I Need You Like A Penny Needs A Wishing Well

In no particular order, here is a list of things that I have recently either found and love, or rediscovered and love:

1. Chocolate pudding cups. Wow. They're fantastic. Nothing cools you off after a long hot day like a couple chocolate pudding cups. Maybe it's a combination of the stroll down memory lane and the fantastic texture, all mixed with chocolotasticity, but it is fantastic. Easily the best purchase I made to start off the semester.

2. ESPN.com's fan passport. It's like a memory vault for every sporting event you've ever been to. You go in, find your MLB, NCAAF, NFL, whatever team, and then select the games you've been to, and it let's you jot a couple notes about it, and then rank the experience. Then it stores it for you so in case you ever need to pull it up (read journal, scrapbook, blackmail), it's there for you. Fantastic. I spent about 25 minutes making sure I had listed every baseball stadium I had been to, and every major sporting event I had attended. Some of the minor ones I left off, like I didn't list that I had gone to spring training games in the summer of 1993. But I definitely did. Many.

3. Skype. Ask me how much I pay to call all over the US as much as I want? $3. That's it. No joke. It's amazing. The hitch is that you have to be hooked up to the internet, but with wifi everywhere and a connection in my room, that's no problem at all. Need to ask the parents about travel arrangements? Done. Cougs just upset the #3 ranked team in the nation? Phone ringing off the hook. Issue with a credit card? Taken care of. From anywhere, to anywhere. $3. Beautiful.

4. Wearing a ball cap. Love it. I had gotten out of the habit of it for several reasons. I wouldn't wear it on days I had to work because I knew it would jack up my hair and I didn't want to re-do it. I didn't wear one on days where I had to act professional (ok, so that might be a stretch. More like on days that I had to interact with people and didn't want them to think I was an immature adolescent, and yes, this included trips to walmart), for much the same reason. And I rarely wore them on days when I was going to see The Girlfriend. I don't think that needs to be explained. However, here on my rock, other than class, there is no one I really need to impress. My classmates don't care anywhere near as much about fashion as people at BYU did (which I didn't really notice until I got here, but wow, Provo and Belmont in particular are ridiculously superficial. I fully believe that moving to Belmont ensured that I would graduate single.) so this Saturday I decided to go with my beloved Cal-State Fullerton cap. It felt like a slice of heaven, deep-fried and wrapped in bacon. Honestly, I think I'm going to make Saturday mandatory cap day and Sunday, after church, mandatory basketball shorts and T-shirt day. Done and done.

5. Boy Meets World. Cory, Topenga, Shawn, Eric, Feeny. I have seasons 4-7 on my laptop. It's like 100 episodes. Set for at least the semester. You want to bring a smile to my face, ask me about my deep and abiding love for Boy Meets World. Better yet, want to bring a bigger smile to my face, ask Mike about my deep and abiding love for Boy Meets World.

6. French Bread. It's what we use for the sacrament here. I know it doesn't change the ordinance, but it certainly is a little more incentive to get there on time.

7. The Oven. For years, (yes years) I had mocked Mike for using an oven for all of his heating demands. He'd put chicken nuggets in there instead of using the far more efficient microwave. It would blow my mind because I would already be half done with my meal by the time the oven had pre-heated. Give me convenience over quality was my motto. Lately, I've come to see his point. The taste comparison...isn't even a comparison. Made some chicken nugget parmigiana (go ahead, act like you couldn't see me doing this. My only question is, has anyone else ever heard of it? If not, I'm so calling it a new creation), and decided to use the oven. I figured if I had to wait for the noodles to boil, why not see how things turn out if use the oven. How, you ask? Fantastically. That's how they turned out. Now I'm hooked. I don't even have a baking sheet. I'm literally just laying aluminum foil on the rack and placing the meat on the foil. Clean up is a breeze and it tastes great. I'm sold.

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The Mate Was A Mighty Sailing Man, The Skipper Brave And Sure

For the first time in over a year, I find myself back in a lecture hall. But this is nothing like BYU. For starters, the class is substantially more... diverse than any class I had at the Y, and this school doesn't have an athletics program. But most notably, I'm only in class for 5.5 hours a day at the most. Some days it's only going to be 3.5. That's it. I can't remember ever having a semester where I averaged under 6 hours of class a day, and the only time I had less than four hours of class a day was when I set my schedule around the idea of every weekend being a three day weekend (which, for those of you still in school, I highly recommend. It's worth the time and trouble to look into the possibility of scheduling all your classes Monday through Thursday. It would be even more worth it if you could get a couple people together to do the same. That way you all have the same stellar three day weekend every weekend. Believe me when I tell you, there is no where you can't get to, enjoy, and get back from in three days.)

It does make for light days, but it also has led me to study for more hours than I care to account for. It's not too bad, but I can easily see why some of the 4th or 5th semesters are just counting down the weeks.

Then again, we do live on a tropical island. A tiny, tropical island, but a tropical island nonetheless. How tiny you ask? This tiny:

Just the blob, not the whole square, represents the to scale size of the island. Amazingly tiny compared to anything else. But I'll take it.

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Try Restaurants I've Never Been To, Order New Things Off The Menu

So, I drove all the way from the west coast of my island to the east. Guess how long it took? 45 minutes. With traffic that seemed about as heavy as the roads could handle. I could loop the whole thing in about 1:30 I think. And that's not even in more car. In my car, I could run around the compass in an hour.

Which brings me to the main point I wanted to address. I really miss my car. No, like really miss it. (Not as much as I miss The Girlfriend, but almost.) Everytime I look around here I try to gauge how long it would take to get there and I always figure it out as though I was driving. Well, I'm not going to be driving, especially not my car. Bamboo shunt pain. I have spent my life driving at all possible opportunities. Need to go to the corner to get milk? Driving. Need to move a roommate across the apartment complex? Trunk is open. Need to pay for gas after filling up? I'm pulling into the parking spots near the door. (Yes, I have really done that. More than once.)

Now, it's all pedestrain means for me. I might even buckle and buy a bicycle. I have not rode a bike since the mission, and have vowed never to again. But, when church is an hour walk away, that's not really an option. I don't walk an hour for anything. I think the last time I walked for an hour was on the mission. And then I hated walking because I knew there were a host of better options.

So yeah, I really miss my car. Like really.

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Everytime I Do It Makes Me Laugh

Ok so I have to run a photo dump for the past couple weeks. I really don't think a lot of them need a lot of explanation, but here we go. Also, they're pretty much in reverse chronological order. Sorry, but not flipping them. But to give you a recap of where they were taken, in Photo order, I belive it is Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Boston, Baltimore, DC, and Philly. And that, along with 90+ hours spent driving around in my car, has been my August. Not kidding.

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You Know That I Could Use Somebody

I'm a tenderfoot scout. It is as low on the totem pole as it sounds. I've gotten some ribbing over it occasionally, but it is what it is. In my defense, they didn't have merit badges in baseball or contra so it didn't really draw me in. I enjoyed going to scout camp every summer and have sash full of merit badges to prove it, but I never did the little things to move up to the upper ranks. Little things like cooking a meal over a firepit, or camping X consecutive nights. To be honest, I don't see how any of that can be difficult. If a group of twelve-year-old pyromaniacs can execute it perfectly, surely I can handle it.

Went camping the other night. I know, it may be hard to believe, but it happened. Barely. Almost spent the night in the car. We pulled into the campsite around 11:30pm, and began setting up the tent using my car's headlights for illumination. We roll it, and stake it out and my brother slides one of the support poles through the top. He gets to lift it, and I realize that it would probably be a nightmare to slide the other one through with the top already arched. So we pull the other bar out and watch as it falls apart into about six pieces. The elastic cord that holds them all together had snapped about of third of the way down. It took over 30 minutes to re-thread them all, at one point I had to use dental floss and medical tape to get it all done.

So to you all you self-righteous eagle scouts (if they even exist), eat it. This tenderfoot got it done. I actually took a picture.

To tell you the truth, lately I have had too many things going on to allow me a significant amount of time to give anyone a full update on things, or formulate any extemporaneous ideas. That camping story came about because my brother and I went to Atlanta to watch the Braves get to Tim Lincecum and then caught Rascal Flatts and Darius Rucker perform their own songs as well as some old school Hootie and the Blowfish tracks. Drove up one night, caught the game, camped, drove down the next day and caught the concert on the way. You ask why, I ask, as always, why not.

The kicker is that it is only going to get more hectic over the next 17 days. In that time period I will drive over 4000 miles, traverse across 12 states, watch ball games in 5 different parks and makes two independent trips to the west coast of Florida. Oh, and then how about I pack up for a two week trip to two different islands, and then head off to a third to start medical school. Believe me when I say that I had to cancel a date night with The Girlfriend just so I could spend one night with my parents to celebrate my brother's belated birthday and talk about how things will be while I'm at school. Tonight is my last unplanned night for the next... I don't know really.

Needless to say, there are still stories that should be shared because funny stuff happens. And everyone needs a good laugh.

So, I'm at church with the Girlfriend, and in walks the former girlfriend. She was visiting a mutual friend that was in town for the weekend. Between Sunday School and priesthood, mutual friend and former girlfriend were in the lobby just chatting with people. I started talking with the mutual friend and looked over to see my granddad talking with the former. Now, you have to realize that there is nothing odd about my granddad walking up to unknown girls sixty years his junior and starting conversation.

After a couple minutes, I started heading into priesthood. Granddad had been talking with someone else for a little bit, but he shanghai'd me. He leads me over and introduces me to the former, calling her by a completely incorrect name. I gently tapped him on the shoulder, told him her real name, and told him, "I already know her. I know her pretty well."

He doesn't say a thing. Just flashes the old man Oops grin, turns and walks away. Hilarious.

It also should be noted that The Girlfriend became admittedly territorial upon seeing the former walk in. It was great.

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So I Reached Out To Kanye And Brought You All My Dreams

An angel lost its wings this past Friday. At the same time, another angel got theirs. I had a dream and had done an excellent job making that dream a reality. You see, I wanted to live my life so that I never, ever, mowed a lawn. Ever. I made it through my teenage years and my mission having successfully dodged numerous "opportunities" to mow a lawn. I can't begin to tell you how close things got. At least once, I was mere steps away from grasping the handles and laying waste to all things over 2" tall, only to be reprieved.

Last Friday, it all came to an abrupt end. I was working on a rental home my dad owns, and had spent the better part of the morning scraping both sides of some 30 panes of glass with a razor blade. It sounds about as much fun as it is, but unfortunately, nothing else was left for me to do besides mowing the lawn. Reluctantly, I grasped the handle I had spent the last 26 years of my life avoiding. (For the record, I did know how to both start and use the mower. It did take me a while to realize how to use the clutch, but nevertheless, I got the job done.)

And like that an angel fell. However, the celestial balance was restored almost immediately.

Even though I had never mowed a lawn, I knew that there was a technique used to optimized efficiency and aesthetics. I also knew that I didn't know it. But Mike does. I sent him a text asking him what pattern(s) I should run. I get back a series of ha ha ha's and then a phone call explaining to frame the yard a couple times than go across the middle with a snake pattern.

And an angel is born. You see, Mike had a dream that I would one day mow a lawn. Actually, he has a dream that I'll spend my life doing every manual labor job imaginable. Granted, in his dream I'm successful and still able to hold season tickets to the local baseball team, but manual labor it is. Let's just say, he might win small battles, but the war is mine.

Also, to bring finality to things, Florida State said no, so I'll be heading down to St. Martin's in the caribbean for medical school. I know, it will be rough spending the next two years or so in a tropical paradise, but I will have to manage. The school is called American University of the Caribbean, or AUC. It's on a rock 36 square miles big. That's like Provo and Orem. Maybe some Lindon thrown in. I'm pretty psyched about it to be honest. It's almost like a second mission, only I don't have to wear a tie, can call home when I want, and don't have to worry about a companion. Ok, so maybe it's nothing like a mission. Forget you. I think it is.

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Did You Forget About Me Mr Duplicity

"Paging Avril Lavigne. Paging Avril Lavigne. Please pick up the white courtesy phone for your message from jilted teenage girls."

So I was watching a show called Video Yearbook. It's on Fuse and it's fantastic. They show some of the most prominent music video's from a year, and the viewer cringes/applauds/dances along to what they used to love and illegally download. For example, 2004 included "I love the way you move" by Outkast. What happened to them? They had a slew of hits, and faded away after they made that movie Idlewild. Did anyone watch this? No seriously, I don't know anyone who at any point watched it. And yet, it clearly marks the death of one of the biggest bands from 2000-2004.

The 2004 show also included "So much for my happy ending" by the aforementioned Ms Lavigne (or Mrs Whibley, if you're on personal terms with her. At least according to IMDB. Want to see an impressive bio? Check out Avirl's on IMDB. Favorite part "One of her songs...is about an ex-boyfriend", implying that only one is about an ex-boyfriend.). She also had a solid career, but then dropped off the earth, save the out of character single "Girlfriend" which turned out to be the most downloaded song of 2007. (Really? Yeah, really. In the world. Not kidding. What type of aural garbage was being pumped out in 2007 that would allow "Girlfriend" to be the most downloaded song? Amazing, in a shameful way.) What I'm wondering, though, is what happened to the angry Avril that got her poster put on the wall of every girl aged 14-20 who just lost a boyfriend? Every five to ten years it seems someone like her comes along. Before Avril was Alanis Morrissette, who won six grammy awards for writing angry songs about past relationships.

My question is, who's today? Is there someone filling that musical void? That is a money reservoir that needs to be tapped. The closest person to filling that would be the country artist Miranda Lambert, but even she doesn't fit the profile, nor fill the need. Of one thing I am certain, and that is that there is a generation of teenage girls getting their hearts broken and being forced to play 5-10 year old songs to fully express their anger about it all. Those songs are probably sufficient, but none of them deal with today's relationship nuances. None have to deal with texting, facebook, myspace, twitter, or even email. Really? No break up songs about being dumped via electronic means? Now that is a gap that needs to be closed. If I was a music producer, I would be on the street tomorrow looking for some girl around age 18 who had just a little bit of edge, and then have my cadre of writers prepare some songs with a hint of vitriol. It's a no-brainer.

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