social media distractions

over the past couple weeks i've had to write 3 news releases, a "green energy" reinvestment act report, a large team charter, and take 3 tests that totaled 8 hours of drudgery. as i sit down to study or write, i instinctively immediately open up several different browsers and start my social media indulgence. i start with facebook, and then i do some blog searching, tumble my way through tumblr, and then end with twitter (which usually takes the longest). then i check my several different e-mails. school e-mails, work, personal, junk, other personal. i've got to take the time to link up all my e-mails so i can get them all to my phone. as of now, only 1 goes to the phone. and it's so nice to be able to receive and respond to group project e-mails while i'm waiting at a red light. that's love. you know what else is love? all the social mediums. it's great to sit down during timeouts at basketball games and plow through twitter and see the chatter from that. or to sit down in church and follow up on how everyone else is singing praises to the jimmer. or how about becoming the mayor of anywhere at all in provo on foursquare? yeah, i'll call that an accomplishment.

social media is a great distraction when you are bored.
social media is a horrible distraction when you have ish loads to do.
i have ish loads to do. yet, i can't be pulled from it. how great is it to have Big Black tweet you and tell you he'll be seeing you at Harry O's in park city in a couple weeks. or to have the guys from jackass reply to a tweet. or to feel the heartbreak of jerry sloan is retiring before ksl even reports it. or seeing the d-will trade announced before espn could report it. that or to just laugh at anything and everything ochocinco says? i feel i have a connection with him ;-) talking with daniel tosh or joel mchale during their shows airing? um, yes please.
the whole point of this is that i am horrible at being distracted. i write this while i should be researching the recovery and reinvestment act and writing and designing a magazine article about it. oh snap, what happened to time management?

finally...it clears out

January is a horrible time for going to the gym. February has proven bad too. provo is a rough place to live if you want an open gym to go work out. these people with their new year's resolutions are finally beginning to sift out. thank goodness. i'm a bit surprised though. i honestly thought it wasn't going to take this long to get rid of these people. so, kudos to you for sticking it out for 2 months. now the gym is back in control of us regulars who go because we like to, not because we made a resolution to.

E.N.T. (the buick specialist)

I've never been to an ENT specialist before, so i didn't really know what to expect. had no idea.

Starting about christmas break time i was having some weird "swimmer's ear" type stuff going on in my left ear. i didn't think anything too serious of it at all. i've had swimmers ear before. i mean, who hasn't? so while i was home in burley for a few days, i visited the family physician. i've now concluded after several attempts for family physicians to diagnose things that they really just do guesswork. trying to diagnose what's wrong with you, is like trying to kill a bull with a letter opener. or a nerf gun with needles on the tips. Good freaking luck. i went in there thinking he'd just do his little magic and swirl some wands and water around and drain my ear. nope. he said there was some infection or inflamation behind my ear drum, deep in the canal. so he game he some anti-inflammatory drugs and said it'd be gone after about a week. well, i figured it wouldn't hurt to also use some of those ear drops. and maybe some nasal spray. so i did. within a week the plugged, muffled sounding swimmers ear was gone. though i give all credit to the drops. that was that, i didn't think anything more of it.

                                              This stuff was an instant relief!

Then about the middle of January comes around and i can feel something in my head, between my ear and my brain. there's been lots of pressure, and I gone done been had a headache ever since. Every single day, it's a headache. It's hard to focus and pay attention and do anything in school. so i figured after a month and a half of constant headaches, it's time to go see the ENT guy and figures this ish out. 

Yesterday was the day. Again, let me remind you i've never been to one, and had no idea what to expect. i thought for sure there was something deep in my ears and only he'd be able to solve that problem. oh boy, after all was done, i felt like i survived the running of the bulls. and of course, all i had to defend myself was a nerf gun with needles on the tips. 

I sit down in the chair and he looks directly in my nose. gets those vice grip things and holds it open. grabbed one of those long q-tip type things and shoves that straight back and starts wiggling it around. it didn't hurt at all, but it did toy with my sinuses like crazy causing a waterfall of tears to come gushing out my eyes. then he starts spraying some stuff up my nose and told me to sniff it hard to get all the way up. that stuff tasted horrible. he went back to the q-tip, wiggled some more, and then grabbed a new tool. it resembled almost too much what the dentist uses when he cleans the plaque off your teeth. one of those long metal hook things. he told me i had a "buildup the size of a buick" in there. i asked him if it was a lacrosse or a rendezvous. haha, good one, right? then he grabs that cavity cleaner thing, shoved that clear back (i swear he was touching my brain) and yanked on that "buick" and pulled it out. just as quickly as those tears came when he was tickling my sinus, now blood was gushing out of my nose. he grabbed a handful of kleenex and i just held them there. he said it'd go away in a few minutes. just a nose bleed. so there i sit, with my box of kleenex holding back the blood, while also still gushing tears from my eyes. i'm glad nobody came with me to this appointment, i'm sure that looked great.

So then i went to have my ears checked and make sure the passages aren't obstructed at all. they first plugged up my ears to check the circulation and who knows what else. everything was normal. then i sat in those cool sound-proof booths and the lady put some headphones on me, and gave me a buzzer. "Press the button every time you hear a beep." perfect. i like this game already. so one hand has the buzzer, the other hand is still trying to switch up the gross kleenex's for a new one. i was still struggling. the beeping ensues and my attention turns fully to it. i was loving this game. i felt like i was on jeopardy playing against Watson. the beeping noises i heard were the lightbulbs going off in my head signalling i knew the answer and had to hurry in and buzz so i could beat the computer. eventually the beeps got too high pitched, and those are the questions i missed. i still had the timing right, so i guessed on a few of those. overall, she said i did good. and that my hearing is just fine. i don't have any hearing deficiencies, despite what some people may say. i guess i'm just really good at practicing my selective hearing. 

After i ultimately lost in "double jeopardy" in that soundproof booth, i went back to the specialist guy and he said they couldn't find anything wrong. there's nothing they could see that would cause these headaches, or this intense pressure and junk i can feel in my head. he suggested i go see a neurologist and get an MRI done so they can really see what's up. that's next on the agenda now. so i pretty much went through all of that treatment just to be told everything is normal, or so they can see, and that i gotta go see someone else. hmmm. lame. all i got out of it was a little bit of dehydration from tearing up so bad, and some slight dizziness from all the blood loss. not a good trade off. Now until i see a neurologist, i'ma go take a nap. maybe a few day nap. i've been so tuckered out constantly for the last month and a half. i don't know how many times i've got to bed before 11. or even 10 sometimes. that's how i know something isn't normal. but eventually i'll get right back on track. i'm just trying to enjoy this adventure as i go through it. and trust me, getting a Buick pulled out of your nose is definitely an adventure!

**sorry if this made anyone gag or get grossed out. just consider yourself lucky you weren't there watching**

Grant Hill drinks Sprite?

i'm not necessarily picky as to what soda i drink. i'm only picky as to what i drink it out of. today on campus i had a bumpin headache and immediately started craving a soda. fountain mtn dews are so much better than others. so of course that's what i'ma get. the shizzy thing? there's no plastic cups anywhere to be found on campus. i resorted to drinking it out of one of those paper style cups. you know the kind, you get them at concession stands at sporting events? or at j-dawgs. they taste terrible. i can always taste more cup than i can soda. so this is how it is, what's preferred...
mtn dew is best as a fountain soda. just not in a paper cup.
pepsi and dr. pepper are best out of a bottle.
coke is best out of a can.
i didn't really start paying attention to soda detail until Robi started making such a big deal about it. Then it became obvious. the next biggest need with soda is the temperature. my good friend Mayve enlightened me on the nature of a perfectly tempered beverage. He calls it carbonix infusion. and he hits it right on the head with this theory and term. He defines carbonix infusion here, "It's when you drink a perfectly tempered dew and it burns so good in the throat, and then here's the key...when you burp, it's that tinkling sensation in your nose when you let all the burped air pass through your nose, sometimes making you sneeze and other times making your eyes water. This is carbonix infusion." perfect.

Like i said, i'm not picky about my sodas, but i pissed my pants from laughter to what thomas said when i told him i was drinking sprite today. He said, "why? are you sick? what the hell is a sprite?" apparently you only drink sprite when you're sick. and with a sleeve of saltines right next to it. and apparently we've become solely 'adult' soda drinkers. why? you ask? because everytime i drink a sprite, or a root beer, it makes me feel like i'm a child again. like i'm 7 years old.
These are the things i think about all day. Maybe that's why i have so much homework to do. and so much to do for job/internship applications. maybe i should stop scheduling time in my moleskin planner to contemplate the perfectly tempered beverage...

what's better?

the only thing better than unexpectedly getting something in the mail, is expecting something in the mail. Knowing it's coming, and waiting for it. whether it be a package from someone. Or something you've ordered. A watch, shoes, movies, money clip. anything. i'm almost addicted to ordering stuff just so i have some excitement and something to look forward to once i get home. and amazon prime makes it even better. free shipping? um, sure.

in pursuit

i want to chase,
but how do i know
for sure you
want me to?

                                                     done running?

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?