Pics from trip and Tootsie Roll's(?) visit.

So for most of these pictures , see Smurf's blog, California Love, about our trip to California. The rest of them are from a visit to Utah by my good friend from back home in California. We've been pals since grade school. For some reason, Smurf has decided to name him Tootsie Roll. I don't know how I feel about this. I think maybe I've referred to him as the Blaxican before. At any rate, Tootsie Roll came to Utah, visited BYU, hiked the Y, Went to my ward where Smurf taught Sunday School and I taught Priesthood, visited Temple Square and the Conference Center, ate at Los Hermanos, and stayed at my family's place in Pleasant Grove, which is a considerable improvement on the little apartment he used to come sleepover and play video games at in Santa Clara. He seemes pretty impressed when he went to church on Sunday and visited Temple Square. That made me happy. He filled out a referal card and everything. My little brother being pushed up the Y by Tootsie Roll.


Me, Tootsie Roll, and Alex visiting Temple Square.
Me, Carrot, Jennifer Ortiz, Smurf and Tootsie Roll: Jelly Belly Factory in California.
Smurf with Jennifer Ortiz
Can't get enough of Jennifer O.
Smurf and Carrot as we wait for Cesar to come fill our car up with some gas. Note that we are 7 miles outside of Winnemucca on our way to California. Smurf was driving.



Some favorites for the week:
Song: Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars. This was an especially awesome song driving the morning after we all had a mass sleep over on Don Phipps' trampoline outside. The sleepover was after a long day of rafting on the American River. His house is sort of in the middle of the woods and you could see lots of stars.

Book: Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942. A very short instruction manual produced by the War Department about being a courteous guest in Britain during WWII in Europe. This makes me yearn to have lived during WWII. Not so much for the war part, but for the feeling of being united for a common purpose, for not having to apologize for being respectful and considerate, and for the common horrible circumstances that made everyone realize their true place in the world and what was important and not.

Movie: The Prizewinner of Defiance, Ohio. I read this book on my sister's recommendation a year or two ago and liked it a lot. Now they have a movie and it's incredible. It's about this housewife in the fifities (played by Julian Moore) whose husband is a deadbeat drunk. She raises her 9 children on prizewinnings from witty jingle and poetry contests back when they had more of those. I know maybe it doesnt sound cool at first, but it's really inspiring and well done. I think one of my favorite movies ever.

That is all for now. I need to find myself a new apartment. Again. Or catch a train and be a bum. The latter thought makes me smile.

Meet my conscience...

And go see Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion.

See ya guys! I'm off to California with Smurf and Catie Jolly. I'll say hi to the ocean for you.

My dad sent me this yesterday. Let me know what you think.

A California Lawyer's Perspective on the War in Iraq

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist, mood, and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war, or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan , and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia . Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler's Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because NONE of them could produce all they needed for themselves.

All of Europe , from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor .

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler - actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could. Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered, then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, then America , and the Nazis would have won that war.

Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the US and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich, and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse. I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs - they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal!) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East - for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win - the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US , European, and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, will be at the mercy of OPEC - not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist.

Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq , which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

The European nations could have done this, but they didn't, and they won't. The so-called "Coalition Forces" are, in most cases, little more than a "Token Force" to keep face with the US . And once attacked, like the train bombing in Madrid , they pull their forces and run for home. We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms -- we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq . If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons? And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For FoodProgram (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education, for Iraqi children.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor . It began with the Japanese invasion of China . It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 - a 17 year war - and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .... a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP - adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

[The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $180 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost over 2,300 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.] But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater - a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now, conditioned I suppose by 1 hour TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

If we do this thing in Iraq successfully, it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya , for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia. If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail, and terrorism from

Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future, because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an " England" in the Middle East , a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East .

The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or somebody does.

The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options -

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran 's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe . It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America . If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.
In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won, three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick. Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo /Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years, or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:

1. We went to Iraq without enough troops.

We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.

The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice - we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile - but we don't. We're trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient's head. The Jihadis amputate heads.

2. We went to Iraq with too little planning. This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had "the right plan" the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean.

That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV.

3. We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security.

This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening. The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq .

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV. Remember, perspective is everything, and America 's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany .

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq in 3 years. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms . or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America , absolutely, but nowhere else. 300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq , so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America ?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.
------------------------------
Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California .

(I think my dad found this at www.theamericandaily.com)

Two decades of Pinetree.

As of this last Thursday, I am 20 years old.

At the beginning of Thursday, I was at Los Hermanos working a closing shift. I'm now a "Lead Server" at Los Hermanos, you see, so that means I get to stay at the restaurant longer than any of the other servers with a manager to close shop. That's the bad part, but the promotion does come with perks like getting better sections of the restaurant and always being seated with tables. I also get a shiny golden name tag instead of just a regular black and white one.

Brown Sugar gave me my first "Happy Birthday" sometime around 1 AM while I was working on my first very own lead sheet downstairs.

When I got home, Smurf made me grilled cheese sandwiches (one of four things that he can make) and we sat at the kitchen table and talked about this and that and whatever we were thinking about until around 6 AM. I like these talks.

At 6 AM the sun dawned and it was my bedtime, so I slept on the couch in the living room until around 8 AM so that I could go paragliding. Chris and Blueshorts and I piled in the car to be on our way, stopping at a 7-eleven where I picked up some red bull and some caffeine pills. This is the first time I have ever taken any of these things, but I wanted to be as awake as possible for paragliding. In retrospect, maybe that was just silly. I downed some of both and then we called Dale, the paragliding guy, while we drove toward the point of the mountain. He told us it would be better for us to wait until later in the evening to go because then the wind would be better. So we reluctantly took ourselves home again for a while. I tried to sleep, but alas, the caffeine and red bull... My body finally calmed down after about an hour and I got a few hours of shut-eye. After the nap, we all went over to Blueshorts' place where Alecia had made me biscuits and gravy, (upon special request, for my birthday) :) Mmmm...it was delicious. She made hashbrowns to go with it and everything. Unfortunately, I may have overindulged.

By the time 5:00 rolled around I was still feeling kinda full. We went to the point of the mountain to meet Dale and his paragliding buddies so we could all jump tandem.

Paragliding was amazing! Well, at least the first 15-20 minutes of it was. The guy who went flying with me just took this giant parachute out of his backpack, laid it out on the ground just so, and then we started running until the chute caught wind and all of a sudden we were riding thermals and flying! The housetops got littler and littler and you could see the freeway and all of Draper. We zoomed around the mountains and went high enough that we could even see over the mountains back to Provo and far out to the Salt Lake. The guy even let me drive for a while!

The incredible thing about paragliding is that one can do it whenever one wants to. You just need one of these special parachutes, and the chutes are small enough to fit in a big backpack on your back. These guys can literally just go flying any day they feel like it. They go up to some mountainside, open their chutes and take off! Wow!

Here is the not so awesome part of the story. Aboiut 15 to 20 minutes up there I started feeling dizzy and sick. When I focused on just one thing like a building or mountain top or lake, I was okay, but the guy behind me kept pointing things out to me and I wanted to look everywhere and we kept goind up and down and right and left and in circles really fast. I quickly realized this wasnt helping and told him I felt kinda nauseous. He said we were about to go down anyways, but it was too late.

I puked biscuits and gravy all over Draper City, all over my shirt and shorts, all over my parachute straps, and quite possible a little on my tandem instructor guy. It was a horrible mess and I felt like crap.

When we got down, the instructors were all pretty nice saying it happens a lot and whatever, but that didnt console me at all. I took off my shirt and shorts and rode home wrapped in a blanket. When I got home I took a shower, where I barfed 3 more times. I then promptly went to bed despite having plans to meet all my friends at Wiggle's house around then.

They all went to Sizzler and had a birthday dinner for me while I slept. I was okay with that since I badly needed to recover. It sucked for poor El Veneno though, who came down to P-town expecting to go have dinner with us and then never heard from me the rest of the night.

When I finally came to, I'm not really sure what time it was then, Garret and Chris and Brown Sugar came to pick me up and we went to Wiggle's house to meet everyone else. I got cake (Alecia made a delicious carrot cake for me) and Wiggle made me a delightful pecan pie. Then I opened some SWEET presents and we played games. Wiggle had decorated the place in green and it looked awesome. I have the coolest friends.

Today (Saturday) I went over to my sister's place in Orem where I had a little family celebration which was equally enjoyable. My nieces greeted me as soon as I got out of the car with little wrapped presents. We had all this sushi and stir fry and delicious gluten free food (cuz of the rest of the family). I played Go Fish with my nieces and then opened some more awesome loot. I swear this Birthday was like Christmas! I've never gotten this much cool stuff for my birthday in my entire life. My little brother AND Smurf and Wiggle and Brown Sugar both got me the Calvin and Hobbes anthology! I love Calvin and Hobbes! I've been laughing my head off at these comics since I was 6 and I'd been wanting to get the anthology set reallly bad. Because I had a one copy from Smurf and Wiggle and Brown Sugar, my little brother decided he would just keep the copy he got me (he loves Calvin and Hobbes too) and will get me the Far Side anthology to go along with the Calvin and Hobbes one! He's got his own job now and he had been saving so he could get me something cool ever since I got him a gameboy for Christmas. Man, so cool!

My older sister got me a book, The Alchemist. My nieces got me keychains cuz I keep on losing my keys and told them they could just get me new keychains as I lost the Superman one they gave me for Christmas. My mom is getting me new Sunday white shirts (she had to ask me my size tonight), and my little sister got me two giant bottles of Nutella to spill on them. I love Nutella!

Blueshorts got me this sweet bag of stuff for making sushi, cuz i do love sushi. Theres a cookbook and little roller things and wasabi and ginger and seaweed and rice and chopsticks and a little package of superhero bandaids for when I cut myself with the knife (he and several others have seen me do this before) so I can still feel cool.

Last but not least at all, my older brother who is currently down at SUU left me a birthday present last time he came up to visit my parents. When I was done opening the rest of my family's presents, they brought it out. It was a giant thing wrapped in a blanket. I opened it up to find a slick looking longboard! This wasn't something I had expected, especially from my brother who isnt that big on presents, but he went all out. He had been planning to get me one for a while I guess. I went out and learned how to ride it the same way I learned how to drive stick for the first time: around the middle of the night when no one is watching so that I can make all kinds of crappy starts and stops and near collisions. I'm not doing bad at it now, and I've got the hang of it enough to ride around town a bit. I never thought of myself as the skater type, but I seriously love this, its a ton of fun. I'm gonna start riding it around everywhere. My brother was awesome to think of it.

All in all, my birthday was great. Being 20 has had its ups (longboarding in the middle of the night) and downs (puking all over Draper) but I think I like it so far. The good things have been great and the horrible things make great stories.

Tomorrow I talk to my stake president about going on a mission and/or advancing in the priesthood. I also teach Elders Quorum and need to finish preparing for that. Wish me luck.

Uncle Pinetree

Got some pictures developed, so here's a few of the photo-worthy events in my recent life:

I got to babysit my nieces Krista (5) and Kylie (2) all week long last week while their parents were on a cruise in Alaska. It was great, and probably the closest I will ever come to being a single working mom. They made a list of things to do while Uncle Pinetree was babysitting. The objectives for the week were; go bowling, go swimming, play soccer, eat at a restaurant, watch a movie, see the castle (the castle at Trafalga mini-golf/fun center in Orem), play hide-and go seek, make cookies, and go to Chuck-E-Cheese. We managed to get all of this done, as well as 3 square meals a day, working several shifts at Los Hermanos, getting Krista to ballet lessons, and much more. At the end of the week I got paid a ton of money (I don't feel bad about this, I think my sister and her husband are going to be the richest people related to me soon) as well as an oversized Alaska T-shirt and hat. But honestly, I think I would have done it for free. Here's some pictures:

This is the restaurant they wanted to go to.

Kylie gets some help bowling from a special contraption just for people her size.

Cookies :)

Full of Grace.

The Castle

Swimming.

OTHER PICTURES:

Chris' family's cabin.

Chris and Smurf skipping rocks at the reservoir above Chris's cabin.Bryce Canyon.

Grand Canyon. We only made it four miles down the Grand Canyon because Smurf hurt his leg. I really want to go again and finish the hike. So if you want to go to the Grand Canyon, let me know.

Mentoring at the Gateway in Salt Lake

Blueshorts, Smurf, Me, Brown Sugar, Wiggle, and Tracie at the Manti Temple Pageant.

Pushing things forward.

I got a calling! First one I've had at BYU. I'm teaching Elders' Quorum now. Even though I'm not actually an elder myself. I taught for the first time last Sunday. I'm hoping I'll get better every time I do it.

Gilmore Guy is getting married!!!!!!! Holy Smokes!! We talked about it running one night. Actually it was more like me asking questions and him talking. I admire him for making this bold move. I hope to be in his shoes someday. This is some of the best news I've heard in a long time. I'm incredibly excited for him.

At the same time these sorts of thoughts make me worry. Not about him so much as myself. I guess that's the root of the problem though, being selfish about these sorts of relationships. I don't even know where to begin with girls. Also, there are certain feelings I can't imagine happening with a girl. But I hope they can happen.

I remember the first time I found a guy my age that I liked. It was in high school. I really wasn't too big on the church at the time. In fact, the church just made me angry.

I remember being at his house laying on his bed, looking out the window at the stars and then looking at him and his curly dirty-blond hair and light eyes and we were both kind of asleep, but not, and thinking about each other and it was warm and great. Not forever great, but just great right that moment. But that moment seemed like forever, right there. I got lost in it. And I didn't really want anything else.

Of course, he drove me home later that night and I saw my parents and my brothers and sisters and I had to do homework and not tell anyone. I just came crashing down to reality like it had all been a dream I was waking up from.

Still, could I ever feel like that for a girl? Could I ever just get lost in her? Just purely because of her physical attractiveness and warmth and just being with her close? It is something I would miss deeply. Is it even necessary?

I don't think it is. I think the most important thing is commitment and just being there and being able to do all the normal things like homework and working and taking care of the kids and what not. This isn't to say that I couldn't have sex or anything like that with my wife. I could, I'm sure. I'm just not sure about always having the urge to, or about those moments when you just sort of want to lay there starry-eyed cuddling each other, being totally attracted and totally content. I think all things are possible, I just have trouble imagining this. Does that make sense? This train of thought upsets me a little sometimes, but I'm willing to give that all up.

Sorry if that weirds out any of you who read my blog.

At any rate, more stuff that has happened:

Smurf is a manager now at Los Hermanos. This is great for him because he gets paid well, receives health insurance, and gets to eat for free all the time. Weird, and a little uncomfortable for me though. It's odd having your best friend be in charge of you sometimes, even if that's his job. I think I'd like to find another job to work at in the morning in addition to Los Hermanos. I should be earning as much money as I can. Also, some deep insecurity inside me is cautioning me against feeling like I work for my friends all the time and I rely on that. I'm not sure how to feel about this.

I got into Fiddler on the Roof, a play that will show at the Orem Scera. We were accepted into the ensemble, which is actually pretty cool considering the calibur of this "community" performance. Smurf and Robb from work got in too, but Smurf can't do it anymore because of his new managerial duties (which we really werent expecting when we tried out). I'm not sure if I will stick with it or not. They always have these surprise practices that I can't make because I don't have enough time to get work off. Also, I've already missed a couple rehearsals already. Hmmm..

Went to the Manti pageant with Blueshorts, Smurf, Brown Sugar, Wiggle and Tracie. The temple in Manti is amazing. It's this big old castle of a building out in the middle of nowehere, and it's gorgeous at night, especially when the lights of the temple come on and the stars come out. I think it's one of my favorite temples. We had lots of fun playing games and munching on the snacks we had smuggled in before the show.

The pageant, on the other hand was really cheesy. At least I thought so. Smurf tells me that this is the nature of pageants, and that is why we do not call them "plays." They are "melodramas." I guess a lot of people have profound religious experiences and feelings there, but that wasn't me. There were a few things I really liked, like the sound of the narrator woman's voice and the vocabulary she used and also some of the effects, like all the fire and lightening when Jesus came to the Americas and the pillar of light at Joseph Smith's prayer. But there was just a lot of hokey stuff in-between.

I was also sort of being sarcastic and making little comments about how cheesy it was through the performance, which I shouldn't have been doing. I feel sort of dumb about that in retrospect. I don't like myself being so vocally critical.

Los Hermanos is getting harder to work at. I hope this is only a temporary thing. I had a server critique the other night, which is where a manager sits down with a clipboard at a table in the restaurant and grades you on how well you serve them. Brown Sugar was doing my critique and she was sitting there with Blueshorts, so it was a little awkward, as I am generally on pretty casual terms with both of these two people. So the short and skinny of it is that I made all kinds of mistakes, like forgetting to even fill the water pitcher I had in my hand before going to fill their glasses. (who does that!?) and leaving a tray stand in front of their table, and getting Brown Sugar's order wrong. It it was this horrible mess.

Aside from all that, it's hard to be "on" all the time and just be smiley and helpful and polite and the center of attention always to everyone. I get really burned out from it lately, even though I still have to do it. I've been making more mistakes, and all the customers I serve seem to just have this gloomy look on their face like, "so why haven't you gotten me my ______ yet?" Hmm. I'm hoping to stay positive and get over this in time.

I served Chris Canon yesterday at lunch. For those of you who don't know who he is, (shame!) he represents Utah, specifically the third district, in the House of Representatives. Not only that, but his wife was roommates with my mom in college and they were good gal-pals. Her name is Claudia Fox. She and Chris Canon were at my parents' wedding reception and lots of other stuff. I told the couple who my parents were and they were thrilled to meet me and ask me questions about how my family is doing and I thought it was really cool that I was meeting a congressman who knew my parents back in the day. They remembered a lot about my parents. Claudia tole me to tell my mom to call her. (I'm so sure she has your number now...) They were nice folks, but I had to seperate the politics from the people. Congressman Canon and his wife started telling me about his policy on immigation (in favor of building a fence along the border, no road to citizenship or amnesty for any immigrant who crossed the border illegally, etc) and I couldn't help but think how silly it was that he was telling me this while a bunch of most likely illegal immigrants who forged their papers to get jobs were making his steak, enchilada, and spanish rice back in the kitchen. They probably washed his dishes too. It was especially ironic when two obviously illegal construction workers came in for lunch and sat down at a table right next to the congressman and couldn't speak enough English to ask me what exactly was in the Joya del Mar soup and what kinds of cerveza we had. I explained everything to them in Spanish, making sure I was loud enough for the congressman and his wife to hear. When I returned to Canon's table, they both smiled plastically and told me I spoke Spanish very well. (She served in Spain, he in El Salvador and Guatemala, surprisingly.) Funny story. He ended up leaving me 7 bucks on a 23 dollar check. Pretty good...for a Republican.

I talked to my mom later on the phone and she was really excited and happy that I had talked to Chris and Claudia. My dad thought it was cool that the two had remembered them. I told my mom that Congressman Canon had asked me to ask her to put a Chris Canon lawn sign up at their house, to which my Mom replied "Oh, well I hate to tell them this, but I'm pretty sure I'll be voting for the other guy."

Way to be Mom, way to be.

I find solace in my car lately, which I have back now. This old hunk of junk is mine, and I love driving around and just thinking and singing along and listening to music in it. Blueshorts gave me an old cd player of his to use with my tape adapter.

Cookies are also pretty good to have around.

I'm gonna get to bed for now. Thanks for reading all this random crazy stuff. Later, amigos.

Work and play

Hey all. Sorry to anyone who read this that I haven't kept in touch with as much the last little while. I've been a busy Pinetree

I ended up moving in with Smurf. It's not a bad setup. We have one roommate named Joaquin who is from Valencia (pronounced "valen(big fat lisp)ia") Spain and another roommate from Baltimore, Maryland. The Maryland one is sort of a nerdy movies junky. He is a film major and his favorite movie is the Ninja Turtles. He seems pretty nice and chill. Joaquin is into motorcycles, home-remedies, bathing in vinegar and the church. He actually doesn't smell as bad as you might think (the vinegar smell fades quickly and leaves you clean and with shiny hair I guess). And he makes us have apartment prayer at night which is cool. Unfortunately he also found out that I'm 19 and haven't served a mission, so now I'm his new service project. I guess I should just expect that though from people who mean well. He does mean well.

The whole arrangement isn't bad. The apartment is small and old, but I'm hardly ever there on account of I'm working all the time. I'm the only one in the apartment with my own room, which is good because I inherited a lot of crap from my last roommates after cleaning checks and also I need to get rid of some of my own. Smurf is in a room with Nathan, and I am in my own room and Joaquin shares a room with the only roommate who is never there, Jo-gie. (I thought I had a cool name!)

Been working tons. Today is the first day of women's conference. I'm actually writing this in the library at BYU on my break between shifts. I'm working something like 14 hours today. Women's conference is cool for the women who come to it I'm pretty sure. It's sort of like a giant EFY for women. They all come with family or friends or all 13 of their daughters to go be spiritually uplifted and socialize and shop with other LDS women. I smile when I think about how wonderful and inspiring anf fun it must be for all of them.

Working anywhere in Provo during Women's conference blows. It's this constant blur of stress and stupid questions and money and women and sets of 13 daughters and credit card debt and high pitched annoying voices and 50 year old women trying to look like they're 21 and arrrrgh! I'm so worn out and I still have quite a few hours left, not to mention tomorrow and the next day. I do like looking at all their name tags though to see where everyone is from. I always ask them about it. And I can say that I've checked out hundreds of womens' chests today. I really can't claim to have done that very often.

Smurf finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower yesterday. I was relieved that he liked it. It's one of my favorite books, but sometimes Smurf doesn't like emotional kind of stuff like that, but he says it's one of his favorite books too, so I'm glad.

Tuesday night was mentoring night for Gilmore Guy and I. We went over to pick up the kids with Gilmore Guy's new ladyfriend Kimberly and their mom wasn't home. She works until 8:30 at night I guess. This wouldn't have been a problem except that the little sister of the kids we mentor was also there and going hiking with only the boys would mean leaving her home alone. Not a good idea. So instead we decided to take their little sister as well. It was fortunate that we had Kimberly there so that she had a mentor too for the day.

The hike was definitely a challenge for the kids (with the exception of the littler sister, who rocked.) The two boys are a little "corpulent." My mentee kept complaining about how he was going to die and he couldn't make it anymore and he hated this hike and was never coming back and he was sweating and his legs hurt and on and on. I kept telling him that we didn't ever have to go back but he could make it this one time and just keep going and he was doing great. And he really was, all things considered. There was some other kid his age who would pass us every now and then on the trail and my mentee would feel all challenged and start running or walking fast for a few minutes until we passed this other kid again. It was this awesome little competition. But around switchback 9 (there are 11 switchbacks on the trail) he was feeling beaten and decided to sit down on a rock for a while even though we were so close. This took me back to freshman year, on one of the fist days of cross country...

We were in Rancho San Antonio running in the hills. I was not very good at running but had held my own so far. I decided to do cross country just because it was something to do and I got so tired I couldn't really think about other stuff and afterwards I would always get that endorphin rush that made everything just fine for a while, no matter what. This was the first time we were running in the hills. It was raining off and on and all us new kids were running on the shortest trail (about 2 and a half to 3 miles up a hill). I was dying but determined to finish the whole thing running. My shoes kept sticking to the mud and that made it harder to run. Dirt would fling up the back of my calves and on to my shorts. I went up and up this series of endless switchbacks. The track was getting dryer as I got closer to where the sun was shining. My heart was pounding and my lungs were burning and I was getting a little bit of the asthma I had through middle school. I finally decided to stop and walk. I put my hands on my waste and walked with my head down along the dirt path for about a minute before I turned another switchback and saw the end of the trail about 200 feet ahead in the distance. An overwhelming feeling of anger and disappointment in myself washed over me.

Most times we stop working towards something just before we reach it. I don't think my mentee picked up on this grand moral lesson, but I was reminded at least.

We finally got up and kept hiking again and soon reached the Y. Everything changed there. My mentee was happy and we ate the Oreos and granola bars I had packed and cheered on everyone else as they came up the trail and just sat and enjoyed the view and the company.

Fast Forward

It's now a couple days since I wrote the post above. Last night was a horrible day at work. Tons of drama and stress and people getting talked to by the manager and one lady even running into the bathroom crying. After work we went home for a few minutes, but then decided we were hungry, so we went to Guru's but it was closed and then back to work to see if anyone there wanted to go eat anything. Or at least give us a ride to somewhere we could eat. Anyhow, we met up with Brigetta, one of our coworkers, and decided to just go get some frozen pizza and ice cream and take it back to her place. Brigetta is in our new ward and lives just across the street. So we did that and ended up talking to Brigetta for a really long time.

My first impression of Brigetta was, as I told Jessica and Smurf, "I think she's really easy to get along with but also kinda dumb." She always seemed sort of ditzy and talked like there was no filter between her brain and what would come out of her mouth.

Well, she's not really that dumb. Just very forward and blunt. Some people think she is mean I guess, although i never really got that impression. Just dumb. But she's not. She's actually very observant and really clever. And she has this long history of corporate management and professionalism you would never believe from just seeing her a few times at work. She's also not as young as she appears (or acts) to be. Shes like 24 or something. Cool. I told Brigetta I was glad we had gotten to know each other more because of my aforementioned impression of her that is now changed.

So now it's Sunday and I'm a little anious and nervous for church to start for several reasons. I'm going to meet the new bishop who I will have to talk to sometime. I'm going to again throw myself out there for any chances left that I might still go on a mission. I've gotten pretty used to the idea that it just won't happen, but I'm going to work at it as though it could. Remember the running analogy?

...I do hate having to go through all this talking every time I get a new bishop, though. I really, really hate it.

Brigetta is teaching the lesson in Sunday school, so that will be something to look forward to.

Where to plant Pinetree.

Today I worked an afternoon shift at lunch. It’ my second time being a waiter. I waited tables for a party of 9, a party of 11, and a few groups of 2 to 4. I made bank! I worked 5 hours (stressing the whole time, but I think I’m getting over that little by little) and made about 70 bucks! This was partly with a little help from Smurf again (I love that kid) who smoothed things over with a table after I forgot to get some lady a Sangria, got a guacamole to the table late, and even briefly gave the wrong food to the wrong people. It was mess! But then Smurf just gingerly walked up to them and asked in what I imagine was some polite old lady voice and asked, “How’s he doing? It’s his first day.” (Actually it was my second) And everyone replied graciously that I was doing great and the next time I saw everyone at my table they were just extra nice to me and that made everything turn around! Smurf works his people magic in these little discrete ways and it's so helpful and turns big deals into little deals and everyone is happier for it. I love it. They left a big old gratuity on the bill and one of the ladies approached me at the end and slipped a $5 bill into my hand saying “Here’s a little something for you.” Wha!? They had already left a 15% gratuity on a 130 dollar order that I had messed up a couple times. Oh man, I was just happy that there are super cool people who overlook stupid little things and are just nice because they can be. It made my day. And Smurf got props from one of the owners of the restaurant becuase he was caught in the act of checking on my table for me and I’m the new guy. It was a big win-win-win-win situation. I like those.

Yesterday I got an elementary school Spanish class that came in for a field trip and all ordered Little Amigos. It was a blast and they all ordered in quasi-Spanish and this other waiter, Isaac, helped me out with everything and the teachers left a fatty tip too because I had kinda worked the Spanish thing with all the little kids and taught them words and played around with them. I kinda stress out a little at this job because I seriously care about making sure everyone is taken care of, but I’m getting better and faster and working at it and the stress goes down and it just becomes more and more fun.

Anyways, enough of that. I’ll try to avoid Los Hermanos talk unless it’s absolutely necessary on here because I’m sure it bores the hell out of most people. But it’s my blog, so whatcha gonna do?

After work today I went to look for apartments with Smurf on this extroardinarily beautiful day here in Provo. So far I have these options:

- Move in with friend Cranguy. Cranguy is moving into some apartments up by University Parkway which is even farther from work than I am now. His roommates will be a bunch of flaming homos with the exception of one. I really don’t mind that, but I don’t want anything going down with this one kid I think is pretty hot (who I would also share a room with), and also I want to be able to invite people over without worrying about covering up all the gay stuff or my roommates scaring normal heterosexual people off. So, while the option is attractive (mostly because of the one kid) it is probly not the best idea.

- Move in with friend Gilmore Guy. Also really far from campus and pretty dang expensive. Really sweet apartment though and Gilmore Guy is awesome, definitely a trustworthy friend. He also keeps a clean house. Neat freak girls come over to visit him and marvel at how emaculate everything is. It would definitely make me think twice about leaving shoes in the front room or bowls on the coffee table. That would be good. But super far away and about double the price of everything else I’m looking at

- Stay at the Villa, just switch buildings. I don’t really want to do this. I like changing things up every now and then and if I have to move out of this building which is going under maintenance over the summer, I might as well find a different location to live. I’d also like a dishwasher and something a lot closer to Los Hermanos. The people here are all kinda boring too, even if they’re really nice, and the buildings are kinda crappy.

- Move into an apartment with Smurf south of campus. It would be a ton closer to work and meets all my needs and wants except that it has no dishwasher and the rooms are a bit small. I can overlook those things though, and this is probably my most viable option. However, while Smurf is one of my best friends and I love the guy to death, I worry about living with him and getting in some stupid squabble. Here is how I imagine it happening: Smurf makes a huge mess and reasons it away in some very very logical smart way and I get frustrated that I’m walking through a place that looks like his current apartment does and our whole friendship comes to a crashing halt over the summer because of an accumulation of little occurences like that... and well that would just be pretty fucking dumb.
On another note, I would also worry about my folks finding out I live with Smurf because I've mentioned him to them before. I don’t want them thinking all these really wrong stupid things about he and I that seriously couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the meantime, I need a place by Friday. I know all this indecision seems pretty petty and and green of me, but well, too bad. I don’t want some ridiculous replay of my last summer at BYU or any other kind of terrible. This summer has the potential to be incredible and I don’t want to screw it all up because I placed myself in all the wrong circumstances.

In other news:

El Veneno is leaving home sweet Provo for good to go be an adult in Salt Lake because he is now and educated and graduated man. Too bad. He is a very cool, level-headed guy that I earnestly look up to and respect and I’m glad we got to hang out and go running and go to the gym and meet some crazy weird people together. I hope he still graces us with his presence every now and then, and that he finds only good things in this new stage of life.

Read this link: http://lds.org/newsroom/showrelease/0,15503,4028-1-23253,00.html
This makes me a little heartsick. I’m not sure I personally agree with this very bold endorsement. I don’t like imposing my beliefs on other people very much, even if it is through a democratic process. I like to think that the ultimate way to do things is try to live by example, even if my efforts don’t always live up to expectations. At any rate, this statement feels like something that I have to squeeze into my testimony somehow and I think it’s going to be a little bit painful. I don’t know how I feel about it.

I need to go out with some girls. I hate approaching this subject. I don’t know how to. I’m sure I can find some girl to date me. I think. But it can’t be all serious or anything because well, obviously... And I just need to be around them more and figure them out better. I wish I could fast forward that part though and just get married to someone cool and smart and start having some babies. Cute, good looking babies. And doing normal family things and having a job and going camping and playing around in the backyard and doing the dishes and paying bills. I really think I could commit to all that and handle it fine, it’s just a matter of getting to that point. Maybe that sounds crazy? I hope not. I like to think it could happen someday, despite myself.

Okay, enough of this post. Later, all.

I fell asleep on the grass today. It's the second time this week I've done that. On Monday night/Tuesday morning, Smurf, Jessica and I sat on the grass outside my apartment talking late into the night. Everything Jessica said was hilarious. Probably because it was 3 in the morning. I was just sitting in my green blanket on the grass rolling around laughing at whatever she and Robbie were saying.

"Rice is a good food for when you want to eat a thousand of something." Haha!

When they left I was so tired that I just decided to sleep there in the grass on one of my Vans shoes, the pair with the dried paint all over them. It was a warm night and I slept fine, which is funny because the next day it snowed like crazy. Utah weather is insane.

Today I dozed off again on the grass at a BYU Lacrosse game. Technically I was working, but nothing was happening at all and this other kid John was running the trailer we were selling stuff out of. It was some good sleeping, and I made $14 at it!

We have a new van for the bookstore. I got to drive it today. It's way too big in my opinion, but the acceleration is a lot better than in the old vans.

A few things I've been meaning to comment on:

Soulforce: I felt very misrepresented on both sides of the issue. BYU was far too restrictive with Soulforce. We could have let them have a forum or make a speech and it wouldn't have done any harm. Also, it didn't seem like people at BYU really stopped to think that maybe some of what Soulforce said had any validity to it. There was this prevailing smug attitude in the newspaper the next day congratulating students on how well they had swept that little mess under the rug. Did anyone actually listen or did we all just put on our "tolerant" face and hold our breath until the gay people were gone or arrested?
While I wanted very badly to support Soulforce because it seemed they were fighting for the underdog, they ultimately they had their own agenda and didn't cater very well to an LDS audience. In fact, they were sort of embarrassing. They were trying to promote things that very few people (gays at BYU included) were going to be okay with and they attacked the church and doctrine, and not just BYU's policies as an institution. This was a big mistake, especially because there is plenty of room for BYU to be well within church doctrine AND more open, accepting, and helpful to gay students. Furthermore, the group skewed facts and lied in their press release about BYU to make the school look much more totalitarian and horrible than it really is. Towards the end of their stint at BYU, I didn't want to be affiliated with them at all. I wish there was some university approved medium through which gay BYU students could speak for themselves. I don't like having to rely on some outside force to raise it's own voice for me.

Caleb Kane: Gilmore Guy sent me a song a couple days ago by this guy. It's called "In Your Own Way." It's my new favorite song for now. Check it out, and props to Gilmore Guy for his excellent selection.

Los Hermanos: I recently got another job here. I love working at this place! I always like jobs in the food industry. I loved In-N-Out, BYU Catering, and now this. You don't even have to get a college degree for it or anything! I should just do this stuff forever. The work is fast paced so time goes by really quickly. I passed my server test a little over a week into the job, and so now I get to start waiting tables and making tips. The people are really cool and even if they're not in a good mood, they pretend to be because they have to make money and the whole feeling is contageous so even if you don't come in feeling all that great, work makes you happy. Smurf works there too and it's great because he saves my butt every now and then by covering a shift for me or by making Nick, the manager, smile and laugh when he's supposed to be mad at me for counting money wrong or doing something dumb. Smurf is definitely one of my best pals, it's cool to work with him. I'm glad he's as smart about people as he is.

And Lastly: I'm slowly learning to be around people who are very different than me socially and personality wise. It's sort of a painful thing, but good I think. Not necessarily to be friends, but just acquainted with them and courteous and let them know you're around and you can listen. Everyone just wants to know someone gives a damn, you know? Sometimes it's hard to care about people, so I have to work extra hard, but I know it can be pretty difficult to be friends with or care about me too, and that's just how it is. I'm very thankful for people who are patient with me, so I hope I can always pass on that buck. I need to constantly work on that.

Pics from Moab Half-Marathon and Holi.

Don't mind #4302, he just really wanted to be in the picture.

Waiting before the race. This is a cool picture except you can see up my shorts.This is right near the finish line. Check out the stud to my right who is on my tail. I swear I wasn't doing that badly in the race, this just happens to be an extraordinary 80 year old man....I hope....
First time at the Hare Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork for the Holi festival.

Pics from Holi festival. Aren't those mountains awesome!?

Pure Evil.
Pure Dorkiness.

Interesting.

60 Minutes Story

I went to Golden Corral tonight for the first time. My aunt is in town, so the family called up and we all went to dinner. I would hate to work at Golden Corral. It would be like living in the section of hell designated just for gluttony. There are all these enormous people there with their tubby kids eating plate after plate of food and these poor employees kept having to clean up after them; plate after plate, dish after dish, table after table. It was kind of surreal in a gross circus clown kind of way.

Not that I dislike buffets. I love them. I ate three and a half plates of food. My little brother had like, six. I'm just saying it must really suck for the workers there. They must really hate fat people who eat in front of them. They probably want to shoot them. And then make soap out of their body fat. This is why I can never get a job at the Golden Corral.

I need to learn to be entertaining. Like, telling stories and jokes and stuff. Or learning to put my legs behind my head, or dislocate my shoulders or some crap like that that makes people laugh or have fun. I can be so boring sometimes it hurts. And this is mostly around people who I don't want to be boring around. I've been seriously considering checking out a joke book or something from the library. How lame is that? Pretty freakin lame.

One of the coolest verses in the New Testament:
Mark 5:9
Pretty spooky huh? gives me goose bumps. Jesus is a stud.

I think I'm going to hire a Mexican to do my Spanish homework for me.

Oprah is one of my heroes. Err....heroines. She's an amazing role model and one of the most awesome, generous, down to earth people on the planet. I think we knew each other in the pre-existence. We were probably friends.

a post.

I just cancelled on going to the gym with Gilmore Guy and El Veneno because I can't find my stupid ID card. All this little stuff kills me. I missed two tests this week because of little stupid things. They all add up and make me feel like a complete fool who is never going to make it through a university.

Been sick the last few days. Really sick. Last night I was tossing and turning until I finally fell asleep at 6 AM, and then i had to get up at 7 to do inventory at the bookstore. I woke up at 7:05 (which means my alarm clock read 7:10 because I try to make myself punctual like that...ha), cursing under my breath and hurrying to pull my jeans on because I had set the alarm clock but had forgotten to push over the little button that makes it go off in the morning. I hate it when I do that. The jeans were my ragged pair, the ones with the patch in the left knee that my mom sewed on for me. I've been wearing them the last 2 days. Time to change soon.

As soon as I got outside, I started coughing immediately. The cold, dry, Utah air makes me feel like I'm inhaling steel wool. The mountains sure were pretty though.

I was so pissed off walking up the hill to campus. I swore to myself that if any of the uptight old bookstore ladies gave me any flack for being late, I was going to calmly punch them in the gut and then cough all over their desks before I quit altogether.

Lucky for them, they didn't make any noise about it.

So I did inventory for a few hours. I just scanned tons of books in the general book department. Most of them were history, or classics like Dante, or stuff about postmodernism. I don't even know what postmodernism is. I once bought a book for this girl Ashley in high school about postmodernism because it was what she wanted for her birthday. I knew at that point that she was way out of my league. She's at Berkeley now, saving the planet or studying rocks or Iceland or heading MENSA or something.

Being sick sure does make you appreciate the being well times. It's another of those simple little profound lessons in life.

We had some visitors this week. It was sort of a little BYU SSA freshmen orientation thing I guess. Lad came up from California and PM came from BYU Idaho. Both cool kids and both my age, which is sort of rare at BYU, so they will be cool to have around. It's odd and a little daunting to think that the amount of gay people I know at BYU will just keep growing. For some reason I thought it might start going the other way.

Despite my age and cluelessness, I've felt like an old man lately. Being sick adds to this. It seems like my words are chosen more carefully, my observations are more keen, and what would usually shake me up just sort of makes me brace myself and go stoic. Like this:


I feel like I am more uncertain than I ever have been; life is more and more a thing of faith and endurance.

Hmm...

My hair is getting a lot longer. It's lots of fun, and less people mistake me for a blond. I can shake my head and it goes all over the place. My mom says its getting too long. She keeps referring me to people who have told her they will cut it for free if money is an issue. Hehe. She also said I was too skinny and I was going to up and blow away one of these days. I love you, Mom.

I've been thinking about people mostly. I've met tons at BYU, and they've all shaped my character a little I think. I mean, either they make me feel things that I have to deal with or I see a trait in them that I like and then steal for my own or see a flaw in them that I share and try to get rid of or all of the above. I wonder what life would have been like without any of these people. I mean, I'm sure I would have learned and grown, but I wonder how, and to what degree would it have been different. Would God have planned it any other way? I hope not.

I find myself constantly trying to walk this fine line between feeling connected to someone and not letting them influence how I feel. I'm not sure this is possible. I hate feeling like if I lost someone I would want to cry or be sad or not know what to do, but the truth is I feel like that about a lot of people, a lot of my friends whether they know it or not. I'm pretty vulnerable to their decisions. I can control how I react, I get better and better about that all the time. But I can't convince myself to actually feel any differently, even when I say or act like I do. Feelings are more important than we give them credit for I think. They make actions either easier or harder. They are the only things that we have some say in towards other people, unless the other people work tirelessly to figure out how to just turn them off altogether, which I admitt sounds attractive sometimes, but I think can be very crippling. I hope that I influence peoples' feelings positively.

I think I've contradicted myself several times in this blog. But I guess that's the beauty of having my own blog. I can write all the nonsense I want. I don't mean to sound so random in these things, it just happens that way.

Some nights I look back at what I've done during the day and wonder if it was the same person as me doing all of it. Tonight is one of those nights. I wish I knew better about what to do; like, if X happens, do Y. I need some sort of manual for all of this.

Sometimes we want to be friends to other people. Other times we want to be saviors or helpers or lovers or teachers or whatever. We can want long term or or we can want short term. I think I'm slowly learning to be content in whatever role I can be beneficial in, if any. Usually I'm not allowed to pick what I'd like.

Songs to get:
Cake - End of the Movie
Shakira - How do you do

Most people will probably only like one of these two songs, but I like both. They are my favorites for the week.

My life is very magical, as I am acquainted with many fairies.

Today (Sunday) was very refreshing.

I went to all of church. The speakers were awful, but I had time to reflect on things, like life and how I will prepare very well for a talk in church if I ever get that opporunity again. I also enjoy singing hymns.

After church I went home and listened to some Enya and ate brownies. Then I took a nap in my very comfortable bed in my clean room.

This is exactly what I wrote immediately after waking up from my nap this afternoon. Some parts don't make much sense because I was still in a dream daze, but that's one of the magical things about good dreams I think. They don't really make a lot of sense but you feel very nice afterward.

I had the most wonderful dream that I died. I'm not sure how exactly, but it was close to BYU. I went to this underworld thing but it wasnt hell, t was a good place, like a hideout. There were lots of dead people, some good and some bad and there were mormons. Some of us were jedis. I was a Jedi but with a small light saber, green. It was so wonderful to be dead! I wanted to go out and meet lots of people who had died, family and relatives and such. I went up to the main world hoping to find some other dead people to show me around. i saw some people but wasn't sure ifthey were dead or not. It was a family, and they were walking towards the Marriot Center like it was Devotional. They were dressed in church clothes. I called out and then the Mom and Dad stopped and turned around. Then so did the kids. I caught up with them an the mom started talking to me and being really nice and welcoming and explaining things. We kept walking and I said I would like to meet some of my relatives. She looked delighted and was about to explain to me how I could go about doing that and then my phone rang and I woke up. It was my mom and she wanted me to come to dinner. Woke up in a wonderful dreamy mood.

After my dream my parents and Grandma came to pick me up for dinner at their place. I brought all the brownies I had left and shared them with family.

I love my grandma. She is so thrifty and clever and wise. She cares about people very much with that old, experienced, kind, genuine sort of care. She's got so much class but is a very humble, God-fearing, intelligent woman. No one is below her. She sympathizes and comforts with anyone who is in need. She understands even if she doesn't know. I'm glad to be related to her.

I'm eating some of her juneberry pie. Who makes juneberry pie?!? Only my grandma. She's awesome.

I think this is all I had to say. Life is being very agreeable right now. Goodnight.

A few things.

Cool song I heard last night in some chick's car: James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover

Whenever I'm walking alone on campus, I have this funny habit of aligning my steps with people walking around me. I have to move my right leg with their right leg and my left leg with their left.

Rachel is the most beautiful girl I know in Utah, (Veronica is gone now, so no contest) just FYI. Holy crap. I think I'm attracted to that female. So Rachel if you're reading this, you wanna go out sometime? If no, Smurf would like to ask you the same question.

I have a ginormous box of brownies on my kitchen table. I'm trying to think of something cool to do with them. Better think fast too, cuz otherwise they are gone in like 3 more days.

Things are generally wonderful. School is managable, my room is clean, life gets more organized every day. I'm going to church, talking openly with my bishop, even reading scriptures again. Relief. I'll try to not blow it this time.

Dancing is hip. New favorite song to dance to: La Vida Es by Nek. Good ol' El Veneno introduced me to that one. Gonna run a half marathon with him and his buddies in March. That's gonna be sweet. Better do some more running before that.

Later.

Change

This has been my favorite song for the last week or so. Some late night talking with Smurf prompted me to post it on here.

Tracy Chapman - Change

If you knew that you would die today,
Saw the face of god and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that love can break your heart
When you're down so low you cannot fall
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

If you knew that you would be alone,
Knowing right, being wrong,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings up pain that can't be soothed
Would you change?
Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?
How many losses? How much regret?
What chain reaction would cause an effect?
Makes you turn around,
Makes you try to explain,
Makes you forgive and forget,
Makes you change?
Makes you change?

Are you so upright you can't be bent?
If it comes to blows are you so sure you won't be crawling?
If not for the good, why risk falling?
Why risk falling?

If everything you think you know,
Makes your life unbearable,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you'd broken every rule and vow,
And hard times come to bring you down,
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you knew that you would die today,
If you saw the face of God and love,
Would you change?
Would you change?
Would you change?
Would you change?

If you saw the face of God and love
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change?
Would you change?

Maybe someday I will finish that roadtrip post. Maybe not.
Everybody have a good day. You're all awesome.

Adventures on the west coast

We arrived in Keri's place in Washington late at night, but not too late because Pinetree was speeding the whole way. We were greeted by Keri's mum. "Mums" are pretty much like "Moms" except they are English so they do nice things like make tea (of the non-caffeinated variety) and dinner and have beds ready for you with chocolates on your pillow. Keri's mum was incredibly kind to us the while in Washington and she was a lot of fun to listen and talk to.
The next day we woke up and went to the pier and the woods. We ate at Barbie's Cafe (excellent reuben sandwiches and clam chowder) where we had a spectacular view of the Puget Sound.

On the deck near Barbie's Cafe



Blueshorts and Keri get cozy in the woods


Then we checked out antique stores and the Norwegian town of Poulsbo.














Jumping up and down on the deck of the ferry headed to Seattle. We were pretty excited
















Smurf feigns illness




















Riding ferries is loads of fun!
















Keri, utterly disgusted that Pinetree gave her a fake smooch on the ferry ride. Pinetree utterly unashamed.
















Blueshorts and Keri on Keri's ipod
















The whole gang, about to dock in Seattle
















"What's coming out of that man's tummy?" asks Blueshorts, pointing to Seattle's first Starbucks.
















Happy New Year!
















JD's place on Bainbridge Island. Huge, beautiful backyard. Behind is the beach
















JD, at his place, Sunday




















Pinetree and a map of The Family Tree Apartments, where he used to live.
















Pinetree's former dwelling, before his parents moved to boring old Utah to buy a house three times its size.



















How Pinetree used to get to school in the morning, despite barbed wire and monkey grease.
















Commuting to San Francisco
















Look at how butch we are.
















Match #250
















Consider the lilies
















Stintson Beach
















Stintson Beach
















So I've actually been in Utah for the last two years, believe it or not.
















Frolicking comes naturally to Blueshorts. :)
















That Golden Gate.












































One of the most beautiful things you've ever seen.



Visiting Mecca.
















Kicking it on the rainbow steps.
















The Palace of the Fine Arts, San Francisco

STATE CAPITALS
Blueshorts and Pinetree insisted on seeing the capital building of every state. Except Nevada; like anyone wanted to see the capital of Nevada anyways....okay, so maybe we did...but it was pretty far out of the way.)














Behold, the mighty power of Boise, Idaho.




















Washington Capital at Olympia, a very pretty building. Green all around, just like Washington
















The Oregon capital building at Salem. "The Provo Temple of state capitals"