to go to Portland and Seattle, (awesome trip, by the way) and I was just generally sick of doing math homework. Now I've got one more test to go before the final, and way too much to catch up on. I may have to find a tutor for a few hours someday soon. (Anyone out there a pro with integrals?) Its so hard to feel motivated about that class again though, especially after the 74 on the last test. My mind has already moved into the summer.

All of my other classes are going well except for statistics. Statistics has throughout this semester been my step-child class. When I put in time for homework, I work on Calculus. I didn't even want to take stats this semester, but I had to load it on in order to have enough credits for a student loan.

The recent drop in academic performance doesn't necessarily mean that I haven't kept busy. I'm always overwhelmed with how much I want to get done, and I'm always working on something, I just have a hard time prioritizing sometimes. Some days it feels like school should be the most important thing, and other days I feel I should just quit school for a couple of years and focus all my attention on learning to play the guitar or sing or act. Most of the time I get caught up doing something I feel is important, but which doesn't work out with my schedule for school...like writing my congressman, or reading the BFG to my nieces, or helping my sister or parents out with cleaning or a project. The problem here is mostly that I want to do everything, and so it's hard to follow through completely with anything. I wish school could just run on my schedule.

Other things going on in my life:
Bus driving: I'm headed to Alaska for a summer job again, this time to drive buses in the small port town of Skagway. In order to do this, I had to put in about 15 to 20 hours every week in training classes, driving sessions and small other things like getting first aid and CPR certified. I now have my CDL and I'm certified to drive large vehicles with an endorsement that allows me to carry lots of passengers.

I have mixed feeling about going to Alaska. I want to see Skagway. It looks beautiful and there's lots of hiking to be done there and its far from Utah and I can make a lot of money and I need to just carry through with something that I set out to do right now and I always feel like running away anyways.

On the other hand, I have a wonderful boyfriend down here who I'm going to miss a lot. Tons. Maybe an unhealthy amount. There's also a lot of really great stuff going on here that I wish I could be involved in, like several plays, races and roadtrips and some opportunities to help people that I care about.

I guess I'd better not flake on this though. I leave on the 30th of this month.

Tutoring Jonny: I've grown to love this kid and his mom this school year. Jonny is hilarious, compassionate, very aware of the feelings of people around him (sympathetic?), and even hardworking.

His mom is anxiously engaged in everything. There's no other way to put it really. Always anxious and always engaged. She's also incredibly generous with her talents and any resources she has to offer. She's truly one of the most giving people I know. I love and admire her a ton.

Progress with Jon is painstakingly, make-you-want-to-bang-your-head-against-a-brick-wall slow, but pretty rewarding when he gets the hang of something. We started math tutoring in September and we're just about to start borrowing in subtraction.

I guess it sounds a little cliche to say that there's so much I have to learn from a kid with down-syndrome, but its true. I actually relate to Jonny on a lot of levels, and his success in life has been somewhat linked to mine lately. I have to believe that he can do anything, so that I can believe that I can do anything. I cling to that idea. There's a lot that I feel I'm lacking in many departments of life; mentally, socially, physically, etc, but I have to believe that I can do just as well as anyone else if I try. And now I have math lessons to make or break that perception of the world daily. Mostly he makes it :) Jonny is a constant reminder to me of a lot of things, and as stressful as it might seem to tutor a kid with down-syndrome, he actually keeps me from losing my mind pretty regularly.

I just need to learn to quit saying "retarded" all the time...

Choir Stuff: Robbie and I somehow managed to get into the top choir at school this year, and last week we went "on tour" to Temple Square and the public library and several high schools. We'll be performing at the Covey Arts Center with the Utah Valley Symphony in a couple of weeks, and then at our school.

Robbie is a tenor and I'm a baritone/bass. I didn't even know what baritone meant when they first told me I was a baritone. I had no musical ability other than to generally be able to mimic the sounds I heard coming out of other people or machines. When we first auditioned for the choir, there was a part of the audition where we were divided into quartets... which means I had to sing the bass part with no one else around singing the same part. I started off maybe the first three notes trying to sing my own part, but sure enough I ended up singing along with what I could hear the most...which was this loud soprano girl. The choir conductor, Dyanne, stopped the audition a third of the way through (in front of the whole class, mind you) and asked me specifically why I was singing the soprano line. I got red, shrugged like an idiot and told her I always just sing what I can hear. I was about to say "F**k this, choir is for douche-bags," and storm off, but Dyanne just smiled and asked another bass to come sing next to me, and from then on I hit every note spot on. And that's how I got into a choir.

This last semester, I did the quartet audition all on my own. I even volunteered to do it twice when one group was missing a bass to sing with them. I now have a better ear for the piano, and a better understanding of how the notes go up and down and what all the lines and connectors mean and how the timing on songs works. I can even plunk out notes on the piano sometimes. Not to say that I'm amazing or don't still need A LOT of work, and its still comfortable to stand next to someone who is singing my part, but I feel a little bit more better about myself in there, and I plan on auditioning again next year.

Roadtrip: I went up to Seattle and Portland recently to visit friends and see Wicked. We did a lot and it was all excellent, but the highlights were two-fold: First of all, there was Jessica. The reason she was one of the highlights is sort of a long story, but I'll just summarize: Jessica drove to Seattle from Portland, flew from Seattle to Salt Lake, and then dressed up as a hitchiker so that I would pick her up and she could come on the roadtrip with us back to where she lives. I love that girl with every fiber of my being.

The second highlight of the trip was the musical, Wicked. Now, I expected it to be a good show. I had heard most of the music from it and thought it was all really clever. But I had no idea how brilliant that musical would be, and how intensely I would relate to it. Its about these two very different friends who grow to love and respect each other, but just can't bring themselves to line up on moral grounds. I'm glad I watched that thing with Robbie.

I almost wanted to buy one of those black "Wicked" t-shirts, like the kind you see nerd girls wearing on the bus...the kind of girl with thick glasses whose faces are hidden behind books about dragons and wizard mages...the kind that are mean when you try to talk to them because they've probably been emotionally scarred many times in their life....I wanted to look like one of them. Thats how sold I was on that show.

I'm Elfiba and Robbie is Glinda. I can't believe I just said that.

More recently (Easter Weekend) I also made a trip down to Capitol Reef National Park with some new and old friends.

I've now been to all the national parks in Utah. Robbie postulated that perhaps that is the key to being free of this state. Even if its not, I love visiting all those parks, and I've got a nice first sunburn for the year now. :)

My mood is actually getting better as I write this blog post, so maybe I'd better quit while I'm ahead and go do real things like study math. I probably haven't written everything I meant to write, but this is a start. Catch ya later, blogworld.

Dreamlands.

2009-01-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

I've had a bunch of dreams I can remember lately, set in odd places. Here they go:

1. An imaginary desert east of LA with my brother in law in his truck. We were driving fast and hunting tigers as we went. I was uneasy about it because I liked the tigers.

2. The U.K, Buckinham Palace. My family found out (through my dad's extensive geneaology research) that we are related to Prince Philip, the Queen Elizabeth's consort, through some Danish acenstry. Don't ask me if Prince Philip is Danish, I really don't know. He is in my dreams. At any rate, Prince Philip died and we were invited, all expenses paid, to his funeral. Mom has never been out of the country before and has always wanted to see the UK, so we went. It was a typically awkward social experience with my family. My family doesn't do high society. My Dad started dancing, which, if you're one of the small few who have ever been privileged to meet my dad, is almost unthinkably bizarre.

3. Toronto. Or at least the Toronto of my dreams. I drove up in my beamer and it was raining. I saw the CN Tower and lots of neat looking buildings wandering around town. I loved it and was still thinking about just staying before I woke up. I met my friend Steven there, and drove him to an old man's house where he needed to make a trade. Steven had some stereo equipment and electronics he was dropping off. Maybe it wasn't a trade because I'm not sure if he got anything in return. It was a little shady. And Steven might have stolen the stuff. Sometimes he's a klepto. He stole me my first Calvin and Hobbes book, but thats another story. We proceeded to drive around Toronto and loved it there.

Alright, back to stupid real life. Got Calculus homework to do.

I'm in love with these kids.

2008-12-01T23:50:00.000-08:00

PS22 Chorus from Staten Island, New York. Check out their blog here.

The story of Pinetree going to Ohio and hitchiking home.

2008-11-20T22:44:00.000-08:00

(This story went down a couple weeks ago. I've been meaning to write it all out, and just finally finished now. Its pretty long and I don't expect you to get through the whole thing, but congrats if you do. :) I mostly just wanted to have a record for myself.)

You know how sometimes you need or want to do a thousand things at once, but thinking about all of it prevents you from getting any of it done?

Well, perhaps you don't know. But I know how that feels, and that's precisely how my friend Betty feels most of the time. Betty is a mess, but I see myself in her sometimes and she makes me feel relatively at peace, so we get along alright.

Betty called me last week and asked me if I would help her move to Ohio in a U-Haul. Her family didn't want her to make the long drive across the country alone. She told me she was willing to pay for my flight back home. "Flight" was later downgraded to "bus-ticket," but to me that was somewhat irrelevant because I had been hoping for a chance to get away from Utah, and from school and family and pressure to get a job, and from panicky feelings about a relationship and just how I'm supposed to fit into life.

I told Betty I would go with her, but that I had one request. I asked her to forgo buying a bus ticket and simply pass on to me the money that she was willing to spend. I would make it home on my own. Betty was nervous about the idea (as was her mother) but hesitantly agreed, assuming that I might reconsider later.

The plan was to pick up the U-Haul truck at 1 pm on Thursday, head back to Betty's house, load the truck, attach her car to the back, and leave. The night before all this was supposed to go down, I messaged Betty to ask her if she was ready to go. Her reply was "I am drunk. I don't want to talk about it. I'll be ready to go."

Some people might get mad about that sort of thing, but I couldn't help but laugh. I went to sleep grinning about leaving the next day with crazy Betty, on our way to Ohio.

The next day Betty picked me up in her unregistered, uninsured, messy car and we went to pick up the U-Haul trailer. After that we headed to her apartment to load the truck.

Betty told me on the way over that she didn't want me to get mad when I saw her apartment because it would "look" like she hadn't done any packing, even though she really had worked on it a lot. Turned out Betty had not worked on it nearly as much as she should have, and we ended up calling a guy to come help us get everything packed. We spent the next 4 to 5 hours packing up all Betty's stuff (sectional couch, gas grill, shelves, elliptical machine, tons of clothes and shoes) and loading it onto a truck. The nice part about this was that I got some of the stuff that Betty decided not to take, like a full size bed, (never had one that was bigger than a twin) a giant down feather comforter which is ridiculously comfortable (I could write a blog post about this comforter alone...you can get up in the middle of the night, pee, get a drink of water, look out the window pensively for a little while, check your email, and get back into bed and its STILL warm and comfy under this thing...heaven :)....even the cover for it is purple... :/ ) and a bookshelf (my book collection is outgrowing the space in my closet I have for books)

We finally hit the then dark road at around 6 pm Thursday night, and we wouldn't stop driving until we arrived in Ohio, over 30 hours later. You see, Betty was cranked up on adderal the whole time, so she was very much awake and chatty. She also insisted on driving because she has this paranoia about other people driving her vehicles. She told me I was just there so her parents wouldn't freak out.

We took I-70 east from Utah, and that took us through Vail, Colorado, a ritzy skiing resort an hour or two from Denver. When we drove through in the middle of the night, it was snowing...hard. At some points it was a complete white-out. Betty was forced to drive 20 miles per hour just about the whole way. To make matters worse, about a third of the way through the mountains the windshield wiper on the driver's side broke. Betty could hardly see through the snowstorm, so I became the eyes of our operation for a while because she didn't want to stop driving. Eventually, when the snow let up, I fell asleep. I awoke in the still dark hours of the morning to see that we were at a truck stop and Betty was outside with some burly trucker helping her take the windshield wiper blade from the passenger side to put on the driver's side. The trucker seemed disgruntled that I was not awake and outside helping my maiden in distress. He gave me a dirty look, and I just decided to stay in the U-Haul and let him finish the job without making eye contact, and that was that.

Betty drove and drove through Colorado (it was mostly night through Colorado) Kansas (very flat and monotonous, but also very beautiful in a simple and welcoming kind of way, especially through the morning and early afternoon. Its not like driving though, say, Nevada, where it is flat, monotonous, dry and ugly. Also, everyone in Kansas was friendly and they were doing Extreme Home Makeover in one of the little towns we passed. I love that show, as a side note) Missouri (more porn stores AND Jesus billboards than I've ever seen in one state) and on to Illinois, where it started to rain.

It rained harder and Betty turned on the windshield wipers. The wiper on her side worked well enough, but all that was left on my side was the rod that the wiper used to be attached to, and it started making a horrible screeching noise. It literally sounded like nails on the chalkboard, each time is made its way back and forth across my side of the windshield. I reached out my window to try to turn the rod away from the window with no success. Then I tried to wrap some papers and plastic from the car around the rod, but those soon fell off. I decided we would just have to let it be, but it was driving Betty (still on the aderall) insane.

The next time we stopped for gas, we filled up the tank and I went in to the convenience store to use the bathroom and probably buy a cookie. When I came back outside, Betty was standing over the windshield wiper rod with an extra large, lubricated condom that she dug out of her purse. She was tying it onto the windshield wiper rod. I stood in astonishment at Betty's course of thought and her resourcefulness.

We hopped back into the U-Haul and for the rest of the trip through Illinois/Indiana to Ohio, I watched a lubricated condom swing back and forth on a windshield wiper rod in front of my face.

We got to Betty's place sometime in the middle of the night and went to bed. At least, I went to bed. Betty had trouble sleeping because of all the aderall she was on. She slept for about two hours before I woke up in the afternoon the next day. That day was a little strange, but ended well. Betty's mom made us some delicious casserole and I met and learned about Betty's family. We went shopping to find Betty some bedding and a Bangles jersey for her mom, who attends a black church where they were having "Jeans and Jerseys Day" that Sunday. Then we went back to her place where I made some brownies, we both got under the covers and watched Dead Poets Society, which Josh was kind enough to lend me the weekend prior.

Originally Betty had wanted to take more aderall so she could go out clubbing in Dayton, but the particular boy she wanted to see was not responding to her texts or phone calls, so I came up with the movie and brownies idea as a safer alternative. Betty finally crashed about 20 minutes into the movie. I watched it all the way through and even got through most of the bonus features. I love that movie a lot. I remember seeing it as a kid, but didn't remember much of what it was about. I have this really bad memory with movies....and a lot of things, but I do remember that it was my sister's favorite. Its now one of my favorites too. But, I digress.

Sometime in the middle of the night Betty got a booty call from a guy named Brian. She started putting on make-up and testing different outfit combinations in the mirror and then asked me if it would be alright if she left me at her house alone with her family. I didn't mind, as I would just be sleeping anyways, and I assumed she would be back before morning to drive me to the freeway so I could start hitchiking home.

I awoke the next morning to find that Betty was still out, presumably with Brian. I packed up all of my stuff, made myself a couple of sandwiches, ate some breakfast and checked my email on Betty's computer. Betty was still gone. I texted her:

"About time for me to go. Where are you?"

No response. I called. No answer. I texted again:

"I am taking off. I hope life is good to you in Ohio. Tell your mama thanks for letting me stay :)"

And with that I picked up my pack, walked out the door, and headed toward the freeway. I walked to the Huber Heights exit on I-70 and stuck my thumb out in the direction of westbound traffic.

The first guy to pick me up only took me a few exits down the road. He was on his way to see his mother in a resting home. After he dropped me off, I was surprised to see a trucker pull up abruptly right behing me. He motioned for me to get in.

"I saw you standing there looking for a ride and doubled back at the next exit down so I could come pick you up." he said. "But then you got in that car, so I figured I would just follow him down the road until he dumped you off somewhere. I'm on my way to Kansas City."

I was excited to be so lucky. I told him I appreciated the extra effort on his part and we got on our way.

I learned a lot about this guy driving with him for several hours, though ironically I can't remember his name. It was something like Gary, so I'll call him Gary. In a nut shell, Gary had a very screwed up life. He was abused in every way imaginable by multiple sets of parents, relatives, foster parents and institutions as a kid. He had attempted suicide three times in his life, once when he was very young. He had been through two rough marriages. One of his sons had commited suicide when he was about my age, and I guess that was part of the reason why Gary picked me up. I won't go into too much of his story, but I will say that he was the kind of person that makes just about anyone remember how blessed they are.

Gary offered me a Diet Mountain Dew (I don't really like soda, or carbonation for that matter, but I accepted and drank it because I didn't want to seem like a prick) and after having to stop a couple of times to use the bathroom (Mountain Dew went straight through me) Gary put on some Evangelical Christian tapes that we listened to for the rest of my ride with him. Gary was a saved man. Gary is a saved man. I believe that. You could tell from interacting with him that he had at some point in his life been washed by that higher power that takes men from a state of hopelessness and despair to a place where they can get through life in some measure of peace, and maybe even start dreaming again. He was a genuinely good person. A few lines from his Christian tapes struck a cord with me. I remember feeling good and smiling when the man on the tape talked about God having a proud picture of me, His son, in His wallet.

Now, Gary was headed all the way to Kansas City, but on the way to Ohio I had gotten a glimpse of something that I didn't want to just pass up on the way back...

I asked my driver if I could stop in St. Louis, Missouri. He agreed to drop me off close to St. Louis, though not in the city proper as he wanted to bypass what is known as the "St. Louis Spaghetti Bowl," a complicated network of on and off ramps that constitutes I-70 through St. Louis.

He ended up dropping me off in Troy, Illinois, a small town at the intersection of I-70 and I-270. It was late at night and the bus that goes from Troy to St. Louis was no longer running. For a few moments, I stood outside the truck stop in Troy wondering what to do. A short, grubby kid approached me to ask if I had any cigarettes. I replied that I didn't, but I would be willing to buy him some if he had a car and could drive me into St. Louis. Unfortunately he had no such car. He claimed to be the only homeless person in Troy, and he followed me around for a while trying to make conversation and figure out who I was and what I was doing in Troy. He introduced himself as "Insecticide."

Insecticide was the first of three "Rainbow People" I would meet on my way home to Utah. Until last week, I had never heard of Rainbow People, but I learned a lot about them. Essentially what I learned is that they are somewhat anarchic, spontaneous communities of people in the woods who share with each other, smoke pot, jump trains and/or hitchike, and tend to run around with dogs for companionship. Insecticide, however, was the least interesting and most obnoxious of the Rainbow kids I would meet.

After wandering around town for a while, I finally lost Insecticide and decided to just walk a couple of towns down I-40 to Collinsville, Illinois, where I was told I could catch public transportation in the morning to downtown St. Louis.

It was around midnight or 1 am when I got to Collinsville, some 8 miles or so down the road. I stopped in at the Walmart (the only thing open at that hour) to ask around about getting to St. Louis in the morning. I found out that there was a shuttle that stopped right in front of the Walmart early in the morning and that it could take me to a bus station where I could get a ride to a metrolink station (Think "Trax" for St. Louis) where I could take a train into downtown. Satisfied with that information, I went off into the woods on the edge of Collinsville to camp for the night.

I arrived at the arch the next day around 8 AM. I was frustrated to find out that the arch doesn't officially open until 9:20 am, so I walked around, took some pictures, and chatted with a few other visitors until we could finally get inside the arch. I got hassled a little bit for carrying around a giant backpack, but when I told the park rangers I was hitchiking home to Utah and just wanted to see the arch before I passed up St. Louis, their disapproval turned into a sort of admiration, which was nice.

After checking out the spectacular view from the top of the arch with a geriatric tourist group, I descended and hopped on the MetroLink again. I took it as far west as I could, which placed me at the St. Louis airport on I-70.

It took me FOREVER to get out of St. Louis, and then ultimately Missouri. By the time I finally left that state, I was just starting to understand how the pioneers felt about it. I kept getting rides from all kinds of people just leaving work or whatever in St. Louis who would take me 10 to 20 miles down the road. When you're hitchiking over 1600 miles, getting a 10 mile ride down the road is like winning a quarter in the lottery.

I accepted all the rides and was still grateful for most of them. One exception to that was getting picked up by a drunk who worked the night shift at a laundry soap plant in St. Louis. He worked from 12 am to 8 am, and then went to the bar and drank until around noon when he picked me up. I didn't initially realize that the guy was wasted, but quickly after he started driving he started talking to me in slurred words and swerving all over the road, nearly running into other cars or things several times. He also had a budweiser clenched between his knees. He yelled and cursed the "damn St. Louis traffic!" while explaining to he "used to pick up hitchikers until this one time I picked up a faggot." I guess there was some kind of bad experience there. At one point he asked me in a slurred stagger if I could "reach in the back and grab another refreshment." I glanced at the back seat and found a cooler full of Budweiser. Unsure of what to do exactly, I grabbed the guy another beer and just prayed I would make it out of this guy's car alive. I'm still not sure what I should have done just then. Luckily he was only taking me 20 or 30 miles down the road.

When I finally got out of that situation, I was picked up about three more times. Once by a younger guy wearing a beanie in a truck. He didn't talk a whole lot. He worked in construction or something and had some letters from Focus on the Family lodged between the two front seats. Next I got picked up by an ex-Mormon Dad who smoked and talked to me about the church and his family and stuff. He took me to another truck stop where I asked for a ride with an uncle/nephew trucker duo headed to Kansas City. They let me ride with them, but we didn't make it to Kansas city. Their truck kept on leaking water and coolant, so they decided to stop for the night in Concordia, Missouri. (I lost my beloved black beanie, the one you see in some of my pictures, in these guys' truck...very sad)

So here I was, trapped at a truck stop in Concordia, Missouri, at night. I forgot to mention the reason I walked from Troy to Collinsville in Illinois. It is very near impossible to hitch a ride at night. I'm not sure exactly why, maybe because its dark and people can't see you; maybe because people are tired; maybe because people just get scared at night. Who knows? But NO ONE picks you up at night.

It was at the truck stop in Concordia that I met two more Rainbow kids, a couple, boyfriend and girlfriend. They seemed friendly, and I asked them if they were headed west on I-70. They weren't going west; they were headed east to...well, I can't remember... but they didn't have a vehicle. They had just jumped a train to Kansas City and then got a ride with someone to Concordia. The girl introduced herself as "Bitchface." I conjectured that it wasn't her Christian name. She shrugged and told me that was just what everyone calls her. She was tall and very pretty with a nose ring and and dreadlocks that had all sorts of jewelry and ornaments in them. Her boyfriend's name was James and he was about the same height as Bitchface, with messy brown hair. They both had long tattered winter coats and boots and they traveled with a dog that was tied up outside.

I wish I had a picture of James and Bitchface to show here, but we were sort of bonding for a while and I didn't want to just ask them for a picture because it would have seemed condescending.

James and Bitchface got a sandwich at subway and shared some hot chocolate and cookies with me at the truck stop. If you know me well, you probably know that all it takes to make me like you is sharing cookies, so I liked James and Bitchface. They told me about Rainbow Gatherings and hopping trains and even offered to let me take their switchmap (they had maps of all the train switches in the U.S.) so that I could hop a train from Kansas City to Salt Lake if I wanted to. Kansas City has a massive train station that you can see driving by it on I-70. If one was going to jump a train, one would probably want to start somewhere like Kansas City.

I told them I didn't want to take their map, but I was glad I met them and thanks for the cookies and hot chocolate, but I'd better start trying to get a ride again. They said they'd better get going too, and we shook hands and parted ways.

After trying to get a ride at the truck stop for a while, some punk kid that worked in the convenience store called the cops to have me kicked off the premises. It was private property, so I guess they were allowed to have me removed for whatever they wanted, but I really wasn't making a scene or harrassing anyone. I was just asking which way truckers were headed, mostly.

I left the truck stop in Concordia, a little annoyed, and tried hitching at a rest stop (public property and outside of Concordia city limits) about a half mile down the road after that, but with no success. At night everyone suddenly turns hostile to hitchikers.

It was freezing; about 20 degrees outside. I thought of camping for the night again, but didnt even want to think about finding a place and taking my sleeping bag out since I didn't have a tent. I went into the bathroom at the rest stop to think over my options and get warm. By 10 or 11 at night I finally caved and found the cheapest motel in Concordia, Missouri to stay at: The Budget Inn, for 30 bucks a night. I did, after all, have all that bus ticket money from Betty, so I figured I might as well not freeze that night.

Then I decided that as long as I was pampering myself, I would go all out. I paid the little Indian (dot not feather) man at the motel, and then bought a sub sandwich thing and some soft bake cookies at the closest convenience store. I took a warm bath and then microwaved my soft bake cookies for a few seconds so they were warm, and I watched British Parliament on C-Span (cuz I'm sort of a political geek like that and because British Parliament makes for really entertaining television) until I fell asleep.

Then the morning came and I was back on the road. I got a ride from an old man headed a few towns down to see his son. Nice guy. I may have gotten another ride before or after that...can't remember.

Then I was stuck at this spot on the freeway for a while. I was starting to get tired of holding my thumb out, and started thinking to myself that if I could just get to Kansas City that day, I would try hopping a train to Salt Lake City. I had to be back in time to start a job, and I had missed enough school and tutoring hours with Jonny already. Also, as badly as I just wanted to go leave everything, it really wouldn't have been fair to my boyfriend, who really is amazing.

I stood and though until my brain was interruped by the spectacle of a long procession of school buses, maybe 10 or 15, coming down the left lane of the freeway. They were a nuisance for all the other cars, just trying to get home. People were either driving patiently behind the procession, or trying urgently to pass it on the right hand side, or stuck somewhere in between. I turned my head to follow the spectacle and after a minute or two I saw a car pull to the side of the road way off in the distance, maybe a little less than a quarter mile from me. I couldn't be sure if the car was just waiting for all of the buses to pass, or if it was waiting for me to get in. I threw on my pack and started to run toward the car just in case it was there to pick me up.

Turns out, it was. Man, was I ready for a ride.

The guy inside the car looked sort of like Rivers Cuomo, the frontman for Weezer, except that he was just a little pudgier. He seemed really excited and happy with himself for having picked me up.
He talked like this:

"Hey man! Oh dude, my name is Shay, man, nice to meet you! Dude, doesn't it feel good to get picked up!? Dude, I've been hitchiking for like the last 7 months, so I totally know how good it feels to finally be going somewhere again! Where you headed?"

"Yeah, thanks dude, I appreciate it." I responded, realizing that I was mimicing the way he talked a little. "I'm actually headed all the way to Utah, but you can just take me as far west on 70 as you're going"

Shay turned to look at me with a beaming smile and paused for a moment. "Dude, its your f#@king lucky day, man! I'm going to California, so you just got hooked up with a ride all the way to Salt Lake City! Oh man, what are the odds that I picked you up, haha! Dude, thats so perfect. I couldn't help but stop and give you a ride after hitchiking myself for so long! But dude, here's the deal, I gotta get gas soon and I've only got two bucks on me. But as soon as we get to Kansas City, we're good. I'm picking up a girl there and she has stacks of money." He looked at me sort of searchingly.

I told him I could buy a tank of gas to get us to Kansas, a little over 50 miles ahead. I figured I might as well even if the money only got me to Kansas City. We stopped at the next gas station and I put twenty bucks in the tank.

On the way to Kansas City, Shay started telling me about this girl he was going to pick up, Kalumi, and then went on to tell me about his life and what he was doing picking up a stranger in who knows where, Missouri.

Shay and Kalumi were drug dealers. Shay had been hitchiking for 7 months making drug deals around the country until he could afford to buy his own car, in Ohio, where his parents live. He was on his way to pick up Kalumi in Kansas, and then head out with her to a pot farm in Humboldt County, California. (Shay and Kalumi actually met working on the pot farm a couple years earlier) They would pick up a load of pot and hash (not sure if the farm knew this was going on or not...) and who knows what else, and then deliver back east to make anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 dollars.

(Shay ALSO happened to know a lot about Rainbow People and their Gatherings, and had even been to one. When I told him I had met a few along the way, he described their basic appearance and guessed that they owned dogs and had hopped a train before I even told him! This was astounding to me as I had never heard of Rainbow People until a day earlier...)

Kalumi's house was sort of on the outskirts of town. There was a creek running through the backyard. It was actually a nice setting, though the house itself was a little run-down. We parked outside and Shay ran in the house (It was obvious from that point on that he had a thing for this girl) and after about 15 minutes came out with Kalumi. She was a pretty girl. She had jeans and a hoodie on. Her hair was a little messy, but she kept it all back in a pony tail. At some point in the recent past she had her hair in dreads. I later found out that both of them had dreads until recently, when Shay decided he needed to look like a "good Jesus kid" so the could make drug runs easier. They noted that two things will attract the eye of a cop: 1. being black, and 2. boys with long hair. So off came Shay's hair.

To make a long story short (because I'm getting tired of writing this thing up...quality of writing may or may not decrease beyond this point...) Kalumi drove for about 6 hours through Kansas and then I drove through part of the day and the night until we got back to Salt Lake. Kalumi and Shay were getting baked the whole time. Kalumi's purse was full of rolled up pot and various other drugs (they used these eye-drop things at one point? I don't even know what those were...) as well as a huge stack of 20, 50 and 100 dollar bills. Kalumi functioned pretty normally after smoking TONS of pot, but Shay, who had not smoked any pot himself in a month or two, got really stoned. He stared off into space most of the time and every once in a while would say something sort of philosophical or just strange. The car was full of pot smoke. We all ate a lot. I had a lot of cookies, maybe because the smoke was getting to me, or maybe just because I like cookies...I didn't feel high at all, and Shay said that even when someone is actually smoking pot it usually takes them a few tries to feel stoned.

We got pulled over in Colorado, just outside of Denver. I forgot to mention that the car we were driving was damaged in the back, (though all lights were still functioning properly) and so maybe that, along with the Ohio license plate, looked suspicious to a cop.

He initially stopped us on a bridge. I pulled over and rolled down my window, but then he told me to keep driving until we were off the bridge. That was good because it gave us a couple hundred yards to try to air the pot smell out of the car. Somehow though, incredibly, the cop did not detect it. Or at leastl, he didn't say anything.

I still have no idea why he pulled us over. I thought maybe it could have been because we were speeding. I never knew how fast we were going because the speedometer on the car was broken so that engine cutoff would not occur if a certain speed was reached. Shay had told me to just keep my eye on the RPM's and the relative speed of the other cars, and I had been doing my best to make sure we weren't going over the speed limit, but I was never sure exactly.

At any rate, the cop asked for my license and Shay got him the registration for the car. We waited anxiously for about 500 years until the cop came back, handed me all our stuff, and cheerily sent us on our way after telling us he just wanted to make sure "everything checked out alright." Luckily, it did, and I didn't hesitate to drive out of that unsettling situation.

And then I drove and drove and drove sleepily up to Wyoming, on to I-80, and back to Utah. I stopped once for about 30 minutes to take a power nap at a rest stop, and then just kept going and going until around 8 or 9 am when we arrived at the U of U. I got all my stuff together, bid Shay and Kalumi farewell, and then headed over to Josh's place. He was home from work that day because he had just gotten his wisdome teeth out. We hung out and got sandwiches at Subway, and then I took Trax down to Sandy, the bus back to UVU, and finally walked the few blocks home.

2008-11-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

This is making me crazy. I probably shouldn't be writing this here, but I've got to get this all out of my head, and I want some third party to come along and tell me how I'm supposed to deal with this crap.

I'm in this sort of emotional situation that I didn't even know could exist. At least, I'd never thought of it before or seen or heard of it, but its tearing me up. I feel stupid writing about it, but this has got to end so I'm going to write about it for a minute because sometimes writing about problems helps me to solve them.

So, close friends and anonymous third parties, here's what I'm feeling:

I'm dating an incredible guy. I love him. He's funny and considerate, smart, good looking, witty, sociable, understanding...a dream come true...really. But he's so incredible, so amazing and wonderful, that sometimes it hurts a little bit to be around him...

Imagine dating someone who is better than you at everything. Even the things you maybe thought you were pretty good at. And, while you admire him and care about him, you also feel a little bit like dirt just being around him because you never feel like you really measure up to anything that he does or has done.

And so, while you love this person so much you'd probably take a bullet for him, there's a small part of you that is in constant pain around him, and you just want to just go hide somewhere or find some people who aren't so amazing so you can feel like you have some sort of value again, because around him you just feel like a waste of a human being.

Its not that he doesn't treat you well, or doesn't seem to care about you. Quite the opposite. You've maybe never been treated so well in your life. But again, that just makes you feel like you're way out of your league somehow... and then you just feel like shit again... and when he's around sometimes its bearable because he's there grinning or holding your hand or doing something adorable and you're just thinking about him (literally, almost nothing except for him the whole time...so much so that maybe you're not paying attention to anything around you, like how you're driving, or that you're dropping things, or that you sound like an idiot when you try to talk) and you're not thinking as much about how your own life is going and how its really not amounting to a whole heck of a lot right now.

But then you go home and it all comes flooding back to you and it sticks with you the rest of the week and just hurts again when he's around even though its numbed a bit by how great he is?

Thats all cyclical and doesnt make any sense, but thats kinda how I've been feeling.

If this was someone I knew and not me, this is what I would tell that person:

(This is also what I've been trying to tell myself the last few weeks)

"Well, he obviously likes you for some reason. He sees something in you, so just accept that and be happy about it."

I can't accept that. First of all, there's nothing I have that he doesn't have or can't get. Secondly, I think his sense of judgement is a little bit skewed right now.

I didn't mention that my boyfriend was in a long term abusive, sheltered relationship a year before he met me, so maybe all the day-to-day normal courteous, nice, stuff that I do seems really great to him, even when its just what any enamored guy would do for the person he fell in love with.

I just worry that maybe he'll realize later on that I'm not so great after all, or worse, that I'll just stay caught up in all these feelings and I really won't be great after all because I can't be myself when I'm always worrying about crap like this.

The bottom line is, I can get through a lot of letdowns, but I'm not sure if I could get through ever being let down by this guy. It would be an awfully long and hard fall. So, I either need to figure out how to fix the way I feel somehow, or find a way to gently let myself down now and deal with it somehow so as to avoid more and deeper pain.

I prefer to change how I feel...I just don't know how I'm supposed to do that.

Nuclear Proliferation.

2008-10-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

11:30pmGlade

k, this kid just added me on facebook

his name is Nima

11:30pmRobbie

nima?

11:30pmGlade

and he's all, "hey, we went to sutter elementary together!"

and i remember nima from sutter

but i only have on memory of him

11:31pmRobbie

what was it?

11:31pmGlade

he kept bragging to everyone that he knew karate

and he said he could beat me up

11:31pmRobbie

haha

11:31pmGlade

and i told him he was stupid

11:32pmRobbie

tell him that

11:32pmGlade

thats not the end of the memory

it sort of spanned a school day

11:32pmRobbie

oh ok

11:32pmGlade

he challenged me to a fight on the grass

and i punched him in the face and gave him a bloody lip. (bleeding everywhere)

and i was hella scared i was gonna get kicked out of school or something or my mom was gonna find out

but then he went to the nurses office and told them that he fell off the monkey bars or something

11:33pmRobbie

haha

11:33pmGlade

and then came back and wanted to fight me still

and i was like, this is the stupidest kid on the planet and sort of made this resolution to ignore him always

and now, 10 or so years later, it feels like hes trying to get my attention again

11:34pmRobbie

haha

11:34pmGlade

and i feel all scared like my mom is gonna find out i split his lip

the end

11:35pmGlade

hes also one of two iranians i know

so it sort of colors how i view that entire country

and im against them getting nukes.

11:36pmRobbie

haha

yeah

ha, i love your political views more when i learn stuff like this

it makes me wonder who george w bush grew up around

Josh on our trip to Zion National Park

2008-10-21T06:30:00.001-07:00

Dairy Queen has some really good fries. Hehe. I love this guy.

Here are some real pictures too, in no particular order.

Biting off more than I can chew.

2008-08-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

I need to just sit and type out my life for a few minutes.

I've decided to try to become a high school math teacher. I'm at least pretty solid about the teacher part.

A teacher for a couple of reasons: first of all I think its a job I could have a sense of satisfaction in. I'd have a direct influence on lots of different people. Secondly, I find that I grow tired of any job after about a year, (sometimes less) and teachers get at least a few months of sabbatical in the summer to recharge and re-motivate themselves. I can take the summers off to go work elsewhere, travel, or just be a hermit for a while and consider other options. Perfect. :)

A "math" teacher mostly because if I'm qualified to teach math in high school, I can get a job anywhere I want to live. I'm not especially great at math, but I do alright at it and I'm willing to put in the work, I think.

High school because thats when teachers actually have an impact on you. Elementary school has some good years, but people forget about most things that happened to them way back in elementary school. Middle school is just a horrible, awkward time in life when you have to be separated from all the other kids because of all the stupid things hormones make you do. No one ever wants to remember middle school. High school is different, and best I think.

So there it is, my career choice. If you'd have asked me two years ago, I probably wouldn't have even considered this option. But that's where I am, and this is the plan for now.

Robbie and Greg and this girl Shelly and I all auditioned for Seussical the Musical at the Orem Scera Shell. (Robbie and I also got into Fiddler on the Roof a year or two ago, but dropped out after a couple days because our schedules got too busy. So we can't bail on this one or we'll never be accepted in community theater anywhere in the valley again.)

Robbie is the Grinch, so he gets this whole little scene about the Whos' Christmas Party to be in the spotlight. Shelly is a Zebra in the Jungle of Nool. Greg is a citizen of Who; Papa Bell Ringer Who, (I always want to say Smurf instead of Who...) and I am a Wickersham Brother. In case you don't know who the Wickersham Brothers are, refer to the book Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss. The Wickershams are monkeys in the Jungle of Nool. We mess with Horton and steal his clover upon which rests Who, the tiniest planet in the sky, where Whoville is located. I'm basically one of the bad guys. In Seussical the Musical, the Wickershams are portrayed as sort of a 20's Zuit Suit/50's Greaser young gang of trouble makers. Its a fun role. Or at least it should be with a LOT more practice. There's a lot of singing to remember and our choreography is tough sometimes. There's one dance where I have to spin around on my kneecap. That knee is killing me now.

I also have a bunch of silly small roles, like circus member, hunch, and my personal favorite, "water". I get to wear rollerblades to be water. Hopefully I can still rollerblade alright.

Its been a really long time since I did play stuff. Like middle school. I was in a couple of productions with my older brother and some church kids at the Santa Clara Rec Center. I played Becky's little brother in Tom Sawyer. Then I was the wizard in Once Upon a Mattress. The only really performance oriented thing I've done post-high school is folkdance at BYU. And if you're a boy, that doesn't really take a lot. So there are all these high school kids in the play putting me to shame right now when it comes to singing and dancing and stuff. Embarrassing. Oh well, should be either really fun, or a decent story to tell years down the road.

I quit my job at Papa John's Pizza.

Mostly it was on principle. Gas was getting insanely expensive, but our compensation (90 cents per trip, even to houses two towns away) was not getting any higher. I was paying about 50 bucks a tank to fill up. We were getting paid 5.85 plus whatever tips we made plus the 90 cents per delivery. We drivers thought we would all get saved by the new minimum wage that went into effect in July. It was supposed to increase our base pay from 5.85 to 6.55 thereby possibly offsetting the rising price of fuel, but instead the corporation decided that it would come up with a new payment "system" to avoid having to pay its delivery drivers more. I would start to explain the new system to you here, but its complicated and boring. Suffice it to say, our regional manager was telling us we were going to make the same amount of money only with a difference in the way we were paid, but that simply wasn't true. We were going to start making quite a bit less. I did the math a few times. Add recent inflation to the top of that and not only were we making less, but much less.

So, sick of having to maintain a car for my job and angry with greedy corporations in general, I started a small insurrection at our employee meeting by calculating the new numbers and showing everyone how this would result in a considerable paycut despite what our regional manager was trying to tell us. I quit on the spot (the flip side of having a right to work state is that employees can quit anytime without notice) and got lots of people steamed. 3 more drivers quit within the next few days. Maybe more have left by now, but I don't know. Likely they were hurting for a few days and then recovered, but I haven't kept up with it.

So I went through finals week without a job. Which was actually really nice. I did reasonably well in school this summer. I got an A- and a B+ in my second term classes, Biology and Astronomy respectively. That may not sound like much, but its a huge improvement on what I was getting at BYU the last year or two.

Now I'm in between semesters of school and looking for a job. The problem is that between this play and school, I don't have much time to squeeze in regular work shifts. I'll be going to school from 8 to 2 on weekdays, then rehearsals or shows from 7 to 10 most weekdays, and 10 to 2 some Saturdays. It's a mess. I've interviewed at a couple of places now but can't make anything work with my schedule yet. Something is going to have to give. I might have to drop out of school this semester or just not work and pray that things work out until mid-October when this play is done.

There are actually two small sources of income I may have. There's an 11 year old kid with down syndrome in Seussical who's mom is desperately looking for a math tutor for him. She found out that I'm now looking at being a math teacher, and so she asked me about filling the position. I met with her the other day and I really like her. So I think I may do that for an hour or two on weekdays after school.

I also do yardwork, cleaning, simple repairs and replacing, and whatever else at some condos my parents own in Provo, and they have decided to pay me for that. Should help out a little. I've been putting in several hours there lately because one of the condos is between tenants.

But yeah, this semester is still going to be a crunch in a few ways for a while.

I'm also dating someone again. A boyfriend.

I met him wakeboarding, my second time out on the boat. I really wasn't looking for a date or anything on those boating trips other than to learn how to wakeboard. In fact, to be honest, I sort of went on the trips assuming everyone else would be sort of a douche-bag. (Have I gotten tons more judgemental over the years?) You have to understand some of what happened on these things to get why I assumed such. Its a bunch of gay guys who are trying to outmacho each other in whatever way possible so they don't look gay, but at the same time they're getting drunk and making out with each other. Kinda ridiculous.

Well, this guy Josh was on the boat but he wasn't doing as much of that. I didn't really pay him a lot of attention at first. But then he asked me on a date, and it kinda caught me off guard. I went on the date. We saw Get Smart. Then he asked me on more dates. I asked him if he wanted to hike the Y around 2 AM one night and he came and we did a lot of talking and I liked him. He got me started playing this question game all the time where, well...we just ask lots of questions. The questions can be pretty basic, from things like "What is your favorite ____?" to slightly more insightful questions like "What's one place you want to go before you die?" to deeper things like "Do you see God as more of a father, grandfather, mechanic, etc?" to goofy silly stuff like "If you were a supervillain how would you dress your henchmen?" Its a good game that I like.

The weekend after the Y hike we went up to the Tetons and stayed at his parents' place, which is in a town very near the park. We went up mainly to climb Table Rock, but my birthday just happened to be that weekend too, and he got his whole family in on celebrating it with me. It was kinda on the spot and awkward for me a little, having only known the guy a couple weeks, but it was also really endearing and both he and his family are great. And I think I hit it off with at least his dad and favorite sister, but hopefully the rest of the family too.

After another week or two we decided to talk about where all this was headed and voice some concerns and what not, and we decided we were dating. Legitimately.

Josh is probably the most considerate person I know. I couldn't even keep up with how nice he is if I tried. Every time I turn around he's doing something nice for me or someone else. Robbie is sick of hearing about that.

He's also really bright and witty and easy on the eyes. He's always up for doing stuff, and he's full of great stories. I feel like he's got his priorities in order too and we line up on the importance of a lot of things. He's not as hung up about material stuff and cars and gadgets and clothes as Jon was, and thats refreshing. He goes way out of his way to treat people kindly, and he passed the Robbie and Greg approval test.

So I'm trying to make that work. This semester could be trying, but we'll see.

I have the same worries about a relationship as I did with Jon. As soon as I'm in, I'm all worried about getting out; afraid I'm stuck. My mind fast forwards to years from now and I wonder what that could be like with a guy. For now, I'm taking it all in stride.

And this post will be done now.

THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY!

2008-08-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

I was just talking to my friend Ben the other day about how I wish there was more spontaneous mass dancing in the world! Man, I would love to be this guy!

Interview with Paulo Coehlo at the end of The Alchemist

2008-08-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

In The Alchemist, you refer to Soul of the World. What exactly is this? How is it tied to religion and spirituality?
Well, let's distinguish religion from spirituality. I am Catholic, so religion for me is a way of having discipline and collective worship with persons who share the same mystery. But in the end all religions tend to point to the same light. In between the light and us, sometimes there are too many rules. The light is here and there are no rules to follow this light.

You mentioned that you're Catholic, but you've said elsewhere that your Jesuit upbringing was painful in some ways. What do you see as the value of, and problems with, organized religion?
The value is that they give you discipline and they give you collective worship and they give you humbleness toward the mysteries. The danger is that every religion, including the Catholic one, says "I have the ultimate truth." Then you start to rely on the priest, the mullah, the rabbi, or whoever, to be responsible for your acts. In fact, you are the only one who is responsible.

A Memory Game to Play.

2008-07-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

How to Play

As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember.
Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. If you leave a memory about me, I'll check your blog to see if you are playing, too. If you are I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Letter from Alex

2008-07-25T20:34:00.000-07:00

Alex is my little brother. He's serving his mission in Hamburg, Germany right now. He's one of the coolest, funniest kids you could ever meet. We were the closest in age of any of our siblings so we got along pretty well. We had the talk about me being gay before he went on his mission. He even knew I was dating a guy for a while and even wrote him.

Sometime I'll have to write a post about ordinary people in the church who are amazing examples to me of what a Christian can be. Suffice it to say, my little brother is one of them.

He sent me a letter this week that I'm trying to respond to. Maybe I'm not the best person to be responding. Let me know what you think. I'm going to send it sometime before his P-day on monday.

To me from Alex:

Hey bro,

Happy Birthday. I heard the family threw a party and the cardboard me was there. Thats cool that you guys have the cutout for family events and what not. Thanks for getting that made for me. Is there anything you want out here that I could send to you or maybe something that I could give you in a year?

I have a question. There is a guy here in the ward who came home from his mission a while ago. Just a little while after he got home, he removed his name from the records and he went inactive because he is gay. He comes to church every once in a while and he still obvoiusly has a testimony and what not. There are a lot of people here though who seem to have the wrong idea about gay people though and I imagine he gets crap about it. I was wondering if maybe I should talk to him or just not get involved in it altogether. Whats your advice?

Love,
Alex

This is what I've got down so far to send to him:

Hey Alex!

Birthday turned out to be a lot of fun. I went and hiked in the Tetons last weekend and then came back on my actual birthday and Lois made me a cool cake with strawberries and blueberries and we did dinner and presents and what not. Our family is pretty great sometimes.

Get me something you think is cool. Or just a bunch of German chocolate. Or both. :)

That cardboard cutout of you is now with us at everything. I really only expected to use it at John's wedding, but basically the whole family thinks its hilarious and now we don't take pictures without it. Its one of Dad's favorite things to talk about when people come over to the house, second only to Ron Paul.

About the guy in your ward: A lot of times missionaries that are gay are guys/gals that have this secret hope that if they just live life right and do everything Heavenly Father wants, (ie go on a mission, get married, be faithful at church, etc) then they won't be gay anymore or Heavenly Father will make their challenge easier. When they find out this isn't the case, which happens a lot after they get back from missions (though often it results from a failed marriage to the opposite sex or some other big thing) the fall is so hard that they are forced to reexamine their life and beliefs from top to bottom. Sometimes I think this is a good thing because often it is the first time someone is willing to deal with reality. They sort of throw off the model of how everyone tells them things are supposed to be and they figure out how life should be for them.Sometimes this means throwing out the church. I'd have to say that most of them have a lot less to do with the church, but some stay and a few even get married and and make it work.

You should definitely talk to this guy. Maybe just start out by introducing yourself. Ask him questions about how he feels about the church. Tell him you have a gay brother who is having his own issues with the church. Try to show that you are not judging but trying to understand and help if you can.

You should also give him a pamphlet called "God Loveth His Children" if he hasn't already seen it. It's a newer pamphlet that the first presidency produces that talks about gay issues and its pretty good. I'm not sure if you can get a hold of one in German there, but you should be able to from a Bishop or Stake President. If not, let me know and I can send you one in English and maybe someone can translate for him or something.

Hope that will help.

Love,
(Pinetree's name)

Let me know if you have any thoughts.

No more gas station food.

2008-07-06T03:24:00.000-07:00

An hour ago I was walking down the street in Salt Lake eating a cheese filled hot dog, a donut, and a bag of Funyons.

In the moment that you're eating those things, there's really nothing better. In fact my friend Ben, despite a few good efforts, couldn't even make conversation with me right then because I was paying so much attention to stuffing my face with everything I found at 7-Eleven.

But then all that grease sits in your stomach for a while, and your stomach starts to gurgle and feel gross.

That happened to me.

And then I contemplated how many times I've eaten either pizza or gas station food this week due to the nature of my job.

And then I realized maybe thats one of those crazy reasons I still don't have a six pack.

Crazy.

Resolution: No more gas station food or pizza.

Bleh.

I might starve.

Galileo

2008-06-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

The more I learn about Galileo, the more inspiring he becomes. I love this guy. I think I want to name a child Galileo.
Check out this beautiful song by Paul Ellis - Did Galileo Pray?

Summertime.

2008-06-27T12:26:00.001-07:00

So far this summer hasn't been disappointing or bad necessarily, just a little lackluster I guess. Not even that...just a lot more tame than I would have liked.

A few fun things have happened. Greg and I hiked to the top of Y mount and camped there and that was cool. At first we were just going to camp in this meadow thing about half way up, so we left our backpacks there. But then we got to the top and decided we had to camp there for the night. So we both went roaring down the mountain and back up. Exhausting, but wonderful. I barely made it to see the last sliver of sun go behind the mountains. Greg met me up there just a little while later. We ate chocolate and camped tentless.. The hike down in the morning was great. You could see the moon up really big over the lake and mountains to the west as we went down. It's beautiful to see the world waking up. Provo is best from about this far away.

It was also cool to pass up all those "I wake up at 5 am and go for a nice stroll up a mountain" old people on our way down the mountain. *grin* I actually have nothing against those kinds of people. I love them. They're some of the best kind. I admire them and want to be one of them when I get old.

I went boating with a bunch of of people (read gays) this last Sunday. ATP just happened to be there too. I told him I think we are officially jack-Mormons now because those are the only kind of people who go boating on Sunday.

The whole boating idea was sort of spur of the moment. I got a call just after I woke up on Sunday (sometime around 11:30 am due to pizza delivering the night before) and I was told by two people that I needed to come boating. "Don't think about it, just come." one said. So I went. And next thing I knew I was sitting on this boat loaded with gays and alcohol and loud music wondering what I had gotten myself into.

But then I tried wakeboarding and (after a few tries at getting up on the water) I loved it.

I don't think I'll ever own a boat, or a giant suburban/truck/whatever that can pull a boat, but its nice to know someone who has those things. And I learned how to drive the boat which is good to know how to do I guess. We all took turns going tubing and that was great unless I was actually riding in the boat and not driving. The idea behind tubing is to turn and turn and turn in dizzying circles so that those who are riding on the tube tied behind the boat with go flying this way and that. Bleh. I got a little nauseous riding on the actual boat towards the very end, but it was worth it.

Truth be told, Sunday is generally such a wonderful day for all the people who aren't Mormon in Utah. It's the day that gays and Mexicans get to finally have the state for themselves, and it makes me smile a little.

After that I went to a small barbecue/birthday party for Caitie and we had an amazing salmon dinner prepared by Robbie with grilled bananas stuffed with marshmallow and chocolate for dessert. And Caitie brought her old mission companion/best friend Catchpole along and the two of them are ghetto and hilarious whenever they're in the same room together so it was a pretty great night.

The things listed above have really been the highlights of my summer thus far. Other things that have happened:
-Brother got married in St. George.
-Nieces had kick ass dance recital. It was Peter Pan in interpretive dance I guess. Adorable, anyhow.-Went to Gay Pride in Salt Lake. The parade was cool. Its a good feeling when you have masses of people that will be nice to even the weirdest freaks. I say that in all seriousness. The rest of it was fun for like a half hour.-Got a sweet haircut with steps!

-Mom had surgery on her knees. My mom has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was 17 and her knees are just shot I guess and she's getting new ones. She seems to be loving staying in the nursing facility she has to be in for two weeks. (I actually think she was getting to the point where she would have let them cut off her left arm just to get away and have some down time for a while, so its cool.) I went to visit her with my sister the other day and she was pretty happy. We brought her Mexican food and movies and stuff.

(this is more just as a record for me than for anyone's entertainment)

School and working part time are what have been going on mostly. I made it through the first term of summer and already I'm bored and hating it a little. Not so much the institution or the actual classes or learning; just the having to go every day part. I hate being required to go do something every day. Same story with work lately. I don't mind the work, I just hate having to go.

At any rate I'm trying not to drop out. I want to go have a real summer in Australia or South America when winter rolls around here again.

My new classes aren't too bad. My biology class is basically a giant powerpoint presentation every day. The teacher just reads off the projector screen. The only reason you need to show up is because there is a quiz every day at the end. We were required to buy these little remote control devices the teacher calls "clickers" so that now we can even take the test off the powerpoint screen. He projects a questions and we all beam in our answers to the teacher's computer, where we are automatically graded and our scores are recorded. The clickers cost every student fifty extra dollars and do the teacher's job for him. Something seems wrong about that to me, even though I guess there's no rule or anything against it. Sometimes I show up late and just take the quiz at the end. I think there will be a lot of memorizing to do for the tests, but nothing too bad.

My astronomy class is great when I can stay awake. We have class in the planetarium. Its a small room. They keep it dark and have the most comfortable, soft, reclining seats there. An elderly, part-time professor with a melodious voice sits at the front. He points with his laser pointer to projections on the ceiling of stars and models of the universe and physics equations all the while telling us bedtime stories about the lives of Copernicus and Galileo and Tycho. Who knows what I'm missing in that class...

I have to go to work soon so I'm gonna cut this short.

Still to come this summer:
Robbie and I go to San Diego! (for such a nerdy reason I'm not even going to admitt it right now...)
I turn 22!
Greg and I hike the Grand Tetons!

Yay!

2008-06-05T00:00:00.001-07:00

He's no Ron Paul, but my second favorite will have to do. And to be perfectly honest, I'm pretty happy and excited that he made it. This coming from an elected Republican...or perhaps "Obamacan" would be more fitting.

Feeling pretty crappy about life right now.

2008-05-19T22:42:00.000-07:00

Here's to hoping this mountain I've been climbing is just a grain of sand.

WHA!?

2008-05-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are going to be on Oprah today! That's like my three favorite women on the same TV show!

Steve

2008-05-12T20:03:00.001-07:00

I have this friend Steve who lives in Montreal, Canada. I've talked to him online since I was 14. Sometimes he calls me, mostly when he's drunk. I tell this kid everything. All my worst secrets. Sometimes its really good to have a foreign friend that you don't have to interact with day to day. Especially on your downer days because you don't want to bring any of your day to day friends down with you. And he cares enough to listen but is detached enough to not get depressed. Someday I will fly to Canada and meet this kid.

Also, I've been wanting to go out and get drunk lately. Or at least tonight. (yes, that's right, the slippery slope to eternal damnation. go on and judge me.) I've never tried drinking, but in my mind I want to be in a happy carefree pub somewhere drowning my sorrows. Maybe some dancing. Eating peanuts. I want to wake up shitfaced with fuzzy memories of what happened the night before.

I have never wanted to drink until recently. It's probably not a good idea. I think red hair means you will be a bad drunk and a nearly certain alcoholic.

Happy Mother's Day

2008-05-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

Robbie and Greg helped me make a present for my mommy last night. Thank goodness for a 24 hour Kinko's...

This is a picture of our old Chevy station wagon. Our family of eight rode in this vehicle from since I can remember until I was in high school. This looks like one of our many trips to Utah. You can just barely see my mom in the back cleaning out barf , courtesy of whoever had to ride in the nauseating backseat.
This is a quote from a book Marjorie Pay Hinckley wrote. I love Marjorie Pay Hinckley. And this is the present I gave my wonderful, selfless mom.

Happy Mother's Day everybody.

Back in school!

2008-05-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back in school!

I'm taking math 1050, college algrebra (sort of like algebra 2 in high school) and philosophy 2050, ethics and values. That's only until mid-June and then I switch to Biology and Astronomy. I should have all but two general eds at uvsc knocked out by fall.

It was only my second day and math is already kicking my butt! The class goes really fast and I don't remember anything about math. I'm keeping up with homework and going to tutoring every day. I think I managed to bomb our first pop quiz this morning, but hopefully I'll be ahead of the game enough next time to do well.

I went to tutoring today and had some guy help me with a problem I know I missed on the quiz. I thought I had done it all right, but came up with the wrong answer, so I had him look it over. The problem was that the guy was from...I want to say Ireland or Scotland? Maybe South Africa? I couldn't tell. But yeah, that was the problem. I just listened to his accent and didn't really conprehend anything that he said. It was mesmerizing. The entire time he was basically telling me I had forgotten to subtract 4 from 10. I had to tell him I was fine and to go away before I actually figured that out because I couldn't think about math while he was talking.

Philosophy is sort of a joke. We spent the entire class yesterday debating whether or not the cap on a whiteboard marker was indeed red. Our conclusion: color is an experience all in the mind, even after you break it down to the measures of wavelengths in angstroms reflecting off of objects. I didn't really participate in this debate. It was sort of silly because in this class you can't really argue anything because the only thing you can prove to anyone else is that you think and perceive. Actually, you can't even prove that to other people, it's just the only thing you can assume reasonably about other people because it is the only thing you know for certain and can prove about yourself. Blah blah blah. It might get more interesting later on when we actually talk about ethics and values in medicine, politics, and more practical areas. Hopefully an easy A.

I'm going to be the best man at my older brother's wedding! I don't even really know what that means, but I'm happy about it. Also, as my little brother will be on his mission in Germany during the wedding, I've decided I'm going to make a lifesize cutout of him to stand in the reception line. He's getting me a high resolution pic of him in his suit with his nametag sometime this week.

I'm trying to get rid of my last little bit of gut before my birthday. I swear its impossible. I've started to do interval training (for instance, 2 minutes sprinting, 2 minutes jogging/walking, repeat a bunch of times) instead of just steady cardio because I read in some magazine with a really ripped guy on the cover that it burns fat better. We'll see about that.

I love playing Scramble on facebook! Challenge me, please!

Gotta get to work soon. Later

A brief campaign video.

2008-04-29T01:30:00.001-07:00

Robbie and Evan helped me slap this together last night and Robbie insisted that I post it here.

Donut and Denmark.

2008-04-19T01:23:00.001-07:00

Its past 2 AM and I just went to 7-eleven for a donut. Cake. Pink Frosting. Sprinkles.

And I was thinking that I'd like to go to Denmark. Maybe if I get really good grades in school this year I'll reward myself with a trip to Denmark in the summer. And Germany, to visit my little brother.

Just some things.

2008-04-17T23:28:00.001-07:00

In-N-Out Burger will be in St. George, Utah next week! I used to work there in California! Trips to Vegas are going to be a lot less necessary now.

I watched Waitress again the other night with Robbie and "Potentate". Man, I love that movie. I get a little emotional watching it, even.
"I was addicted to saying things and having them matter to someone." - Jenna

*sigh*

There is this song that I heard on the radio the other day. The lyrics go something like this "Girl you gotta know, every time you go, out the door, that its not alright" I looked up the lyrics on google and elsewhere but can't seem to find the right song. Anybody know who sings it?

I took my nieces to hike the Y (my second day hiking the Y in a row) and they made it the whole way! Granted, we stopped at 8 of the 11 trail posts on the way AND I bribed them with a surprise treat at the end if they finished (bagged cotton candy, but regardless, that's pretty hardcore for a 4 and a half and 7 year old! I remember taking my little brother up there for the first time and I'm not sure who did better...The view was really hazey that day because of dust or pollution or something, but it was still decent and my oldest niece even wants to go again and asked if she could invite friends next time. I'm so proud. I hope I have instilled in them a love of hiking to see wonderful, bigger pictures.

Everyday this week I have been looking at pricing on cruiser motorcycles and even some scooters. I think that will be my next major purchase in life.

I cut my hair after seeing some recent pictures of myself. I now have sort of a mini mohawk thing that goes all the way down the back of my head and i'm diggin' it. I got it the morning before meeting with my local Republican state senator....but I wasn't thinking about the meeting that morning. When I realized what I had done, I was concerned for about 3 minutes. But then I just wasn't anymore. The meeting went well. More of a presentation really. My local state senator is actually pretty decent in my opinion. More political involvement to come.

Ron Paul will be in Caldwell, Idaho on the 25th of April before the Idaho Republican caucuses! I may just head on up to Idaho to see him speak. The thing is, the Utah County Republican convention is on the 26th early in the morning and I have to go to that. I'm not sure if its worth being dead tired at the convention the next morning...but it might just be...

I've been pretty busy lately, but I have this nagging feeling that I want to get into something totally mindless. Like nintendo or computer games or comics books or Lord of the Rings or Magic the Gathering. Actually, scratch Magic the Gathering. But I sort of miss the feeling of getting totally lost in a world not my own. Robbie and I are even thinking of going to Comicon in San Diego this summer. Comicon is basically the largest gathering of sci-fi/fantasy/comic book/whatever nerds on the planet. They're having the writers of Lost come this year, so that might be cool to see.

I'm so excited for school to start! And my job is tolerable and I kinda like it sometimes! I think this will be a good year.

Thoughts on a closed chapter in Pinetree's very short love life.

2008-04-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Things could have worked with Jon. We were both pretty commited to our relationship. It could have lasted for a long time. We hit a plateua and in my mind it came down to three options:

One, we could keep on going out the way we were; one of use travels 56 miles or we meet inbetween, we go out and do something together or with friends, and then we go back home again.

Two, I could drop everything and move closer to (or even in with) Jon and find work and school up there. We could see how things work when we're in each others' lives day to day.

Or Three, we could call it a good run and break it off altogether.

Staying the way we were was getting time consuming, stressful and expensive.

I thought about moving closer, but really I just don't want to. And it's not that I don't do things like that on a whim ever, because I do. Moving would just put a lot of other people and priorities in my life on the back burner. And, perhaps the fact that I don't feel the desire to get up and go highlights more foundational issues with our relationship.

There was a lot that really could have been better. We don't share tons of interests really. For instance, he is huge on cars. He watches car shows on tv, works for a car company, dreams of owning many luxury cars someday...I don't know the first thing about them except that I like the look of old BMW's so I bought one. And I'd like a motorcycle, but other than that I could really care less. I like politics. He knows he is a democrat from a family of democrats, but really doesn't care for it as much as I do. I like trying new foods, he likes to stick with what is good and familiar. My sense of security comes from being as free as possible from all entanglements; school, work, debt, property, etc (there are good sides and downsides to this...maybe a whole other post on this later.) His sense of security comes from having a steady job and schedule and being able to have the good things in life that he wants. I like playing regular sports for fun, he likes the less conventional ones like skiing and golf and he wants to get into scuba diving. I like to read, he doesn't. He likes all Pixar/Dreamworks animated films, I'm more choosey about my kids movies.

Our upbringings were completely different. I grew up in a fairly diverse urban area in a small apartment with five other kids at least two states away from our nearest relatives in Utah. He grew up in a house in a pretty well off family in a small rural Mormon town where most of his extended family lives on the same couple of blocks. His aunt and uncle live next door, grandma in the next house. Our family dynamics are very different. My family feels like a collection of very different people who stick together because they are a family. His family is sort of like a unit where individual members feel like they have to break out on their own from time to time. If that makes any sense...

I don't feel like we connect on a basic level as well as I do with other friends.

Regardless, Jon is kind and funny and hard working and adorable. It was all workable, but does that make it right? I don't really think so. Based on my very limited experience, I think one can make something work with a lot of different people if one chooses to do so, but it might not be the best idea to just stick with the first one who does, especially when one is 21 years old and has a lot of other things he needs to get done in life....like getting through school.

Obvioiusly we broke it off. I don't think there will be any problem with remaining friends. I'm okay about the whole thing and I'm pretty sure he is too. He is going to try to date other people. I don't think I'm going to. We'll see.

The last four months were the only real legitimate relationship I've ever had and they were good months for the most part. I feel like I can say I know what it feels like to date a guy and work at it, and that's a good thing.

I also, oddly enough, feel like it wouldn't be as huge of a stretch to date a girl now, either. Being attracted sexually to someone is huge, but it's importance dwindles in time and you fall in love with everything else about a person. I've always known this, but it's hard to date a girl or even consider it when I'm wondering what it would be like to date a guy I'm attracted to instead. Well, now I know. And aside from the beginning parts, I'm not sure it's a hell of a lot different, as controversial as that is.

I think I will hold off on dating anyone for a long time. But it's a thought. I feel like I can make a much more valid judgement on that sort of thing now.

Man, there is a lot I could say...but I'm going to wrap this up.

But before I do, I should probably add this: I don't think that gay relationships are any less valid or meaningful than straight ones. It's really about what you choose for yourself, and when your decisions aren't hurting you or anyone else, they should be respected and even supported. If I know you, you're my friend, and you choose to be in a relationship with someone of the same sex, I will have your back. If I ever have kids or a family, you'll be welcome there. My spouse and/or kids won't ever think to look down on you for it, regardless of what my own family ends up looking like.

A new friend of mine has a quote on her facebook page that says "God belongs to everyone." I like that a lot. And I believe it.

Happy and Annoyed. But mostly happy, really.

2008-04-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

HAPPY:
I fixed my car myself for a dollar a couple of days ago!

ANNOYED:
I had to fix my car because when I idled at stoplights or wherever, the "check engine" light would come on and it smelled like gasoline. I took it to a mechanic and he wanted to charge me $125 to replace the fuel pump regulator; $50-something for the new part and $75 for an hour's labor. So I looked down at where he told me the fuel pump regulator is and saw that there was a small plastic hose that wasn't connected on one end. I tried to reattach it but it was too small. Looked like it had shrunk. I went in to the parts section of the mechanic and asked a different guy if I could buy a new hose of that size. I bought a small piece of rubber hose to replace the old plastic one. My car's "check engine" light no longer comes on, nor does it smell like gasoline. I spent about a dollar and a minute fixing my car once the problem was pointed out to me, and this schmuck wanted to charge me $125 for it. Jerk.

HAPPY:
After a few weeks of consistently hitting the gym (pretty hard I might add) and eating healthy I had my body fat percentage tested and it was 6%!

ANNOYED:
I still don't have a six-pack. I have a nice line between abs one and two and a "kinda"-line between abs three and four if I flex my stomach really hard, but still a gut at the bottom. I thought the results of the body fat calculator thing MUST be wrong because I've read in several books that one should normally be able to see a six-pack at somewhere between 12 and 7 percent body fat. I took the test repeatedly and got the same results, within about .5 percentage points. Ridiculous. My body just does not do this six-pack thing...and yet I keep trying. I did eat a whole lot of junk this weekend just out of spite. Back at it next week though.

HAPPY:
The family was all over for conference today. :)

ANNOYED:
I was planning on going to priesthood session with my brother in law. I changed downstairs and came upstairs around 5:40 to find that he had left already. He was making a big fuss over getting "one of the soft seats this time." I guess he just figured I could meet him there. Whatever. So I drove over to our normal church building only to find no one around. Apparently they were only broadcasting at the stake center. I just don't know where our stake center is. I probably could have found out, but at that point I was so irrationally ticked off that I just skipped out on it for the first time since I was 12.

HAPPY:
I went to the gym after that. Then I got invited over to eat dinner by a friend.

ANNOYED:
I'm not sure where this friend lives or if he was even having dinner at his own house. I texted him twice to ask and got nothing. What the hell!? People are such flakes...

I know I shouldn't complain because I do flakey, stupid, careless things all the time. And because it annoys me when people complain a lot because someone flakes out on them. That's life. Buck up and get over it. Find something else to do with your time, right? Right. Its just extra annoying to me tonight for some reason and I want to to be a hermit-bum in Mexico right now...

Okay, really that's not completely true and life isn't bad at all to me right now. In fact, if we compared it with all of the other lives on the planet right now, my circumstances in life are likely somewhere in the top one percent. At least top five percent. Even if you really stretch out every issue and worry in my life AND I'm having a horrible day, I'm still probably somewhere well in the top ten percent. Those annoying things above were really about the worst I could come up with for all of you tonight and even they were all coupled with happy things.

And there are lots more happy things. I feel a lot better because I've been exercising and taking care of myself lately. I got elected to a very small political office - though I'll save stories on that for a later date when a little more political dust has settled. I'm working on getting back into school in the summer and I'm really excited about it this time. My brother is going to get married. My niece April is walking and she is adorable. She says words, but mostly just "hi" all the time. My room smells like the fresh linens scent candle on my desk. My dad and I had a good talk the other night about the gospel and ambiguities in life. I'm broke, but I get by just fine and I'm happy with what I have. Life is good - there's just enough conflict peppering it to taste.

Recent Events in Pictures

2008-03-30T20:38:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

*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.

Meet the Parents

2008-02-25T09:16:00.000-08:00

I just got back from an interview with Holland America to be a tour director this summer. I still have my black slacks and shirt and tie on as I sit here on my bed writing this.

Ack! I have such mixed feelings about this job! I was trying to feign excitement about it at the interview but really I was sort of ambivalent. I want to go to Alaska so I can earn lots of money for school next year and so that I can get a free cruise to send my parents on vacation. My dad, who used to be in the navy, has always wanted to go on a cruise to Alaska to see the glaciers.

On the other hand, I have an amazing boyfriend and great friends here in Utah and I want to get a jump on school, possibly even starting this summer. Also, there are so many things I want to do and places I want to go this summer and I won't be able to do any of them if I'm in Alaska...though I'm sure it will be great to see more of Alaska than I did last year.

So to sum this up, I'm totally cool with getting hired or rejected, but I'd like to find out soon so that I can start planning my life.

In other news, I drove up to Kaysville and met most of Jon's family yesterday. (He met my parents a few days ago)

First of all, Kaysville is way out there. I love it though. It's not the suburban, commercial, overrun with billboards and concrete and signs sort of place that Utah County and a lot of Salt Lake County are. Kaysville is still a lot of country. It's growing, but the houses are farther apart and there are still places where you can look out and see open spaces and big sky.

It was a little bit weird at his house with his parents, but mostly good. They made small talk (though sometimes my mind went blanks and I didn't know what to say or what exactly they were talking about) and we had dinner over there. His mom makes amazing cookies, so really thats all I needed to like her. His parents are a lot like mine, actually. Mom is the more sociable of the pair and worries about her kids a lot and the state of her marriage depresses her sometimes. Dad is more distant, but very opinionated if you get him talking. I can understand these people.

After dinner we went to Jon's sister's place to watch the Oscars. His sister and her husband are way cool and a lot of fun. Jon's sister, Em, has a best friend, Kerry, who is a lesbian, and Kerry and her partner were there too. We had most of the gamut of sexuality covered in that living room. The lesbians were a riot to be with...extra hilarious girls. They fastforwarded through most of the Oscars though (tivo) and that was kind of annoying, but I guess Jon's sister and I were the only ones who actually wanted to see everything because everyone else seemed to cheer Kerry on when she grabbed the remote and pushed the fast forward button through whatever she deemed to be boring. I didn't fight it though, I just sat back and ate Reese's peanut butter cups to my heart's content.

We went back to Jon's place and talked and had some sweet sweet action in Jon's room (yeah, so nice...he's hot) and then I drove home.

I'm still feeling a little tethered in this thing. We're at the point where I know if it ended, it would hurt Jon. And me too a little...this guy is really incredible and I love him. There are so many things I want to do yet in life that would require me to move or be away though...I need to figure out how to make this work.

Tee-hee.

2008-02-21T14:06:00.000-08:00

I've been laughing about this for about three days now. Hehe.

Sound off.

2008-02-16T12:13:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my thoughts lately. They're a mess. Tell me what you think if you make it through.

Carol Lynn Pearson:
I read Goodbye, I Love You today. Its such a good book and if you're reading this blog I recommend it to you. It made me miss church a little. And California. It made me think of this time when I was about 8 and my Mom had a broken leg and the church really kept my family afloat. We had two Relief Society sisters over every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Different ladies in the ward brought our family dinner every night. Charity did not fail. You know what I love about the church? That. I miss hometeaching too, and service projects and teaching in priesthood.

On the flipside, the book also reminded me about that particular aspect of Mormon culture, especially here in Utah, where everyone is trying to look like they're perfect already. Like their marriage is great even when its on the rocks, and porn and homosexuality and divorce don't exist, and we pretend there isn't any tension about race or sex but there is. We keep hidden a lot of female self-esteem issues and male sexuality issues and the two exacerbate each other and lead to a host of other problems. Plastic (sometimes literally) women over 40 come into the Good Earth and get into even more debt searching for the fountain of youth because they're trying to look good for their husbands who have porn addictions which we know affect huge portions of the population here in Utah but which no one ever admitts to. So many women, including my mom and Jon's, feel stuck in their marriage but don't feel like they can talk to any of their member friends about it because that would somehow reflect poorly on them. Three girls I've worked with now are treated well on a surface level among all their peers here, but no one will get close to any of them or even consider dating them because they are black.

But enough of that stuff.

To get back on track, Carol Lynn Pearson is a fascinating lady with an obvious talent for uplifting. There were a couple times in the book when she talked about auras and psychological healing and intense meditation and that was a little weird. You can be into that and be a perfectly wonderful Mormon, but maybe you should keep that to yourself? Maybe not. Whatever, I still love her.

While I'm a little bit on the subject of women's issues...

Twilight:
This book is ridiculously popular with women and we've got to find something more healthy for them to read. I started the book because my sisters all love it and I wondered what the deal was. Its sort of a step up from a romance novel. I'm only on page thirty something though and I'm already starting to feel like being fake, pessimism, not eating, and people who have no interest in me are cool. And that nice kids are all nerds. Crap! This is not an outlook we should be cultivating in young women!

On having a boyfriend:
It's really pretty nice. Granted, the guy I found is kind and considerate and my best friends like him so far and he's gorgeous. I'm sure not all gay relationships are this great. I feel like I'm in a good one.

We went out to eat one night and the waitress asked us jokingly if we were on a "man-date". "Yeah, actually we are." I replied. Jon nodded his head. That took her off guard, but also made her nicer to us the rest of the night.

I'm sort of in awe of Jon and feel lucky to have him around. I'm not sure how to describe this really well, but I just like seeing him and watching him react to things. When I see something I think is beautiful, I just feel like I could lose myself watching it and how lucky I am to be seeing it, and that's the effect Jon has on me.

Also, I'm proud to have him as a boyfriend. I like how he treats people and I like having him around.

Sometimes I am afraid, but its a sort of afraid I get about a lot of things (jobs, apartments, car insurance payments, etc.) The fear is that I'm stuck. That I'm tied down to something and I can't get out of it, even if it is something good in my life. A good friend advises me that this is normal. Its especially normal for me, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it so much?

The other day I wanted to quit both of my jobs, pack up my things, and drive to Mexico where I would live and get better at Spanish until I felt like coming back to America. I know that sounds absurd but I was on the brink of just doing it (still might). And then I remembered that I have a boyfriend and that wouldn't be fair to him. And then I got worried because even though our relationship is not overly serious at all, I feel obligated to him and what if that obligation hampers my ability to fulfil a lot of goals and dreams I have in life which might require leaving or being on my own? Is this crazy? I'm sure it is. I think things will work out though. I'm okay going with this whole boyfriend thing for now. I'll take it a step at a time and do the best I can at it. I shouldn't be so fickle about everything.

Quotes from my spaz niece, Kylie (4):
"Jesus is pretty happy right now that I'm helping you."
"Jasmine is immodest but she has nice hair."

Jobs:
Getting pretty tired of these jobs now, though pizza can still be fun. I have an interview to be a tour guide for Holland America this summer. I'm not sure if I want that or not. I actually have something besides an education to stay in Utah for right now.

Politics and Election 2008:
I really haven't written anything since Super Tuesday and so much has happened. I voted. I even made it on the front page of the Daily Herald with a Ron Paul sign at the intersection of State Street and University Parkway. My dad and I did some campaigning in our home precinct and I'm happy to report that Ron Paul did about twice as well (6%) there than he did statewide (3%). He also did much better in my sister's precinct, where I'm living right now (about 4.5%). Still, Utah County as a whole voted about 93% in favor of Mitt Romney, and Utah State followed suit with about 90% for Romney. These are pretty magnificent numbers that you almost never see in democracies outside of pre-war Iraq, China, The DPKR, or Iran.

Two quotes from one of my personal heroes, Sir Winston Churchill come to mind:
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried." and "The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter."

Now Romney is out of the race (officially) and I'm not really clear on what happens to all of Utah's delegates to the National Republican Convention. All I know is that I'm going to try to be one of them this year. The Republican Party is hacking off its last leg, and maybe I can at least be a part of shaping it for someday down the road when it gets redeemed. If not, I'll just be independent or even democrat again just to fight the status quo here in Utah.

I'm pretty confident that I'll ultimately be voting for Obama at any rate. At least he's not duplicitous and he makes people feel good. And he's black. And another of my personal heroes, Oprah Winfrey, endorses him, so that really seals the deal right there. As goes Oprah, so goes the nation. And that can't be so bad...can it?

I never thought I would like Dolly Parton...

2008-02-09T19:44:00.000-08:00

but it turns out, I love her. I'm planning my trip to Dollywood. Just so you all know, this video has a few clips from the Transamerica soundtrack, so if you're not comfortable with that, you probably shouldn't watch. This is the most wonderful song though...

I've got lots of thoughts on life and politics and things, and I'll talk about those later.

Vote!

2008-02-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

Only a few hours left...Make sure to vote today.

A break from political videos. Jesse & Joy - Espacio Sideral

2008-02-03T00:42:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite song right now, in English or Spanish. The music video is kinda crazy, but whatever.

This is kinda how I feel about it too.

2008-02-02T09:03:00.000-08:00

(Don't worry, the blog will get less political in time. But for now, more saturation to come.)

Ron Paul. Make sure to vote on Super Tuesday.

2008-01-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

This man makes sense.

Ron Paul at the latest debate available on YouTube, January 24th in Florida.

The two videos above are Ron Paul on gay issues. I agree with him 100%

Also, if you're interested, Ron Paul has a very solid Mormon following because his views line up very well with what most prophets have said about the role of government. Especially David O McKay and Ezra Taft Benson. Also see the work of Cleon Skousen, an LDS scholar who wrote and lectured about the role of government and visit mormonsforronpaul.com.
This is why my family is supporting Ron Paul. But its not to say that the church is endorsing any one candidate over the other, because it never does. The church expects you to get informed and make that decision on your own.

Lastly, there will be a Honk and Wave rally hosted by the Utah County Ron Paul Meetup Group at the intersection of University Parkway and State Street on February 4th, the night before Utahns go to the polls on Super Tuesday. If you like this candidate, come help wave signs, pass out literature and get the word out for him. And talk to your friends and neighbors.

President Hinckley

2008-01-28T23:19:00.000-08:00

I've meant to say something since about 8:30 Sunday night about President Hinckley's passing. It caught me off guard, though I can't say it was completely unexpected. I'm very saddened by it.

President Hinckley was such a voice of reason in the church. I saw him put crowds of tens of thousands at ease. I saw him make all those people yearn to be better. He filled them with love. He filled me with love.

He had been the prophet through most of my spiritually conscious life; when I resented the church, feared the church, loved the church, put my hopes in the church, and then most recently sort of passively drifted away from the church...floating alongside somewhere. He was always there, but even when I took issue with the church and the messes it seemed to make of peoples' lives sometimes, I always loved Gordon B. Hinckley and still do.

He was a man of integrity, and not just in the way that politicians throw that word around. He knew what integrity was and lived it.

He knew how to enjoy life. He was wise and funny. He knew how to live and he knew all those little secrets about how to treat his fellow man.

I always thought of him as this sort of Yoda for the church, steadily hobbling along full of purpose with that little cane of his. He was a constant like the north star he always talked about, and he always stepped in at just the right moment, when it was needed the most, with something profound and stirring and loving and true.

The world has lost a spiritual giant.

This post doesn't really have a lot of substance, so you're allowed to skip it.

2008-01-23T21:44:00.000-08:00

When I got in my car this morning, it wouldn't start.

I love my old beamer, but one of its flaws is that is has this fuel pump switch that you turn on from the inside before you turn on the ignition. It's meant to be some sort of drag racing feature, I guess so that you can kill the engine in the event that the brakes won't work or the gas pedal sticks or for whatever reason. The guy who owned the car before me was a mechanic who tinkered with things a little, and this is just one of several quirks.

So at any rate, I'm always leaving this fuel pump switch on. It's silent, so I don't ever realize that I've neglected it, but it drains my battery, so that when I leave it on for a few hours or overnight, the car won't start the next time I want to drive it. It frustrates me like nothing else. I've become a pro at quickly and repeatedly jumping my car battery.

So I realized this morning that I had left the damn fuel pump switch on overnight. That, right there, fouled up my mood for most of the day. As fast as I've gotten with jumper cables lately, I only had about ten minutes before I was supposed to be at work which really wasn't enough time to move my brother in law's truck, jump the car, and get everything back in place before taking off. So my sister just gave me a ride to work. I was pretty grumpy, though I tried not to take that out on her.

I was relieved to make it to work on time. I've been late a lot recently and I'm trying to redeem myself. Unfortunately, just as the relief was kicking in, my boss informed me that the employee fridge/freezer had died overnight and that my job for the morning was going to be cleaning that out. Most mornings this would be no problem; I'm no stranger to dirty jobs. But it wasn't what I wanted to hear upon arrival at work today

The one good thing about this task was that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone else for a good few hours...

Jon wanted to go to lunch today. I did not feel like going to lunch or seeing Jon, just because I was in such a pissed off mood and because I looked like crap. I hadn't shaved, I still need a haircut, I have this disgusting and persistent breakout right now on my face, and to top it all off I smelled like the inside of a dairy fridge (my next project after cleaning the employee fridge was pricing milk and butter)

I just felt like hell. And I looked like hell, and that made me feel even more like hell. I wanted to come up with some BS reason for why I didn't want to go, but couldn't think about one that wasn't just an outright lie (I did consider lying...) that Jon wouldn't shoot down. So I bucked up and went to lunch. I figure if I'm going to be in any type of serious relationship with anyone, they're going to have to see me on days like this so they can get a feel for what a complete mess I can be.

I didn't say anything to Jon about my ill state when he picked me up. I just tried to make small talk and make the best of our thirty minutes. We went to Quizno's. The line was long. I spent like 10 bucks because when I have feelings I eat them -- giant sandwich, bag of sunchips, apple juice, double chocolate chip cookie. Some of you anorexic people who do the opposite need to tell me how you swing that. I didn't end up eating a lot (although I assure you I would have given the chance) because by the time we got our food my break was about up.

Jon gained some major points for still being excited to see me and/or be around me when I'm like this. Nothing was said about it, though I felt extremely self-conscious and just outright embarrassed. Jon looked and smelled great (he always does) was clean shaven, and though tired, wasn't in a bad mood at all.

So he passed what in my mind was a good test. Worse is yet to come, I'm sure, but he's doing good.

I still need a little boost of self-esteem though sometime soon. I need to actually start running for this half marathon thing in March. I haven't exercised in weeks and maybe that will make me feel better. Now I'm just rambling. Nay-nay to rambling. I'm done.

Pinetree has a boyfriend.

2008-01-14T22:21:00.000-08:00

and he came to Moab with Pinetree and his friends. And it was fun.

Libido

2008-01-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

It doesn't go away even when you're going out with someone. I thought maybe it would...

See, there's this part of me that I don't like to talk about much. A part that does really stupid things now and then. A part that wakes up somewhere he really shouldn't be at some Godless hour in the morning covered in God knows what, God knows where. He showers and goes home, wherever that is, usually listening to some music to try to cover up whatever emotion he is feeling inside. This part of me came to full actualization sometime around 15 or 16 years old.

This sick, nasty part of me is what makes me feel terrible. It's what gives me this constant need for repentance. It makes me say prayers and make promises and plead and beg and want to die.

So, I thought, "I should have a boyfriend." A legitimate sort of person to person connection that's not all gross and weird and maybe the gross weird part of me will go away...because I don't feel bad about holding a boys hand when I really like him or kissing him or really doing anything with a boy when it just happens because we like each other very much.

And I've got enough guts to handle being in a gay relationship. I can make that identity mine and make it work.

And so I've been dating a boy.

And the gross part of me did go away for a while. Its so nice to just focus on someone you're falling for when the feelings are reciprocated.

But I'm realizing now that I still have those sick urges. That maybe I'm really screwed up in the head.

The boy I've been dating lately is gorgeous. He's supermodel hot. He has these amazing angel eyes with long dark lashes. I'm big on eyes. He's relatively normal acting in public (which is a big find in the gay dating pool!) but just quirky enough that we can have sneaky inside jokes and be cute with each other. I always feel so lucky that he's even into me. I feel like the ugly end of the stick in this relationship, but he says he likes me and I'm doing my best to own that.

I've basically got what I wanted. I've even got what I want in abundance as the dating pool has opened up a lot of really attractive opportunities, though he who is mentioned above is the best one I think.

And even when I've already got the most beautiful boy in the world, this very dirty, weird Pinetree is still lurking in the shadows, willing to go off and do something bizarre and irrational with someone much less attractive.

Why!?!?

If I was a character from Heroes, I would be Niki for sure.

P.S. - I love this song:

The Kooks - She Moves In Her Own Way.

Afterglow

2008-01-02T23:29:00.000-08:00

I love this song. My buddy Josh showed it to me.

Wasted

2007-12-26T00:08:00.000-08:00

Smurf got shot down by a girl tonight, so we bought root beer float stuff and got Mormon drunk. Then we talked a lot. That is all.

Tomorrow we're both going to UVSC, where things are going to be better for both of us. And for Gypsykid too.

Pinetree Pizza Boy

2007-12-23T21:54:00.001-08:00

I've settled into a couple of new jobs. I work at a natural foods health store by day and deliver pizza at night. I'm all about sneaky double lives.

The Good Earth job is sort of tedious and boring sometimes, but its easy and I get a steady paycheck. For the first few weeks I worked the register, and that was terrible because you get a lot of mean old ladies and picky snobby people.

Quick sidenote to anyone who reads this blog, especially old ladies and those who are very particular: (now that I think of it, I'm probably just preaching to the choir....but I'll carry on) Think about yourselves in another person's shoes before you actually interact with them. So many of life's little problems would be solved if we could manage to implement the Golden Rule even with those who we think are of minimal of importance... like grocery store clerks and pizza boys.

So as I was saying, I worked the register but then quickly asked if I could learn to do some of the other things at the store. More recently, I've been able to avoid customers. I'm generally scheduled as an MPP (multi-purpose person) and I stock, price, clean, and lift heavy objects.

The pizza delivery job is perhaps one of the funnest I've ever had. In fact, I count the minutes at the Good Earth until I get to deliver pizza. I just drive all over Orem and Lindon all night on little missions. I eat as much pizza as I want. People are almost always happy to see me when I show up and they even tip me for it. I love this job!

Another great thing about the pizza job is the people. You know how at most jobs you get someone who thinks they are really important? Well, no one working at a pizza franchise thinks they are important. Consequently, everyone gets along great.

Perhaps the only downside to this job is having to wear a bright yellow shirt that makes me look like I have jaundice, but I cover it up with a jacket or pullover at night because its freezing and just wear my Papa John's hat and some khakis and big snowboots aside from that.

Anyhow, hella fun that job is.

In other news, I'm dating a boy. This is the first time I've really allowed that to happen, officially. But he's kind and smart and ridiculously good looking and I'm very tired with the church lately. I feel very let down by it (albeit not very let down by God, really) and very happy about him and just normal guilt-free being with someone in general. We'll see where this goes. It may be a temporary or permanent change for me. There's really a lot to say about all this, but I'll save it unless you ask.

I'm so excited for Christmas! I'll list here what I've gotten for all of my family because I'm pretty stoked about all of it and I haven't been telling them of course so it will be a surprise. I love getting presents for people. I wish we had Christmas more often. You'd be excited for these presents too if you knew my family:

Oldest sister, Amy: Mix cd. She keeps a list of songs that she likes from the radio on the refrigerator door and I burned them all onto a cd for her
Older sister, Lois: Gluten free brownie mixes and several pairs of really cool socks to go with these old Mary Jane shoes that she loves.
Older brother, John: Awake (Live's greatest hits) and a Kalai cd.
Younger brother, Alex: Two memory cards for his camera while he's on his mission in Germany. I actually sent these to him a while ago.
Younger sister, Lyndee: Lip gloss and body butter from the body shop as well as a fat gift card from there. I also got her a book to go along with it that has makeup tips and general how to's of beauty stuff in it. She's 17 in February. I'm not sure if the book will be taken as useful or offensive, but she should really love the other stuff at least.
Brother in law, Jared: BBC Wild Planet series. I love this show and he's always watching PBS specials while he bounces kids on his knee or whatever, so I figure he will like this.
Niece Krista, 7: High School Musical shoes.
Niece Kylie, 4: Disney Princess Calendar
Niece April, 8 months: Product red onesy (sp?) that says "Ado(RED)" because she really is.
Dad: A shirt.
Mom: A top.

I actually have a couple of other things in the works for my Mom and Dad that would have been way cooler, but didn't have time to finish them so I settled with clothes which they both actually could use I think. When I get these projects done though, I think they are going to blow my parents away.

I'm yawning now. I work tomorrow, and there's a lot I want to get done, so I'm going to call it quits for the night.

If I don't see you soon or write anything else on here, Merry Christmas. Be nice to people.

Headline News!

2007-12-18T12:54:00.001-08:00

Ron Paul is headline news on CNN today!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/18/paul.fundraising/index.html

I contributed to his campaign! And remember, if you like this guy, don't forget to register to vote. If you're a Democrat, you'll have to switch over to Republican in Utah (even if ever so briefly) so you can vote Paul in the primaries. The deadline for switching parties is January 6th and primaries for Utah are on Super Tuesday, February 5th.

If you have any questions about Ron Paul or his campaign, ask me or just google "Ron Paul"

I'll post for real later.

No dice.

2007-11-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

I didn't get the job. The hiring people said they would e-mail me either way by monday to let me know. I've been checking my email every 15 minutes since monday morning and haven't seen anything from JetBlue, so I finally called this morning. The nice lady on the phone said that I would have gotten something by now had I been hired.

Damn.

I don't know why I wasn't hired. Like I say, I think I did really well at the interview. Maybe it was the Y chromosome. Maybe I'm too white, or too tall. Too gay? Not gay enough? I don't know.

I am glad I got to at least see New York for free. I just have to think of something to do with my life now because I was sort of banking on this JetBlue job. Do I really want to go back to school in January? In Utah? I'll have to get another job if I do.

The only other options I can think of right now are:
A) Join the military
B) Pack everything into my car and take a chance starting over somewhere else in the country.

As an unrelated thought, (actually, I'm sure it connects somewhere deep in my subconscience) I'm really not feeling the whole church thing right now. I went and talked to my new bishop sunday before last. I just went numb to all the things he said to me for about two hours. Poor guy was trying really hard. I just didn't really care because I'd heard it all before. Same "struggle," same unappealing prospects for the future.

I sat there thinking maybe I should just try dating boys. And I've been thinking that ever since. And maybe I will.

Except this nasty scabby thing has developed on the side of my mouth because my lips got chapped and then split. Its revolting and fairly unlovable. So I'm going to hold off on dating anyone until I at least look normal again. Maybe I'll try to be good before then, maybe not. But I'm not going to impose guilt on myself either way.

I can't tell if I'm doing what God wants me to do or if I'm just caught in a game of chicken with Him.

Time in the Big Apple.

2007-11-10T17:46:00.001-08:00

So I'm applying to be a flight attendant and I missed my flight back to Salt Lake today. Only I could be so amazingly stupid.

I sort of misjudged how long it would take me to get to JFK airport from lower Manhattan. You have to take the subway for about and hour and then the airtrain and to make a long story short I arrived at the airport about 20 minutes before my flight left, and you have to be there 30 minutes early for them to allow you to board.

Hell.

I'll be flying back tomorrow at 1 PM. One more night in New York...

I'm staying here with my friend Chris. I met Chris the summer after my freshman year at a program sponsored by the San Jose Mercury News for aspiring young journalists. It was called Mosaic: The Urban Journalism Workshop and it was targetted to "ethnic" kids (Chris is Mexican, though not stereotypically so...think Ugly Betty as a gay guy who writes plays) from the south bay to give them a leg up in the industry (in very bay area fashion). Well, somehow I (perhaps the whitest kid at my high school) made it into this program only to become aware of the whole "ethnic" thing once I was there. But whatever, different people were nothing new and I was all excited to be a hip young journalist. Also, gay is kind of liking having an ethnicity, right?

Anyhow, at Mosaic I had a change of heart about my future career and decided I would never, ever write for a newspaper other than the one at my high school. I also made some friends, and of those friends I kept in touch the most (through phone and chat and emails) with Chris, who was really nice to me and who I knew was gay. I came out to him a little while after the program. He was probably one of the first people, if not the first ever, that I told about being gay.

So nearly seven years later, I see Chris again for the first time in New York. He's basically the same, but I'm not. I was this really chipper, go-get-'em, enthusiastic (yet exceedingly self-conscious) young kid back at that program and I'm just not anymore. Or at least I'm not right now. I tried to recreate my high school persona for Chris' sake, but it just didn't work and I feel weird here. Chris goes to NYU and has all these brilliant playwright friends who write for Broadway and have all these incredible connections with the rich and famous, and I really just don't feel like I fit in at all. They sit around and talk about terribly smart things and go see each others' plays and discuss people and things I've never heard about and then go drinking every night. I do not belong here.

So, New York has been fun and miserable at the same time. I'm thinking I should have just checked into a hostel. I always love hostels.

I saw the Little Mermaid on Broadway and I have to admitt that was fun. I saw another play written by some kid at NYU and that was interesting. I walked through Times Square and saw the Statue of Liberty from the coast of Manhattan and walked by Ground Zero and hung out at some bars with all the NYU kids.

My interview on Friday morning went really well I think. I felt totally "New York" the morning of; taking the subway and then walking through Queens with my business suit on, Dunkin Donuts breakfast and hot chocolate in hand. I went through two long group interviews, sat through some presentations, got my fingerprints done, did a drug test, proved that I could reach everything and fit into an airplane and chatted with some potential future coworkers.

You know when you leave a test feeling like you totally kicked ass? And you say to yourself, "Man, I totally kicked ass!" Thats was me after my interview. But that in itself isn't necessarily good because half the time I feel like that, I wind up with a C+ on something. So I'm just trying not to think about it until I know. I won't find out for sure until Monday.

If I make it, the company does an extensive background check on me and then I go to training in Orlando, Florida on November 28th for 3 to 4 weeks.

I just hope no one on the hiring team finds out that I missed my flight today.

New York

2007-11-06T19:47:00.000-08:00

I'm going to New York this weekend for the first time for an interview with JetBlue! And its free! Even if I don't get the job, this was already worth it.

Cycle

2007-11-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

I'm always falling into lame excuses why I can't run a race lately. I'm supposed to be spearheading my ward's stake 5k race effort tomorrow.

But I'm sick. I started feeling it on wednesday night but didn't pay it much attention. Then I went and painted Ron Paul banners all night thursday without a jacket and by this morning I felt horrible. I went in for about 20 minutes of work before I expressed to my manager that I didn't really want to be there today. Luckily they had an extra person scheduled.

Seasonally, this is about the right time for me to get sick. I remember exactly where I was around this time last year...cuddling with another sick person, listening to music: Coldplay and some movie soundtracks, falling asleep...and it was so serene for a few hours until the alarm went off sometime around 6 AM and we both had to get up and go face the world. I didn't do a very good job facing it for a while after that.

This is the time of the year when my spiritual life, at least the spiritual life that I generally think I'm supposed to have, hits an ultimate low that its been working towards since sometime in the middle of summer. I get depressed and start thinking about ways to leave Provo again and somehow abandon everything that is my sorry little life.

I watched this movie called Year of the Dog the other day. Its actually sort of a silly dark comedy, but at one point the main character gets let down by another character and starts crying and then says the whole situation is okay because she's finally realized for certain that everyone just ends up disappointing her. I almost started crying too.

I've started fantasizing about shipping off somewhere and starting fresh, finding a boyfriend or just a calling, blah blah blah. Its dumb, I know, but its sort of how I operate.

I bought a car. A little red BMW 325. We're almost the same age and its loud as hell thanks to a souped up muffler, but I like it. I've always wanted an old beamer.

I applied to be a flight attendant for JetBlue. I was surprised to find out that my application had moved forward and yesterday I did an "automated telephone interview". I think I did alright overall, but my response to the first question was a little shaky and awkward because I was trying to get used to the idea of being personable with an audio recorder. I'm anxious and excited to see what happens. Would I be able to go to school with this job? No... Its also a ridiculously stereotypical gay guy job, but I don't care. I'm in love with the idea of getting to just take off all the time. If I make it, I'll be able to get on any domestic standby flight for free with just about any airline. For international flights, all I would have to pay is taxes. I get starry-eyed just thinking about it. Of course, it would be a while until I wasn't on-call with a completely unpredictable schedule, but ahh...just imagine...going anywhere.

Even if I don't get the job with JetBlue, I'm sure I'll have come up with some method of escape by February or March even though I'm trying to gear up to go to UVSC in January.

I'm living with my oldest sister, Amy, right now. I'm always trying to think of better ways to be her brother. I know I lack in that department sometimes. I have a feeling that she and my two other sisters should finally know about what is going on in my life, but I can't find a reason to tell her other than I just feel like I should. So I don't... I just help out a lot with the housework and the kids, especially the things I know she hates doing like the dishes. She does such a good job with her lot in life. She's a wonderful mom and her kids are bright and adorable and have grown up not wanting for love. I just hope she feels fulfilled with that. I know its sometimes hard for her to keep the perspective that she holds on to so tightly. She's so smart, and I know she sometimes wonders about the what ifs and what could have beens in life. She doesn't show it anymore, though.

I just watched The Family Stone sitting here in bed. What a nice little open-minded family. The gay couple seemed so reasonable.

I had this idea that I was going to read the whole Book of Mormon over the summer and sort of straighten up and fly right and gain a more solid testimony. I did so well for a while. Not only doing the BOM thing, but writing in my journal, going to all the church meetings and activities that I could in Anchorage, keeping everything clean and organized, keeping track of finances and planning a budget. Everything was great for about a month there and then it got sporadic and then it puttered out.

I should muster up the motivation to get my act together again, but theres this problem with turning things around in my life or repenting or whatever, and that is that I've started to see how despite my noblest of efforts, my "bad side" always finds a way to outsmart my "good side."

Things are going in a different direction fast and I don't know if I should just go with it and see where I end up, or for the millionth time try to correct course for a place that I can't be sure about but feel is right...maybe only because I feel secure with it. Both sides have their case and both are unknowns.

That last bit was so general and cliche that I'm annoyed with myself. I'm done writing for now.

Heavenly Music.

2007-10-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

Listen to:

-The "I Want to Hold Your Hand" cover by T.V. Carpio used on the Across the Universe soundtrack. This is the most beautiful cover of this song. And it has a lesbian twist. My favorite song right now. Such a gorgeous voice.

-The "Let it Be" cover from Across the Universe. Heavenly. Dripping with soulful grace.

-"No, No Never" by Texas Lightning for a more upbeat song. You can find it if you search for them on Youtube. Usually the first search result is a video of them playing at the Eurovision 2006 song contest and its a good one. This is a German country band from Hamburg(where my little brother will bed serving his mission in 2 days)with an Australian lead singer.

Post Priesthood Session Thoughts.

2007-10-06T23:25:00.001-07:00

I want a T-shirt that says "flaming" on on the front and "red-head" on the back.

Thomas S. Monson says I can do anything.

Departure

2007-09-20T02:28:00.000-07:00

It's very late at night here in Alaska and all of my roommates are asleep, so imagine me whispering all of this to you.

I'm coming home tomorrow, finally. I had my exit interview and my boss said I did and excellent job and that she wouldn't hesitate to hire me again. I cleaned train cars for a couple of days and now I'm ready to go home. My flight was actually scheduled for the 23rd, but I spent a bunch more money so that I could come home earlier than that. No regrets at all. I'll be on a plane all day tomorrow...this morning actually. It's time to come back to Utah for a while.

See you soon maybe, and goodnight.

Fall in Alaska, lest I forget. And a mini-tour of a McKinley Explorer train car

2007-09-16T19:09:00.001-07:00

A Tour of the Train

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Hurricane Gulch in the Fall.

I thought these clouds sort of looked like giant footprints in the sky.

Getting cooler. Fog rolling in. This is the best I could capture it.
Healy Coal Mine. This means you are close to Denali National Park.
Fall colors
Fall colors, side of the train.
Fall.
More Fall. The pictures don't even do it justice, really.

The switch: where the northbound train meets the southbound train. This is what we make the guests do upstairs to keep them busy during the switch. It's called the moose wave. Tour package vacations are really a lot like kindergarten classes for retired people.

A light at the end of a tunnel.

Waiting for the bus to take us to the Best Value Inn in Fairbanks.

Pretending to sleep on the train.

Train of thought.

2007-07-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

I just got off the train again last night. Phew. This is a tough job, but I plan to stick it out for the rest of the summer. With my next paycheck, I'll be free of all student loans. The relief is almost enough to make a guy never want to go to school ever again...

I turned 21 this weekend. On Thursday, Smurf and Rascal and I got some Indian food and went to Harry Potter. It was cool. Pretty much like most nights off, except I got a present too.

On Friday, my actual birthday, I was on the train again soaked in dishwater and old peoples' chewed food rocking violently back and forth on a track somewhere between Anchorage and Fairbanks Alaska. It really wasn't too bad for a day on the train. I only had to wash dishes for one train car instead of the usual two. The waitstaff sang me happy birthday at dinner and brought me some chocolate cheesecake. When we rolled into Fairbanks, several people offered to buy me a drink and when I turned them all down this girl Brooke settled with owing me ice cream. This guy Matt invited me to go to a Korean restaurant with a bunch of our coworkers at night to celebrate. I didn't really want to go...I just wanted to go to bed, but I didn't want to look like a jerk (or Heaven forbid, some sort of social introvert...) so we went out to eat. I got some tasty beef and noodles, and everyone except an underage Bulgarian girl and I got drunk. There was a lot of Karaoke, starting with the Happy Birthday song sung to me by the owners of the restaurant. I actually have a video of that on my camera, but I don't have it with me.

Birthday in Fairbanks

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Suffice it to say, its pretty one-of-a-kind. Lots of people sang Karaoke after that. I sang Karaoke and it was really terrible. I don't even want to talk about it.

Tomorrow Smurf and Rascal get on a plane to go back to Utah. It's a little sad because they really are my best buddies up here, but at the same time it'll be nice to just live independent of them for a while. Even if only for a couple months. Sometimes I forget how I used to function on my own, and that's an important thing to remember. I'm moving in with some other folks who work on the train, and they seem cool enough.

My little brother, Alex is going to Hamburg, Germany on his mission!!! Best news of the week. I got a call from my family a few days ago just after I had stepped off the train. I was walking home through downtown Anchorage, hauling my giant blue backpack in my dirty chef pants and white shirt when I got a call from my family. They put me on speaker phone while my little brother opened up his call. He read his letter and we were all whooping and shouting when he read where he was going. It was one of those classic Mormon moments and it made me so happy...I was beaming. Everything was even brighter than it usually is at 9 o'clock at night in Alaska. My family is the mostest and I can't wait to see them again. I've thought about them so much since coming up here...just how their lives are going and what kind of people they all are and all the things I want to do with them when I get back and what I want to get them for Christmas. They're so important to me and I need to figure out how to treat them as such more often.

Speaking of which, I was reading the new church pamphlet, "God Loveth His Children" last night. The pamphlet was made for "SGA" individuals in the church. I was so impressed with it, and so pleased that it was produced. It is so dead on. It's really what I and so many people I know need to hear. A lot of it I had already sort of established in my mind, but never could put into words like that. Someone must have worked the wording of it over and over. It's such a tightrope to walk. It will be just little controversial I think, but so be it. We have desperately needed just a little more guidance from the church in this area. It's so tricky to address us gays, and they did a good job I think. It made me feel good to be in the church and made me feel just a little bit more like I belong. My favorite line was, "Happiness is harvested from the cultivation of worthwhile things, not just the suppression of that which offends God."

Delicious Women.

2007-06-26T02:02:00.000-07:00

One day back in Provo, Smurf and I were hanging out at my apartment when he noticed a large poster hanging up in my room. The poster features a beautiful German brunette with green eyes in a little Octoberfest outfit. She has a dazzling smile and is holding three enormous, mouthwatering ice cream cones in front of her chest.

Smurf was pretty amused by the poster, or perhaps merely that it was hanging in my room. He asked about it and I told him that I had it up so I would start associating beautiful females with ice cream and/or other delicious treats, and subsequently develop a sexual attraction to women. Smurf started laughing his head off

...until he looked over and realized that I was dead serious.

And my scheme might just be working! I'm always incredibly attracted to cute girls who make delicious treats.

At any rate, a few extraordinary movies have entered my life since moving to Alaska, and I can't help but acknowledge a common link between each of the movies' leading ladies...and that I'm ridiculously attracted to all of them.

My summer crushes include:
Maggie Gyllenhaal's character from Stranger than Fiction; Dropped out of Harvard Law because she was more interested in making treats for her study groups than for actually studying (we would so get along). She left and started a bakery.

Juliette Binoche's character in Chocolat; has a habit of running from town to town all over Europe with her daughter. Runs a Chocolatier in a small French town in the movie where she tempts the townsfolk with her sensuous treats. or Kerri Russel's character in Waitress; A pretty, kind, small town girl who invents new recipes for scrumptious pies in the restaurant where she works as a waitress.

I recommend all of the above movies.

Additionally, in real life there is a little ice cream shop in the hotel next to the one where we stay in Fairbanks, and I'm in love with the girl who serves me ice cream there. She is adorable.

A little more of Alaska.

2007-06-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

The following are on a hike I took last night up to Little O'Malley mountain, in the Chugach mountains very near Anchorage.

The sky is huge here, and mostly the sun just goes around it, not over it, except for about 4 hours every day.

Sunset over Anchorage. That means 11:30 to 12:00 midnight. The buildings in the distance are downtown.

Salmon Fishermen over the river near the railyard.

That's my street about a block from my apartment. And that's a giant moose walking down the road. Only in Alaska...

This is the chic little restaurant near the Westmark. We get our meals half off here because we work for Holland America. :)

This is Smurf eating at the chic restaurant. I hope his mother sees this post...

Amen.

Politics

2007-06-19T00:42:00.000-07:00

After staying up watching speeches and debates that covered almost all of the presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat, I've decided that this man is my current presidential favorite. I may see about campaigning for him.

Ron Paul on the Daily Show

Ron Paul at the GOP Presidential Debates

Alaska pics.

2007-06-08T16:36:00.000-07:00

I rented a bike on one of my days off and biked the Coastal Trail in Anchorage as well as a few other things like the airport for small and water-take-off planes (one of the largest in the world). This place really has gotten beautiful.

Who washes your dishes!?

2007-05-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

Mt. McKinley

Trip to Alaska.

2007-05-10T00:44:00.000-07:00

(The following is a write up of our trip to Alaska by one of my traveling companions, Evan. All artistic genius credit goes to him, I just copied and pasted because it was easier than writing this whole story out again myself. Also, I’ve added a few notes of my own, distinguished by parantheses and a “side note from Pinetree:” or “SNFP”.)

Day 1 - Underway

I woke at about 8 to finish packing my livelihood into one piece of luggage and a backpack. Not too hard to do I guess… 15 pair of underwear; 12 T-shirts; 5 dress shirts 10 pair of socks; 4 pair of jeans; 1 pair of black workpants.

After getting that squared away I had to pack the remainder of my belongings into a few boxes that could store in someone’s garage without taking too muck space. I finished that around 12 noon. Then met up with Burton, a guy I know through Los Hermanos who got the same gig . It was to be me, Burt and Pinetree driving to Alaska in a two door Saturn. We ran around taking care of last minute things. Then went to pack Pinetree’s stuff. Pinetree had consolidated his things down into a few pieces of luggage and a backpack but we didn’t have room for some of his camping gear so he packed in what he could into his suitcase. We got it all in and started to head out of town. At which point I realized I had left my birth certificate, Drivers license and social security card in the Xerox machine at the library (dumb dumb.) I went in and it wasn’t there… checked with the front desk… not there. She sent me to the …back desk and they had it there! The librarian gave me a look like ‘you lucky dumb ass!’

So we head out of town, stopping to fuel up at Costco. I ran in to try and buy an SD card for my digital camera but it was like $40 for a 2 gig (and I already had one in the mail from Hong Kong) so I figured I’d make do with the cameras internal memory until I could find a cheaper one (wal-mart has 1 gigers for like 14 bucks.)

Headed to Idaho. we stopped in some Idaho town to fill up again, it had one gas station/grocery store. Not that weird to me since I grew up in Podunk Oklahoma. But it was funny that the music playing in the store sounded like the score for Nappy D. We got to Boise around 10 and stayed with Burt's uncle Warren (not Jeffs). He had made us some nice minestrone soup. unfortunately I'm allergic to beans and it had beans in it. but I had some cereal and corn bread with honey. we slept like... dogs (at least I did, I got the floor).

Day 2 - Bad Luck.
Next day we headed out around 12 after visiting burtons grandma, she sent us on our way with some fruit and graham crackers . We had a pretty uneventful trip until we were about the middle of Oregon. Burton was driving. I spotted a cop in the median between the highway lanes and said “Burt, po-po” he didn’t realize what I had said till we were right on the cop. He slowed down (he had only be doing 5 over anyway) and we passed the cop doing the limit. I think its important to note that we were all in good spirits at this point and probably all had smiles on our faces, which, I think is the only explanation for what happened next. The cop pulled out of the median, we had two semis between us and him and they were doing a good job of staying side by side which kept him off our tails for a bit. Burt wasn’t sure if the cop had clocked us before he slowed down or not and Pinetree said he needed to pee. Se we decided to pull off at the next exit and try and loose him (and find a bathroom). We pulled off and the cop pulled off behind us. And tailed us for a couple of miles (there were no gas stations or anything for Pinetree). After tailing us for an eternity the cop finally turned on his lights. He asked us if we were aware that we had ’something hanging off your bumper.’ Burt told him he had been rear ended recently and hadn’t gotten it fixed. I must say that this point I was relieved ( unlike Pinetree who really REALLY needed to relieve himself). But then, the cop asked us if we had been drinking, and if we had been taking any illegal substances. Burt giggled at this because its absurdity
(to him) and said ‘uh…*giggle*. No…’ the cop then asks him to take off his glasses and tip his head back. Burt complied. Then he told him to close his eyes.. Burt shut his eyes kinda tight, on account that the sun was pretty bright and kinda bothering him. The cop told him not to squint just to relax, so he did. His eye lids were fluttering (again, the sun was pretty bright.) He said that was indicative or marijuana use. Asked if we would be okay with him searching the car. We said ‘sure, go ahead.’ he asked if we would be okay with a canine unit coming in to sniff our luggage. Sure. Go ahead. Pinetree asked if it was illegal to pee on the side of the road. Cop said it was. (whatever…) (side note from Pinetree: I was ready to just forego the side of the road and pee on the officer at this point. Have I mentioned I hate the police?) He took Burt’s ID and registration and went back to his car. When he came back he asked Burt to step out of the car and do a couple more tests. He told him to do the little close your eyes thing again, then had him stick his tongue out. He said that his green tongue was also indicative of smoking weed, asked him again if he had been using it, Burt explained that he had an Amp energy drink in the car if the officer wanted to look. The cop said “be honest with me, have you EVER in your life used marijuana?” Burt replied “no, never in my entire life have I ever used marijuana” he asked if either me or Pinetree had ever used it. “not to my knowledge” he asked him again if he would be okay with having his car searched by a canine unit. When Burt again said “go ahead” the cop told him he was okay to leave, and told him where the next gas station was.

That was just plain old fashioned harassment. The guy was clearly bored out of his mind. Saw three guys having a good time and thought “ I could wait for someone to speed, but that’s probably not going to happen, it hasn’t yet at least… or I could go stop those guys … easy enough…. they have a broken bumper… and I’m sure there’s a couple of secondary offences I can get them on… seatbelts… registration… insurance. Yeah. Lets do that! (he said all of this to the little devil on his left shoulder.)
Upon discovering that we are 100 percent legit motorists he figures (in his head so we couldn’t hear him)
“so you have all your ducks in a row do you? Well let’s just see about that… I’ve seen happy campers in my day, and I’ve seen campers that are TOO happy. And there’s the slightest chance that you have enlisted the aid of a little helper, if you know what I mean… which, if you could hear my thoughts, you probably would”
And he sets about trying to find any little discrepancy in our mannerisms and behaviors that would give the slightest reason for suspicion. “well” he says in his brain “ this driver guy is certainly giggly, and he probably doesn’t react well to bright light… I’ll have him stare at the sun!” he continues and then he gets a little more frustrated, “this guy has to have at least TRIED drugs at one point in his life…”

Anyway, you get the point. He thinks like a child who loves playing cops and robbers. He also reminds me of a beast I once knew that was the most tenacious of tentacled sea dwellers. He just wouldn’t let go. He met his end at the point of a harpoon… directly between the eyes. As I am sure that cop will.

Part 3 Day Two cont‘d - “Drive on, Driver.”

After the whole racist cop incident we got back underway. We were getting pretty far along, we had crossed into Washington and all was well except for Burt’s whiny punk music. I found some me time and decided to spend it sleeping. (kinda hard to do when you’re packed in like a prized specimen of the perfect race, with a lot of luggage instead of bubble wrap or packing popcorn (since that stuff is a choking hazard and all, and we’re talking a LIVING specimen) but I dozed off soon enough.

Not long enough though, It seems. I had barely nestled in to a pile of money, women and cotton candy when I was awakened by what sounded like air escaping instantaneously from a circular rubber tube molded around small reinforcing wire and nylon mesh. And my instincts proved true. It was in fact air escaping and it was in fact a circular rubber air retaining device as I described… a tire. The front left one to be exact.

Burt pulled over (to the right side of the road, as is proper) and as luck would have it we were right by a rest stop. If good luck had been on the ball he(she?) would have let bad luck take over just a little earlier where we could have made it actually INTO the rest stop instead of on the other side of a long tall chain link fence… but whatever, (s)he’s luck… and really didn’t owe us any favors and I‘d say she was at least considerate enough to take a break when s(he) did.

The tire was ripped like this months Mr. Beefcake centerfold in Playgirl (that what the mechanic said at least, I’ll take his word for it.) So we figured airing it up again wasn’t enough… we needed something a little less ruined to replace it with. That’s when we decided that a spare tire would be the best plan, and so we got out the one that was in the trunk. Pinetree did most of the work, I’ll admit. (I was hesitant to touch the tire that would be likened to a nude man within a couple of hours. Although that must have been a subconscious reasoning for not touching it, as I didn’t yet know the mechanic had gotten this months issue.) (side note from Pinetree: Ha! So Evan knows about the whole gay thing, just to put that in perspective...Burton has no clue though)

We went to put on the small, not so showy or ripped replacement (which will probably never be featured in an adult women’s magazine) but alas, it was kinda…. flaccid. It needed to be aired up and we lacked the lung power to do it ourselves. that’s when we decided that we needed something or someone else to do it for us. We asked a couple of truckers if they could do it ( I thought they might since their trucks are equipped with air brakes and I thought there was a good chance that they had an adapter to use for tires. But no luck. I checked out from the group to use the stinker. And I feel it is necessary at this point to tell you that I was SICKLY! After… a while… I rejoined my compadres who were trying to get ahold of their insurance providers to see if they offered roadside assistance. But they didn’t. The other guys wanted to see about maybe hitchin’ a ride into town to get someone to tow us and I was like What?! Why not just get them to air up the tire. And then I realized that that’s what they were actually wanting to do. But I maintained that we still had a good chance of finding a trucker with a typical crude composure and a typical trucker T shirt... like with a woman wearing next to nothing and doing something totally unladylike… and above it usually some name like Harley Davidson (which sounds to me like a pretty white trash name… pretty fitting for an airbrushed whore who has no more decency than to sprawl out all over a motorcycle in a torn up T-shirt that would serve better to mop up a smoothie from the kitchen floor. Or maybe even some spring water or canola oil... Like tuna comes in, sometimes that makes quite a mess on the floor… at least in my experience.)

About this time Good Luck clocked in again and picked up where he left off. He didn’t miss a beat. He obliged on the whole trucker scenario (even down to the T shirt, but I didn’t notice it, Burton did.) He was on the phone with none other than “a pair of double D’s” so we had to wait a little while. But then he got right to it and used his brake lines to air the spare up to 60 PSI (as per manufacturer recommendation).

We slapped it on and we were on our way! (when I say slapped I don‘t literally mean slapped, but more in a sort of a general way that just conveys that we did in fact act with some sort of verb or action that securely fastened the tire to the hub… I just said Slapped to save myself from describing the process.)

We made it to Cle Elum, a little biddy town with a service station that had a dog passed out on the floor in front of the counter. The lady on the other side of the counter referred us to a shell station that does tires. We mozy’d on down. He said he had a used tire for $40 or a new one for a hundred or more. We opted for the used one. And had him throw a tire rotation into the $10 labor fee. $50 bucks got us rolling again. And we made it the rest of the way into Seattle with minimal hassle. (which was cool… and I managed a crappy picture of the Space Needle at night… but I think I lost it) Once we found where we were going to stay.

Day 3 - Seattle

So we woke up around 9 (AM, that is) and decided to get some breakfast and see the sights. We stayed the night at Burton’s sisters online friend Jason’s house…. Yeah. He was pretty cool. I didn’t sleep so well because I was still feeling SICK. We headed out and grabbed McDonalds. I got a sprite. We drove around the place… lots of up and down and side to side. I got queasy and puked in a trashcan. And let me just say, I started feeling better immediately. We parked in the convention center and walked around. We ended up at the space needle (which was right up the street from where we stayed, at my buddy Jason’s place (Jason is actually an acquaintance of Burt’s sister, but I like to think we’re buds.)) Pretty sweet little spot. It started raining while we were up there, but it subsided a little by the time we left. We walked around and down and up and across. We went to REI headquarters and I got me a nice sleeping bag. And as it turns out an extra stuff sack for it (Which proved fortuitous later… more on that later). We dropped off some stuff at the car and went to the underground market. At which point I began feeling more sickly than ever. My bones felt like they were frosted with ice. And my tummy hurt. I sat down and told the boys they could walk around… after a while Burt came back and sat with me and then Pinetree came back from the comic book store. (side note from Pinetree: I was getting a book and a few single issues of Smurf’s favorite comic, Astro City at the comic book store. We had just had a discussion with our friend Kaylene on Earth Day (Earth Day 2006 pictured below. NOT part of the Alaska trip)about characters in media that we thought we related to in one way or another, and Smurf said he related to this character, The Confessor, from the Astro City comics the most of any. So, Smurf being one of my best pals, I was intrigued by this Confessor character and wanted to read about him. When I saw the comic book store in Seattle, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to do some research. I also bought some of the comics Smurf is missing. I’ve since read all the comics I bought and I seriously love them. I love superheroes. Anyways, enough of this side note.) We went home and I slept for a while. Burt and Jason ordered a pizza and we played Settlers of Katan. It’s an alright game. I kinda like it. (another side note from Pinetree: Pinetree does NOT like Settlers of Catan. At this point, he was off eating dinner at a homo diner on Broadway Street and hanging out with some pals he knew who had moved to Seattle…but Evan and Burton don’t know this)

We went to bed. And upon awakening we packed our stuff and headed out. I had to stop and grab some pepto bismol. We crossed the US/Canadian border and talked Borat with the customs officer. He was pretty chill. Made terrorist jokes about us and stuff. It was special.

We got to Vancouver and decided to park and look around. So we did. We looked around a grocery store, they had hella cheese. And some of it was exposed completely, mold and seepage and whatnot. Kinda sick.

We were stopped by a homeless man who asked us for money. We told him that we were American and had no Canadian money he said “that’s okay I can use an American quarter” but we told him ‘we don’t carry cash’. but we really did and I feel that we lost a little bit of our treasure up in heaven for holding out on him.

Vancouver was okay nothing really cool stood out to me. (SNFP: I really loved Vancouver, I thought it was an awesome city that I could perhaps live in someday) Mostly I was sick again and didn’t enjoy myself that much. We ate at an American style restaurant that was PRICEY. Oh that reminds me. We went to a FMV or something and I thought I’d buy an SD card. Remember how I wanted to get a cheap one instead of paying 40 bucks for a 2 GB? Yeah, try 45 US dollars for a 1 GB. Such BULLCRAP. That money could have gotten me a 3 pack of 1 GB in the U.S. of A.

Anyway, I went ahead and bought one and took some pictures. We got lost on our way back to the car and ended up in the ethnic part of town in fear for our lives. The locals had wings and coo’d a lot. And they had the weirdest writing on their signs. See Pictures. (SNFP: Sorry, I don’t know what pictures he is talking about)

that’s enough about Vancouver. Suffice it to say that we made our way back to the car and got our collective butt out.

Day 3 - the Long 99/Unknown Territory

I’d like to start this one off with a verse of scripture and a spiritual thought.

Okay forget the scripture and lets scratch the spiritual part of the thought, I would like to quote a line from my boys Nappy Roots.

So rough it was, downright wrong, I tell ya
Nobody never gave us nothin but tough time, and made us somethin
Different stretch of road, new somethin to see
Every state on the map, a different somethin to eat

After we crossed the Border we realized that we were somewhere south of hell when we saw that everything was in Kilometers and Liters, And CANADIAN dollars. There were also tons of Asians (that’s just a side note, it didn’t have anything to do with hell). At first we were kinda excited to see that gas was something like $1.26 and then we realized that that was per liter or cup or ounce or what have you. Anyway. I’m going to take a moment to expose a Canadian conspiracy….

See, over there, they take our mile (yours and mine) and HACK it into one and 6/10ths kilometers. “Why would they do this?” (That’s your line) Because they DWELL in confusion! Also they have conditioned the Canadian Commoner into feeling that it really means something. Like, for instance, a Canadian commoner might say something like this… *ahem* “oh say, der… we’re aboot to hit 100 KM/h! that’s really something, der eh?” but, in fact, it is not something. Because they are actually only going 60 American miles per hour (they left the hour alone, but I’m sure it will soon be corrupted by their skewed perception of reality.) Hence, by slowing down traffic through Canadia, they retain passers-through for longer forcing them to spend their valuable, uncanadian currency in Canada! It also keeps Canada going slower than the rest of the world, which explains why Canada is so far behind the times. Scientists predict that eventually Canada will collide with Russia, because its moving to slowly to keep up. Luckily Russia isn’t going much faster, which puts the estimated time of collision (EToC) some 20 years down the road. (that’s only 5 years away for the rest of us, though.)

I again visited the land of cotton candy, loose change and women for an hour or so. We started into some pretty green and snowy mountains. Burt’s exceptional driving kept us between the lines for the most part. We drove and drove. And then stopped in Lillooet, BC (which here and hereafter means British Columbia, or Canada) and camped. I was pretty much still in the depths of sickness, but the camp host gave us a key to the bathrooms (there and thereafter called “washrooms” or “Water closets”) (SNFP: We really only heard “washrooms”) So I survived the night.

Day 4 - More Mountainous Road. (And long stretches of not so mountainous but by no means desert-like road.)
Next morning was when I took over driving. We got all packed up and headed out, stopped off to pay the camp fee, 22 demented dollars (that’s kinda like funny money, except there’s not really anything funny in Canada.) I feel its necessary for me to give credit to my friend Burton at this point. He had been the sole driver thus far, which was well over 1000 miles of road. But I took over. So enough about him.

I drove for a while or two, about 8 hours worth. We stopped at a DQ somewhere near the start of the day and ate food. And drove on, And nothing happened. That is, until I got really sick and drove like a mad man to the wee town of Chetwynd, BC. I was in no condition to drive after that, (remember when you feel sorry for me that is day 3 of my horrible illness, with no end in sight.) I bought some Imodium AD ($7.36 #$@% dollars) and we continued. This time with Pinetree behind the wheel.

I don’t know if Pinetree has driven a stick before, but he only killed the car once. He dumped the clutch quite a bit along the way but I think that subsided after a while. (SNFP: Pinetree had driven stick before. Pinetree’s first car was a stcik, but it had been a while and he had to get used to it again. Also, Pinetree drove his first car into a city bus) .He drove through the most mundane stretch of road ever witnessed by passers through such as ourselves.
He got antzie I guess and upped his speed to about 86 MPH or 138 CMU’s (herein and hereafter known as Canadian measuring units) What happened next has been classified as too to be depicted by mere words. And I’m sorry to say that in all the confusion I was unable to find time to snap a photo.

PINETREE GOT TICKETED! (SNFP: I swear there is an international popo conspiracy against me) Damned mountie caught up with us somehow. And he held nothing back… well he kinda knocked the price of the ticket down some but still… let me just say here **** the R.C.M.P.
Pinetree was pretty bummed and said he was pretty much done with the whole car driving scene. (SNFP: Mostly I just couldn’t afford another ticket…I still need to figure out how to pay this one somehow…in Canadian funds no less.) Burt took over and drove us into a what would be the last vague indication of civilization that we would witness for a long time… long.

More later! Will a higher power Deliver our heroes from certain peril!? The climax is yet to… happen.
And so, Until next time…

Day 4 - The Adventure Begins!

We came to the town of Fort Nels-- wait, wait! let me back up… So, we were about 50 miles out of Fort Nelson when we realized that we were DANGEROUSLY low on gas. Our minds were rushing with anticipation ‘ Will we make it to Fort Nelson?! (we didn’t know.) “Will we die in this netherworld!?” (I’m not sure who asked this question, I was delirious in my illness and couldn’t muster the energy to find out. Looking back it seems kind of an absurd question… but far be it from me to pass judgment.) Will I never get the chance to deny my kids something they really want, as is traditional for parents to do?! ( I actually cried to think of this one, Burt will deny it but he was welling up, too.) We were thoroughly stricken with terror. Palms sweating, we watched anxiously as the fuel gauge dipped ever closer to the black void below the E (which represents the word Execrable.) I have to interject at this point, I simply can’t permit you to experience all the anxiety that we had to endure. Just so you know, we made it to Fort Nelson without so much as a sputter. So yeah, we got gas. Stopped at Boston Pizza. I had a lemon water (I was still deathly Ill, but the recent, taxing and stressful experience left me a bit parched… and due to my illness I was losing fluids…a lot.)

We hit the road and Burt took the wheel. He drove us pretty much into the heart of the unknown. He and Pinetree woke me up to see the northern lights (erora boryalus). I didn’t really get a good look at them, the windows were pretty frosted over. They were pretty much gone after 5 minutes. I went back to bed and awoke to the most bone chilling sound in the world for 3 transnationalists to hear when miles from the nearest settlement!

Read on to hear what happens next! Was the sound crunching bones!? Was it death gurgles? Maybe the sound of a thousand angry canucks moving in for the kill… stay tuned to learn the truth!

Okay then, I wont keep you waiting. The sound was excruciating to the trained ear of a mechanic. The sound had nothing in fact to do with crunching bones. Or death gurgles. It may as well have been a thousand angry Canadians, but there were NONE around. It was a metallic scraping… it sounded kind of like if you were to take an internal combustion engine and deplete the lubrication system while it is operating. And that, my readers, is exactly what had happened the very internal combustion engine that was beneath the hood of the car we were driving. (Burt was driving. Hence, Burt is to blame.) He acted like it surprised him and said something totally transparent like “oh shucks! That doesn’t sound good.” but we all knew it was what he wanted. He pulled over and killed the car…. At this point we were NOT getting anywhere at all. I wouldn’t stand for it. But we really had no choice . Burt tried to ditch us and make off on his own.. But, again, I saw right through it and wouldn’t stand for it. He said he was going to “just walk to the last gas station… about 23 miles back.”

We made him stay put. I took the opportunity to relieve myself on the side of the road (and was ecstatic with the results). We put the hood up and turned on the flashers and tried to sleep. I woke up every time a car passed (don’t get me wrong, its not like there was a lot of traffic…) but most didn’t stop. A trucker stopped and offered to give one of us a ride to the next gas station in the opposite direction. But we courteously declined (I had nothing to do with it, Burt was doing the talking. Being in the back seat, it was just my job to wake him up when people stopped… that was no small chore.) After a while some people stopped and gave us a quart of oil.. We put it in (I had nothing to do with it, Burt did all the pouring…. Being in the back seat and all I couldn’t very well get out for such a small chore.) He hopped back in the car and went to start it but it wouldn’t turn over. Burt said it was bad news and I tried to be optimistic about it. I thought what with all the hours of flashers being on that there was the minutest of chances that it had drained the battery to low to turn the engine over. Burt put the hood back up. And eventually this kindly couple with a camper trailer stopped and tried to give us a jump, Didn’t work.

He offered to “tow-start” us. I guess that’s how lazy people push start a car. He stung a tow rope from their camper to our car and I put it in second gear… turned the key to run and what not and he started pulling.

After about 30 feet the wheels locked up and he was literally dragging the car. (I knew this was bad news, read on to see what happens.) Since that wasn’t working out he offered to tow us into the next town (which turned out to only be about 10 miles away… Watson Lake, BC. look it up.) So, Pinetree hopped in the cab with the kindly smoker couple and their dog. And me and Burt jumped in the car and the towing began. After about 2 miles the tow strap broke. We moseyed over to the shoulder but the smoker couple kept driving without so much as a hint of noticing their lost cargo. I started gathering my stuff together out of the car and what not. Burt went and pee’d on the other side of the road. I Yodeled some. That was fun. ( A word of caution: Be sure to note your surroundings when preparing to yodel. If there is any chance that your yodeling may cause an avalanche, or a severe beating, refrain from yodeling.) We waited for a while and it didn’t seem like our would-be rescuers were going to come back. I noted that there was the slightest chance that they had eaten our comrade, Pinetree. Or were, even as we discussed it, torturing him as strangers often do to innocent, unfortunate travelers. WE figured that this was more than a slight chance after all. Burt said he was glad I was on the road trip because of my high spirits when the going got rough (at this point it is safe to say that the going had gotten rough)

Burt was pretty much placid as well. I guess we both fail to see the point of dwelling on the negative and letting it affect your mentality. It’s so much better to try and stay positive, or at least to find some distraction from the negative when there’s nothing to be done about it. That’s exactly what the case was here… nothing to do but to wait for our would-be good Samaritans to discover they lost their payload and then hope they came back. But in the mean time, why not laugh at the absurdity of how long it was taking them? And so we did just that.

Eventually they came back. Pinetree and the Samaritan’s wife asked us “how far did we make it before the tow rope broke?” to which there was no real reply, since we were no more than 10 yards from the breaking point. Burt answered “oh, about from where we started to about…. Right here.” Now I appreciated the humor behind this little joke, but some did not. (SNFP: Namely Pinetree. Let me explain. I really did want to know how far we made it. I was the one who got to keep getting under the car and tying the tow rope to it, so I was wondering if we even had enough rope to make it, (my knots stayed every time, the strain from the pull was just to much on the middle of the rope and it kept breaking.) and the road all looked the same. It was straight and long with skinny trees thickly packed on either side. Back to Evan now…) And I can understand that, but there was a point to the answer… the point was something like “We only know what happened from there to here. And we have no better means of estimating that than you have.” but the question was repeated and the answer didn’t change much.
Like I said, I can see where this rubbed Pinetree the wrong way, and maybe we should have fought the urge to be smartasses about it and ventured a guesstimation, because sometimes people will persist until they get the answer they want even if its irrelevant, but I didn’t feel it merited the energy since the point was moot. (SNFP: I pretty much felt the same way at this point and had rolled my eyes at Burt (who was still giggling to himself over how funny he was) and gotten over it long since)

After 2 more broken ties and retries we made it all the way into town. The last break happened right as we were pulling into the diner/car shop so me and Burton hopped out and pushed it the rest of the way. The goodly people went on their way, Pinetree sent them off with an expression of our gratitude and a good “God bless!” (SNFP: for some reason that just seemed appropriate for these people. You would understand if you had spent the last 45 minutes in their car with them chatting and petting their dog) and we went into the diner to wait for the mechanic. He showed up after about 10 minutes and we went out for the official diagnosis. And it goes like this. “She’s seized. She’s done. She’s Finished. And she’s got nothing left in her” he popped the hood and pointed to the engine block.. Or rather a hole therein “that’s your engine, der. And she’s busted up.” one of the connecting rods had gone right through the cylinder wall and that pretty much all there is to it. And like the mechanic said, she’s finished.

Pretty much I had made this assumption when we tried “tow starting” the car. And that’s why I started gathering my stuff together when we were temporarily abandoned. I had made up my mind (and you would have, too.) to hitch-hike out of there. It was really the only option we had. We discussed it a little in low voices (there was no one around ((maybe a ninja or something, but no one that I could see.)) but it just felt like a good time to talk in low voices.) We voted to leave the Piece of crap where it sat, eat some breakfast and make a final decision. We went into the diner and had a bite. I got the omelet. Burt had to tell the guy that we would be back for the car at the end of the summer. We figured he wasn’t to keen on the idea of us using his parking lot for a junkyard, and wouldn’t let us go until it was taken care of unless we told him we’d be back for it. We did just that, (the telling him we’d be back, not the actually being back… which I don’t think will happen.) we gave him the spare key to it and got his business card.

We went out and started consolidating our stuff into a reasonable load (none of it ended up being reasonable, but we couldn’t very well leave it behind) I didn’t end up having to shed anything, I had packed really light from the start and had some room to spare in my luggage so I took on some of the community wares… a tarp, a map, some DVD-R’s and other various items. Pinetree had to shuck his bedding (he hung onto his sleeping bag, but left his pillow and blanket). He also left a little camera bag sized piece of luggage with unnecessary clothes and what not. Burt had to leave the most stuff, if you figure in the car. But he left A LOT of CD’s and stuff behind.

We started off down the road. We got about 30 yards out and I stopped for a rest. Soon enough, Joanne and her dog came by and asked “what are you guys DOING!?” to which we replied the obvious, “Hitchhiking… to Alaska.” Burt feels that I should add here that he always depends on the kindness of strangers, and he was not left wanting. She told us to throw our stuff in the truck and pile into the cab. She asked us what our game plan was “umm find a ride to Alaska” “well ask me questions! Maybe I can answer them” I don’t think we really knew any good questions pertaining to the trip so we ended up talking about her and her dog (here remaining unnamed, it didn‘t speak (yet another disappointment Canada had to offer)). She took us down to the last petrol station in town, Tags Fuel Station. I promptly went in and asked for a piece of paper.
I wrote Alaska and held it up to help people understand our hopeless situation.

And this is where Evan’s writing ends…..

I’ll pick up the slack here and give you the short and skinny of it. We held our thumbs out for a while and got really lucky. A man by the name of Emmit (pictured below) picked us up. He was driving a bus for Princess Cruise Lines that he had to get up to Fairbanks within the next two days. He wasn’t supposed to pick up passengers, but he made an exception for us. We gladly threw our stuff in the bus and rode with him for the rest of the day. We stopped at a motel that night in a small town close to the Alaskan border because Emmit was tired. Actually, Emmit went to one motel and we went to another motel across town (about 2 blocks) that was thirty bucks cheaper. At that point we were unsure of whether or not Emmit would give us a ride all the way in to Alaska or not, so we set an alarm to go off at 5 am the next morning to be sure we would catch him on the way out. We only got about 6 hours of sleep, but it was a good thing because Emmit was about to roll out of town right when we met him back at his bus around 5:30.

He drove us to the Canadian/American border and made us get out and walk across it on our own because he didn’t want to declare any passengers. I thought this was very silly, but we complied because beggars can’t be choosers. We successfully passed the American customs office on foot and met Emmit on the American side of the border where he picked us up and drove us a few more hours to Tok, Alaska, where the road diverged; Fairbanks (where he was going) one way and Anchorage (where we were headed) the other. This was as far along our route as Emmit could take us. In all he had driven us over 700 miles, and we were very grateful.

Back to hitchhiking. We tried hitchhiking for a few hours that Sunday morning. In between we even caught a portion of mass at the Holy Rosary Catholic Church, one of perhaps 10 buildings in Tok Alaska. Hitchhiking is tough in Tok. In any given hour, maybe 10 cars go by the freeway (a few more than once), and in the several hours we sat there with our thumbs out, no one picked us up. We started exploring other options sometime in the afternoon. We found out from a lady in the bar/grocery store that a weekly shuttle came through Tok and took passengers to Anchorage, and that much to our good fortune, Sunday was the day that it came through! We quickly abandoned out hitchhiking strategy and hopped on the shuttle outside of the Grumpy Grizzly Café at 3:00 PM Alaska Standard Time. We were going to make it to Anchorage!

And this is the man we got to sit behind and make conversation with the whole way:

After several cigarette breaks at tiny road stops in Alaska, we made it to Anchorage around 9 or 10 PM. The driver was even kind enough to drop us off at the local hostel downtown, where we stayed for two nights before finding an apartment.

We are now living in a tiny little one-bedroom apartment. A couple other LDS guys expressed an interest in living with us. We were fine with that as it drives rent down considerably, and it’s really not bad either because we have no furniture other than a bunch of air mattresses we purchased upon arrival and our suitcases.

For the last two weeks we have been subjected to cheesy corporate training meetings in the Westmark Hotel in Anchorage. We’ve also been cleaning and prepping the train cars at the rail yard for the coming tourist season.

Tonight will be my first time working on an actual moving train. The company sponsors a charity even for the Children’s Miracle Network where wealthy people pay $250 a plate to ride a train to Seward Alaska before the tourist season begins. It’s a good cause, helpful training, and I get paid :)

I’d give you all my impressions and some pictures of Alaska thus far, but I’ll have to save those for another post. This one is already enormous.

HBLL, 1:37 AM

2007-04-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

My mind is already in Alaska. I just looked up Vancouver, Canada and it looks beautiful and a lot bigger than I imagined.

I'm listening to Yahoo! Music France. Haha. French music is so....French.

Smurf may be coming to Alaska now too, along with Rascal and our buddy Burton from work who I'm driving up with. It's going to be weird to bring a small chunk of my Utah world with me to Alaska, but I think Alaska will still be very liberating. This is going to be the first time in a couple of years that I leave Utah for more than a week or so. I am so ready for it. Provo has somehow skewed my perception of reality. It feels so much harder to tell right from wrong, up from down, dark from light here. I don't know what to believe sometimes. I need to figure that all out again.

Okay, now the HBLL is playing closing music. I love HBLL closing music. It's always amazing.

Gotta head home.

A much needed change.

2007-04-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

So you're probably heard already, but the Honor Code has been been officially changed. Well, not the Honor Code per say, but the paragraph that outlines BYU's specific stance on homosexuality as it relates to the Honor Code. See Drex's blog for a summary of what went down. Drex should just be our official scribe or something. I always think I'm going to have to write out a play-by-play of everything that happened at a particular event, but then when I finally get online Drex already has it written down, probably better than I could record it. This happened even before we really knew each other at all. Way to go, Drex.

The Baker's Son, who attended both meetings with us, also wrote about what happened in his blog.

I'm really pleased with this development. I'm surprised at how quickly the change was made. The intent here was to make sure that students at BYU can feel comfortable talking to bishops, friends, the counseling center, administration, etc. about homosexuality without feeling like it is some sort of Honor Code violation. The wording of the previous Honor Code clause was so ambiguous that one could essentially be in trouble with the honor code for anything that they did or said, as long as someone perceived it as homosexual in nature. Jan Scharman, and apparently the entire President's counsel at BYU, were very reasonable and understanding about the obvious problem with the old clause, and they quickly took action to change it. I hope this small step helps gay kids at BYU to feel just a little bit better about their own school, and about the church as a whole. There is still more that can be done at BYU, but the administration is very willing to help. We have more meetings with administration and faculty coming up to address some other issues at BYU. Stay tuned.

Niece #3

2007-04-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

Easter

2007-04-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

"Wow, that Easter Bunny is super nice to kids!" - Kylie (on the right)

Went to church with and had dinner with the fam + my brother's off and on girlfriend. Good day.

F the Police!

2007-04-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

Police. Cops. The Filth. The Fuzz. The Popo. Sorry if any of you are related to police officers or anything like that, but I hate them. I realize the importance of law enforcement, but seriously, the filth around here just runs amuck making people's lives miserable over trivial infractions of the law. I make no distinction between the filth and university parking enforcement. In fact, UPE is worse than the filth. They really have nothing else to do but make your life hell for parking in the wrong spot for 3 minutes while you run in to grab your backpack or something. I've been booted in my own apartment complex (driving my brother in law's car) on Thanksgiving day. Every parking lot at my complex was empty. The whole street was vacant. It was my own apartment. There was one car sitting on the side of the street: my brother in law's...the car I was supposed to drive back to my parents' place for Thanksgiving. It wasn't like there was a crisis of parking space at University Villa either, or even that there wasn't ample, perfect, right-in-front-of-your-door parking for everyone else. But guess what? I got booted. Merciless pigs...

I especially hate the popo in small towns like Provo, or say...Pocatello, Idaho, where there is no real crime. This makes the popo feel justified in finding silly crimes to bust you for; like speeding on highways that are straight for a thousand miles with no other cars on them (got a ticket today on my way to BYU-Idaho to pick up my little brother) or crossing the damn double white lines that they just barely installed to get into the carpool lane on I-15, EVEN when you have other people in the car with you! (like with Smurf and I on the way to EG conference in September).

As an added frustration to the ticket I got today, I already have a citation from last month for driving Smurf's car so that I could take Rascal to work because he was late. Unfortunately, Smurf's car has an outdated registration sticker on the back. So of course the fuzz finds me and has to charge me money for it. What the hell! Who really cares...

I'm going to have to start a fund of money I can just have on hand to constantly keep the filth off my back. At any given time, I'll just have to have $300 or so of pig hush money to pay to the local courts to keep them quiet. Honestly all this makes me want to do is start some organized crime in Provo so the popo can get a taste of what its really like to try to enforce the law. One more ticket and I swear i'll turn in to the most badass criminal this state has ever seen. Then we'll see if the popo can really do its job.

I'm in Rexburg helping my little brother move. He is tired and taking a nap right now, so I figured I would vent some of my frustration. I'm really pissed off at the police.

Sinning in Sin City and Understanding Learning Deficiencies

2007-04-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Went to Vegas right after dinner on Monday with Rascal and Smurf. We camped out at Valley of Fire state park on Monday night/morning. We were driving around the park at about 3 am and couldn't find an available campsite, so around 4 am we drove just a little ways outside the park and set up our tent just off the side of the road in the desert. We weren't sure if you were allowed to do this or not, but we were tired. We slept pretty well until a park ranger found us and woke us up around 9 am. I guess we weren't all that shocked about his entrance on to the scene. We weren't in a proper campsite and Smurf's car looks all crappy, like something a hobo would drive. Also, brushes with the law are pretty common when you hang out with Smurf. He is a police magnet. Luckily, the ranger was reasonable, nothing like the Provo Popo, and so he just told us we couldn't camp there and let us go without any citations or anything.

We made it to Vegas and got a room at the Stratosphere. I had driven through Vegas before on family roadtrips and even stayed overnight at Motel 6 or other such places with my giant family on the way to Utah for summer vacation, but I'd never actually stayed at one of the big Hotel/Casinos. They are totally worth it! The room was pretty cheap and we were on the 23rd floor with an amazing view, so we all felt pretty cool staying there. Rascal and I are determined to stay in the Luxor someday. We're thinking maybe we need a yearly Vegas trip. From the hotel we left for In-N-Out Burger, an establishment that both Smurf and I worked for back in the day. Delicious. After that, we hit the town for a while until around 6:30 when we walked to Treasure Island to see Cirque du Soleil's Mystere. The show was absolutely incredible. The performance was beautiful to look at, the music was captivating, and the acrobatic feats were astounding. I want to take some gymnastics classes.

I love roadtrips. I like rolling down all the windows and driving fast with the wind all up in my hair. I love pumping music really loud and singing in the car. I can't emphasize how much I love this activity; seriously nothing else compares. I realized that I'm a huge fan of the band Live on this trip. I love Lightening Crashes, I Alone, and Heaven.

Las Vegas is much cooler than I ever gave it credit for. It's astonishing the things people can make and do to entertain themselves, especially in the middle of the desert where there's really nothing but what people put there. It's probably the best place to go for just about any kind of high quality entertainment you could want. That also means its a really shallow town that caters to just about every vice you could possibly have...but I love it. I could maybe live there for a while working as a waiter, but probably not much longer than a year or so. It's on my list of options for things to do when I come back from Alaska.

On an unrelated note:
I've been learning a few things about myself lately. I've thought about it on the last two roadtrips I've been on, First with John and his pals to Moab and then to Vegas with Rascal and Smurf. I seriously can't learn things verbally, at least in an auditory way. I am verbally retarded. It's not that I don't understand words or language or anything like that. Well, sometimes it is, but I can't understand certain ways that people communicate verbally. I'm not sure how to explain this, but I will give a few examples:

1. I can never pick up all the lyrics of a song from just listening to it. I understand the song and what its saying and I get the emotion it is trying to convey while the song is playing. I can also hum back the melody to you perfectly, but I couldn't ever recite the words to that song unless I have looked up the lyrics or had to write them down or something. Especially when the song is in Spanish
2. I've been working on learning a little German from cd's. I can do this alright, but I don't understand the exact words immediately. I do after a while, but when I'm first learning stuff, my mind just sort of thinks: "Make this noise to convey this thought."
3. I can tell you what a movie was about and the theme and the conflict and how it ends and all of that, but I can never remember an exact quote, or exactly what a character said. If I do, I've worked on it or just heard it about a million times.
4. It's the same with jokes. I remember that a joke was hilarious. I'll be laughing to myself all day about how funny something was, and I'll remember the facial expression of whoever said said it and how they were acting and the gestures they were making and the sound of their voice, but I can NEVER remember what they said! I could do a perfect impression of how that person acted and sounded, but I could never tell you what words they used. I suck at trying to retell jokes unless I've worked at it really hard or read it in a book a few times or something like that.
5. In folkdance, I was decent at picking up steps when the teacher was demonstrating the moves and counting or clapping their hands or humming to the music or something like that. As soon as the teacher would start telling us exactly what we were supposed to do though, i would get lost. When some lady would stand at the front and say "Do such and such on the 8 count and then turn around and do a half step and face your girl and blah blah blah." I would never get it. Even if the teacher was doing the moves as she said what they were, I would get lost because I would just be trying to focus on what she was saying and not on what I was actually supposed to do. I would just have to watch everyone else and practice what I saw until I got it right.
6. Often I will talk to a person and quit actually listening to the words they are saying. I will just listen to the tone of their voice or how they are reacting to me or the gestures they are making or the expressions on their faces. I just zone out into my own little world even when it seems I'm paying you full attention. I've probably done that to several of you who are reading this. Smurf catches me doing it ALL the time. Its good too because sometimes I really need to be paying attention to what someone is saying, word for word. If I really focus on what someone is saying, I will force my mind to make little pictures and associations with the words I am hearing and I can understand just fine, but it takes some focus on my part.
Sometimes I am really socially awkward.
I love Rascal, he is a super cool kid, but I rarely get what he is saying, even if I pretend to. He will be talking about something forever and I just smile with a blank stare at the end and maybe give a little chuckle. Sometimes he catched on to that, and sometimes he doesn't. My inability to understand is probably partly because half of what he says is movie quotes or song lyrics or famous lines or something, and I have no idea what they are from or the context or what he's trying to say or how it is funny. Smurf always gets it and has to translate for me.
I do great hanging out with people who don't talk much and only say what they need to say directly. In fact, some of my favorite people are just like that. They comment on things and are fun and can be very expressive, but just don't use their words unless they really need to.
6. I love it when professors use powerpoint presentations that essentially say word for word what they are saying. That way I actually see the words on the screen AND I can hear and see how the professor is conveying whatever idea we are talking about. Most people hate powerpoint and think it is redundant sometimes, but I love it. I also like charts and graphs with words that explain what is going on in them.
Okay, I can think of lots of these. The important thing is that I'm figuring this out about myself and can hopefullly figure out ways to correct or make up for my deficiency. Also this will help me in my choice of professors if I get back to school again.

The funny thing is that Smurf ONLY learns in the ways that I cannot. Well, not necessarily...we can both read things and pick them up, but for instance, he hates dancing and its really hard for him to learn to do it. He said he felt like he had down-syndrome when the EFY people would try to teach him to do their choreographed moves. He ended up learning only one dance as an EFY counselor, and it was because someone took the time to verbally tell him everything he had to do with his body when the music came on. Also he doesn't do well with charts, graphs and diagrams. I've also learned that he won't pick up on how you feel about something unless you tell him precisely. He doesn't like sarcasm because he can't tell when the person really means the words they are saying. Crazy that we get along enough to function.

This has to make you smile. :)

2007-04-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

Laughing Babies

I actually saw this on Smurf's MySpace and I was giggling for hours. I'm reposting it here in honor of the due date of my big sister's third baby. I want me some babies.

Response.

2007-03-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

Date:	03/29/07 04:48 pm
Subject:	Jan Scharman Follow Up

Vice President Scharman asked me to contact you and thank you for waiting patiently through the events of the past few weeks. As promised, she has spent some time on the advocacy statement and wanted to know if you are interested in getting together again to review these ideas, as well as go over the questions and answers you have been putting together. Please call me if you are, and we’ll work out a time for you all to meet.

Thanks.

Georgia Rasmussen

A-333 ASB

BYU

I got this email today from Georgia Rasmussen, Jan Scharman's secretary/personal assistant, the same person I had to talk to for setting up an appointment with Jan. I'm really glad they got back to us. I was actually just about to write VP Scharman to ask what all she had decided/found out. This email doesn't say anything about many of the other ideas we had that she said she would get back to us on, but I assume we'll just be able to ask her about those when we meet again. The administration is much more accessable than some might have you believe.

A dream.

2007-03-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

One night in the middle of the night I awoke from a dream and tried to write down everything about it because I thought it was cool. There were a few nights/mornings when I tried doing this. I can't find my other dreams right now, but if I do maybe I will post those too. I might have even posted some of them a long time ago and just forgot. Anyways, I've been cleaning off stuff from my computer so I can get rid of it for the summer and I found this. This is exactly how it was written, in my half-asleep stupor:

"EFY. dorms. lots of kids in dorms. Beautiful place, lots of really cool hiking mountains in the ditance next to the stree church was on. Black soft dirt trails. Very colorful. Different things on the street. Friend has a room, writes stuff cinder block on the wall satirically about what he talks about. Can do magic or somehting."

Haha! Wha?!?!?

I really like reading this. I need to try to do these more. They're fun to look at later on. And now you have a glimpse into just how my mind works.

:)

Activism

2007-03-23T14:50:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Moab in a few hours so I don't have a lot of time to write. If you want to know about what happened with Soulforce, see Drex's blog. It's fairly comprehensive.

I've spent that last couple of days (maybe even the last few weeks?) defending the Mormons from the gays and the gays from the Mormons. I hope its going somewhere. Ultimately I think it's the Mormon part that drives me because I have a belief that the church is for everyone, even the gays, whereas the gays might not be for everyone, especially the Mormons. I know that's vague, but I think you get it.

As far as Soulforce goes, I'm glad they came because they act as a good catalyst. I don't think they get much done, and they're a little embarrassing sometimes, but they get us gay kids talking and thinking, even if most of the rest of the student body is oblivious. I (and I think many of you all) still feel misrepresented by Soulforce and thus feel the need to represent myself. And we need to respresent ourselves because no one can do it better. To be fair, I think Soulforce did a much better job this year than last year as far as catering to their audience goes. They were well-versed in scripture and had tried to learn about LDS doctrine. I told two girls that I met from the ride that I thought they were better at building bridges this year and I would pass that on to Jan Scharman if we talk to her again. I think we will. I'm going to send her another email, perhaps when I get back from Moab. It's a shame that this organization has already thrown the credibility of its individual members with the administration out the window by putting on shows and pulling illegal stunts meant for nothing but a camera.

Perhaps I'll go back to school at BYU after all. Maybe not, but I feel like it can be a better place and that I'd just be giving up on it if I didn't. I wish BYU and the church could be more of an example, more of a light on a hill. I wish it were the perfect place for a gay LDS student to go... not just a pretty good place that you have to sort of be careful about if you're gay.

There are a lot of things I wish about gay things and not gay things, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I might just have to be the one to make it happen.

I have a lot to say and a lot of mixed feelings about everything thats been going on this week. We has some really interesting experiences. I'm not going to addresss all of those things here, but feel free to ask me if you're wondering.

Catch ya later.

The location of eternity

2007-03-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm not sure which is better. There are those moments that feel like eternity, like when you get lost in somebody's eyes or touch... and then there are eternities that feel like far too many moments.

I watched Steel Magnolias with Brown Sugar a few weeks back. Shelby says "I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special." Wow.

I went to the wedding receptiong of two of the most beautiful people I know this weekend. Smurf knows them better than me, but man, you should have seen them dance. And all the pictures they had up were amazing and they had Pudding on the Rice served by my cousin and her fiancee. Anyways, the reception was really beautiful. I want that. Not that exactly, you know, but my own that.

There's this boy. This same beautiful boy with light eyes and curly brown hair. It'll never work between us, neither of us would let it. And he's completely reckless with my feelings and too cool for me and all of that. But man, when he's got me, he's got me. And I walk into it way too easy and sometimes he doesn't even have to ask and there's a lot of wishing and thinking about this imaginary dimension where we can live together and play with each other and have kids because man, he's so perfect even if he's not.

My best friend from high school, Tootsie Roll called me up this weekend too. I miss that kid and the whole bay area world where you're not attached to anything and you don't have to care unless you want to. You can tell all the nay-sayers to f**k off, wherever they're coming from, and when you do care about something maybe its deeper and stronger than ever. Like no matter what I do or Tootsie Roll does, we will always be those pals from grade school until whenever even if we don't talk as much as we do with other friends. Doesn't matter if I read my scriptures or not. Sometimes I think maybe he's one of the only real friends I've ever had.

I'm done with this. I think I'll just be up early this morning.

Longboarding down the canyon...

2007-03-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

officially one of my favorite things to do in Provo.

Also, today is officially spring in my mind. Its beautiful outside.

************ !

2007-03-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

I just got cinnamon rolls from Shirley's Bakery in Provo. Shirley has God's recipe for cinnamon rolls. I love food way too much to achieve a six-pack. I'll keep trying though.

I watched God's Army 2 States of Grace last night and I loved it. Its really well done for a Richard Dutcher film, and true to life in so many ways. I loved how all the really wonderful things happened at the same time or close to the same time as all the really horrible things. I could identify with that. And I liked how God wasn't ever presented in any way really. Everyone believed in Him, but there was no reason to believe He was there except for faith. It was very...realistic I guess. I also liked how any faith and belief in God was portrayed in a good light, not just the Mormons. And finally, the cinematography and setup of shots was impressive and it had gangsters. Favorite LDS-made movie so far. Touching, really.

The date with Kate:
It was...okay. We went to Mimi's Cafe and then Barnes and Noble after. I had my game-face on through Mimi's cafe and was asking lots of questions and we were talking and doing really well. Half way through Barnes and Noble I sort of ran out of things to talk about and I thought it started to get really boring. We were still talking about books we liked and all kinds of things, but I was just...I dunno...unstimulated? I sort of headed towards the door, but she didn't, so we stayed there until it closed looking at a big book of modern architecture. We got back in the car and there wasn't a lot of talking then. Just my iPod playing. When I parked by her apartment, I expected her to get out, but she didnt. So we talked a little more. Then I walked her to her door. I thought it must have been the most boring date she had ever been on in her life, and I told my roommate that. I guess he must have told his girlfriend, who told Kate. Kate later texted me and said she had a great time and wasn't bored at all. Cool...?....
In retrospect I imagine that had I been on a date with some guy doing all of the same things I did with Kate, I would have been having a great time because there would have been this innate interest and curiosity that would have kept me going through the night...but there wasn't. It was just very unbalanced and strange for me.
One thing that bothered me on the date was that I was afraid to be irreverent. I didn't want to say anything about religion or politics or race or sex or anything like that because I was afraid of offending her. I need a girl who knows how to be irreverent. She has a sense of humor, but its very dry an satirical. I love that, but I also like people who can just be "lol" funny once in a while. I mean, not extremely so because thats just annoying, but just a little. Blah.
We could probably go out again. I haven't talked to her a lot since, so maybe she thinks I have written her off or something. I don't know what to do about this. I'll probably just leave the whole situation alone until I head to Alaska. She is going to George Washington University for graduate school next year anyways. I don't know how all of you married mohos pull it off, seriously. Even with cool girls.

I'm going to drive to Alaska. The drive will be ridiculously long, but my buddy from work and I are going to make a roadtrip of it stopping to see things in Oregon and Washington and Canada. I am excited.

I have three races coming up this month, and I'm not ready for a one of them. I think I will just coast through them and not worry about it too much. I ran like three miles and was dead tired the other day. DEAD tired. What happened to my marathon running superpowers that I had just this last October? Gone.

I need to sell this computer. I think maybe I'll go for a computer-free summer in Alaska. I'm sure I can stop in at an internet cafe or something like that once in a while when I need to. It will be good for me though. really good for me. I need to write Greg on his mission.

I really want to grow out my hair right now, but also it looks ridiculous unless I put a bunch of crap in it or sleep on it a few times...and then it looks kinda crazy and cool, but I dunno if its worth it... I want some long Sawyer from Lost kinda hair, or I dunno...just long. To cut or not to cut? I might end up going to a barber sooner than I anticipated.

Catch ya later

FYI

2007-03-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the trippy lesbian/gay Oprah show that I talked about once on my blog is on today, and will rebroadcast at midnight or 12:30 AM in Utah, just in case any of you are interested. This episode drove me nuts for a while.

I'll post something real later.

Pinetree: Amazing with words.

2007-02-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I called Kate. (It's only been two days since I was supposed to call her...) Here is how it went:

P: "Hey Kate....Kate? Hello? Is this Kate?"

*fuzz over the phone and nothing for a minute*

K: "Hi yeah, this is Kate."

P: "Hey Kate, this is Pinetree. My roommates were telling me you were over here waiting for me to get home forever on sunday night so I figured I'd give you a call."

K: "Oh yeah, I came by to see if you were home so I could thank you for the Valentine and then Ana (my roommate Ben's girlfriend) started talking to me about Dostoevsky and stuff so I ended up being there longer than I thought."

P: "Oh...well, thanks...for the thank you" (Am I the most articulate person in the universe or what? Hell...what stupid things I find myself saying sometimes...)

*awkward chuckles as Pinetree slaps himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand and says a silent "d'oh!" to himself*

K: "Yeah, no problem, seriously, thank you."

P: "You're welcome. So.........."

*then there was like this forever silent moment*

P: "So do you want to hang out or go out on a date sometime?"

K: "Yeah, sure."

P: "What are you doing Thursday night?"

K: "Nothing that I can think of"

P: "Okay, cool, well how about I call you Thursday night and we'll go do something."

K: "Ok sounds good to me."

P: "Okay, ttyl, Kate."

Yeah, I know. Just call me Rico Suave.

Anyways, I have a date thursday night. I'm gonna borrow Smurf's car...maybe an hour or two early so I can clean all the crap out of it or at least shove it in the trunk. Now I have to think of what we're going to do. Honestly, this is like my first official date in over year. Like Robb says though, if it all turns out crappy and awkward, at least I'm headed to Alaska in May. It's cool how my blog is turning into this twisted Degrassi episode the last couple posts.

Kate

2007-02-25T23:37:00.000-08:00

She came by tonight while I was gone. She probably found out that I sent her the valentine. My roommates said she sat waiting around forever for me to get back. She left her number. I walked half way to her apartment tonight and then walked back.

ARRRRGGHHHH!!!!!!! What am I supposed to do!?

Don't get me wrong, I think this girl is awesome, but I mostly like adrmiring her from afar, especially at church when she leads the music. She's so pretty and calm and confident. Its so weird to have to talk to her. I don't know why I get nervous, its not like there's this turn on that there is with guys, I just don't want to look like an idiot around her. Also, I blow things way out of proportion and my mind tries to fast forward to actually dating her and I freak out.

What do I say to this girl? "Yeah, I'd love to go out with you. I'm gay, is that cool with you?" Blah. But she has to know. I can't lead her on. I just won't do it.

Do I even have the stamina to date a girl? I haven't even been able to focus on school long enough to get good grades lately. I'm ready for a new job after a little less than a year. I'm moving to Alaska in the summer and who knows what or where I'll be after that. I'm so inconsistent and ridiculous and crazy. This girl doesn't know anything about this boy that she maybe likes and I'm an idiot for leading her on even this little tiny bit. Also I have a rebellious streak that I try really hard to channel into good rebellious things, but I dunno if she could be cool with that. She's solid. I'm all over the place.

I have the stupidest questions running through my head about her and I haven't even gone out with her once. There's just all these little notes and the tension. Would she try to go running or watch Tyler Perry movies or hop on a plane with me tomorrow if I wanted to? Does she like ice cream and could she play along when I'm being silly? Does she want to do big things with her life? Would she mind making all the first moves physically? because honestly I don't know how to do that with a girl.

Yeah, I want to be married someday. I want to have a female counterpart, a partner in crime with two X chromosomes who can get dressed up and be pretty but who also loves me as much as I want to love her and who is independent and charming and smart and witty and wonderful. I want to have little kids I can play with and a family to go camping and watch movies and feed the ducks with. I want to have to figure out what to do when my 2 year old colors on the walls and I want to have to make a family budget and a home. I want to have a cool, spirited, compassionate, amazing righteous family that still sticks out like a sore thumb. Can't I just skip to that part?

This crap drives me insane. I can't picture myself in 10 years. I hope something comes together somehow. How will it though if I don't have the balls to even go talk to this girl because I'm already worried about our future together? What the hell am I thinking??? Hell. I'm stuck.

Update 2

2007-02-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was really great. We got a meeting with Jan Scharman, Vice President at BYU over Student Life. She couldn't have been cooler. She was really glad that we were there and willing to try to make a difference. She said she read our email over and over when she got it, and that she and the BYU administration were very concerned about the welfare of gay students at BYU but were just unsure of what exactly they should do. I've said to a couple of people already, she was very reasonable, sincere, honest and compassionate. She's also just an interesting person and is really easy to talk to. I feel a lot better about BYU as an institution knowing that someone like her is in the administration. She's going to talk to a few other people in the administration like the Academic VP and BYU's spokeswoman about the possibility of doing a fireside at BYU as well as a few other things (articles in the newspaper, meetings with faculty, discussion groups, etc) and then call us back to set up another meeting. Wow. I'm surprised we got this far.

Thanks to all of you mohos who came to VP Scharman's office yesterday. You all made awesome comments. I would really feel very inadequate and ridiculous doing this by myself just because I'm such a screwed up kid when it comes to this SGA business and BYU as a spiritual and academic institution has no reason to take me seriously as some crappy student suspended for grades who hasn't even served a mission. You guys make all the difference in the world and I'm glad you all think this is a good thing too because if you didn't, I'm not sure I'd be able to put any effort into it. I feel like we're doing something good, and I hope we really are. Even if nothing comes of this, I'm glad we at least tried to make something better. Also, thanks to all of you who have offered support, whether I have gotten back to your emails or not. We need all of it we can get, especially if something actually does end up happening. I read all of your emails and really appreciate them.

And now for a couple things unrelated to SGA stuff:
Carrot had another ghetto food-filled dance party last night and holy crap...Carrot throws my favorite parties with the funnest kids. She and her roommies are so awesome. Yesterday before our meeting she also sent us an inspirational Richard Simmons text message that I got to show to everyone. AND I have all these hilarious Carrot quotes running through my head right now AND she has promised to send me an engagement photo she made of herself and Ludacris so I can put it on our fridge next to all the other ones. Ha!

I'm going to an 80's prom theme dance tonight for our stake. I went to the Catholic Thrift Store after work today and got a light blue suit for 8 bucks. I'm actually not super thrilled about this, just because its going to be so awkward. In fact, maybe I won't go...but I should because I'm on the activities commitee. I wish Carrot could be in charge of our stake dances...

Vegas in a few weeks with at least El Veneno and maybe Sarah an other friends. Super excited. I need to sign up for the race.

Also, due to the unexpected size of my tax return, I'm sorely tempted to just quit Los Hermanos with Smurf and Rascal and just travel the country until I head to Alaska...But I should probably do something responsible with the money like save it or pay off a student loan early. Boo. Work is killing me lately. Maybe I'll be able to hang on at this place a few more months...

That's all for now. I'm taking a nap. Catch ya later.

P.S. Some good songs of late:
Runaway Love - Ludacris (Such a sad song, but also has a good beat AND it speaks to me. We've all felt like running away sometimes, yeah?)
Show Me What You Got - Jay-Z (fun dance song from Carrot's party)
Out of the Woods - Nickel Creek
For You - Barenaked Ladies
For You - Duncan Sheik
Lento and Limon y Sal by Julieta Venegas
Sirena - Sin Bandera
LDN and Smile by Lily Allen (Her lyrics are really biting and sarcastic and horrible even though her songs are super upbeat. It's kinda crazy, but I like it when I'm in the right mood)
Ruby Tuesday - Franco Battiato (I like this version of the classic Beatles song)

Update.

2007-02-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

A few things to write about for the sake of writing:

1.We finalized a proposal letter and I sent it to President Samuelson. Stay tuned. I don't know what will come of all this. Maybe something good, maybe something bad, maybe nothing at all.

2. I went to P.F. Chang's for lunch with my family yesterday because my brother was in town. Candied walnut shrimp served with melon balls is what its all about. I love food. Also my niece was cracking jokes with me that she had heard on Lambchops, except they were seriously hilarious and had me busting out laughing! It was sort of like I was kickin' it with someone really hilarious my age, except she's six. Her once weird baby sense of humor is really developing; she's such an awesome kid. My whole family is great. I really needed that little boost from them yesterday. I was starting to get discouraged about things and now I'm a bit better.

3. I've been doing laundry today and I washed my iPod, which was in the pocket of a fleece pullover thing I have. For a minute or two, there was this constant stream of profanity emanating from the apartment laundry room. Good thing the only kid there was a convert of only a year or two(?). I apologized when I realized he was there and he was cool with it and even gave me a hug to console me. The positive side of this (always remember to find the positive side of things, Pinetree...) is that now I'm going to get myself a new iPod and iPod shopping is pretty fun.

4. I decided on a job offer in Alaska. I'm going to go with grayline and work on the train. Should be a good adventure.

4. I got a valentine for this girl, Kate, and was debating whether or not to send it to her and what to put on it if I did (don't want to sound to serious, or too weird, or like I'm trying to be funny, or a million other things). So I was about to not send it, but then I remembered Bonnie Parkins' recent fireside where she said to never supress a generous thought. (By the way, Bonnie Parkins' had made my select list of female leaders in the church who I don't think are full of fluff. Remember the "I love exclamation points" lady? Ay carumba....) I really liked and wholeheartedly agree with that piece of advice/commandment, so I sent the Valentine with my hometeacher over to Kate's apartment. The rub is I was still a chicken about it and I sent it anonymously. *sigh* Who does that after 3rd grade? Honestly, probably only some wussy fag like me. I talked to Kate after Munch and Mingle as well. Actually, I was nervous and so the conversation was pretty stupid or we just let other people who were around talk. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this heterosexual thing and I'll just have to stick with my feeble attempts at celibacy.

5. Good Memories:
6. Catch ya all later.

First Y Hike of the Year. And a taste of southern Utah. And a proposal.

2007-02-10T23:16:00.000-08:00

Y Night Hike.
The Y is the perfect distance from Provo. If it was closer, you might still feel like you were in Provo. If it was farther, I probably wouldn't be able to walk to it.

The Y itself.
Stepping outside of Provo.

Below are some pictures from a trip to Southern Utah with my old seminary teacher. We stayed in Moab so that we had easy access to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. (A side note about Moab: It's pretty much my favorite town in Utah. It's full of outdoorsy, granola type people and surrounded by natural wonders. Brown Sugar tells me that Alaska is like a giant Moab, full of granola folk. I think I will love it there. Moab is also home to the Red Rock Bakery which is a great place to get a sandwich.)

At any rate, here are the other pictures:
Canyonlands Overlook

Arches National Park - Double Arch
Arches National Park - Turret Arch
Arches National Park - Delicate Arch
Arches - Somewhere on the road.
Canyonlands National Park - Aztec Butte
Canyonlands
Canyonlands

We visited Arches, Canyonlands and Dead Horse State Park. OST had much better cameras to use than I did (I'm the proud owner of a little 6 megapixel digital Olympus that I bought in September) and it was fun to play with them. They can take some seriously amazing pictures - stuff you wouldn't mind hanging up in your home. I relearned all about F-Stop values and aperture and various settings on the camera. I took a photography class in high school, but I definitely needed some refreshing. The pictures above are just the ones I took with my own camera. I actually think they turned out really well if I do say so myself, but they lack two very memorable and interesting shots that I took with the other camera; White Rim Overlook in Canyonlands and False Kive in Canyonlands. White Rim was this hauntingly beautiful giant rocky void with what looked like marble bathroom tiles at the bottom. I sat there amazed that there could be so much empty space framed by all this intricate white/black/gray rock. I supposed you would have to see it in person to understand...

False Kive was perhaps the coolest part of the entire trip (thought the entire thing was really cool). False Kiva is an ancient ruin you can only get to by a special trail not mapped on any national park maps...Yeah, I'm pretty amazing for even knowing about it. In fact, the park rangers won't tell you how to get there unless you ask about it specifically by name. It's like a secret menu option in the National Park System. If you are lucky enough to find it, even with directions, (it took us a few tries...the place gives no hints of itself until the very last second when you find it) there is a log you can sign and comment in and an amazing view.

Okay, I got a picture of False Kiva from OST, and here it is:
Awesome, huh?

Lastly, dear readers, I'll take a moment to propose something I think I already mentioned on El Veneno's blog. I'm thinking of putting a sort of forum together at BYU on the whole SSA issue in anticipation of Soulforce's arrival at the end of March. I have mixed feelings about Soulforce, but ultimately I feel misrepresented by them, and I think that more representative voices of the LDS/SSA community ought to make themselves heard so that LDS people, especially BYU students, have a better understanding of what SSA is and how different people deal with it. An important insight would be how people deal with it within the context of the gospel without breaking the commandments or disobeying the prophet, and living your whole life that way is possible.

I have a good feeling about doing something like this, but I feel very inadequate about actually putting it together. I'm really a horrible example of leading the sort of life that I think one should. However, I think I can be brutally honest about that up front and I'm going to put an effort into this project. I would love to have help if any of you are interested. The plan right now is to hammer out some sort of proposal to present to whoever we need to at BYU (BYUSA? President Samuelson?). El Veneno and Smurf and I are going to try to work something out at first, and then we hope to present that to a broader group of you all for feedback, and then finally make a presentation for the administration. If all goes well, we could put on a forum at BYU with a an educational presentation, a storytelling time where a panel talks about their experiences, and a question and answer session.

I'd feel much better about Soulforce's planned stop at BYU if BYU students and the community had an opportunity to actually hear from a broader group of LDS/SSA guys. I'd love for this to work. If it doesn't, that's okay too and at least we tried. Smurf wants to call BYU to repentance if it doesn't. We'll see about that.

Leave thoughts or comments on this blog or email me at gbauman@byu.edu. Let me know if you would like to participate in something, whether up front or behind the scenes.

Catch ya later.

So there's this girl that I like...

2007-01-28T22:59:00.000-08:00

2007-01-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

Mika Grace Kelly

I like it.

Stoked!

2007-01-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

I got hired by Grayline of Alaska!!!!

I got a phone call last week and had an interview this morning with this sweet lady named Lorell. She is going to be my boss this summer. She's really sweet, the kind of person who is just everyone's mom, but also a no-bullcrap kind of person and I like her.

Here are all the details of the job as far as I know:

I'm going to be doing dishes and helping the cooks on the train for the first couple months. Yeah, that might not sound like a glamorous position, but I think I'm actually going to love it and it will be a welcome change from serving for a while. I've been thinking lately that I need a job where I can just work and not have to talk to people or be "on" all the time. Also I've been seriously thinking about culinary school lately, and I'll be working with a bunch of kids from all over the country who are culinary students back in the kitchen, so it'll be good experience to have for making that decision. As soon as I turn 21 (July 20) I will become a waiter on the train. By that time I'll probly feel like being social again.

The train, the McKinley Explorer, travels between Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska. It's about a 400 mile trip. Between these two cities is Mt. McKinley and Denali National Park. Shifts come every two days. It's two days on and two days off. So on the days I'm off I'm free to explore whatever, go hiking or mountain biking or rafting or just chill in the city.

On the days I work, I'll be working 12 to 14 hours with overtime pay every day. Also as a waiter I don't just make 2.15 an hour plus tips like here in Utah, I get 7.15 to start out with as well as overtime (over ten bucks an hour plus tips!) Also I get free food. Really really good free food.

On my days off I'll be living in an apartment in Anchorage, which I am yet to pick out. Most people just rent a single bedroom apartment with like 4 to 6 other guys and end up paying 75 to 200 bucks in rent every month depending on what you get and how many people. No one really lives in their apartments though, they just sleep there. I don't think I'll be at home much anyways.

The people I will be working with are recruited from all over the country. She said they have a few people from Utah every year and they like us because we don't drink or do too much bad stuff. Then she warned me and said some of the people they hire can be pretty crazy on their offtime. Perfect :)

I'm leaving sometime in May and coming back sometime in September. This is good because I'll be around for when my newest niece is born in April.

Holy crap, this is going to be so awesome! It's going to be a ton of hard work, but I can handle that. It's also going to be way fun and I'm going to get to see some incredible things. I think I'm going to be excited about it this whole week. I can't wait. I wish I could take off right now.

I think I'm going to get myself a laptop before I leave...I need to start checking out apartments in Anchorage.

Pinetree is stoked.

Other stuff that has been happening:

•I got to work late this morning on account of the interview, so Brown Sugar had to do all my opening work. Oops. She was pissed at me and even held out all her treats on me, which is a really miserable thing if you have ever tasted Brown Sugar's cooking. It's insanely good.

•This Thursday I'm headed to southern Utah with my old seminary teacher (I need to think of a blogger name for him...I think he'll come up more) to visit all the national parks in the area. I want to get all the use I can out of my national parks pass before it expires. My old seminary teacher is a photography/film guru and he is going to show me how to take cool pictures. Also he is a cool guy and a genius and knows how to travel and what to see. I'm super excited for our trip.

•Wiggle has left us for New Mexico. We went out to Thai food to mourn her passing. Thai food is delicious! Wiggle will be missed, but I think this will be a good opportunity for her to start fresh with everything and have a good time.

•Last night I had my whole ward over to my tiny apartment living room for munch and mingle, which is now sort of my calling within the activities committee. We had cereal, and it turned out pretty well, although I have to admitt I sort of hid in my room for a lot of it. This gave me the opportunity to talk online with Linds who is a super cool lesbian chick who happens to also like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, children, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, rain and singing in the car. She's also NOT a bulldyke. I was ready to ask her to marry me, but I don't think she was having it, so no go on that. Bummer. Finding a lesbian to marry for strictly functional, platonic relationship purposes is harder than one might imagine...

Ok, I have to go back to work now because otherwise I think Brown Sugar is going to cut me. Peace out everybody, I hope you all are also having great days out there.

P.S.
Favorite Hip Hop/R&B of the moment:
Wyclef - Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Yelé (Robb, you're going to have to tell me what they are saying in this one if you can understand Haitian)
Tupac - Thugz Mansion, Runnin' (Dyin to Live)

New Years Resolutions 2007

2007-01-14T23:29:00.000-08:00

1. Read scriptures every day, even if I do something ridiculous and horrible and don't feel quite like I'm actually living my religion. So far this is going pretty well.
2. Get ripped with a six-pack... before my older brother. I'm hitting the gym 3 times a week and maybe I'll keep running on the days between if it doesn't inhibit growing muscles. So far this is also going pretty well.
3. Find a profession or some sort of calling for my life. I want it to follow the following criteria:
•Provide for a family or potential family. A large one with tons of kids.
•Allow me to help the downtrodden and be a direct influence for good.
•Allow me to travel at least 2 or 3 times a year, whether for business or pleasure or otherwise. Preferably with a family.
•Be ethical, productive, and in line with the gospel. None of this selling alarm systems crap or shady real estate deals or Tahitian Noni juice or Mormon pyramid schemes or tricking the poor into buying things they don't need. I'll have none of that and can't stand it anyways.
•Allow me the opportunity to grow and progress
•No more than 40 hours a week if I have a family. Otherwise more hours will be fine.
•More to come on this as I think about it.
I've been thinking about culinary school and maybe a major in business lately.
4. Date some girls. Maybe even hold hands or something drastic like that...Any takers?
5. When I turn 21, send in auditions for The Amazing Race, Road Rules, Oprah's new reality TV show, or other cool reality television. By that time I should have a six-pack AND I can work the whole token gay/mormon/redhead thing which you'd think could land me a spot on anything.
6. Read the following books, finally:
The Chronicles of Narnia (I'm part way through the Magician's Nephew right now)
Les Miserables
The Count of Monte Cristo (Smurf got this for me for Christmas the first year I knew him, and I still need to read it!)
The Other Eminent Men of Wilford Woodruff
7. Try to go on a mission again even though it seems like this is getting ridiculous? I would still love to go, but if I don't it's okay. The resolution is to just try again.

Other less important things I would like to do this year but won't kill myself over if I don't achieve:
•Learn to play guitar, piano, or violin. Also learn to read music and sing.
•Travel to a continent I've never been to before. And maybe even travel around the ones I've already been in.
•Learn French and German and either Mandarin or Japanese.
•Run another marathon or a few.

I'll stop there. If I can get all of these things done, I will be a happy pinetree.

Gingerheads. And Hook.

2007-01-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

All About Red Hair. Who knew?

I love the movie Hook. I forgot how much I love that movie until it was on TV the other night and I sat down and watched it all. Its really pretty deep and has tons of gospel and my life analogy in it. I love how Peter Pan only leaves Neverland so that he can be a dad and have kids so that they can have adventures too. This was actually the first movie I ever cried at. It was pretty embarrassing, really. It was like my 8th birthday party and all my friends and I were in the movie theater and I was eating a Snickers bar and then Tinkerbell came on the screen and took Peter Pan in his cradle off away to Neverland. And I started bawling because I knew he had to be Peter Pan and was too cool for the normal world but at the same time his parents would miss him and well...I'm not going to explain myself. It was a very complex emotion at the time. And I really never cry at movies, so go figure.