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Surprise update!

2010-11-16T07:08:00.000-08:00

The blog lives! Mostly because I've discovered it's more fun to write in a blog than it is to write papers for work...

So, turns out it's been a while since I've written anything here. Instead of explaining to you why it's been so long (here's a hint though, it involves an elephant, 4 of the 5 great lakes, an escalator, and an asteroid), I thought I'd just update you on the most important things that have happened in the last little while.

I think the most important thing I have done since my last post was to become more prepared for the future. My roommates and I have begun creating a stash of food in case of an emergency. The two most likely emergencies being (1) we all lose our jobs and our identities in an action packed, thrilling story of betrayal, love, loss, and espionage or (2) mutant zombie vampire were-creatures from the black abyss of an alien planet take over the world (This story is actually less action packed than the first, though it surprisingly has more love and espionage). Anyways, the point is, we have some food stored away for either scenario, or any other (less likely) emergency that may occur. This food consists of 25 pounds of hot chocolate powder and two pounds of cold cereal marshmallows. We could live for...well...at most a week off of this stuff. And man what a week it would be!

This is what food storage was meant to look like. My only fear is that by posting this online, millions of people will storm our apartment to try to take our food storage from us. Try it. Just you try it. We'll be ready for you. No one's stealing even one pound of our precious hot chocolate.

Well...that's about it. Now you're updated on all the important events from the last 8 months of my life! I left out the stories that seemed less important, like my near death experience jumping from a burning building into streets flooded by a tsunami caused by a nearby volcano eruption, as well as my failed arranged marriage with the daughter of a Thai mafia mob boss. In comparison to the 25 pounds of hot chocolate powder and the discovery that I can bulk order cold cereal marshmallows online...those stories just didn't seem nearly as exciting.

Mountain top guru

2010-03-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

There are many roles out there that I think I could really pull off quite well: action movie star, world ruler, billionaire, Ninja Warrior competitor (tv show ninja warrior, though I feel I could pull off a pretty good ninja too), Indiana Jones type of archaeologist, and the list goes on. High up on that list though, of things I was pretty much born to do, is to be a mountain top guru.

Step one to becoming a mountain top guru: select a mountain. I've got this one picked out. It's a pretty sturdy mountain, nice view, and it's a solitary peak so you don't have problems with guru neighbors, which can always be quite the hassle. I feel pretty good about it.

The life of a mountain guru is simple. You sit on the top of a mountain, ponder life's mysteries, and give advice to those that come seeking it. It's a nice, simple way of life, and who doesn't want a straightforward life? I can sit, I can ponder, and I am always more than willing to give people advice that they need...I really am made for this. Here's how I imagine it would go.

Step two is also very important, and many gurus overlook it. You need to select a comfy chair. I mean, the job has a lot of sitting involved, and even when you're doing all that pondering, you're still typically sitting. A nice, comfy chair is a must for that, and if there's a foot rest with it too, all the better.

There I would be, sitting peacefully on the mountain top (I'd have a full beard, as I understand that to be important to mountain gurus), and a poor, tired soul would come, dragging themselves up the last leg of the mountain hike. After catching their breath, they would look at me, tears in their eyes, and tell me their life story. They would tell me of how hard they tried at everything in their life, and yet, things haven't really seemed to pan out. They would ask me, desperation in their voice, "Why can't I succeed?". I would look back at them, with my cool, sagely stare, wisdom clearly shining through my eyes, and I would comfort them, saying "Friend, there are different kinds of people in this life. There are some people that don't, and there are some people that can't. You just can't." Their eyes would light up, as they pondered my sage words and realized, it's not that they aren't giving it their best, it's that their best isn't good enough. They weren't failing because they didn't try hard enough, they were failing solely because they simply were unable to do it. They didn't lack effort, they lacked ability. A weight would be taken from their hearts, and clouds would disperse from their mind, and the trip back down the mountain would drift by like a dream. Yup...I really think I would be a good mountain top guru. If it weren't for the fact that I get it for free whenever I want, I would definitely crawl on my hands and knees over jagged rocks, climbing perilous cliffs, and wading through 10 feet of snow, just to be able to listen to my advice.

Stereotypes

2009-12-20T08:29:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but I love stereotypes. Not so much stereotyping others, I consider myself pretty good about avoiding stereotyping other people because of their race/gender/high-level-of-nerdiness. However, I love embracing as many stereotypical things as I can for myself. I mean, what's not to love? Here's some examples:

As a guy I don't need to shower every day. As an engineer, I don't need to shower every week. As a combination of the two, it turns out I don't have to shower every month. Which saves me all sorts of time, is environmentally responsible, and just plain awesome.

No matter how much I may seem to be aimlessly wandering, I'm a guy so I'm never lost and don't have to ask directions.

Since I'm a guy, I can fix anything. It doesn't matter that I have no prior experience fixing cars or whatever, I can just open it up, start banging away, and viola, fixed. No actual technical/mechanical knowledge necessary.

I wrote (drew) a screen play for a great and manly movie. Average working man (played by the Rock) leaves his home one day to go to his average office job. As he does, it blows up. He goes to the tool shed and pulls out a few pistols, automatic rifles, and a grenade launcher. He fights terrorists, ninja assassins and barbarian hordes in the middle of the jungle. He finds a secret lair and fights the bad guy in his robot contraption that is loaded with guns. And, of course, it ends after the 40 minute fight scene with no explanation as to why his house blew up or who the bad guys were. Now that's what I call a pretty sweet movie.

As an engineer, I am not expected to have social skills, so it is expected of me to commit at least one social faux pas a day, if not seven or eight.

As an engineer, my vocabulary sucks, and I don't even know what faux pas means.

As an older brother I am expected to tease my younger sisters. Not only do I embrace the stereotype, I go above and beyond the call of duty on this one. My sisters are extremely lucky to have such a good older brother.

I'm pretty sure there are a lot more, but, as a guy, I'm lazy and like to think as little as possible, so I'm not going to bother trying to come up with anything else.

Breakfast

2009-12-13T19:33:00.001-08:00

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and meals are the most important thing in my life, so how have I not blogged about breakfast yet? The time has come to fix that.

When I was young, I didn't really understand breakfast. I remember thinking things like Cookie Crisp and Reese's cereal were great. I still remember the commercials for Reese's, where the kid would at some point think: "Wait, Reese's for breakfast?". That commercial should have clued me into some truths that I didn't learn until much later. Now, as a mature grad student, I have a much more sophisticated approach to breakfast. Gone are the days of Cookie Crisps and Reese's cereal. In are the days of cookies and Reese's. And fudge, and peeps, and brownies, and just about anything that tastes good to me, and is, therefore, good for me. These foods are spectacular for breakfast. If I knew a more spectacular word than spectacular, I'd use that. If I had the choice between starting my day by finding a hundred dollar bill on the ground, or having brownies for breakfast, it'd be brownies in a heartbeat.

Here's a picture of recommended breakfast foods. And I swear, if anyone so much has hints at a dislike for any of these foods...in particular the Peeps... (Yes, that is a menacing trailing off, in case the "..." didn't tip you off)

Now, a word of warning: Not all foods are breakfast foods. And I'm not just talking about cold pizza (seriously people, warm it up. Cold is weird.) I'm warning you against things that are much worse. Foods that would make you want to move your bed into your closet so that you could hide in your closet, under your bed. That bad. Top on that list (and really, the only thing on the list) is a Mexican candy called Pulparindo. My roommate did a piñata for his birthday a while back, and acquired some Mexican candy for it. He had left overs that were just sitting on the table. The bright yellow wrapper of the Pulparindo caught my eye as I was eating breakfast. Knowing that candy makes an excellent side for any breakfast, I thought I'd give it a try. First off, it didn't taste good. The second problem was that it didn't taste good and it was pretty spicy. My third problem with it was that it really did taste horrible, and it didn't get better the longer you chewed it...in fact it got worse (not originally thought possible, but found to actually be true). It was like I was eating death flavored horribleness, covered in a thick layer of torturous agony. Seriously, not a good breakfast food.

Absolutely, positively, not good for breakfast. You may make all the disparaging comments about Pulparindo you want.

Hair

2009-12-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

I realized I'm doing this blog thing all wrong. My blog is supposed to be me, I should be using this to talk all about me! I thought I'd give it a try for this post. I'll spare you a post about my obvious manliness, awesomeness, toughness, wonderfulness, and manliness, since most of you are well aware of those traits (I was, after all, voted alpha male unanimously in 2009 by all those who participated in said voting). Instead I'll talk about my hair and it's ever increasing length.

For much of my life, I have fought against the semi-curliness of my hair by keeping it short enough that there was no room to curl. Whenever my hair would get long enough to begin to curl, I would attack it with a vigor that can only be compared in ferocity to that of a battle between a great white and a crocodile, the two most feared animals on the planet. So most may assume that the new hairstyle stems from me either being too lazy to cut my hair, or from my being an engineering grad student, so it's only natural that I throw all personal hygiene out the window. Both are pretty much right.

Scary, I know. This picture probably shouldn't be shown to small children, or those with weak hearts, Actually, this picture probably shouldn't be shown to anyone, and I apologize to all those who will suffer from severe nightmares now.

At first I held off cutting my hair because I had received vaguely positive comments about it ("I like your hair longer, it hides your face more" and "Your hair isn't looking completely horrible anymore.") Fueled by friends and enemies alike (you know which you are) commenting that they thought my hair looked good longer, I've held off on cutting it...though I've come close a few times... But recently I came up with an even better reason to grow my hair out. With it just a little bit longer, I'll be able to combine the three most awesome and influential hair styles ever known to man. I am, of course, talking about the fro, the mullet and the mohawk. Just imagine, fro on the sides, mullet in the back and mohawk to top it all off. Actually, I did a Paint mock up of what it would look like, so you don't have to imagine. I'm pretty excited now, and for the first time in my life, I wish my hair would grow faster.

Behold, it all it's glory, the frollet hawk!

Mail: Boost to the self esteem

2009-10-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Have you ever come home, flustered and discouraged? You go through the mail and find that all you ever get is junk mail? Do you throw that junk mail away? If so, I'm here to tell you to stop. Junk mail is the answer to all discouragement problems. In fact, I stopped calling it junk mail, I now call it "overly polite, complimentary, feel good and uplifted mail", or Opcfgau mail for short. This was a pretty recent discovery for me as I did something unusual one day. I opened one of the envelopes and actually read (well...scanned) the letter inside, instead of just straight up throwing it away. Let me share some of the things I've learned about myself.

This is what it's like when you view your mail as junk mail. You've got to change your attitude!

First off, I am a Member-Elect of an insurance company I'm not even signed up for. Member-Elect. That sounds important. That sounds like me. I deserve to be a Member-Elect, and they recognized it. That same company let me know that I "cannot make a mistake..." (There was something after that about by joining now, but I'm pretty sure the main message was that I just can't make a mistake).

I am also one of a credit card company's most valuable customers. I deserve MORE. Then they offered me many things I didn't need, but the point was, I am very valuable to them, I am important, and I deserve more, and hopefully they will decide later just to send me free cash instead of useless offers.

Throw away that junk mail attitude and start getting Opcfgau mail. Just look at the difference. It's all in how you view your mail.

Insurance and credit card companies have let me know I've been pre-approved due to my greatness. Cable companies tell me I should go boldly into the land of more. Everyone let's me know that I deserve more. So to make sure that all of my friends realize how great I am, and how much I deserve, I have started forwarding my Opcfgau mail to them. Enjoy!

Finding the Blog

2009-09-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

Many of you may have noticed my blog has been missing as of late. No, it's not that I haven't been updating it, it's that the blog has been missing so I've been unable to update it. For those who don't understand and view blogs as merely an internet site that cannot possibly go missing, I say "Phhh, you don't understand. You could never understand." My blog was missing, and this post is of the journey I undertook to recover it.

Here is a map to help you follow this great journey I recently undertook.

I left home and headed in the direction I could sense to be the right one. I first approached the cruel, fearsome mountains of inevitable suffering. As I drew closer, I slowly began to develop a subtle sense of dread. I noticed it as I passed an old wooden fence. At the end of the fence, sat a lone crow, the harbinger of doom, cawing at odd intervals. Shortly thereafter, as I entered the woods at the base of the mountains, I saw the venomous black widow, harbinger of sorrow. Further along, after my path was crossed by a cat as black as midnight, the harbinger of bad luck, I came to a small river. Flashing in the sunlight as it jumped, I saw a rainbow trout, the harbinger of good fortune. It was snatched out of the air by a great horned owl, the harbinger of metaphorical disaster. It killed the small fish in it's cruel claws and devoured it until it was no more. I decided that my feelings of misgiving were probably all in my head, so I continued onward. If only there had been some sort of sign to tell me how hard this journey would be, I may have never attempted it. Anyways, to make a long story vaguely shorter, I crossed the cruel, fearsome mountains of inevitable suffering with great difficulty, overcoming many trials and hardships. I was on the brink of death more times than I can count (approximately ten, as I tend to struggle with numbers having more than one digit).

Next up on the journey was the uncrossable burning lake of freezing death. This lake is famous for burning with a heat intense enough to burn you to your very soul, while the the water itself is so cold that the average man or woman will freeze to death at just the thought of it. The lake does a fair job of defying logic and passage across it. It wasn't easy, but I was able to swim across it by skimming the surface at the interface between the awful heat and the frigid cold. It also helped that I am, by nature, a fair amount tougher than the average man or woman.

Finally, I arrived at the location of my blog, the cave of horrible trials and great rewards. It was indeed horrible, but I made it through, at last arriving at the room of hidden wonders. There I found my blog, resting between treasures of equal value, such as the fountain of youth and world peace. Not wanting to be taken as greedy, I only took my blog and left (well, I did technically take a sip of the potion of manliness, guaranteed to make you the most manly guy on earth. I was not surprised to note that I remained unchanged after drinking from the potion.)

I decided to try an alternate route home. It was getting late, and I was somewhat anxious to get my blog home. This route was similar to the first, only instead of uncrossable burning lakes of freezing death and cruel, fearsome mountains of inevitable suffering, I crossed over meadows of wildflowers. This route was slightly longer, but in the end proved to be significantly faster.

The McMurtrey family curse

2009-07-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Having visited family recently, the ominous McMurtrey family curse was made fresh in my mind. It's not something we talk about, and rarely to those outside the family. But, I decided, if you're really to get to know someone, you should know about any family curses. And what better way to reveal family curses than on a blog?

We do our best to act like a normal, happy family. But there is constantly a dark cloud hovering closely around, never far from our minds...the McMurtrey family curse.

I'm not completely sure when the curse started, so the parts of the following story that I don't know, I'll exercise a bit of artistic liberty to help the story flow. Here's the mostly true story of the origin of the McMurtrey family curse: Sean McMurtrey, my great great great grandfather, lived in a small fishing village of the coast of beautiful Ireland. He was known for being a handsome, strong, extremely manly, intelligent, tough, rugged man, traits that had always seemed to run in his family, and would for generations to come. Often, as the sun peaked over the Emerald Isle, Sean would take his young son fishing. He enjoyed these times, reeling in fish after fish with his son. He would continue to enjoy them, until the day the the family was cursed forever.

This is that fearsome place where the McMurtrey family was placed under a curse. I stress that this is definitely the place, and not just the first picture that came up on a google image search for Ireland.

On that fateful day, long remembered by his descendants, Sean took his son fishing early in the morning. As the cool breeze blew across the shimmering lake, Sean thought: "Today will be a wonderful day." He couldn't have been more wrong. Not long after he cast in his line, Sean felt a fish nibble on the bait. At that same moment, an old woman came up behind him begging for alms. "Wait jest a moment, I think I've got one!" The woman only begged more loudly, crying and sounding miserable. Sean feared she would scare away the fish. "Can ya not see that I'm busy? Isn't there somewhere else ya could be beggin'?" He said. He ignored the woman after that, staring intently at his line in the water. Suddenly a clap of thunder was heard, coming out of the beautiful blue sky. Birds in the forest took flight, and a horrible screeching sound came from the forest. Sean turned to see the old woman, skinny arms clawing strange signs into the air, hair blowing wildly, though there was no wind. "For caring more about fishing than the good of those that ask your help, I curse you and all of your descendants. Never again, when you go fishing with your son, will luck be with you." She cackled horribly and then vanished, leaving only the stench of burnt hair in the air. From that time forward, McMurtrey's have never been able to catch more than one scrawny fish in any father and son fishing trip. I have many memories of fishing as a family when I was a kid...but few memories of ever catching anything. I was recently reminded this, as my dad wanted to go fishing when I was home. To ensure success, he decided we would get a professional fishermen to show us the best places to fish. For trying to go around the McMurtrey family curse, my father was rewarded with a large thunderstorm the morning of, and a cancellation of the fishing trip.

Vacation

2009-07-05T19:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm on vacation, so I thought I'd take a vacation from my random posts, and actually post about what I've been up to. Plus I have just a little bit of time, as I accidentally got myself out of the game I was playing with my family, so I have to wait for them to finish so I can jump in on the next one. My vacation can probably be summed up by Friday's experience. I woke up from my afternoon nap on the couch at 4:00, saw my dad walking through the room, and asked "So what's planned for the rest of the day?". He thought about it for a second, and replied "Nothing." Beautiful, I thought. This is what vacationing is all about.

Other than taking it easy and playing games with the family, seems like we've been spending a good amount of time in either a lake or a pool. I haven't done a lot of swimming in these last few years, so that's been a bit rough...especially playing sharks and minnows. I've played a different version with some friends before, but the way we play it in my family is basically like tag where you can't be tagged while you're underwater. This means the "shark" has to trap people while they're underwater and force them to surface before tagging them. And that means the game is pretty closely related to drowning. Next year I'll have to practice up on my swimming...and drowning...skills before visiting home. Anyways, I'll be out here at my parents house in Texas until Wednesday, and then back to the joys of work and such...

Early mornings stifle creativity?

2009-06-22T03:42:00.000-07:00

So, originally I wasn't actually going to put up a new post this week. I just haven't been able to think of anything to write about. I admit, I didn't exactly "try hard", but let's be serious, you're not supposed to have to try hard to come up with a blogging topic. Usually if I have to really search for a topic, I end up writing just to write something, and it's feels forced and not so good. As I was trying to figure out why I couldn't seem to come up with anything, I realized it's because early mornings kill creativity. Here, I made a chart to make sure it's clear.

Bottom axis is supposed to be wake up time. I realize now that I should have made the time go forward...but I wanted the creativity to go downwards, so...anyways, it's already made, and I'm not about to go back and fix it.

I remember never being a believer in the old saying "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." It wasn't until I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, that I realized how the saying's supposed to go. If memory serves me well (usually doesn't), the quote goes something like this: "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes." I've had to get up early for the last week and a half to use a machine that is always booked during the day by other people. Since everyone else seems to realize that getting up early actually makes you a worse person, the early morning times are usually free and I've taken up scheduling them. On a side note, there is a computer set up in this lab so you can get on the Internet while the machine is running. It's a Mac. This is my excuse for the lack of quality images in this post. After an epic battle with the mac version of excel and then photoshop, I was able to get the graph made. I'm not willing to risk my life trying to make any other sort of graphics. I did, however, find an icon labeled time machine...I will most likely double click it at some point after I post this, so if you never see me again, I probably died in the future, or the past. Hard to say which, given my Mac-using abilities.

Fun and useful

2009-06-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well, there's been a lack of blog posts lately, mostly because I've been traveling. Now I don't want you to think my blog is unimportant to me, and that I dropped it as soon as I found something better to do. So I've prepared a great story about how I was going to update it while traveling, but just as I went to upload the new posts, I was attacked by a large group of men. Only it turns out they weren't men, but were actually beings from another dimension disguised as men. And they weren't just attacking me, but had plans to destroy the entire world. After I subdued them, I found that nearly two weeks had passed and the first thought that passed through my mind was "Curses, I haven't been able to update my blog yet." So as you can see, the blog is of utmost importance to me, I just was unable to update due to unexpected attacks on my life and the planet I live on. Someday, this event will mostly likely be made into one of those movies based on actual events, so I don't want to go into more details than that, otherwise I'd ruin it for you. But, having my life nearly come to an end that way, made me realize I'd better pass on some more wisdom to those that read this. Here's a couple of the most important things I've learned in my life.

Pooling comes with hot and cold rinse cycles, commonly called hot tubs and normal pools, to help your clothes get extra clean and retain their vibrant colors. Please be advised that the use of bleach is typically uncalled for while pooling, especially if multiple people are pooling nearby.

Do you know about the importance of pools, especially during the summer time? Yes, they're fun, but what makes them important is how useful they can be. Pools can replace showers! It's a great time saver, plus it makes getting clean fun. Instead of showering, you could be pooling! The chlorine in the pool acts as a disinfectant, plus it leaves you with that nice clean smell that everyone loves. Worried that your hair might not be getting the nutrients it needs? Don't worry, put a little shampoo in before jumping into the pool, and problem solved. Need some clothes cleaned but don't feel like doing the wash? The pool is the place for you, it cleans clothes just as well as it cleans you. So put those clothes on and jump in the pool.

This man has it all...well...a grill that bears his name. And in the end, isn't that all that matters? That alone makes him worthy of being anyone's idol.

Another fun time saver is the George Foreman Grill. I've been ignorant about how great these things are for most of my life, but that all changed about 6 months ago when I got one. Yeah, it's easy to cook on, and let's you grill from the comfort of your home, but what you may not have realized is, like all grills, the foreman grill doesn't need to be washed! You never wash grills, you just scrape off the charcoal from before and throw new things on. And this grill is no exception. My only hope is that someday I will be able to make as useful a contribution to society as Mr. George Foreman.

Acting my age

2009-05-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month I went another step up on the age ladder. I'm now high enough that I don't have to pay extra when renting a car, but not so high that the rungs on the ladder are starting to get a bit rickety. Now that I'm up here, it seemed like a good idea to take a look around and make sure I was acting my age. So I spent the last week meditating on the things I should be doing by 25 (it was either that, or do actual work...). Here's what I came up with, and how I measure up.

Complain about work: check and check. This one just came naturally to me. By this age, most people are just getting into this. I've been going strong for years.

Complain about aching joints/back. I just started to get into this, but I now vow to put more effort into it. The little I have dabbled in this, it's been fun. It's a good outlet, and as an added bonus, it's very annoying to those around you when you do it. I don't see any downside to this. With any luck, I can throw my back out, and then no one will hear the end of it. I'm pretty excited about the idea.

Act mature and grown up. Check, check, and triple check. I mean, people have been complimenting me on my maturity, adulthood, prime of life, ripeness, mellowness and development for years (Sometimes using the synonym feature in Word gives you interesting results...). When you look up maturity on wikipedia, it just shows my picture (provided you look within the next 10 seconds before it gets changed back to a less true definition).

Clear cut and to the point, you can always trust wikipedia. Just like you can always trust everything said on this blog (with possible exception to things said in the comments).

Reminisce about the good ol' days. I don't know if this task actually falls into the responsibilities of my age group, but I'm willing to take it up just in case. Man, things were good back then. So much better than now. And have I told you how much better the cartoons were when I was young?

Yup, that's right, I'd definitely say I earned this.

Well, after this thorough investigation, I'd say I'm still on target with my age. I can't wait until the day I become old enough I can just sit on a rocking chair on my porch all day and just yell at the young whippersnappers as they run by. I'm hoping the word whippersnapper comes back into fashion by then, otherwise I may be calling them hooligans. Either way, I'm excited for it.

Adventure part 3ish

2009-05-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

Not the best of my logos...but time is short if I want to finish this by the end of Sunday, and I'm trying to get back to being more consistent on my updates. I used a picture I took in Disneyland, so that's got to be worth bonus points for the logo grade.

How many adventure posts have I done? I think this is the third one. Chances are I could go back and look, but ever since I hit double digits on the posts, it's seemed like way too much work. So this week, I knew what I should write about, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I didn't want to just do a list of things I did, but also thought that out of all my weeks to write about, this one should be the easiest, since I took some vacation time and went to Disneyland with family (brother, sister-in-law, niece, nephew, mom, and two sisters). So I decided, since Disneyland is the place where fantasy meets real life, I'd mix fantasy with actual descriptions of what I did. There's a chance you may have to look closely to get what I actually did.

Among the untold stories of this adventure is the tale of the capture of my sister, sister-in-law and nephew by the flying elephant. I was OK with the loss of the sister, but had to fight valiantly to rescue everyone else. I taught "Dumbo" not to mess with me.

I went to California on Tuesday, spent some time on the beach, and then Wednesday we went to Disneyland. Started things off with a submarine ride. The goal: Find Nemo. I was all over that. I saw him in the distance, swimming with a shady looking turtle. Word on the street said the turtle went by the name Squirt. Sadly I was unable to retrieve Nemo, as I was informed by the captain that the submarine was not equipped with diving suits and I could not leave the submarine until the ride had come to a complete stop. I suspect the captain had been paid off by Squirt. You may have won this time Squirt, but next time, I'll bring my own diving suit, and we'll see who waits for the ride to stop.

This picture depicts one of the many lessons I learned at Disneyland. If at first you don't succeed, crawl. After attempting to run under this arch, hitting his head and falling backwards, my nephew got right back up and crawled under it. I will use this lesson throughout my life. Next time I fail, I will get right back up and start crawling until I succeed!

Next up, I received a call from space command. The evil emperor Zurg was stealing batteries to power his ultimate weapon. I wasn't going to sit by idly while he destroyed the universe that I live in, so I set off, hopped in my star ship, and started blasting things. Luckily Zurg marked all his minions with a Z so I knew what to shoot. As you may have noticed, the universe has not been destroyed. I confronted Zurg and his weapon of mass destruction and took him down with my laser blaster that lit up in three different colors! After being highly praised by Buzz Lightyear himself, I set out into the world again. It should be noted that Zurg, who apparently wasn't killed, tried this scheme three more times, but don't worry, I took him down each time. Anyways, the rest of the trip was filled with action and adventure as I took on pirates, towers of terror, and let's not forget, Goofy.

Genius

2009-05-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

I believe that everyone, at some point in their life, has one idea that enters their minds that exceeds the caliber and quality of all other ideas they have ever had and will ever have at any point in the future. This idea can be life changing, for them and the world around them. A moment of sheer, unadulterated genius. It is, of course, up to them whether they are willing to give flight to that idea, or stifle it and let it rot and die in their mind. After nearly 25 years of waiting, my idea finally came. And don't worry, I put it to action and let it live. And now I am going to share it with all of you.

Here it is, in all its magnificent glory. I give you the Oreo combined with a peep. I can die happy now, knowing I have made a contribution to mankind's progress. I expect the rest of my life to go by uneventfully, with nothing coming close to the awe inspiring ingenuity of this idea.

That's right, sometime last week, my stroke of genius came. I was trying to decide whether to have some Oreos or some peeps. Then it came to me. Like a tidal wave of brilliance lighting up my mind to new and glorious possibilities. I realized I didn't have to choose between them, I could have the best of both worlds. In one fluid motion, I quickly placed a peep between the Oreo cookies (on top of the double stuffing of cream) and put the Oreo back together. The above picture doesn't do this creation justice. Everyone of you should try this and see it in real life. If you need peeps, I have a few left...but after the creation of this idea, I can't guarantee that they'll last long!

I haven't experienced a culinary stroke of genius on this level since the day a friend of mine thought to put Easy Cheese on Cheetos. Sometimes I wish I knew a more amazing word than genius to describe the amazing and awesome nature of extremely good ideas like these. If I did, I'd be using it all over this post.

If you haven't had your moment of genius, don't worry, it'll come someday. But let me warn you. The jealous crowds may try and discourage you. They hide the fact that they are amazed with the brilliance of the idea with ridiculous comments like "Ewww, that's gross", and "Tell me you didn't eat that...". Don't give in. Remember, your idea may someday change the world we live in. I fully expect mine to.

Roommates

2009-05-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Webster's online dictionary defines a roommate as "One of two or more persons sharing the same room or living quarters - also called roomie." This is important because this post is centered around roommates, and it's important that everyone knows what one is. Many people have "roomies" at some point in their life. I currently have three. We get along well, and rarely have any problems...until this last week.

Look at this place. It's not an ordinary house, made of cement and wood. No, this house is made from the stuff that dreams are made of.

My roommates and I, along with some friends, have been considering leaving our apartment and renting a house. We found one we really liked...but didn't get it. Something about working through a realtor, who was working through a listing agent, who was working with the owner. Also, it is possible the owner was looking to rent to a family, not a bunch of college guys. I guess it's also possible I shouldn't have stood outside the owner's bedroom window at night, softly chanting "rent us the house...rent us the house...also, install a pool, with a high dive coming off the roof...". So, with that dream gone, I looked for another house. A friend of mine sent me a link to a beautiful, 7 bedroom house, with 6200 square feet of goodness. A little on the pricey side, but with that kind of square footage, we could have fit like 20 guys in there. A great idea, right? I thought so. Sadly none of my roommates seemed to catch the dream. Despite my bringing it up every 4 minutes for 6 days straight (yes that includes all night long too), they refused to budge on the idea. They tore my dream house apart, one dream brick at a time.

Two out of three roommates agree: Raccoons living on your balcony is not a good thing. Well, two out of three roommates are wrong!

If that were the only offense, I could have forgiven them...well...technically I probably still wouldn't have gotten over it any time soon, but might have some day in the distant future forgiven them. But that same day, more excitement entered my life that I tried to share with my roommates, only to be met with cold eyes, doubtful shakes of the head, and one yelling at me to get out of his room, he didn't want to rent that stupid house. I had woken up that morning to a crash from somewhere in the apartment (or just outside the apartment, as it would turn out). I went out, prepared to fall down and play dead if I saw a robber. But instead of a suspicious looking character putting our TV in a large bag, I saw that, somehow, two raccoons had gotten onto our third floor balcony. Exciting, right? Who doesn't want raccoons for pets? I'm not sure if we're allowed to have cats or dogs, but I'm certain there aren't any rules against raccoons. And think of the benefits. We wouldn't have to take our trash all the way to the dumpster any more, we could just throw it on the balcony and the raccoons would eat it. I'm pretty sure there was no downside to this. Yet, disappointingly, only one roommate seemed excited about the prospect of raccoons living on our balcony. In the end it didn't matter much. As mysteriously as they appeared in the morning, they disappeared in the night, leaving no trace...nor dead raccoon bodies on the ground from a three story plunge.

The Battle of the Blinds

2009-04-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

It's national poetry month...though I haven't done very much to celebrate it. Several friends have been celebrating it by posting favorite poems, or poems they made up, on their blogs. I don't know my poetry all that well, and I have the writing skills of a three-legged mongoose, so I've held off on doing too much. But, as the month comes to an end, I feel like I should do something. So I decided I would make up a poem for this blog entry. But to save myself the embarrassment of not being a great poetry writer, I also decided I would claim this poem was written by me in the third grade. Understand, though, that this poem, that I wrote while in the third grade, is about recent events in my life.

Though turned, these blinds aren't open. See how the room is enveloped in darkness? Can you feel it wear at you to the very soul? Thus begins the Battle of the Blinds.

The Battle of the Blinds (allegedly written some many years ago)

Have you ever suffered such,

that pain and loneliness were nothing new;

And death's destroying touch

Carelessly hovered, hanging over you?

I once did, and here's the tale told,

Of a fight fought with a heart bitter cold.

Spring, season when hearts are light,

When winter's grey at last begins to flee,

Windows and blinds, once shut tight,

Thrown open wide, in hopes the sun to see.

But for me, the blinds opened not,

Tangled tight, stubbornly they fought.

Cried my heart, heavy with wrath,

Begone blinds that bind me and hold back

The noonday sun to light my path,

And the air with freshness my room does lack!

Fear not, I tugged till tired and sore,

I battled with the blinds, I won the war.

Open at last, after hours of desperate struggling, nigh past the time when fervent hopes of the heart fell lost into the dark bleakness of misery. Hurray for perseverance, the winner of wars!

You don't always win when you gamble.

2009-04-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

During the two weeks since I last wrote, having missed writing on Easter, I actually came up with several ideas that I could write about. That's no good, since that means I have to choose between them. So I stopped thinking about them for a few days, until I could only remember one, and that's what I'm writing about. The idea that stuck with me, though, is the one I wish I could forget. It is about events that adversely affected me this last week. Adversely affected me in a very strong and horrible manner. We're talking hope crushing, dream destroying, life changing (for the worse), soul gnashing (sounded good...may or may not actually mean something) events. You could say I gambled...and lost horribly.

I used to feel invincible, like nothing could touch me, I could do whatever I wanted...until I lost horribly. My seat on top of the world was taken out from under me, and all my delusions smashed to fine grained dust, sifting through my hands and out of my grasp. Then I was faced with my own mortality, my human frailties, my now obvious vulnerability to hardship and failure.

It wasn't money that I gambled away though, you can recover from that. I basically gambled away my right to happiness, my ability to feel joy, and any opportunity I had for good fortune. And all to try something different and save a little money. In retrospect, I don't think it was worth it. There I was, blissfully moving through the week, picking up some food to help me get through it. One of my roommates got me hooked on oreos a while ago, so I thought I'd pick some up. After all, it makes me drink more milk, which is good for me. As I went to get them though, I suddenly didn't feel like normal oreos. I thought I'd be adventurous, explore some new area of oreo flavor. I saw mint oreos, chocolate covered oreos, white oreos, white oreos with chocolate filling. But what did I end up getting? Peanut butter oreos. Peanut butter and chocolate go well together, right? A good change up I thought. If I have ever been so foolish before in my life, I don't remember that time. Peanut butter oreos aren't bad...but they aren't the type of oreo goodness that I had come to expect. Oh the disappointment I experienced when I got home and tried them. The heart wrenching realization of what I had done! The misery and depression that followed almost proved too much for me...especially with this next gamble I would make.

Where were you, Cadbury Creme Eggs, during the post-Easter sales? I searched the store for hours. I checked the top shelf, I check behind the peeps, I rummaged through other people's shopping carts when they weren't looking. Alas...no eggs were to be found.

Easter, a time for religious celebration, a time for family and friends, laughter and games. A time for special Easter candies, like robin eggs, chocolate bunnies, and of course, creme filled Cadbury eggs-the undisputed king of Easter candy (I put undisputed, so don't bother trying to dispute it now). Being the smart shopper though, I decided to wait until after Easter to buy my fill of delicious, heavenly Cadbury eggs. Folly! Foolishness! How could I possibly believe that any of this creme filled goodness had even a remote chance of lasting beyond Easter? The shopping trip the day after Easter held only further depression, despair, and several boxes of peeps for me. I thought I could wait, I thought I could save some money. I gambled. I lost.

Canned joy

2009-04-05T05:02:00.000-07:00

I was going to add more to the logo, but I thought I'd keep this one simple and tasteful, rather than action-packed and tasteful, or awesomely cool and tasteful like some of the other logos have been.

I hate to revisit a topic that I so recently blogged about, but I had a pretty successful day foraging at Kroger's recently. So successful, that I'm pretty excited to share it with everyone. So it started out like any other shopping trip...I'd been out of food for about a week, and shear desperation forced me to drive the 1.3 minutes to Kroger's to restock on food. And, as is tradition, I went with no plan, or even a vague idea, of what I was going to buy. I got there, and the foraging commenced.

So there I was, out in the middle of Kroger, foraging for much needed sustenance. I had nothing but my wits to keep me alive and guide me through this expedition. It was long and grueling, fraught with danger, peril, and a hazard or two. But in the end, it was totally worth it.

As part of the traditional shopping trip, I headed to the canned fruit section where I'd normally grab a thing of pears, peaches, and apricots. I don't want you to get confused and think I buy this stuff for health reasons. I usually make sure to get the fruit soaked in heavy syrup, and just to make sure I get enough sugar intake, I drink like half the syrup after eating the fruit. Anyways, so there I was, looking at the cans of fruit, when suddenly a flash of light caught my eye from the top shelf. I glance up and immediately my eyes fell onto something new. Something exciting. Something you might even call exotic. New types of canned fruit that I had never seen before. Fruits that I would never have thought to can. As I looked at them, the can of purple plums seemed to tilt, as if nodding to me, and I thought I heard a voice in the wind whisper "Yes Mike, we are here for you. No we don't cost much more than normal fruit cans. Try us. Add us to your cart. We will never abandon you." Afterwards, lightning struck and two cans, glowing with power and sheer amazingness, fell into my cart. It was quite the experience.

A picture of my cabinet after the addition of the can of Red Tart Cherries (pitted), and the whole purple plums (not pitted it turns out). How do they fit so much goodness into a can? I suspect they take an entire fruit tree and put it in the can, and then remove the less good stuff like roots, bark, branches, trunk, etc.

I hadn't had a shopping trip experience like this since the one time I went to Meier's and found a can of mangos. My hobby used to be to try new types of fruit whenever I saw them at the store. As of now, my new hobby is to try new types of canned fruit. I'm excited to have my eyes opened to the wondrous and exotic world of strange fruits, stored in small, metal cans.

Friendly insults.

2009-03-29T05:31:00.000-07:00

The process of choosing a blog topic is very intricate and complex. It involves such steps as random thoughts going through my head, and me deciding to write about them. The random thought for today's post came while I was talking to one of my friends from BYU (where I did my undergrad work). After a brief exchange of pleasantries, some small talk about the local weather, and an involved discussion on world peace, I realized that we didn't actually do any of these, and mostly we just traded what I would call friendly insults. Basically from greeting to farewell, we shared friendly insults, with little bits of news from our lives scattered sparingly between. And this of course, strengthened our bond of friendship at least 232 fold. So, for those who want to make their friendships stronger, I thought I'd share some of the secrets from the art of friendly insulting.

Friendly insults are usually similar to real insults, but changed slightly to add that friendly feel. Take the word "jerk" for instance. It is curt and harsh, and can inspire feelings of hatred and malice. But, add the suffix weed to it, and it becomes "jerkweed". There's an insult that inspires feelings of brotherly love, peace, and harmony. There's quite a few modified insults out there. Another personal favorite is taking the angry "Sucker" insult, and changing it to the happy-go-lucky "Suckahfish" friendly insult.

Consider the difference between these two very real examples. When the insult jerk was used, everyone felt angry or hurt. However, when jerkweed was used, there was laughter in the air, friendships were strengthened, and steps towards world peace were made.

Now that you've got some of the classics down, let's move on to the slightly more advanced friendly insults. These are the ones you make yourself, using some key words. The most important of these is "face". Face, by definition, is a term of endearment (note: It's somewhat possible that definition was made up by a friend). So by adding face to the end of nearly any insult, you immediately lighten it up and change it to a friendly insult. See how nice it sounds when you change lame to lame-o-face? The o isn't usually needed when you add face, it just makes this one flow better. Hopefully this has been educational for you. There are many more rules, but hey, let's just start with the basics. Now you're equipped to strengthen any friendship.

A weakness

2009-03-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

All my life I've been taught you should make your weaknesses your strengths. No one ever told me how to do that though. I guess it's supposed to be one of those things you learn as you go through life. I'll let you in on a secret I discovered though. There are two ways to make weaknesses strengths. You could actually work on overcoming them and all that stuff, OR you can find a way to make your weaknesses look like strengths. That's the goal of this post. I've found recently I have a new weakness. I can't make what I do sound exciting, so either I need to think of a new way to describe my work/research, or I need to convince everyone out there that science, when described in a monotone, unexcited voice, with long drawn out details, is really cool!!! Please use a tone of voice for that last sentence that merits the three exclamation marks. You can use your really excited voice, your awestruck voice mixed with wonder and amazement, or you can use your cool voice, with undertones of rocking out.

Monotone science explanations are now cool. They're the new black (I don't know enough about fashion to actually know if that means something).

So let's look at the different parts of how I explain what I do. First off, I use a monotone voice. 'Mono' means one, and 'tone' is some how related to pitch or something like that. But what people don't realize is that there's a third thing to look at with this word. It has the word 'mon' in it, which is a cool Jamaican way of saying man. So what using a monotone voice means is that I only use a cool manly pitch when describing my work. That's good. It's kind of like listening to Arnold talk as the Terminator. Cool and manly.

There's no need for a caption here, but, since I'm one to belabor the point, let me again point out, science rocks. The more details the better, and if it's told in a sweet melodious monotone voice, even better!

And as for science itself, Webster's online dictionary uses these words, among others, to define science (note that the order of the words may have been rearranged to enhance readability): "Science: Something obtained through a physical sport." So that means talking science is normal, like talking sports. In fact, it's manly for guys, and cool for girls, just like talking sports, otherwise Webster wouldn't have put those words somewhere in the definition.

And let's not forget the old saying, "the devil is in the details". So going into the long drawn out details is like letting your rebellious nature come out. And everyone likes a rebel. So, as you can see, my descriptions of my work really are pretty awesome. Check that off for another weakness turned into a strength.

Foraging, the new manly

2009-03-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

So, back in the old days, it was manly to be a hunter, and not so manly to forage around and gather berries and such. I mean, think about it. What could be more manly than taking a sharpened stick and tracking down viscous wild boar? Certainly not frolicking through the forest with a basket looking for raspberries while humming sweet little melodies to yourself. But now with today's modern grocery stores, things have changed. It is now more manly to forage than to hunt. How do I know that? Well, because I forage at stores, therefore, it obviously must be more manly.

Gathering and foraging in the old days was not very manly. The fuchsia border is supposed to help you understand that. Fuchsia is not a manly color. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

People who hunt in stores know exactly what they want. They have items in mind and they track them down. Us foragers are much more care free. We have no idea what we want, nor where it will be found, we just wander aimlessly, picking things here and there as they catch our eye. Usually large sale tags catch our eyes, but sometimes the random things like cherry flavored carrots just nag at your curiosity until you slip them into your cart. Some may claim that we just don't have a plan, but that's not true. Our plan is just so good, that it doesn't need to be thought about before hand. It just kind of happens.

A picture of today's modern forager. Tough, manly, and cool. There's nothing sissy or weak about this.

So here's the moral to the story: It's now manly to be a forager, however, it is still not manly to hum sweet little melodies to yourself.

Also, I've been forgetting to do this mention this, but my roommate started up a roommate blog where we each put a quote on it, and people vote through the week on which one they think we should put on our fridge. So far, in the two weeks it's been going, I've won once. Yeah, I know. That's good. Sadly things aren't looking so hot for week three, but I'll still be one for three...that's not bad. Feel free to check it out: http://fridgeforthought.blogspot.com/. I'm not allowed to tell people which quote is mine, but if you're really my friend, you should know, and should vote for it.

A visit from the sister...!!!

2009-03-08T07:03:00.000-07:00

So my sister came and visited me two weeks ago. It made me realize a couple of things, mainly that I don't know how to punctuate to show horror. For trailing off and sarcasm, I often use "...", for confusion I use "!?!??!", surprise "!!!", and such. What do you use for that horror tone of voice, accompanied by creepy music? I hope ...??? did it, because that's what I'm going for in the title.

Here's a picture of my sister and me. If you are thinking the letters on my side seem so much cooler than the letters on my sister's side, that's probably just the letters reflecting my much higher level of coolness. If you think the letters on my sister's side seem cooler, that means the hours and weeks I just spent playing with word art were wasted on you.

So the week with my sister here was pretty good. She's been in Japan of the last year and a half, thus the picture of us eating sushi (before that, she wasn't a seafood fan, like most in my family). Despite her long time in Japan, I was still able to finish my meal before her using chopsticks. She will claim it's because she was full and couldn't eat anymore, but that's like the slow kid who quit the race and said he felt like he had run far enough. Incidentally that kid would then go on to drop out of school. He would quit jobs on and off for the next 15 years until people would stop hiring him. Then he would join the foreign legion but quit that shortly after joining. They wouldn't take his desertion very well though, and eventually they would find him and put him into a prison camp for the rest of his life, where he would die hungry and alone. Just an interesting little story I heard once.

I should have realized a younger sister's visit could be as dangerous as a nuclear explosion. Despite the fact that I've always done those good older brother things (You know, protecting her from bullies, helping her with homework, picking her up when she fell), I fear she may have spread rumors while she was up here, and for all I know is now spreading rumors to the rest of my family. I think she gets this from my older brother, who loves to spread all sorts of rumors. It took me a while to realize why my mom seemed very concerned for me when I first moved to Michigan. It turns out my brother was having a blast spreading rumors to her that I was depressed...

So yeah, sister came, we did fun things, and I of course was a good older brother, meaning I'm sure I was very encouraging of everything she did, and I showed great restraint and didn't tease her in the slightest. Yup, I showed great restraint...only letting a few things here and there possibly slip out...but very small, modest teasings...nothing too big. Well, for the most part.

I'm not dead

2009-03-03T05:45:00.000-08:00

Well...blogging hasn't been happening much lately, but don't worry, I'm not dead. At least I don't think I am. I don't have any of the symptoms (lack of breathing, no pulse, cold skin, inability to move, etc.) Each week that I haven't posted, I have at least started entries. One I didn't finish, then the other I didn't like so I spared you...not to mention I didn't finish it either. Things have been busy, though not too stressful...I think. Sometimes it's hard to tell busy and stressful apart. They're like friends that hang out around each other too long so they start acting like each other and almost seem the same.

Well, this was a convenient find. I was getting ready to go through the grueling task of editing a picture of a tombstone to say what I wanted. I was unhappy about the time it was going to take, and grumbling quite angrily to myself, when I stumbled on this site that puts the text in for you. It's a blogging miracle!

This blog post is going to be short. The main idea is to get something up so that rumors don't spread about me being either dead, or having fled the country for some criminal act. Don't worry though, I'll make up for it with a teaser for the next blog post.

Doesn't this raise the anticipation for the next blog post? Is it going to be funny, or serious...or scary (given the title, scary is probably a good guess)? Are you so excited, you won't be able to eat nor sleep until it comes? In case that's true, I'll try and get it up this week...so hang in there.

Written Sunday, posted Tuesday...why is that? Read to find out!

2009-02-17T17:36:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I've sat in class and thought: If society collapsed tomorrow, none of this would help me. Who cares about thermodynamics when the human race is on the brink of extinction? What I would really need would be survival skills. Or at least some useful skills that would make a tribe leader think I was important enough to keep around and feed. Needless to say, these kind of thoughts made many of my chemical engineering classes seem pointless. Now I've veered away from chemical engineering and my studyies are more focused on steel. Now that's useful. If I could make steel, everyone would think I was useful, they would definitely keep me around and not abandon me in the terrible wastelands that would be left after society collapses. This has been a big motivator to work hard in my classes and studies now. The only problem is, no one has actually taught me how to make steel in the real world. I may need to do some outside research...I mean, do I just find some red rocks and throw them in a fire, and out comes iron? I don't think so. But I don't know.

Here it is. This picture single handedly delayed this post from going up until today. The entire post was written, and the other picture was done on Sunday, but I couldn't decide what to do for this first picture. I searched online for images of ruined wastelands...but a rare fit of guilt at randomly stealing other people's pictures for my own puroposes, no matter how great and noble those purposes might be, suddenly kicked in. I have shamelessly stolen bits and pieces of other people's pictures (and sometimes the whole thing) numerous times. I'm not sure what happened. But it did, and I had to create my own ruined wasteland. So I searched through my pictures, found this one, edited it, and put it up. I guess I'll put the original below so you can see some of the wonderful ways paint can edit pictures (though technically the color changing was done in some other program that is on my computer). But the point is, this is what the world could look like tomorrow. Are your classes preparing you for it?

Speaking of classes, school's going pretty well for me, despite great obstacles and opposition. And by that I mean I'm doing fine, but you always hear those stories of people overcoming great odds to do something. That makes me feel like I should be doing something more, since I don't really have any huge setbacks (When I was young, I once went on a shopping trip with my mom and sisters that lasted for many, many hours. That nearly killed me...but I feel like it's just not quite the same as some of the obstacles other people overcome). So rather than work harder and do more, I decided I would invent difficulties in my life, so my meager accomplishments would look like huge triumphs of the human spirit. Maybe someday I'll go into more detail about these huge obstacles I face on a daily bases. You know, the type of obstacles that would make a lesser man give up and surrender to the bleak realities of a stark and cold future that surely awaits him. But for today I thought I would just go on vaguely about what's going on in my life for the people that care (I know you're out there...at least one or two of you...if all else fails, I'll call my mom and make her read this. She has to pretend to care.)

This is what I claim my life to be like. Well..understanding that the lightning, pit of vipers, torrential downpour, and deadly briar patch are symbolic for the many grueling hardships that I face on my journey. Don't worry though, as hard as my life might be, I continue pushing on and making meager accomplishments, despite the metaphorical (and possibly literal) pits of vipers that I must face.

This weeks been pretty good. I learned some interesting things. One, playing a mobster card game (Family business) the night before Valentine's day, makes for a different sort of Valentine's day. I don't think I've ever been wished "happy Valentine's day...massacre!" so many times before. Nor have I ever seen so many red and pink cards with veiled...or not so veiled...threats on them. Secondly, I've learned...well...actually, that may be it. I try not to overload my weeks with too much learning. In other news, my younger sister got back from Japan this last week, after having been there for a year and a half. It's exciting to have her back...but lest you think I'm actually a good older brother, I should probably point out, this sister has always been pretty easy to tease...and teasing by email just isn't quite the same. While she's been gone, I've had to up the teasing on all other sisters quite a bit to make up for her absence.

If I had a million dollars...or more!

2009-02-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

You know the song "If I had a million dollars"? I've been thinking seriously about that lately (as seriously as I think about anything in life). What if I did have a million dollars? Probably, I wouldn't buy you a house, like the song says. Sorry. I don't know how many people read this, but if I bought each one of you a house, I'd lose my million dollars pretty quickly. Maybe I'd buy you a hat or something. This got me thinking though. What if I had a billion dollars? Then maybe I would buy you a house. But just one, for all of you. You'd have to work out amongst yourselves how you were going to share it. But what else would I do with the left over money? There's all sorts of things I could do with a billion dollars. I made a pretty good sized list of what I would do with a billion dollars, here's some examples.

1. Eat at a buffet everyday.
57. Get it all changed into coins, and store it in a money bin that was roughly the size of a large sky scraper.
91. Buy an island and make my own country (I'm not sure how that works, but if I had a billion dollars, I could pay someone to find out).

I could do all sorts of things with a billion dollars. I could buy servants, friends, and much, much, more! Yup, owning a billion dollars would be the best...or would it?

This should be roughly a million dollars. Not that I counted. When you have this much money, you pay someone else to count your money. But you need to watch them to make sure they don't steal any. Not that you watch them though. When you have this much money, you pay someone to watch the guy you paid to count your money. You may even want the second guy watched too. Just in case.

What if I ruled the world? Now that would be something. I'd be a benevolent ruler...at first. Then power would definitely corrupt me. You know the drill, I'd probably throw my sons in prison (this assumes in the future I have sons) because I'd be worried they would try and take my throne (solid gold by the way, very ornate, lots of precious stones, and plenty of platinum and silver worked into it in nice little spiral designs). Towards the end, I wouldn't want to die, so I'd start forcing all the scientists in the world to find a way to make me live forever. Then I would get angry when they told me it wasn't possible, and I would make a decree that as soon as I died, the world would end. I'd have some sort of switch hooked up so that when my life ended, nuclear warheads would go off in the center of the earth or something. That would encourage the scientists to work harder. Then, as I got older and there was still no hope of not dying, people would start coming out to save the world. You know, like Harrison Ford, Will Smith, and other world saving people that we see in the movies. I would win though, because I've seen the movies, and because I rule the world and have many billions of dollars by this point. By the end though, I would realize the errors of my ways, and not want to destroy the world. On my death bed, I would tell my advisor (who would not be the typical evil advisor trying to supplant me) the code to disarm the bombs. Unfortunately, my change of heart may not come quickly enough. As I finish telling him, and he runs to the control panel to type it in, I would probably pass away. Would the world be saved? Who knows. The only way we're going to find out is to make me the ruler of the world and see how it plays out. So next time we get together to decide who should rule to world, pick me, and we'll solve this mystery.

Orange juice isn't sleep, and other disappointing realities

2009-02-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

This past week I've had the great blessing to be able to work overnight shifts in the lab. Please note the usage of the phrase "great blessing". It's meant to cause jealousy in others who didn't get this same opportunity, while at the same time hide the fact that I may or may not have been really excited to do this. So it turns out, not getting enough sleep can make you feel sick. But drinking orange juice can help stop you from getting sick. To me, it seemed obvious that this means that orange juice can replace sleep. Not so. Despite drinking a fair amount of orange juice the first night, I still felt pretty groggy towards the end, and somewhat sickish, until I got a pretty serious nap in. So it turns out, orange juice is not a good substitute for sleep. Don't trust me on this though, feel free to test this out yourself. I know I was shocked to learn this.

Orange juice, it supposedly does the body good. But apparently it's not a sleep substitute...very disappointing...see if I ever drink it again.

Did you know socks don't last forever? It's sad, but true. It seems like they should, I mean, it's not like you grow out of socks, they're not quite one size fits all, but they're close enough. But it turns out, socks wear out. Just one of those cold, dark realities of life. I've been faced by this recently, when I started realizing more and more of my socks had holes in them. I would put my socks on in the morning, note that one had a hole in it, and make a mental note to throw it away later (it was too late to throw it away at this point, obviously. I was already wearing it). Sometimes I remembered, more often than not I forgot. Eventually it seemed to always happen, and I had to go and buy new socks. Sad, but true. Don't worry though, Kroger carries socks, very high quality brands I'm sure. While I've accepted the fact they don't last forever, I'm hoping to at least get 25 years out of them.

I realized that a lot times I put the pictures before the paragraph they pertain to. I like to think it builds up suspense for the next paragraph. What could the last disappointing reality be? Is it about the chicken? Maybe the playing cards. Probably not the very tough looking hand, that obviously belongs to a very tough man...probably,,,

And the last disappointing reality that we must face in life from time to time is that forks can't cut everything. I'm not much of a knife user, I definitely prefer just to use the side of the fork to cut off whatever I want. And it works most of the time. Sometimes though, you have to break down and actually use a knife. I guess that's why it was invented...people eventually realized that forks just couldn't cut through everything. Secretly I'm not sure if it's socially acceptable to cut food with your fork, or if you're always supposed to use the knife. I like to think it is...if it isn't, don't tell me. Ignorance is, in reality, bliss. Ignorance will never be on my disappointing realities list.

My life is one filled with danger.

2009-01-25T19:27:00.000-08:00

Starting a couple of months ago, I realized I was taking my life in my hands every morning when I left my home. There's lots of reasons for this, I'm sure. The world is a perilous place. Healthier, stronger men than me probably die every day. Sickness and famine abound. Wars and terrorist attacks are not unheard of. Crimes of all natures occur. Crocodiles have been known to attack people. But these aren't what worry me when I set foot outside the door (well...with the possible exception of the crocodiles...have you seen a crocodile attack on TV? It quickly rose to the animal I'm the most afraid of, even passing great white sharks, which were high up there after shark week on the discovery channel.) What worries me, as I set foot outside, are giant icicles. Seriously.

This is a picture, taken today, of the door I walk out every day to face the world.

Out side my apartment were some of the largest, deadliest looking icicles known to man. I was literally risking my life every time I moved about a foot outside of the entryway into my apartment. I say was in the past tense, because apparently it got to be serious enough, that the apartment people must have come by and knocked them off. All entrances in the complex suddenly had no icicles one day. So unless they all fell at once, they must have been removed on purpose. And had they all fallen at once just by chance, I'm sure I would have heard about the 10 or so deaths that it would have caused.

Sadly I have no pictures of the door before the icicles were knocked down. This is an artist's (using the word loosely) rendition of what it had looked like.

At first I was glad that my life was safer and I no longer feared death when walking through the doors. But at the same time, I felt an emptiness without the icicles there. That sense of adventure every morning and evening as I wondered "Will this be the day an icicle falls on me and ends my life?" Also, my roommates and I would use the icicles as a show of bravery. Whoever could stand under them the longest was the more courageous. It's intense to know that any second you could die, and you only had to take a step forward or backwards to be safe, but to do so would show cowardice and intelligence, two things we try our best to avoid. It worked out well for deciding who's turn it was to wash the dishes. Whoever moved first had to go up and clean them. Well...maybe we never played these games, but I'm sure we would have started if they hadn't knocked them down. So farewell icicles, now that your gone, I can walk out the door and worry about my lesser fears of war, crime, and crocodiles.

Warning: Thief at large

2009-01-18T14:02:00.000-08:00

So, I realized I must have been robbed within the last two weeks. What was robbed? Not valuables like diamond necklaces, expensive watches, priceless ancient urns. Not family members (that would be classified as kidnapping, I think it's different than stealing). Not even something less valuable like my wallet (which I keep traditionally empty...a tradition I've had for as long as I can remember...maybe someday it will change). No, what was stolen is hard to put a price to. It's like trying to attach value to a sunrise, or shaking the president's hand, or beating your arch-rival in some sort of daring feat of strength. Someone, or something, has been stealing time from me.

This is from a birthday party I went to a week ago. Could the thief be one of my "friends" Hmmm.....everyone's a suspect.

Now the thief, as most are, is very sneaky about it. It's not like I'm watching the clock, and suddenly it jumps forward 5 hours. But I've noticed my time just doesn't seem to always be there when I want it. And, despite what some may think, it is definitely not because I am wasting and squandering it all. No, it is definitely being stolen. Take last week for example. Sunday is typically my blogging day. And yet, before I realized it, Sunday was gone and blogging time hadn't come. The thief stole blogging time! The only thing worse than that is to steal meal time...and that is serious enough of a crime, even the most morally corrupt, lawless, evil, hateful thief will not go as far as to steal it.

I'm pretty confident in my thief catching skills. I mean, I just watched Batman, The Movie yesterday. You've got to learn from the best, and let's be serious, 1966 Batman and Robin were obviously the best thief catchers out there...whether the villains were stealing time, or dehydrating world leaders, Batman and Robin caught them in the end.

That's not all, every day it seems the thief has been slowly sapping away my time. Days have flown by, I think with only 18 hours in them. I'm pretty sure I only had 5.3 days in the week last week. I worry the thief will only get more ambitious the longer this goes on. Someday soon I may wake up to realize I've lost years of time. Any information that leads to the capture of this thief, may possibly kinda almost be rewarded. So let me know if you've heard of any suspicious characters lurking around.

Traveling for the holidays

2009-01-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

It seems like I've been hearing about exciting travel stories from a bunch of different people. Well, exciting could mean frustrating here, as most the stories are about delayed/missed/canceled flights, but that could be thought of as exciting. I didn't actually have an exciting holiday traveling story, but if I did, here's how it probably would have happened.

The day started like any other. The sun rose, the wind blew. In the distance, the wild turkeys could be heard making turkey sounds. Nothing could have prepared me for the grueling journey on which I was about to embark.

Thursday Jan. 1st, 2009. 4 a.m., China Spring, Texas.

Woke up, loaded bags into vehicle for transportation to the Dallas Airport. Loaded self into vehicle for same purpose. Removed self from vehicle in order to go find someone to drive me so I wasn't awkwardly sitting alone in the passenger seat of the car. Went to Dallas airport, checked into flight, waited at gate C 24.

Thursday Jan. 1st, 2009. 8 a.m., Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.

Listened to announcement declaring my plane unfit for travel. Transferred to a different plane at gate E 38. Got on plane two hours later than original departure time. Promptly fell asleep.

Thursday Jan. 1st, 2009. 3 p.m., Cairo, Egypt.

Woke up from unusually sound sleep. Plane was unloading. Got off. Looked around. Became confused. Looked around again. Confusion increased 8 fold. Talked with flight attendant. Became apparent that I transferred to the wrong flight. Instead of a layover in Philadelphia, I was in Egypt. Confusion was replaced by fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety were replaced by hunger and sleepiness. Was informed I needed to purchase a ticket back to the U.S. They did not accept Visa. Realized I could not but a ticket. Decided to walk back. Struck out across the desert.

At first I was intimidated by the vastness of the desert. Then I realized, it wasn't the vastness that killed people traveling across. It was was the vastness, the heat, the lack of water, the venomous wildlife, and the marauders that killed travelers. No long intimidated by just the vastness, I struck out for home.

Thursday Jan. 1st, 2009. 7 p.m., Egypt and surrounding countries.

Discovered a lost pyramid during my travels. Excavated it from the hot, burning sand with my bare hands. Found interesting artifacts. Carried them out. Donated them to a museum on my way back to Detroit. Bought lotion for my hands to help soothe the burning pain from the sand digging. Very quickly ran through the countries of Libya, Algeria and Morocco.

Thursday Jan. 1st, 2009. 9 p.m., Atlantic Ocean

Constructed makeshift raft from drift wood, fishing line, and an old sock. Rode quickly across ocean, carried by the winds of a hurricane. Made good time. Nearly eaten by shark north of Haiti. Ate shark instead. Rode winds north to the shores of Connecticut.

Thursday Jan 1st, 2009. 10:00 p.m., Eastern United States.

Sold raft for 50 dollars. Used money to take a taxi as far as the eastern shore of Lake Eerie. Started to swim. Halfway across the lake, wished I had kept the raft. Finished swimming just south of Detroit.

Thursday Jan 1st, 2009. 10:30 p.m., Detroit

Walked the rest of the way to Detroit. Got there 20 minutes later than I had originally planned. Picked up my suitcase from the baggage claim. Found my ride was still waiting for me. Got in car, rode back to Ann Arbor. Trip completed.

Here's the map showing my trip. As I was drawing the dotted lines, I hummed the Indiana Jones music. You should also hum it while you look at the map, if you didn't, you should start humming it now, and look at the map again.

And that's my story of how I went from my parent's house near Waco, TX, back to Ann Arbor, MI where I am currently sitting and writing this blog post.

The future

2008-12-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

As a new year is coming up, I thought I'd put up a post about my future. The start of a new year seems like a good time to look ahead. This post won't have goals for the new year, nor speculations as to where I want to be by the end of the year. I'm not one to sit around and muse about what the new year will bring. I'm much more likely just to get on google and search for my answers. And that is exactly what I did. So yeah, no speculations here, just straight up facts about my future.

To know the future, some people get visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, others use time machines. I personally, like to rely on good old fashion future seeing websites.

The first thing I learned was that I will be successful. I visited sites that promised me they could predict my future, and each one told me that. Some said I would be rich and famous, and generously help build houses for the poor in exotic places. Others told me I would be rich and famous, running a fortune 500 company. In fact, one went as far as to say I would invent glow in the dark office supplies right before a huge black out, which would make sales go through the roof. The point is, all websites agree, I will be rich and famous.

Let's see...in your future I see success...riches...and is that a glow in the dark stapler?

I learned something else from these future predicting websites. While they are obviously pretty accurate with the longer term, they appear not to give many short term warnings. For example, it would have been wonderful if one of the websites had told me: "You will be rich and successful. Also, be warned, the next website you try and open is going to cause your computer to crash and all of the websites you have open are going to be lost." Sadly, no such warning. So I guess I've learned my end destination in the future, but I don't know all the twists and turns, bumps and potholes that the road leading there will have. If there are many more serious trials like computer programs locking up, I may just call it quits and just live at home eating junk food. I've been trying it out this last week, and it seems about as good as being rich and famous.

Where were you on this one, future predicting websites?

Adventure returns to my life

2008-12-21T19:58:00.000-08:00

The day: Tuesday, the day of my last final, the day that would end in happiness and freedom...or so I thought. Little did I know, tragedy, heartbreak, misery and woe (yes both misery and woe) were in store. Here's the tale.

I know what you're thinking. I missed my true calling in life as a graphic design type of person. And you're probably right, I mean, just when you think a logo can't get better, I add lightning bolts.

So, Tuesday started the same as any other Tuesday, except that I had a final (this changed the day quite a bit, so essentially it started different from all other Tuesdays). I got up, studied, and went and took the test. It was painful, but pain is my middle name. Not a day in my life passes that I don't regret that my parents named me Michael Pain McMurtrey. Afterwards, did some adventerous stuff for a while, and left to wait for the bus around 8:40. I take the city bus to school, so as to save the environment. Not because I am too lazy to go and buy a parking pass.

This is Captain Planet. We have a lot in common. He's saves the world by fighting polluting super villains. I save the world by taking public transportation.

While waiting for the bus, two classmates drove up and offered me a ride home. I accepted. Carpooling is also on the list of ways I save the environment. If not for me, this world probably would have been destroyed years ago. I was being dropped off second. After we got to the first guy's apartment, I moved to the front, rather than continue awkwardly sitting in the back. We continued on. We got to my place, and I went to my apartment. Chalk me up for another success at finding my way home at the end of the day. Then it happened. I felt lighter than usual. I did a quick check. I hadn't lost weight due to some sort of miracle diet. I emptied my pockets. Sure enough, I lost my cell phone. I checked the apartment. No luck. I checked my friend's car. Failure and frustration resulted. Did I leave it at my desk on campus? I thought not. But thinking isn't always my strong point, so I decided to ignore what I thought, and go check.

Well...this picture speaks for itself, thus making the caption pointless...

I grabbed my car keys and left. Roads were treacherous. Snow, ice, slush, salt, dirt, and loose gravel were everywhere. I didn't care though. I had lost my phone. I sped around corners like a grandma in the Grand Prix. I got to the building I work/study in. I realized I had emptied out my pockets, meaning I didn't have my keys which would get me into the building. I silently cursed in my mind with words like "Man" and "Yar, this sucks". Several door attempts later, I managed to secure a cell phone off of another poor soul trying to get into the locked building. I called a student in my research group that I knew was still there. She let me in. I checked. No phone. I left very dejectedly. I, of course, didn't care about a worldly thing like a cell phone, given that I am much above that sort of thing. However, the fact that I had lost something, that I had failed to protect something in my care, and that I was unable to be successful despite my best effort...that's what really hurt. Well...and the fact that it's hard to talk to anyone I know when I don't have a cell phone...that kind of hurt too. But it was like being stung by a bee while falling into a pit full of boiling lava and failure.

This is what it's like to try and not succeed. Imagine what it's like to jump in there. Best never to try if you're just going to fail.

I decided it must have fallen out of my pocket. Either when I was getting in the car, or when I moved to the front of the car. I searched through the feet (feet should be read as inches here) of snow where I had gotten in my friend's car. No luck. My coworker who had let me into the building saw me and offered to call my phone for me. We went to the parking lot where I had switched places in my friend's car. It took about 3 wrong turns, and 4 checked parking lots before we found the right one. I looked in the snow and saw it. My poor frozen phone, covered in ice and snow, yet still alive, if just barely. I quickly cleaned him off, warmed him by the fire, and got him a steaming cup of hot chocolate. All's well that ends well...except the hours of frustration, cold and humiliation...

So, do you have what it takes to be a nuclear engineer?

2008-12-14T17:40:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, when I tell people I'm studying nuclear engineering, I get strange comments like "Nuclear engineering, that must be hard.", or "Wow, that sounds cool". And of course, the inevitable "That sounds incredibly boring and lame". I think many people have the wrong impression about nuclear engineering. Maybe they see me and they think that to be a nuclear engineer, you need to be ruggedly handsome, witty, incredibly strong, graceful yet manly (girls might not worry about the manly part so much), and have a clear, stately manner of speaking. But, don't worry, while these traits are ideal, you do not need them in order to be a nuclear engineer. In fact, I'm here to let you know anyone who has the desire can make it. In fact, the desire, it turns out, is optional.

Yup. This is me. And someday I might be a nuclear engineer. Speaks wonders for the profession, doesn't it?

To be a good nuclear engineer, you need first and foremost, a good sense of humor. The idea is, you sit through classes that may be boring and you may not understand, and then afterwards you get together with your classmates and joke about how you really enjoyed all the many things you learned in class, and how easy it was. Also, you must have a strong ability to complain. After the joking, a complaining session usually is in order. If you're complaining abilities are weak, you may not have the endurance to last through this. It can be very long, and very intense.

When all else fails...it means no matter what, you are most likely going to fail too, so you might as well have fun with it. This guy had the right idea.

Nuclear engineering isn't all about classes. A significant amount of it is lab work. You need a highly developed skill set in order to be successful here. You will be asked to do things like: heat something up. Cool something down. Clean something. And my personal favorite: spend hours on end sanding and polishing steel bars. If you don't have these skills already, they can be developed. It takes a lot of work and commitment, but it is possible. Watching the Karate Kid can help, especially the part where he sands the deck.

See, first you glue metal bars to a bigger metal bar. Notice how uneven and unshiny they appear. Your job as a nuclear engineer is to change that. You must clamp them down and then sand the day...and possibly most of the night, away. Only when you've masted the art of sanding, will you be worthy to gain the title nuclear engineer.

So yeah, if you can joke around, complain, and sand things, you could quite possibly be an exceptional nuclear engineer. In related news, Salvation Army has an impressive selection of awesome sweaters. There are like two rows of them and they are even sorted by color. It's kind of like being in heaven. Knowing that somehow heaven must be better than Salvation Army really motivates me to make good choices in this life.

Talking to yourself

2008-12-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

A skill, an art, a game, a sign of craziness.

I'm not sure why, but I've been thinking about the idea of talking to oneself (or is it one's self...). Possibly because when I was trying to think of what to write, I debated with myself.

Me: I know, I could write about talking to myself!

Me: I don't know, do you really want people to know you talk to me?

Me: Hmmm might seem a little weird, but...not that much weirder than other things I've written. I could just write about it in a subtle manner so people don't know I'm talking from experience.

Me: I don't know...in my experiences you're not very subtle.

Me: Hey, what are you talking about??!! You take that back.

"So I've got this great idea, what do you guys think?" (By the way, if you're worried someone will think you're crazy if they catch you talking to yourself...that's nothing like the fear that a roommate will think you're crazy if he sees you taking multiple pictures of yourself on the couch...)

Obviously I won the argument and decided to write about talking to myself. Also obvious is the fact that I was right and I'm not very subtle. But seriously, talking to yourself is great for many things, not just debating an idea. Sometimes, if you're struggling with something, who better to give you a pep talk than yourself? You know exactly what the problem is, and you always know just what to say. Here's another example...of what a friend might do, not me though...

My "friend": I don't know, I just don't think I can do it...

"Friend": Are you serious? Why not, come on, you're great, you just got to pull yourself together.

"Friend": You think so? ...No, no, you're wrong, I can't do this.

"Friend": Hey, yes you can. Look at me. In the eyes, not at my shoes. Ok, now, I want you to stop all this crazy bad talk about yourself and say "This is me, this is what I was born for. I can do this!" You know you can, you've got to stop tearing yourself down. Now, keep your head up high and go out there, and just do it!

Remember, common courtesy to roommates says that you should wash hand prints off mirror after any high fives given during motivational self talks. (Also remember, this is a picture of a friend of mine. We look similar, but I stress the fact that we are friends, not the same person)

I'm not sure why, but I also like to justify myself out loud. Especially when I'm about to do something dumb and I know it, but I want to do it anyways. I'm not sure why I do this...maybe just in case people in the next life can get together and watch tapes of people's lives, I want them to know I recognized that it was a bad idea. Usually just one quick statement out loud to myself covers this, like this one:

Me: Well...this is a really dumb idea. I probably won't live through this...but hey, you can't let fear govern your life, right? Sometimes you've got to do dumb things to learn. I mean, I just want to live a little.

Then I jump on the sled with my friends, heading towards an intersection, where either a car will come and hit us, or we will hit the giant wall of ice on the other side. Had we died, I was covered, I had proclaimed to myself that I knew this was a dumb idea, but I wasn't going to let knowledge ruin my life!

"So, I've got to maneuver between the cars, hope no more cars come, dodge the parked cars on the other side, and watch out for the guy shoveling the walk. This may not be a good idea..."

So, I know what you're asking yourself right now. Probably something like this:

You: Man, he's right, talking to yourself is useful and fun. Why do people think it's crazy?

You: I have no idea. Maybe people who don't talk to themselves are crazy.

You: Yeah, I bet you're right.

I think the problem comes if either half of you in the conversation forgets you're talking to yourself. I mean, think of how confusing and crazy it could sound.

You: So yeah, then I asked her/him if she/he wanted to go watch a movie together, and he/she totally shot me down. It sucked.

You: Ha, man, what a loser you are.

You: Hey, you're supposed to build me up.

You: Why would I do that, you suck, you should try being more like me.

You: ...I am you, what are you talking about.

You: What? What on earth are you talking about? You are me? What, are you living two lives or something? That's crazy talk.

You: No, really, we're the same person, we're talking to ourselves right now.

You: Oh man, you really are crazy.

Then you would run around yelling hey, this guy/girl is crazy, watch out. He/She thinks he/she is me. People would look at you, and probably think you were crazy. At least that's my theory of why people think you're crazy if you talk to yourself. A few crazy people ruin it for the rest of us.

A motivational post

2008-11-30T18:39:00.000-08:00

Because who doesn't need a little motivation once in a while? And who better than me to give it? Note the hypotheticalness of those questions, no need to answer them in the comments.

Everything's clearer with a graphic.

So, I've gone a while in my life without any real goals. I have vague long term plans that could possibly be called goals, but if so, they're wishy-washy-prone-to-change goals. I recently realized I needed to set goals, so I set my mind to it. To start off, I set a serious goal for Thanksgiving break. I spent Thanksgiving in New Mexico where my brothers both live, and I set the goal to stop my three year old niece from calling me a little girl whenever I talked to her...especially on the phone (my brother taught her to call me that, he gets a kick out of it, and she's come to love it. She gets so excited to talk to me and call me a little girl that I almost felt bad trying to break her of it).

I once thought I would never learn to ski...especially after my one and only attempt at it. And I can't ski and never will be able to because I didn't set the goal to learn. Some day, when my kids want me to teach them how to ski, I won't be able to. They will cry and be disappointed in me for years after that. Their strongest childhood memory will be that I couldn't teach them how to ski. And why? Because I didn't set the goal to learn. So set goals.

So, time to be motivational. Setting goals can be discouraging. You can feel your time running out. You will most likely run into setbacks. For example, when you try to change one niece, you may suddenly find that another niece and nephew catch on that it's fun to call Uncle Mike a little girl, even though it's obviously not true. Some setbacks can be painful, such as small children jumping on you and kneeing you in the stomach/legs/face/neck while happily calling you a little girl. At times it can seem like there is no way to accomplish your goal. You don't know what to do, you have no idea how you teach a three year old, and when you were three you were always polite and kind to everyone so you don't relate to name calling at all.

Goals should be measured. If you don't put people after the ramp, how will you ever know how many you could have jumped over?

But persevere! Somehow, things will work out if you persevere. I can't pinpoint exactly what it was that did it, but eventually I got through to my niece. By the time I left New Mexico, she was calling me a big tough man, which is obviously more accurate than a little girl. And as an added bonus she started calling my brother a little girl. Accomplishing goals can be so sweet. So go set some goals and accomplish them!

To sum things up, sometimes goals can be like getting a drink from a drinking fountain when you're two feet tall. Even doing all you can do (climbing stools, pushing buttons, the works) your goal will still be out of reach. But if you just start crying, other people will come and lift you up so that suddenly your goal is easy and takes no work on your part. At least I think that was the moral of the story.

Controversial topics

2008-11-22T19:57:00.000-08:00

So usually I avoid controversy. I am a mild and peace loving person, who avoids arguments and conflicts. Just ask anyone who knows me. Well, not anyone, as there are some who are jealous of my peaceable nature. Don't ask them, they'll lie. Actually, thinking on what many people might say, most people I know must be jealous of me, so just believe what I've said and don't bother asking anyone. I'm saying this because in this post I'm going to claim some things false, that many people believe to be true. I don't want those people getting offended and arguing their points. I'm just voicing some opinions that I have that just happen to be right.

This is a common sight outside my apartment. Unless these ducks and geese came from the North Pole, they have done little migrating south this winter.

1) Birds, namely ducks and geese, migrate south for the winter. False. They do not. This was a recent realization for me, but I noted at BYU there was a pond that had ducks in it year round. I've been paying attention to the flying V's that I see in the skies this winter. I have noticed geese flying north, and geese flying east, but I have not seen any flying south. People just see geese and ducks flying in V's and they say, oh they're flying south for the winter. Check next time someone tells you that. They are probably not flying south.

Is it a bear? Is it Bigfoot? In my opinion, either one is equally likely...it's probably just a hairy man in a bad fur coat...though the photo is a little blurry, so I could be wrong. It may be a pretty nice fur coat.

2) Bears are a real animal. Again, commonly believed, but not actually true. I realized this a long time ago. I've hiked and camped in "bear country" a number of times. I have seen zero bears in the wild. I think bears are like big foot, or other things like that. There are always sightings, but little proof. Sure, zoos claim to have them, but look closely, half the time they never move because they're actually fake. The ones that do move I think are probably made with robotic parts. I've seen them do the same things with dinosaurs in a museum. It doesn't mean suddenly that dinosaurs are alive and walking on the earth...I think you're just as likely to run into a dinosaur, as you are a bear.

This has never happened to me. Not that I have ever been deserving mind you...

3) I've been trying to think of a third one for a while, preferable one that isn't animal related. I thought about disproving that lying is bad, but then I decided it might be bad to lie about lying being bad. So I settled on the idea that Santa gives you coal if you've misbehaved. This one was disproved a number of times while I was growing up...because my sisters never got coal. Apparently Santa is very forgiving, even when letters are written to him with proof of siblings' bad behavior. I, of course, never had to worry about whether this was true or not. I lived by the motto: "Do whatever possible to ease the life of parents and those around you, and make the world a better place".

Hopefully this post has been enlightening, and I haven't crushed anyone's dearly held beliefs. Luckily, I think the real reason I've avoided controversy for so long in my life is because I only have strong opinions about weird things that other people don't care about.

A week of increase

2008-11-16T06:19:00.001-08:00

Growing up, I was not always "cool". I didn't listen to a lot of music, in fact, usually I only listened to what my friends liked, and that was while I hung out with them. And we all know, the music you listen to determines, in a large part, your coolness level. So, when I learned this great truth a few years ago, I decided I needed to get to know some bands and find some that I liked so that I could be cool...and hold my own when people talked to me about music (this is very similar to the reason I started following sports better...it's very unmanly if you can't hold your own in a sports conversation). So, after some recommendations from some friends, and listening to different music for a while, I found my favorite band: Jack's Mannequin. The song that really got me hooked on them was Dark Blue, but I like a lot of their other songs too. I'd explain who they are, but you can just look them up on wikipedia if you don't know.

It was dark, and I'm not the most skilled photographer, but, I think you still get the general idea from this picture. Well...maybe not, but the idea is, this was a concert for cool people to go to.

So, thinking my coolness was secured, I continued on in life, not realizing I was missing key components to being even cooler. I had only been to one concert in my life (I'm not talking like a symphony or orchestra concert, I've been to those...and for the record, I also am not counting local bands, though I've been to one of those when my roommate was playing in one), and that was Neil Diamond. It's a long story, but the short of it is a friend, who is a huge (huge) fan of Neil Diamond, had an extra ticket, invited me, and I went. Average age at the concert: 63. It was fun, but I don't think it did much to raise my coolness level. So this week, a friend, who knew I like Jack's Mannequin, and who also had found out that they were playing in Michigan, invited me to head up and see them. Only she didn't tell me what we were doing at first, and it wasn't until we were on our way up that I found out. I don't think I've actually been that surprised since the day I found out you could microwave a potato in a ziploc bag. It was a lot of fun to go hear them, and I could actually feel my coolness level raising.

I want this to be me. Sitting in front of a mansion with a top hat and a cane, doing nothing. But doing nothing in a rich and classy like manner.

Also on the rise this week was my sophistication level. I went to Eugene Onegin, an opera by Tchaikovsky (yes, I had to look up how to spell his name). I feel it is important to be sophisticated and cultured. That way, if society ever goes back to a more divided class system, where the upper class lounge around in mansions all day and go to balls and such at night, I will be classy enough to fit in with them. I would much rather live in an estate and not be stuck cleaning chimneys or something. While talking about different concerts and shows that I went to, I could also mention that I went to a high school rendition of A Christmas Carol. I'm not sure what good characteristic that increased, but I'm sure it made me a better person.

Here's a summary of the week for those who didn't want to read the post. Coolness has gone up, sophistication has gone up, and it should be generally understood that manliness/toughness goes up every week.

Update: More action and adventure from my life.

2008-11-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

Well, this was another exciting week. I'll go over Saturday, which is always the highlight of any week...unless you're on vacation, then all days are equally highlighted.

An adventurous life needs an adventurous logo...and an adventurous color scheme helps.

So a while back, I got an email asking me to go to a luncheon on Saturday. It was for prospective engineering graduate students thinking about coming to Michigan. There was a guy visiting the nuclear department from BYU (where I did my undergraduate work), so they asked me to come and talk to him. Obviously they need to do more screening before sending out these invitations. I cracked after the first question. It went something like this. Him: "So, how's everything going?" Me: "Aagghh, what are you doing, why are you thinking of more school? Get out while you still can! You're getting a degree, why aren't you happy with that? They suck you in and they'll never let you go...do you want to be in school for the rest of your life? Please....take me with you....I'm small, I'll fit in your luggage....you've got to get me out of this place. Don't make me go back to class, I can't do it, I haven't understood a word in 5 weeks. You've got to help me..." By the end I had dropped to my knees, cradling my head in my hands and looked like I was going to pass out. He seemed like a nice guy over all. I also met another guy from Idaho who's looking at nuclear engineering and considering working for my adviser. After the initial outburst, I tried to compose myself and remember that I was trying to convince people to come out here for school.

You need to be prepared before you go shopping. I would suggest printing off some floor plans, taking a compass, maybe a sleeping bag and some matches just in case. Oh, and plenty of granola bars.

The luncheon was right across the street from a mall here in Ann Arbor. I've been somewhat in desperate need to go shopping, but not the usual kind of shopping for milk, bread and whatnot that I get at Kroger. I needed things like clothes and such. Someday, Kroger will start making Kroger brand clothing and selling it in their stores, and that will be a happy time...but until then, I knew I had to give in and go shopping somewhere else. The Sears entrance caught my eye because they had an auto center too, and I wanted to get a price estimate on something for my car. So I went in, found the auto center desk, and then went looking for the actual mall entrance. I wandered lost in Sears for a while. It's a big store. A man came and asked if he could help me find anything. I almost begged him to show me the exit, but I didn't trust him. He had those shifty eyes that said "I will not help you, instead I will mock you". So I told him I knew what I was doing, and busied myself pretending to look at whatever was closest to me. Purses. After he turned his back, I bolted...in a casual, walking manner, not to draw any more unwanted attention. Charlie Chaplin in "The Gold Rush", doing a dance with rolls...genius.

Eventually I found my way out, bought things I needed and ended up back in Sears. I bought more things there, and finally found the doors that looked like the entrance I had come in. On my way to those doors, I found the doors I had actually come in and went out those. Later that evening, I went to a friend's and watched some old classic movies with a bunch of people. It was fun, and educational, as these were actual classic movies (Charlie Chaplin, and a Buster Keaton), not movies that I usually refer to as classics, such as Labyrinth, The Sandlot, or Mighty Ducks. Afterwards, we played some Dr. Mario. I finally won something after doing doing a fair amount of trash talking...which is unusual for me...usually I trash talk and then lose horribly. That also happened in my last Dr. Mario match, but the point to focus on is that I also won sometimes.

Halloween and Music

2008-11-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

First, I'll explain the music to the right. In this post I'm going to talk a little about some songs my old BYU roommates and I made for fun. So I thought I'd try and put together a play list so you could listen to some while you read the post (I have been told I write a lot, so now you can listen to music while you read the long posts...hurray...). The only one that needs explanation...or at least that I can explain...is the Community Theme. Two of my roommates and I shared all our food and eventually formed ourselves into the Community. We tried to get others to join with limited success...in fact, mostly we just got our other roommates to form the anticommunity, and they have since been our archrivals.

Not only was Jen the first (and currently only) to post a Halloween picture that I could steal, she also helped me with the costume. She gets all the credit for the awesome sunglasses that pretty much made my costume (a rockstar for those that may be confused).

Halloween was a lot of fun, even though I didn't have a costume together until October 30th...which probably isn't unusual for me. Halloween night I went to a party put together by people in my church. It was a lot of fun, there was food (always a good thing), games (again, always good), and dancing (ummm....also always good?). They also did a pageant type of thing to determine who would be crowned Mr. and Ms. Monster. The Ms. it turns out is important not to confuse with Mrs., we did not force any sort of marriage at the party. They just picked a few people to be in the pageant, you had to be in costume, and share a talent. I was one of the guys they picked.

The song I did for the talent part of the activity was based on Love Machine, a song written by some of my old BYU roommates...is is also the only song we ever actually performed (at a church talent show last year). We usually just made songs and recorded them for the fun of it, but it worked out for the talent show. We even had something for everyone of us to do, including a couple of dancers.

I don't know much about pageants. I remember my sisters would sometimes joke around about a special wave when we were younger. It went something like "elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, wipe a tear, blow a kiss." I was a little worried I might have to break it out...and very worried that I might wrongly direct the blown kiss so it hit a guy. I have not blown many kisses in my day...I have no idea how you aim a blown kiss. Luckily I was not required to do any sort of special wave. For the talent, I sang "I am the Monster King". A remake of the well known song, "I am a Love Machine". Well...maybe not so well know, but I wish it were. It's part of the get rich schemes my BYU roommates and I came up with.

Pilgram in the music video for Girl in my Closet. Sadly, the hair is not real.

We took up writing songs for fun our freshmen year, and we did it every now and then later on. Then, this last year, we were inspired. We put together a music video to Girl in my Closet (started it at like midnight...the best time for any sort of project like this), and put it onto Youtube. We figured if we could get about a million hits, then we could get our own site together, put up other music and videos, and become the next greatest band...and most importantly, make millions of dollars so we could all drop out of school. Sadly, so far, after 8 months of being on Youtube, we only recently cleared the 1,600 mark. Hopefully in a few more weeks we will reach the coveted million views mark...and to help things along, I'm going to put a link here, completely using my blog to push my own interests. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmXXL_Drcd4 Feel free to visit it and boost our feelings of popularity (and get us one step closer to dropping out of school). We also did a version of Love Machine for a talent show. We didn't practice together much, we added the keyboard part like the day before, and picked up a drummer from another band that my roommate Lamar played in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNtmY0xh1ZA Overall though, it turned out pretty well.

Story of the past: Cool guy of the week

2008-10-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd pull a story from my past years for this blog post. Partly because I don't want to write about my week every time, otherwise people may realize I don't live the adventerous, action-packed life that I say I do (Though really I do, if I were to talk about my week this week, I would tell you stories of wandering through the dangerous areas of Detroit, visiting cider mills, one with a bridge rumored to be haunted, and let's not forget game night on Friday, where I saw the phrase "The man took his dog to find his lost meat" slowly change to "Evil vampire man attacked the girl with a pitch fork"). So my past life story I'm going to tell we'll call "The Origins and Endings of The Cool Guy of the Week".You had to be cool to be cool guy of the week. It was the most important rule.

As I've said before, I always lived with the same guys through my undergraduate years at college. During our time together, many interesting traditions started and ended...and sometimes even started again... Cool guy of the week was one of those traditions. It started our freshman year. Basically, every week, everyone on our dorm floor would vote for someone to be the cool guy that week. This meant anything they said went (cool guys obviously can't be wrong), they got prime seating for midnight movie on Thursdays, and everyone else had to constantly let them know how cool everything they said was. Oh, and you had to wear a very...cool...shirt all week, called the cool guy shirt. This shirt could never be washed, although you were allowed to jump into the pool with it on, if you felt that it needed a little rinsing off.

Don't worry, we did not discriminate between male or female. Either sex could be voted cool guy of the week, though some thought it unfair that we refused to allow the title to be changed to cool girl of the week, or anything like that. But let's be serious, guy encompasses both male and female.

The tradition obviously stopped while my friends and I served missions for our church, but when we got back, it started up again (with a new cool guy shirt, as the old one was lost, and with the addition of a cool guy sweater option for those colder days). And the tradition grew to include much of our ward (church group that met together). Eventually a roommate started up an online voting website (I did a google search and found the website: http://www.geocities.com/coolguyweek/ it still exists!). This is where the tale becomes sad. Corruption, greed, and false coolness lead to many problems with the voting system. Soon, campaigning began, as if one could campaign to be cool. People began to lose sight of the true meaning of being cool. Then fake votes began showing up. Due to a flaw in the security system of the voting website...or maybe just the complete lack of any security system on the website...people were able to vote as many times as they wanted, and false names were often created.

I was voted in as cool guy during a week of civil unrest. The previous cool guy, outraged that one of his cool mandates had not been met, refused to return the cool guy shirt and sweater. During this time of turmoil, a cool guy coat was created (bought in Mongolia by one of my roommates). I have never gotten so many angry looks on BYU's campus as when I was wearing the cool guy coat everyday. I suspect people were angry and jealous of my coolness. I did not wear the cool guy hat that is shown in this picture, I didn't think the world was ready for that kind of coolness.

In an angry response, our apartment shut down the online voting, seizing all control of the naming of cool guy of the week, so that only we could decide who should be cool guy of the week. This caused many horrible backlashes in our ward. Angry mobs formed, bricks were thrown threw our windows, followed by torches. The cool guy of the week could not calm them down. Finally, after getting thicker windows that would repel bricks, we decided that the once proud, unifying, tradition of Cool guy of the week, had lost all meaning, and needed to be retired. The cool guy shirt and sweater were hung in our closets, and there remained...and possibly still do remain.

The final cool guy of the week was the naked indian on BYU's campus (please note that the statue is not actually naked, he is sporting a loin cloth, we just refered to him as the naked indian statue). He was cool because he could sport the sweater in the normal fashion, or as a cool guy loin cloth.

My scary tale of sisters and ghosts.

2008-10-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me, knows sisters scare me more than ghosts.

This is my mom and her friend playing cello for Boo at the Zoo. They love to dress up in somewhat elaborate costumes, they went as ghosts this year. I don't know why, but my mom completely changes when she's around some of her friends. She gets kind of crazy...and I mean that in the good sort of crazy way, since I assume she may read this.

So I went to Ohio this weekend, that was fun. Friday, after finishing up everything that needed to be done with school (I use the term finishing somewhat loosely here...), I left Ann Arbor, picked up my older sister and my youngest sister from the Detroit airport (they had flown there...it's an airport, it's what you do.) and we went down to Cleveland. This was no random trip back to my childhood home. We went to see my mom, who had also flown in from Texas where my family's living, play cello at the Cleveland Zoo. The more I try to explain this to people, the less sense it makes to me, but it happens. My family hasn't lived in Ohio for like 5 years. My mom used to play cello with her friend every Halloween for "Boo at the Zoo". Even though my family moved many dozens of hundreds of miles away, my mom still flies back to Ohio every year around Halloween time. It's kind of like a vacation for her I think...but they pay her to take it, which seems like it would make any vacation better. I am willing to travel to Hawaii if anyone reading this would like to pay me to go there.

Again, Boo at the Zoo. So, they've taken up playing these funky looking cellos. They're electric cellos. It's because by day my mom plays at the zoo, but by night she rocks out with some pretty hard core bands. You should hear the electric cello, electric banjo, and electric kazoo all play together, you get some pretty rockin' tunes.

On the way to Cleveland, my sisters and I stopped at Cedar Point, which is a pretty awesome roller coaster park. Then we continued on to the east side of Cleveland, where I grew up in a small town called Chesterland. We stayed with some family friends who treat us like we're their kids. Only I wonder sometimes if they don't treat us better, so maybe like grandkids. Let's be serious, I've seen my parents around my nephews and nieces...they definitely treat grandkids better than kids. Saturday I went to Columbus to pick up a friend from BYU who was interviewing for dental schools, then went up to Boo at the Zoo. My favorite part, besides the cello playing of course, was looking at all the kids costumes (apparently this event is for kids like 8 and under, so if you are, say 24, and do not have any kid with you, you actually tend to feel slightly out of place). Halloween's coming up and I always struggle coming up with a costume. So I figured I scope out what was hot, and just copy the most popular costume. Turns out fairy princess is pretty popular. I may not be that.

Picture of Ohio where we stayed. I've got to say, I'm pretty proud of this picture, got the sun just right through the trees. Had to cut down 7 trees to do it, but it was definitely worth it.

Sunday was fun too, went to church with a lot of people I knew growing up. Plus it was the primary program, which means the entire meeting was done by kids younger than 12 (and a few adults to help them). I also sat by a friend who had two of his kids with him that were too young to be part of the program. So, yeah, needless to say I enjoyed the meeting a lot. Kids are funny, and I seem to relate pretty well to them. Turns out we even have about the same length of attention spans.

Week 2: Still here.

2008-10-12T19:08:00.000-07:00

Last summer, my family went on our first big family vacation ever. We went to Belize, it was a lot of fun. Despite my original belief, Belize, though Itallian sounding, is not in Italy. It is actually in Central America. Wikipedia and Google maps agree on this.

Yup, it's week two and I have not given this up yet. That's a good sign. I took up running a little while ago. Ran almost everyday for a week...and then stopped and haven't been out again since. So, two weeks in a row without quitting is pretty good for me.

Mainland Belize is a pretty cool place, with lots of old Mayan ruins, surrounded by jungle. It was fun to wander around, eating fruit off the trees, and bugs off the ground, just like Baloo taught Mowgli in the Jungle Book (Disney cartoon version, as I'm not mature enough to actually read any sort of book, or watch a real movie). Just need those bare necesities.

I was going to just write about my week, but I realized I have one major problem. I have no pictures from anything I did this week. And since some people (namely my brother...possibly others) tend to only look at pictures, I realized I was going to have to do some improvising. So I think I will show random pictures that tell one story, while here in the text I will talk about something completely different. This will most likely be very disorienting and confusing, but my mind's made up, so it's too late to change anything. This week I did some country dancing at a church activity (and possibly even did it right...well...small little parts of it right). The whole activity was fun, even though there are rumors floating around that the chili judging was rigged. By rumors floating around, I mean I hope to start some by mentioning this in my blog. I did not win, nor did I take second...or third. On top of that, the guy I was taunting all week took second place, completely thrashing the credibility of any future trash talking that I might do.

We didn't realize it at the time, but some of these sites were famous...well, more famous than other ancient indain ruins. The top picture is one taken with my camera. The bottom one is not. This may be the closest I ever come to being in a famous movie. For those who don't recognize the bottom picture, it's from Star Wars (Return of the Jedi I think...). Please note, I thought of many lame Star Wars related jokes for this caption, and I held off on putting them. That should be worth extra credit in something...do we get graded on our blogging skills?

Also this week was my first ever visit to a cider mill, followed by many hours wandering in a corn maze (It was actually very similar to Lord of the Flies. After so many hours of wandering lost without water or food-not counting the hundreds of ears of corn that surrounded us-our group started to split into tribes. Then the tribal wars started. Things got ugly for a while. There was much backstabbing, friend turning on friend, life long enemies made, then unmade...and promptly made again due to said backstabbing. It was definitely a lot of fun and I would highly recommend it to anyone.) Cider mills are apparently very important in Michigan. There are tons of them around and everyone has their favorite one to go to. In fact, I'm told you can tell a lot about a person by what cider mill is their favorite. I'm trying to figure out which cider mill says "I'm cool, tough, and ruggedly handsome". That's the one I plan on making my favorite...which may shake many people's faith that you can tell anything about anyone based on their favorite cider mill.

After spending a few days in the jungle, we went to the coast and went snorkeling (first time I've ever been). I had mixed feelings about it at first. I had recently watched shark week on the discovery channel and had seen a "harmless" reef shark bite a camera man. The mixed feelings came from my fear of being attacked in contrast with my hope of losing a sister or two to feed the poor, hungry sharks. Neither one of these happened...nor was I able to ever catch...or even touch...a fish despite the fact that there were many that mocked me by swimming close, only to dart away when my hand moved.

Blogging and me

2008-10-05T05:54:00.000-07:00

Family a few years ago. Since this picture was taken, two more nephews have been added to the family and one brother-in-law. Also, two sisters have been sold off, causing great gain to family morale and finances.

I'm kinda new at this blogging thing. In fact, until recently, I considered blogging for older, married people (these two go together, being single means you're young, married: old, and married with kids: really old - Sorry Kip and Katie, but congrats again on becoming really old). Recently, however, I stumbled upon an underground movement of hip, young, cool people who have blogs. So I thought, I'm hip, young and cool, I like underground things, maybe I could blog. Then, after talking with some of these bloggers, I decided I'd give it a try. So that's the basic story of my starting a blog.

It turns out, starting a blog means lots of decisions...some of which I wasn't really ready to make-this includes naming your blog and choosing a template. I'm told I can change these later, so that made it less stressful. I picked a random template, and called the blog "This blog was made for reading", mainly so I wouldn't make two mistakes. One, so I would remember I should probably try and make it at least somewhat interesting since people will (possibly) be reading it, and two, to remind myself that this is not a private journal, if I write it, people may actually read it, so be careful self, don't write too much of what you don't want known.

My plan for this blog will probably change pretty often. Secretly, I'm not much for talking about myself, which is what I think you're supposed to do on a blog, so I decided I would ramble about nothing instead. Then I remembered this blog was made for reading, and random ramblings might get old. Since I recently started a new phase in my life (graduate school at Michigan), I decided maybe I could use the blog to keep old friends and family (old refers to friends, not family, I still hang out with the same family as I did when I was younger) up to date, and also, it could be used to help people in Michigan get to know me better (which may be a bad idea, if people start avoiding me, I may stop blogging, or just start telling outlandish lies to trick them into thinking that I am cool to hang out with, and should not be avoided).

Again, family, couple years old. The main reason for this picture is that there was a lot of text without any picture, so I threw this in to break it up a bit. It's in San Antonio, my family moved to Texas about 5 years ago.

I believe there is an "about me" or something like that on the side bar, haven't really looked at anything on the blog yet before writing this post, so I figured I'd summarize my life in this first post. There are 7 kids in my family, I have two older brothers, an older sister, then three younger sisters. Despite being surrounded by sisters, don't worry, I grew up very manly and tough. My mom is a musician, my dad an engineer, so I guess I got a bit of both...making me a poor musician and a bad engineer. I spent most my life growing up in Ohio, just east of Cleveland. I was a distance runner in high school, and did many other very important and wonderful things I'm sure. Really I was somewhat quite (somewhat may or may not mean really) and possibly even somewhat nerdy (somewhat here should give the impression that this is not very likely, but there is a small, very small, possibility that it is true). I did my undergraduate studies at BYU-Utah in Chemical engineering. It was a pretty fun time for me, freshman year I lived in the dorms and got to know the guys on my floor pretty well...after spending about a month only doing things with my roommate. The original plan was not to get to know anyone and eventually move to the mountains and become a hermit, but eventually we got to know everyone else on the floor and decided they were cool enough that we could hang out with them.

"Family" picture of roommates - this caption is above the picture because I am somewhat struggling to get the captions to do what I want...
I would be roommates with some of the guys I met freshman year for my entire time at BYU, and stay pretty well in contact with most of the rest. I went to Argentina for two years after my first year at college as a missionary for my church. Then I came back and finished my degree in April 2008. It seems like a lot of time at school was spent trying to figure out a get rich quick scheme with my roommates so that we could drop out of college and be rich. A few were really good ideas, but we always ran into snags. One of my favorites to talk about was a very simple idea, we only needed the use of our apartment complex's pool, and a killer whale. And, as luck would have it, one
of my roommates was going to Alaska that summer, a prime place for capturing killer whales, or so I believed. Basically the idea was to keep the whale in the pool and charge people admission to swim with a killer whale (a good date idea if I've ever heard one, but also fun to do with a group of friends). I'm pretty sure we could have made a lot, I
know it's one of my dreams to swim with a killer whale, and if it were in a swimming pool that was small enough that the whale would have trouble eating me, all the better. We even realized we could start up a collection for people to donate money to get a larger aquarium for the whale, thus making us look humane and caring. We would then promptly pocket the donations. Sadly, my roommate failed to bring back a killer whale, thus wasting his trip to Alaska. He has still not been completely forgiven. Since none of these get rich quick schemes took off, I am still going to school, studying Nuclear Engineering at the University of Michigan, waiting for the day when I can drop out and get rich quickly, with minimal work. If all else fails, I may eventually take my own trip to Alaska, and show my roommate how whale capturing is meant to be done.

I've liked Michigan so far. I moved here in the middle of the summer (July 9th) so that I could start working in my advisor's lab before classes started. This worked out well for two reasons. One, I got to know my way around the lab a little bit before getting bogged down with classwork, and two, I got to know a good amount of people out here during the summer when people tend to do more (good weather, less school for those in school, and...I don't know, people just do more in the summer, it's true, so I don't have to justify it with reasons). That second point was important, since there are no mountains in this area of Michigan, I couldn't fall back on my original plan to become a hermit living in the mountains, shunning all human contact. Luckily, there were a lot of activities I could go to with people from my church, so all I had to do was pretend I was social, and I got to know a good amount of people pretty quickly.

My first apartment in Michigan. I lived here by myself for two months...this is at the end of the two months after I furnished the apartment with an air mattress a stool (technically, my mom came and visited, and had pity and went out and bought the stool).

Well, that does a decent job summing up my life...well, at least as well a job as I'm willing to type right now, and probably more than most people are willing to read. The plan is now to go back and figure out how to put pictures in this thing so that it at least looks interesting. I will try and put pictures of family, Utah and Michigan. I will probably not put any of Argentina, because I have no pictures on my computer. They are all stored in a man book. For those that don't know, a man book is similar to a scrap book, but much more manly. Where a scrap book looks nice, has colorful pages, cutely written captions, and cleverly cut pictures, a man book has white pages, messy, short captions written with a black sharpy, pictures crudely cut so that they would fit on the page, sometimes cutting people in the picture off so you can cram more in, and it just has a general manly feel to it. It is a very tough thing to have, and portrays a strong sense of manliness about the person who is skilled (and manly) enough to make one. Well, that's it for now, until next time (probably next week, the plan is to be a weekly updater).

I took this picture from someones facebook album. It's a picture of me in Michigan, conveniently the one that has the most other people in it that I could find. I am sure I picked this picture so that others could see some of the people I hang out with in Michigan, not because I think it makes me look well-liked and popular. But, by all means, please note how many people are in the picture and come to any obvious conclusions. There are at least dozens of people, and that's not counting the third table of people that is outside the picture. Nor is it counting the picture taker...who may or may not have been the waitress, I'm not sure. Either way, we were good friends.