waking up next to you

a great quote i recently came across from Thomas Edison, " you know the ambition of a man by whether or not he loves his alarm clock in the morning."
some days it's hard to wake up and be in love with that alarm clock. especially those too frequent mornings when it goes off at 6:30 so i can meet Joe at the gym. (if i knew he wasn't going to be there it'd be so easy to not go. so i'm glad there's someone waiting for me). We all have time and we can utilize it for so much good. some days you may wake up and feel like death (see last week's post), but you're 100% in control of how you choose to feel. Sure there are some outside forces that influence you, but ultimately it's up to you to decide what to do with those influences. we just have to remember to make every day the best day of our lives.

I honestly wouldn't mind waking up to this pearl every morning. It's the Finger of Fate at Hell Roaring Lake in Idaho. One of my favorite hikes.

drudgery? yeah that's tuesday

tuesday's this semester have quickly become a day of horrible work. tuesday's are my gethsemane. Work from 8-2. then class from 230-9. holy long day. today in particular is a total bust. maybe it's because i'm sitting in a horribly worthless class. fundamentals of mediation and negotiation? um, no thanks. not into it at all. Oh, and it's a 3 hour class. with no breaks! maybe today is so horrible because i'm feeling a bit ill (haven't had a cold or the flu in over 2 years) and my mental edge has collapsed. My nose and head is more clogged than a shower drain while a shedding silverback gorilla is bathing. i've been sneezing all day and now something is tickling my sinus's so bad that i try to sneeze (looking up, looking at the lights, anything) all to no avail. don't worry though, because i'm not sneezing, my left eye is watering. it's leaking more than a mouthful of water in condoleeza rice's mouth when her lips aren't touching. And the worst part of this class? easy, it's the 350 pound white mammoth man that immediately upon sitting down takes his shoes off baring his, well bare stanky feet. This, the same person who nigger-lips the crunchiest, hardest, loudest foods known to man. Please, guy, just spoon some soft quiet baby food in that orifice for one class period. please.
i know i've been sick. congested, stuffy, sneezy, yes, all of it. so it's no surprise to me when i hear myself breathing. kind of noisily too. oh wait, that isn't me. it's that same person who is already taking up one of your senses completely. Going barefoot, and not allowing me to smell anything else. And now he's taking up my entire sense of hearing, with both his loud eating, and his creepy wheezy breathing. So that even if i WANTED to listen in to this class, there is no way i'd be able to. And my sense of vision is gone, thanks to my leaky eye from my not being able to sneeze right now. oh i can't wait for this class to end. then i can make the 20 minute walk in the freezing cold to get to my car. oh wait, that isn't great either. i don't know what's worse right now. horrid class with jigga lips going to town on a zip-tie right now? or meandering my way all light-headed like to try and find my car and drive home on a half a tank of sanity.
please class, just end. let me make my way home so i can overdose on some nyquill and watch biggest loser. I've been waiting for that for 13 hours now. My day will finally get good, as it is just about to end. yeah, it's tuesday.

i'm dumb, she's a lesbian!

I've now seen weezer 6 times, and have all intentions to continue. They always put on a great show. This past weekend all of us concert goer cholos went down to vegas to see them perform for their blinkerton tour. If you remember, i saw them over thanksgiving break in LA on a friday and again on saturday. Vegas is the only stop where they were doing just a one night show.
"I just made love to your sweet memory. One thousand times in my head."
thankfully, i didn't have to make the 5 hour drive down to vegas. Much thanks to my great friend Bryce Stewart (a true stud) for letting me fly down their with you. i've flown with him a couple times. once he flew me to st. george just so i could hitch hike home. that was an adventure. another time we flew the slower plane down so we could work on his jeep all night long, and then drive the jeep right back in the morning so i could make it to my Grandma's birthday party, and then also spend some time in park city. That vegas trip was easily an adventure too. This time we flew this plane, only taking an hour and 45 minutes.
"I talked for hours to your wallet photograph. And you just listened."

After some delicious baja fresh, i met up with joe and sarah and we hung out for a while waiting for the rest of the crew to show up. A couple hours later, Thomas Boy and Ed all showed up and we met up with them down on the strip. Just kind of hanging out for a bit until the concert. A tradition for joe and sarah is to get crepes at le paris, so we joined them with that while boy and ed ran off to new york new york to ride the coaster. on our way out of the casino, i couldn't help but try my hand on roulette. i've learned through the years (and the few hundred dollars) that the more spins you take on roulette, the more your odds of winning go down. so this trip i resolved to just put it all down on one spin. i tested this theory out and put just $20 on red. pays 1:1. and i won. thank you. Thomas won too. nice teamwork. safety first, and then teamwork. No more vacuuming bullets up off the ground. We met back up with boy and ed and still had a few hours til the show, yet boy wanted sofa king bad to be in line and ready to get in the doors. So we let him go ahead and get in line while the rest of us cavalierly walked/wandered around, making stops to CVS for some sodas and treats. we also witnessed someone win big on the slots. hello $3g-notes. me and ed just went outside sipping our bevy's still killing time. ed is one of my favorite peoples. since he's married we don't have as many heart-to-heart convo's like we used to. so it was good to just sit there and chill. one thing is for certain, we always end up laughing very hard. it's usually a race to see if tears come out of my face before ed laughs so hard that whatever he's drinking comes up his nose. 
"But when we wake, it's all been erased. And so it seems, only in dreams."
Time to go get in line with joe and sarah. Tom and boy were already in. The hard rock hotel was a great place to have a concert. very dope set-up. and good fellow concert goers. We even saw a good friend from high school josh meline. Cade, Abe, and Jason Jones all met us there too. they left provo a few hours after us. The concert was great. pretty much the same idea from when we saw them in LA. Played the entire blue album, played the entire pinkerton album. and then a slight encore too. thank you weezer. you never disappoint. 

After the concert, it's immediately time to gamble again. i didn't want to sit down at a roulette table and waste away with lots of spins. so i put $40 down on red, won it, and walked away. So, my theory (at least this time) has been good. so next time i'm down in vegas i'll be betting more moneys. but still, just one spin. i'm good with that. 
Now time to go home. we all went to in-n-out for some grubs. and of course just loved it when ed ordered the 4x4. the quadruple burger. we ate our foods, and by now it's 1:30, and much to sarah's worry, we took off. got on the road and headed home. She was just worried we'd fall asleep on the drive. haha, thankfully i drove, becuase it didn't take long before a couple heads were nodding off. Ed and tom were both great co-drivers as they tried to stay awake and talk to me to keep me awake too. Boy was gone. long gone. he didn't even try. we drove straight through the night and got back to provo (with the time change) at 7:30. we couldn't tell if that was really late, or really early. we were all too tired. so we all stumbled inside, somehow found our beds and slept til well past noon.
Weezer is always fun/incredible. The crew of us never disappoint. it's always fun to have something great like this to embark in. 
"Only in dreams. And so it seems, only in dreams..."

OMG!! is this ocho cinco?!

at work today i get on facebook and am directed to the NFL star ocho cinco's page to see that he has said, "I feel like inviting people over to the house, whooping they a** n a game of choice (360 or PS3) n sending them home question their skills!" he's a popular guy, so of course he generated several hundred responses in just over an hour. that wasn't the surprising thing. the surprising thing was how stupid people actually are. several people posted their gamertags, which i guess isn't bad. what is bad, is when you air out your phone number on a huge page like that for all of FB to see. there's no way i'm not going to mess with these people!
So, i texted all these people as if i was ocho cinco and told them we gotta play some video games today. 2 were the quick ones and realized how wrong they were in there thinking, and after only a few texts came to terms with it and knew ocho cinco wasn't inviting them over. my favorite person was Dimepiece Merchant. Yeah, dimepiece. i knew this was going to be good. She's so in love with ocho (i quickly found out) that no matter how good this seemed to be, she knew ocho was going to invite her over. she told me she wanted to play so bad, but was too far away (from who knows what or where).  i looked up her phone's area code (fresno), and told her i'd be flying in to fresno today for an action figure signing at the wal-mart just off king's canyon rd. oh boy did this get her excited! she invited me over to play video games, and i just told her she could meet me at the marriott downtown and we'd be able to play on their big screens in the grande ballroom. (seriously??) she loved it. asked when my flight got in and where i'd be. hahahahaha oh my freak, i forgot about the best part. she said she'd come to wal-mart, but wanted to know if she should bring her bodyguard. as if she's famous and important enough for a bodyguard.
the funny thing is, throughout this whole conversation i said, "you really think ocho cinco would just text someone cuz they put their number on facebook?" 3 times! still didn't catch on. she asked if wal-mart knew i was coming to do the signing today. um, really? no, ocho cinco is just going to surprise them and stop in and do them a favor like that. nope. he won't. after a couple very forward texts from her i finally said it again, you really think this is ocho cinco? i'm not ocho cinco, he wouldn't text you just cuz you put up your number. i didn't think she could get any dumber, but she did. she then said she wanted to work for me. thinking i worked for facebook. what, because i could see what she posted (along with everyone else) she thought i worked for facebook?!
please tell me the rest of the world isn't this dumb! i was laughing very hard for a long time. thank you Dimepiece for giving me a great laugh today. i love your all caps texts, and your misspelled everything! you made my MLK Day great.

feelin' it

going to the Jazz/Knicks game this past week reminded me of something. how much i love the national anthem. any sporting event i go to and i hear it being sung, i immediately get goose skin. for some reason this song strikes a tender chord in me stronger than any other song, ever. i get it every time. more than once it's brought a tear to my eye. Every time i hear it i thank God i live in such a great place.

how on earth can anyone listen to this and not feel patriotic and amazing?

drooling

after 2 months of drooling over the all gold Nixon 51-30, i finally sprang the $450 and was in love with the 14k piece wrapped around my wrist. that watch gets several comments every single day. The only other thing that would make my wrist happier is the Ceramic 51-30. How much longer do i have to drool over this $2,600 beauty before it's making my wrist complete?

captivating

I saw this video on my friend Mark's facebook wall and couldn't stop thinking about how awesomely cool polar bears are. how are they so smart? who tells them how to hunt? how do they know their noses are black, so they cover them when waiting/hiding for their prey? when i'm so consumed with something i can't stop thinking about it, i'd say it's captivating. right?

no cop

apparently i display some kind of aura about me that makes others think i'm a cop. Seriously, i've had several people in the last few days ask if i was a police officer. it's happened at the gym, wal-mart, and the market. maybe it's the mustache? or maybe it's the look of power? i'm going with mustache.

christmas

i remember growing up, christmas would start so effing early. 7 o'clock was about right. i'm loving christmas more and more as the years go on. a couple years ago we didn't want to worry about waking up early or anything, so we all opened all our presents christmas eve. everything. that was great. this year we decided christmas would happen just whenever everyone woke up. that wasn't until about 1030. but then mom had to run out to our aunt's house and take care of her cats. so really, this was the latest christmas ever, we didn't even begin until about 1130ish. and i was totally fine with that. loved it. i was also totally fine that it wasn't a white christmas. thank goodness it wasn't white. it was 40 degrees with not a hint of snow. grass was still greenish yellow. it was the first christmas in a long time i can remember that we didn't have a fire going in the fireplace, there was no need. it was so warm.
of course the weather in burley doesn't last that long. 2 days later as i was leaving, it was in the 20's and the usual 15-20 mph wind was hawking. yeah, it was brick. to me, burley is paradise. the hot, the warm, the freezing bawls cold. i love it all. every second i'm home reminds me of that. memory after memory floods back, those reminders help too.

nachos, not mine

christmas break, time to completely relax, right? oh, that's being done excellently. The last several days, how do me and the brohas unwind? um, we go to 7/11 or maverick late at night and get us some sodas and nachos. though, i'm reaching my limit. my gut is in a serious coma. waking up sick with a gut ache isn't what i'm wanting. so i'm faced with 2 choices. i can either stop getting these super greasy nachos late at night, or i can continue until i've built up that resistance/tolerance to them. yeah. it's christmas break.

                                     Heaven on Earth, Hell in the Belly

another one down

this semester has finally come to an end. so of course it's time to look back and see all the things i've done/accomplished during that time. and so the list goes on. I...
wrote over 100 pages worth of papers. worked with 2 businesses and their PR campaigns. started this blog! got 5 new pair of shoes ;) Did my own networking efforts. saw two of my favorite bands. traveled...a lot. this semester alone i've been to baltimore, Washington dc, NYC, Idaho (home sweet home), Las Vegas (3 separate times), Los Angeles (love road trips), and there's many more trips lined up for next semester. including another trip back to NYC. another highlight was throwing another kick A columbus day party with the bounce house again. a few different urban camping adventures. had an amazing time with intramural sports this year, our football team was great, and the co-ed "Brothers and Sisters" team was way fun. The best part was watching cheri dominate. I was able to go to the temple almost every week. My goal was once a week, but then school and life got me busy and time was hard to spare. Still, i treasured every time i went. I continued the tradition of hiking Mt. Timpanogos for the third time in as many years. this time with many more people. i was still able to golf several rounds early on in the semester. Something i've been missing for years, until now. I had a mustache. and then it went away, and now it's back.
I think the best part of this semester was just learning. Learning more about others, life, God, and myself. It'd be a complete waste if i hadn't learned anything. An even more waste if i didn't act on the things i've learned.

found when it wants to be

i am under the firm conviction that whenever you lose something, you find it only when that item wants to be found. a couple months ago i lost my chapstick and started looking in every pant pocket i could. nothing. so i just went and bought some new chapstick. a week later i lost that one too. again, i looked everywhere and couldn't find it. so i just settled and knew that they'd both be found when they wanted to be. well, today i put on a pair of slacks for a class presentation, and sure enough there was one of the chapsticks. then, i opened my backpack and saw the other one. i had checked those pants before, and i had been in and out of my backpack several times and saw nothing. this time however, my chapsticks wanted to be found, and sure enough they were.
another instance that proves this is last week Boy was looking for a text book. and frantically looking for it because he needed it bad. after he had looked everywhere for a long while me and tom both told him not to worry. it'd appear when it wanted to. the next morning, there the book lie, right on Boy's desk. on top of everything. and i'm pretty sure Boy had checked that very spot at least half a dozen times.
over the years i've learned to not get frustrated when i lose things. eventually they'll appear. but not until they want to.

center st. and 700 east

right now there's a few things that i really want to do. all been done before, and i've got one of those burning desires to do it again. on my list i've got urban camping, sledding down the deep tunnel up provo canyon, getting some rt. 44 cokes at sonic, going fishing, hiking somewhere, snowshoeing, and traveling. there's gotta be a way to incorporate all of that into something, right?

for those of you blessed enough to have been urban camping, you'll recognize that this is the site. my favorite.
and yes, that is a round-about. perfect for camping.