The Dally News

Surprise

2010-03-01T14:08:00.002-05:00

So I was bored just now, and pulled up the web traffic report for my blog. Turns out there are people out there looking still. And not just stumbling on accidentally, but actually searching for The Dally News. Either that, or there are a lot of stupid people out there who can't spell "daily."

Anyway, I'll see if I can't think of something worth posting. Don't hold your breath though.

Awesome

2009-03-31T01:16:00.004-04:00

I want to prepare you to be ready for the awesomest blog post you've ever seen. Because that's what this is.

I was bored just now, and I google image searched the term "Awesome." This was one of the first images that came up:

That is among the coolest pictures I've seen in recent memory. Bonus points to anyone who can provide the following information:

1. The character's name
2. Where the last place you saw him was
3. How to do his signature moves, the pile driver (pictured here), and the flying chest bump.

While we're on the topic of awesome, this is one of my all-time favorites:

Here's another one I just found the other day. It's aptly titled: Narwheagle Wearing Wolf Shirt. That's about as awesome as it gets.

So there you have it. Awesome.

Back from the dead

2009-03-01T23:49:00.004-05:00

So I just did a google image search for the term "freedom," hoping to find a picture that adequately describes my post-bar feelings. Well, I didn't find one, but I did find this picture, which must the most patriotic picture in the history of pictures:

Freedom. That's what I was going for there.

Anyway, I'm all done with the bar exam now, so it's a mere 8 to 10 weeks before I find out how I did. Needless to say, I'm really hoping I passed because if I didn't, then it's just time to start studying again not long after I find out I failed. I don't want to have to go through that hell again. In the meanwhile, I'm looking forward to restoring some sense of normalcy to my life.

That's really all I have to say. But here are a few things I found out about while looking for a picture to include in this post:

-Someone made a movie called "Zombie Strippers." I didn't even bother to read the synopsis of that one. But I'm gonna guess it has something to do with strippers who invite unsuspecting strip club patrons backstage, where they eat their brains. Call it a hunch.

-Some of those flash mob folks have put together a few zombie flash mobs. Talk about bad ideas. If someone is carrying a baseball bat, you could easily get your head bashed in, and the head basher would probably be justified for doing so.

-The chick that played Stephanie Tanner on Full House (you all watched it; don't deny it) wound up strung out on meth. But apparently she's clean now.

-Gary Coleman is still really short.

-One day Chuck Norris looked into the mirror and said, "Nobody outstares Chuck!" He is still there today.

-In 2001, someone set up a web page dedicated to the cause of getting Leonard Nimoy to eat more salsa on the belief that because he is awesome and salsa is awesome, if you combined the two, he would become unstoppable. Curiously, the web page hasn't been updated in almost 7 years.

-Any typical hamster can be easily converted into a dangerous fighting weapon. Click here to find out how.

Anyway, I didn't really have anything worth saying, but I was bored and felt like posting something.

In other news, I turn older on Wednesday.

That is all.

A worthy cause

2009-02-20T00:36:00.002-05:00

OK, I'm going to try to keep this as brief as I can. Any of my blog readers who reside in Utah should be very concerned about their rights to access public waters. Tomorrow, February 20, 2009, a committee of the Utah House of Representatives will be voting on whether to send a bill to the floor of the House, or to kill it now.

The bill is House Bill 187, and its purpose is to turn back the clock on a Utah Supreme Court decision, Conatser v. Johnson,. The gist of the Conatser decision was that the public has the right to access public waters for any lawful purpose, even when the waters run through private property, provided that the public is not entitled to trespass to get to the water, must stay in the river or immediately adjacent to it, and that the public must not damage the landowner's property while using the river. Makes sense enough, right? It's public water, after all. Why not allow the public to access and use its resource, right?

House Bill 187 will change all that. Here's what it would mean for you and me. If you want to float a river that goes through private land, you can still do that, as long as the river you want to float runs through one of the rivers specified in the bill. The bad news is that the bill only specifies 14 rivers. There are quite a few more rivers than 14 in this state. If your river isn't on the list, you can't float it.

And if your river is on the list, you can float it, as long as you don't trespass to put in. But once you're on the river and enter private land, if you stand up, you're committing criminal trespass, a class B misdemeanor. That's right, floating is legal, standing up is illegal, unless you're doing it to get around an obstruction that materially impairs your ability to float on through.

If you want to fish, the news is even worse. Any portion of any river that runs through private land is off limits, unless the land owner allows you, of course. That's how it was before the Conatser decision.

But it gets far worse. If an owner of a single family dwelling that abuts a river puts up a sign that says "no fishing," not only are you prohibited from fishing in the portion of the river that abuts his property, you are prohibited from fishing within 500 feet of that property. That's about 170 yards. This applies even if you're in a publicly owned portion of the river. So one land owner could potentially shut down close 400 yards of a river.

Additionally, this means that you could be standing on publicly owned ground, fishing on publicly owned ground in publicly owned waters, but committing a class B misdemeanor. Let you think I'm making this crap up, read lines 191 through 198 of the bill:

http://le.utah.gov/~2009/bills/hbillint/hb0187.htm

So what should you do? You should email your representative RIGHT THIS INSTANT and tell him/her that you will not vote for him/her if s/he supports HB 187. If you don't know how to contact your representative, go here to figure it out:

http://www.le.state.ut.us/house/DistrictInfo/NewMaps/State.htm

There is also an online petition that you should sign:

http://www.petitiononline.com/21809/petition-sign.html

It's pretty urgent that you make your voice heard. The Legislature has a long track record of pushing things through when they think nobody cares. It could very easily happen with this bill if we don't get enough of a popular groundswell to kill this thing now. This is urgent, so waste no time contacting your representative and telling him/her to vote against House Bill 187.

So I failed at keeping it brief. Sorry. To those of you who know me, this should come as no small surprise.

[/soapbox]

All work and no play makes Dallas a dull boy

2009-02-16T14:22:00.004-05:00

Apparently there are still a few folks out there who bother to check this blog. I'm not sure why, because I really haven't had anything worth posting since I had the incredibly bad judgment to ask for a third shot of pepper spray. But I thank you for your persistence in checking up.

So, by way of update, I'm getting ready to take the bar. It's next week on the 24th and 25th of this month. Read: one week from tomorrow. That means that for the last couple of months, I've done precious little other than sit on my butt and study law, the vast majority of which I will never need to know again in my life. Basically, it's a twisted form of hazing, as far as I can tell. Anyway, that's enough whining about it out of me. I knew what it was when I picked it up.

Anyway, I thought I'd make an effort to start blogging at least more than semi-annually. If I have any thoughts worth posting in the future, you'll be the first to know. This was just a quick note to notify the blogosphere that I'm not dead. I'm still boring, but I'm not dead.

It never gets old.

2008-12-05T21:33:00.001-05:00

I know this has been kicking around out there for a few years now, but it still makes me laugh. I can't think of anything else every time I hear Carol of the Bells now. I hope it does the same thing for you.

Eating crow

2008-11-24T00:46:00.004-05:00

Hmm... I guess there is no easy way to do this. Time to sit down and eat an extra large helping of my least favorite dish:

We played decently, but you've got to credit the U's D. We got stung with a -6 turnover margin, and it's pretty much impossible to win if you do that. Some of them were absolute gifts to the U, but some of them were earned by excellent strategy and effort, so you have to give them credit for what they did. Tough to see it because our D played a solid enough game to give our O a chance to win it, but they couldn't seal the deal. Gotta give the devil his due, the U capitalized on our mistakes, and created their own opportunities, and won a convincing W.

Yeah. Not a fan of that.

Still, it was a fun game to watch (until the 4th quarter meltdown, anyway), and an intense place to watch a game. I guess you've got to get it handed to you every now and then so you appreciate the wins, right? But it's hard to be disappointed with a 10-2 season, and I'm looking forward to what I hope will be a respectable bowl match up.

I'm already getting excited for next year's game in Provo. Long live college football.

Spoiler alert!

2008-11-20T21:51:00.005-05:00

So a football fan was walking down the street and saw a little boy giving away new-born puppies. A sign next to the puppies said "Free BYU puppies." The fan didn't think much of it and kept walking.
About a week later, he was walking down that same street and saw the same boy giving away the same puppies. Now, however, the sign said "Free University of Utah puppies." The fan's interest was piqued. He decided to ask the boy why the sign had changed.
"Weren't they BYU puppies last week?" He asked.
"That they were," replied the boy.
"Why the change?"
"They were neutered."

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I've got my ticket. I cannot wait to be there. Where, you might ask?

Perhaps Utah is curious what 11-1 feels like. We'll both know, come Saturday. No shame in 11-1.

No BCS for U!

Boise State, you're welcome.

Follow up:

2008-08-24T14:55:00.002-04:00

Thought you might want to see a few pictures after being sprayed:

This one is about 30 minutes after being sprayed:

This one is about 45 minutes later:

Here's a link to a good video of some of the aftermath.

And one more.

Hot, hot, HOT!

2008-08-19T00:26:00.005-04:00

So the company that makes this stuff reports that the burning agent in this spray is derived from the burning chemical in a cayenne, or a jalapeno pepper. *Edit* it's only about 10 times as hot as a cayenne.

This...

crap...

BURNS!!

I've done a lot of things in my life, and subjected myself to pain that sane people would never do. But nothing I have ever done even approaches how horrible this stuff is. I recommend that you avoid doing this, if at all possible.

Absofetchinlutely!

2008-07-20T23:06:00.002-04:00

Another B Money video about to go viral! Friday night was B Money's birthday party. He was going to try to get Ludakris, Snoop Dogg, and/or Dr. Dre to come to the party, but apparently they were all busy and couldn't make it.

After dinner, a few of my friends unveiled the 2nd B Money video. They put in some serious time to get it all finished up, and it looks pretty good. Take a peak for yourself:

Look closely and you'll see me in two scenes.

It made for a happy B Birthday.

Anyway, that's really it. I don't have anything else worth saying. Maybe in the next couple of weeks, I'll have something worth blogging about. For now, this is it.

Maximum wisdom

2008-06-09T00:12:00.004-04:00

I just spent Sunday night watching The Princess Bride with my 5-year-old nephew, Max. As always, he dropped a few pearls of wisdom:

"It's easier to get your rings to slide off your finger when they're all spitty." -As he pulled his CTR ring off his spitty finger.

"He kicked me in the crotch. That doesn't hurt for girls because girls don't have crotches."

Not really much you can say to follow up on those.

Road trip part I

2008-05-23T08:57:00.012-04:00

As I mentioned, I graduated. Graduation was alright, if not a little silly. But it was a graduation ceremony, which are pretty much always silly, so what do you do? Anyway, here's a picture of me along with a few friends in our graduation dresses:

Anyway, that's all done and behind me now, and I'm in the process of moving back to P-Town. So Willus and I are now in the middle of a cross-country road trip. Most of my two or three readers already know about the trip, but in case I haven't told you, here's what we're doing:

We're taking 2 weeks to stop at as many baseball games on the way home as we can see. Along the way, we're going to stop and take in some other sites as well. Here are the parks we've either seen, or are going to see:

Fenway Park (Boston)
Yankee Stadium (NYC)
Progressive Stadium (Cleveland)
Wrigley Field (Chicago)
Busch III (St. Louis)
Arrowhead Stadium (Kansas City)

Other teams' home schedules didn't cooperate, or we would have stopped there too.

We've already stopped in and visited Mike and Cyrus, two buddies of mine in dental school in Boston. We went to a Red Sox game, and also went out on Martha's Vineyard to do some salt water fly fishing. This was some of the most fun fly fishing I've ever done. The weather didn't completely cooperate with us, so the fishing wasn't fantastic, but it was good, and we did catch some stripers and blues.

Anyway, back to baseball. One of our key missions to this road trip is to decide which stadium offers the best overall baseball experience. Perhaps the most important measure is which stadium has the best hot dog. So far we've only been to games at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, and the consensus view is that the Fenway Frank is the runaway winner thus far.

I also had an Italian Sausage at Fenway, and it was pretty tough to beat. Come to think of it, Fenway's food BURIES Yankee Stadium's food. I was definitely impressed with Fenway, and definitely unimpressed with Yankee. The hot dogs I had in Yankee Stadium were terrible. Cheaper than the Fenway Frank, but they were gross. Overall, Yankee Stadium is a dump. Sorry Yankees fans. Fenway Park is heads and shoulders above Yankee Stadium in terms of the quality of the experience. Better luck with your new stadium, because the old one sucks. But they did give me a free hat, which was cool.

The game at Fenway was pretty cool too b/c we got to see Jon Lester pitch the first no-hitter in the majors this season. This was Willus's first major league game too, which was pretty cool. So the Sox won 7-0 over the Royals. The Yankees also beat the Oriels 8-0. So thus far, the home team has won in a shut out. We'll see tonight if the Indians can keep the streak alive.

Now that I think about it, I'm going to develop an objective scale to rank the stadiums we visit. I'll post this soon, and keep you updated as the trip progresses, and as my access to WiFi allows.

Later today we're going to Progressive Stadium to catch an Indians game. I've heard really good things about Progressive Field, so I'm excited about that. Then on Memorial Day, we'll be catching a game at Wrigley Field, which I'm really excited for. Between now and then, we're going to stop in and visit Kirtland, the NFL Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, and possibly the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So that's the road trip to this point. I'll be posting more pictures when I can. (Most of the good shots have been on my brother's camera, and he didn't bring the cord you need to upload pictures to a computer, so I'll have to wait until I get home to upload those photos).

Final count

2008-05-13T13:25:00.005-04:00

So any of you have been suffering through the last 3 years worth of blog entries know that one of my lame goals in law school was to make it through the entire 3 years without buying a single highlighter.

This was surprisingly easy to do. By the end of my second year, I had a large enough stock pile built up to last me through my third year. But rather than stop there, I decided I would pursue the goal to an absurd end, and build as big of a stock pile as I could.

Final stock pile count: 151.

To put the picture into perspective:

You know the saddest part of this whole thing? That I actually find that the excess of the situation only makes it all the more amusing. Over the last two semesters, I have used them at a rate of about one every 3 weeks. By my estimate, at that rate, this stock pile would last me until approximately February 4, 2017, all else being equal.

Here's the funny part: they don't always respond too well to altitude changes, as sad experience with them in airplanes has taught me, and I just loaded them into a box to be shipped across the continental divide. Realizing their air pressure sensitivity, before I packed them, I double bagged them. So here's hoping that 2 Hannaford shopping bags are enough to stop 151 markers worth of bright yellow ink.

How would I explain that to the insurance adjuster when I filed a claim? That might be a tough sell.

5/9/08, 12:00 EDT.

2008-05-09T14:03:00.004-04:00

As of a couple of hours ago, I am OFFICIALLY FINISHED WITH LAW SCHOOL!

That means that my relationship with this woman has permanently changed:

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure we'll still find unhealthy ways to continue this bizarre love-hate collusion we've got going on. But things have changed between us. Oh my, things have changed.

Anyway, I gotta say that it feels AWESOME to be done.

Graduation: I highly recommend it.

The Final Countdown

2008-04-28T10:23:00.004-04:00

This song has a very special place in my heart right now. It's been playing endlessly through my head for the last few days:

*EDIT* OK, stupid Youtube won't let me embed the player for some reason. So you're going to have to open this link to see it. How lame is that? I wanted you to be able to ROCK right here on my blog, instead of having to go to Youtube to do your rocking. Jerks. Anyway, this is the link. Yes, I meant to have the link be this long.

What an awesomely terrible song. I hope you watched the whole thing. I really do. But here are a couple of questions that I couldn't answer myself after watching the video:

*Why are they heading for Venus? Isn't that a fairly inhospitable planet?
*Why does he provide his own echo after he says Venus?
*How do you get your hair to do that? I always wanted mine to be all feathered and awesome like that when I was in 1st grade.
*If they really have as much hairspray in their hair as I suspect, how do they have pyrotechnics on the stage without causing them all to combust spontaneously?

Anywho, my final countdown isn't quite as cool as Europe's. Mine is the countdown to being done with school. I have one class today and one tomorrow, and that's it. I have 3 finals after that, and then I am done with school. FOREVER.

So, yeah. Not as cool as Europe's, but still pretty cool. I'll be Dallas, J.D. one week from Friday.

Success

2008-04-15T23:56:00.002-04:00

Just as I was about to go to bed, I noticed that my right hand smelled like a combination of hot wings, chicken tenders, lane wax, and a 14 pound house ball that apparently used to belong to someone named Alice.

That, my friends, is the mark of a good day.

That is all.

The newest, awesomest page on the interweb

2008-03-28T11:36:00.002-04:00

My sister just emailed me this link. It's her youngest son's blog. He's one of the funniest kids, and is about 10 times as creative as I ever dreamed of being, and comes up with awesome stuff. I don't know how frequently he'll post stuff (hopefully more frequently than his mother does), but this page will be well worth keeping an eye on.

Max's blog.

It will now be a permanent fixture in my links on this page. -->

Good work, Max. You're easily the most creative kid I've ever even heard of.

National Corndog Day '08

2008-03-24T21:51:00.004-04:00

*Edit* Now this includes a picture.

I just wanted to toss a post up here really quick to brag about my performance at this year's National Corndog Day.

My consumption tally for National Corndog Day 2008:
Corn Dogs: 9*
Tots: 60
Root Beers: 6

I didn't even really come into this having made myself super hungry either.

Two days later, I am still feeling the after shocks. Totally worth it.

*I only got 9 because we ran out of dogs at our party. If we would have had more, I would have reached double digits without question. I'm revamping my strategy, and next year I fully intend on making a solid run at the triple double (10 dogs, 100 tots and 10 root beers).

The Lord of the Wings - The Fellowship of the Wing

2008-03-14T10:41:00.016-04:00

In keeping with our theme of trying to do new and exciting things during our last year of law school, we recently had what will hopefully become an Albany Law School tradition, The Lord of the Wings wing eating tourney. Fortunately a local bar and grill worked with us and gave us a really good price on 500 wings. I don't even want to think about how long before our contest they were cooked.

Like I did with roller derby, I spent some time reading up on competitive eating. There is a lot more psychology to this than you would think, at first blush.

The Lord of the Wings was an endurance event. We started with a field of 12 competitors, each required to come up with a nick name. -I chose "The Avenging Angel." I even made a shirt just for the occasion.

The field of competitors

Round 1 was 10 minutes and we were given a platter with 20 wings. After that round, the lowest 2 competitors would be eliminated. Then to round 2, which was 7 minutes, after which the lowest 4 competitors would be eliminated. Round 3 was 7 minutes, lowest 3 eliminated. Round 4 is the round where champions are made. 20 minutes, all you can eat wing-off, or wing into submission. All wings had to be completely consumed (gristle and all) to be counted. So there are your ground rules.

I knew I wouldn't be able to hang in for that long. There were some pretty legit heavy weights in this contest. In the world of competitive eating, I would have to be a sprinter, and not an endurance competitor. The Lord of the Wings did not play to my game. So I came to the contest with two goals: 1. I didn't want to be on the bottom of the pile. 2. I wanted to make it into the second round.

I started out of the gates strong. I've always had really stretchy skin, which I think helped me pack more wing into my mouth at once. I'm pretty sure that I had about 4-5 wings worth in my mouth at any given point in time, sometimes more. 3 days later, as I write this, I still have canker sores in my mouth from it. I was stride for stride with the leaders for the first few minutes. But Viju, the guy with his elbows in my ribs (he does the same thing when he plays basketball, so I'm told) ultimately pulled ahead. He wound up finishing his 20 wings in about 7.5 minutes, which is impressive for an amateur.

The craziest thing about this whole thing for me is that I felt just fine all the way up to the last 2 minutes of round 1. I started hitting the wall right about then. But I managed to hang in there, and get 18 wings before the clock ran out. Yes, that's 18 wings in 10 minutes.

As a side note, I eat healthy, and have for years. Once in a while I'll cheat and eat something that isn't that healthy, but that's pretty rare. I can't remember the last time I cheated at this magnitude. Those of you in the west can't find good buffalo wings, (I know. I've looked, and there aren't any out there) so you might not know what these guys are like. Bottom line: 18 wings puts an unholy amount of grease in your system.

So it should come as no shock to anyone that shortly after round 1 ended, my stomach decided to voice its opinion on what I was doing. In The Lord of the Wings, this is known as "a reversal of fortune," and results in immediate disqualification, even if it is a real crowd pleaser.

Hold it together, man!

I was able to hold it together and not puke, but it was the closest I've ever come to puking without actually puking. This is probably very fortunate, because I think had I lost it, we easily could have had something akin to this on our hands:

Warning: this video has a few cusses. So kill the volume if you don't want to hear it. Or don't watch b/c it's actually kind of disgusting, even though it's really funny.

My 18 in 10 minutes was enough to get me into the second round. It was actually one of the better scores for the round. Unfortunately, I couldn't continue. I knew that the first time I had another wing hit my lips, it was going to be a reversal of fortune of epic proportions. I have thrown up about 3 times in the last 20 years, so I'm not exactly eager to risk doing it again. So I came up lame, and couldn't go on. So that was the end of the road for me. It was a whole lot of fun anyway.

Additionally, the experience gave me a new-found appreciation for competitive eaters. My favorite has to be Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas. Seriously, open that link, and scroll down to look at some of the records she has. It's insane that a 98 pound woman can put away that much food.

Here are some other pics from the evening. This one is easily my favorite.

There are a couple of more pictures of me floating around out there that I haven't gotten ahold of yet. When I do, I'll post those too b/c I'm sure there's a gem or two out there.

Best 12 bucks I ever spent

2008-02-25T23:54:00.010-05:00

So when I got an email from a friend last week, asking if I wanted to go to the local women's roller derby teams skate on Saturday, the only thing for me to say was "A million times YES!!" I used to watch that on early morning cable channels when I was a kid, and it never failed to entertain. Going was a no-brainer

But first, I spent about an hour and a half reading up on the rules on Wikipedia to make sure I would understand what I would be watching.

The next thing we did was to make signs. I went with the traditional using the letters from ESPN to spell something (despite the fact that no ESPN people were within 500 miles of this). Unfortunately, there was nobody on the team with an N in her fake name, so I opted for "Nasty."

Of course I made sure to put the name of the hottest girl, Savage Scout, on my poster.

This was another one of my poster name girls, Merry Pain. With her skates on, she was easily a foot taller than me. It was a flash back to 7th grade, except funnier. She was nice enough to hunch down, so as not to make me look like a midget in this picture, and she even gave me a kiss on the cheek at one point, but my buddy with the camera didn't catch the action. Yeah. I got game. The other girl in the picture is my friend John, who, having consumed 1.5 beers at this point, was very, very drunk, which I'm sure you would never guess from this picture...

I think this lady may have been my bus driver when I was in Jr. high, come to think of it. Why she chose to be Willie Nelson's doppelgänger, I'll never know.

We were right on the edge of the track. The ref told us that if anyone wrecked in front of us, we could shove her back onto the track. Instead of pushing girls on roller skates, I tried to push my friend John into the crash zone as they came by, which was easy b/c he was pretty drunk. I never caused any collisions though, which is probably fortunate. I would have felt pretty bad if one of the derby girls damaged her skates on John's head or something.

Yes, that is a John 3:16 sign, and no, he is not a born again Christian. We were going for sports cliches, and that's what he came up with.

Anywho, it was a highly amusing night. Between watching the girls skate (and they skated their hearts out, and played an intense game that came down to the last second) and watching several of my very drunk friends at such a high-class event, that night was well worth the $12 it cost. Women's roller derby gets two thumbs up from me!

Quiz time!

2008-02-13T17:12:00.006-05:00

OK, time to guess what you're looking at:

Here's a hint. You are looking at what happens when you combine winter camping, the onset of the flu, dehydration, and not eating enough with someone who has naturally low blood pressure and lives in an apartment with hard wood floors.

Give up? You're looking at sutures! In my face, specifically.

So the long and short of it is that I went winter camping right as I was getting what I think was some sort of flu. Bad way to start things off. I slept 18 hours Saturday night, and the better part of the day on Sunday. This meant that I didn't eat or drink much in that time. This eventually lead me to black out while I was in the bathroom late Sunday night. While blacked out, I decided to head back to my room, only I didn't realize that not getting enough oxygen to your brain hurts your ability to walk, and greatly helps your ability to fall down. So I hit the deck pretty hard, splitting open my eyebrow.

Never one to let something as trivial as low brain oxygen stop me from acting, I apparently got back up and headed back to the bathroom. At this point I was still largely blacked out, and also a bit punch drunk from the shot to the melon I had just taken, so my memory is a little hazy. I collapsed into the bathtub, which is where I came to.

Being that it was about 12:15 in the AM when I did this, the emergency room was the only place I could go to get stitched. Here's something I learned. ER people ask stupid questions. I walked into triage, expecting people to recognize instantly that, as a person with a ghostly-pale face, a decent sized laceration over my eye and blood smeared all over my face, I could easily be someone who had recently sustained a pretty hard shot to the head, and as such, would probably require medical attention.

Instead, the triage nurse looked at me and said:

"What can we help you with?"

What can we help you with? Are you serious? Is that what they teach you in emergency nursing school? I should have told her I wanted to order a pizza, or that I was there to see someone about an ingrown toenail, or that I just wanted to know if she thought that my pants made me look fat. What can we help you with, she says. Pfffft!

Apparently unsatisfied with only asking one stupid question, a few minutes later, she asks:

"Are you experiencing any head pain?"

What am I supposed to say to that? I don't want to be too much of a smart a-s-s to the people who are about to sew my face together, but how can they expect a serious answer to that question? So I said:

"Mostly it hurts where the hole is that doesn't belong there. -You know, the part that is bleeding? Right there hurts. Everywhere else is fine."

The other thing I learned is that things don't go speedily in the ER, which came as something of a surprise to me. You might think that on a tame night at the ER they could sew me up and send me on my way in about an hour or two. It was a tame night, so they should want to get me treated and out of their hair in case things got crazy on them, right? That's what I thought. I was there for over 5 hours.

I haven't received the bill. I'm bracing for that b/c I suspect I might be just a little outraged at what they charge for the whole ordeal. But I'll reserve my rage until I know it's warranted. I'll probably blog on that once I get it.

Anyway, all in all, I guess it's not too bad. A friend of mine had a similar black out a few months back, and he broke all of his front teeth when he fell face first into his bathroom floor, so I suppose my episode could have ended far worse. Plus it should be just big enough of a scar to be cool looking, but not so big that it will scare small children. Plus this is the first time I have ever had stitches as a result of an accident. So making it almost to 31 before having an accident that required stitches is a pretty good run of things, I think, so I can't complain.

So, yeah. That was my weekend. Hard one to top.

Clutch

2008-02-09T18:09:00.000-05:00

I mentioned this before in another post. Turns out it was more like 38-40 seconds of fame.

Anyway, the video basically speaks for itself.

Hands down the coolest athletic moment of my life, and definitely on my list of top 5 coolest things that have ever happened to me.

Like a knight in shining armor

2008-01-29T08:57:00.000-05:00

OK, so last night was a pretty much awesome night, which means that you, the readers (yes, both of you), get two posts in as many days.

Just when I thought that the main event of the night would be to watch the man who I believe could quite possibly be the worst president in the history of our country give his lame duck State of the Union address, I saw that the Versus network had come to my rescue.

Three words: The Karate Kid.

If you haven't watched this movie recently (and I'm betting that precious few of you have), you really ought to do yourself a favor and go rent this movie, and SOON. Here are some of my favorite lines:

-Fear does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-Pain does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-Defeat does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-What do we study here?
-THE WAY OF THE FIST, SIR!
-And what is that way?
-STRIKE FIRST, STRIKE HARD, NO MERCY, SIR!!

Or how about when Mr. Miyagi encourages Daniel-san to go to the Halloween dance instead of hanging around with him all night:
-To make honey, young bee need young flower, not old prune.

Or how Daniel-san must first learn balance, then learn punch.

And who could forget the Pièce de résistance:

Seriously, this is arguably the greatest montage in a sports movie EVER.

Let's also not forget that this movie starred a young Elizabeth Shue:

Yowsah!! I've never wished so bad that I was a skinny kid from Newark with a Poncherello-wannabe haircut! And I am younger than her, which means that when this came out, I was still younger than her, which also means that it's not creepy that I still thinks she looks hot in this movie, which she made when she was probably 17.

I enjoyed it so much that I've talked to a buddy of mine, and we are going to make it a point to watch the rest of the series of movies, including the IVth installment, which starred another up and coming hottie:

Hillary Swank, your career has never soared as high as you did under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi. It's a shame that your career hit its apex so early.

'Bout as worthless as teats on a boar hog

2008-01-28T13:58:00.000-05:00

You'll forgive the title of this entry. But I heard a real redneck (woman) say it in high school, and I thought it was hilarious, so it's stuck with me. It's also how I'm feeling these days. Here's why:

This is my current schedule. You'll notice that it is not exactly rigorous. It's left me lots of time to do things such as read lots of random Wikipedia articles, and watch about every Mythbusters episode ever made. Twice.

On top of all that, I'm sick right now, and I think there's a legitimate threat that my face could explode at any moment. I just hope that if it happens, it happens in the privacy of my home b/c that would be embarrassing.

And the workout regimen listed has been heavily modified from what is listed, but I have some good reasons for that.

1. I don't want to get up early to workout because a) getting up early sucks; and b) leaving it for later in the day leaves me something to do in the evenings once I'm done with my homework, which usually happens very early in the evening.

2. I'm now officially serious about the triathlon thing. Progress update: I ran 6 miles the other day, stacking 10 minute miles. Not too bad for someone who just started running 2.5 weeks ago. I have no trouble swimming a mile, and and am getting pretty good about pushing myself harder, and not letting myself wuss out. I did the mile in about 35 minutes the other day, though that's not an actual time as I didn't really keep track. I need to start doing that. I haven't swam until exhaustion for a while now, but the last time I came close to it, I swam 1.5 miles. But for all that, I'm probably not going to be able to try to do an actual triathlon until summer '09. I still don't have a bike and I don't want to buy one just to transport it across the country.

Anyway, the fact that I haven't gotten around to changing my workout regimen just underscores the title of this entry. Lazy piece of garbage, this guy.

Um... That's about it. But a few of my friends have told me that I should always include pictures in my posts. So here are a few pictures that in no way relate to this post.

I thought this was hilarious. So I'm a nerd. So what?

It was really, really bright.

What is with these guys? If you believe something that strongly, then get your own carcass out there to support your cause. Paying people to go out and protest your cause is lame. Especially when your cause is that someone else under-bid you so you didn't get the job.

Um. That is all.

Vacation > School.

2008-01-12T15:21:00.001-05:00

Just thought I'd post a video and a couple pics from the break.

Christmas was awesome. We got the coolest present for my dad in the history of dad Christmas presents.

Here's a video. Willus and I spent the last couple of days at The Canyons skiing in the middle of a system of several storms that came through, dumping somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50 inches before it was done. Loads of fun. It never ceases to amaze me how big that place is. Our last run of the day we were still able to find lots of untouched powder.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I hop a plane back to NY to start me last semester of law school. Last semester of school EVER. I'm looking forward to it more than a little.

That is all (for now).

Update on how lame I am.

2007-12-13T21:49:00.000-05:00

I guess I'm jumping the gun a bit. I haven't finished my 5th semester just yet. My last final is tomorrow morning. I should be studying trust and estate law right now, but I'm pretty sure I'm as ready for this test tomorrow morning as I'm going to get, so now I'm just screwing around.

But by the time most of you read this, I'll be done with the semester, which puts me 5/6 of the way through, leaving one tiny little semester standing between regular Dallas and Dallas, J.D. That thought makes me feel giggly inside, I'm not going to lie.

In other news, I'm well on my way toward my lame-o goal of breaking the century mark on how many free highlighters I can pilfer. This semester was a good one for me. I had one day where I nabbed 13. I'm going to see if I can get 20 in a day next semester. I think the current count is about 65.

Sadly, that's about all I have to update you on. Oh wait, that's not true. I've decided that next summer I'm going to start training for a triathlon. I probably won't be able to do the actual triathlon until summer '09 b/c summer '08 will be occupied by studying for the bar. But I may be able to do one before that, who knows. If not an official one, then a private triathlon.

I've got the swimming leg down so that I could do that without dying. I have yet to start working on the running or biking part. Partially because I don't have a bike. Or running shoes. And I haven't biked in years. Or run in years. So I guess you could say I have my work cut out for me. But I've decided I won't let such trivial things get in the way.

Anywho, I'll be on a plane to Utah on Saturday. I'll be seeing a lot of you soon.

That is all.

30 seconds of fame

2007-11-21T13:07:00.001-05:00

So any of you who went to the BYU v. Hartford basketball game last night were part of one of the most harrowing athletic moments of my life. I got picked to be the guy to go out on the court at half time, drive the length of the court, shoot a lay up, come to the other end, shoot another lay up, then drive to the other side of the court to shoot a 3 pointer. I had 30 seconds to do it in.

Short version: I suck at basketball. I was worried I would dribble the ball off my foot, and spend 30 seconds chasing the ball all over the court, or throw up an airball, and have the crowd boo me, or something. I missed my first lay up (I wasn't joking when I said I suck at basketball), and made the next two. My first 3 point shot hit the side of the rim, but I got the rebound just as the announcer called out 10 seconds left. Knowing that I only had time for one more shot, I took my time, got in position, squared up and took the shot right as time expired. I nailed the shot. 13,000 or so people cheering loud for something I just did. In a word, it was

AWESOME.

I'm working on getting video of the occasion from BYU. I don't know if they'll release it or not, but if I get it, I'll put it up here. I don't have moments like that very often, so I have to maximize my enjoyment of them while I can.

A singular experience.

2007-11-09T11:29:00.000-05:00

I just had an unbelievable experience, and I felt compelled to shout it from the rooftops. Unfortunately, the closest thing I have to a rooftop these days is my blog, so this will have to do.

I just got off of a phone call with a customer service agent with a really big company where I ACTUALLY RECEIVED QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE. I know, I know. You're probably skeptical, as I would be, but it REALLY happened. Read on, my friend. Read on.

I had to call an airline to get the details of my holiday flight home (because I'm a genius and deleted the confirmation email with these details). Here's how it went down:

My first surprise was that it took about 8 seconds to get through to an operator. I didn't even have to dial 1 for English, and then 3 for customer flight information, and then 5 for departure and arrival information, and then 2 for departure airports on the east side of the Mississippi, and then 5 for departures after 12:00 pm, and then 3 if I am a male passenger, and then 1 if I am not overweight, only to find myself in a 10 minute long queue waiting for an operator to pick up the phone and ask me how she can help me. Wait, after entering all that information, you still don't know why I'm calling? Gee, it's almost like pushing all those buttons is a colossally assinine waste of time, or something...

-As a side note, anyone who hates this process as much as I do might be interested in this web site. It's a compilation of the magical codes to circumvent these maddening systems and get to a human as quickly as possible. It's a brilliant idea, and I wish I had thought of it. But I digress...

So not only did I get to talk to an actual human being in a few short seconds, she spoke ENGLISH. I'm not one of those speak-English-or-go-home-type bigots. I can't stand it when people get like that. I want to make that clear. That said, it's frequently very frustrating talking to customer service operators b/c it does me little good to try to explain my customer service needs to an outsourced phone operator with a limited grasp on the English language, particularly since I don't speak Hindi.

Not only did she speak English, she was actually PLEASANT to talk to. No condescension from a pompous jerk on the other side of the line that can't believe how stupid I am to have the customer services needs I have (never mind the fact that it's my stupidity that gives her a job in the first place). She was genuinely nice.

Not content to stop there, she asked me what I needed, and my name, departure date and approximate departure time, and about 10 seconds later, SHE TOLD ME WHAT I NEEDED TO KNOW, and no superfluous junk info, and re-sent the confirmation email to me just for good measure. She didn't even try to up-sell me on something, or hit me with a stupid pitch for some service designed for the same tools that order crap from The Sharper Image, or Skymall. I had to pinch myself to see if I was really awake.

I hung up the phone, still a little in shock over what had just happened. I looked at the timer on my phone and noticed that the total time elapsed for the phone call was 3:21. 3 minutes and 21 seconds? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I dialed the number, got my call answered by an actual person, and got my question answered by a pleasant human being that spoke cognizable English in 3 minutes and 21 seconds? That's unbelievable! You grow to expect a half an hour or more for this type of thing these days. I think speaker phone was designed for exactly this reason, come to think of it. Seriously, I probably wouldn't have believed it if it didn't happen to me.

So what company is this you might ask? What company is it that hasn't gotten the memo that customer service is something that big companies just don't bother with any more? Normally I wouldn't give out the free advertising to all 4 or 5 people who read my blog, particularly not to a big company, but this experience definitely warrants the big ups. Southwest Airlines, you just earned my return business. Impressive. Very impressive.

Salmon River: Take 3!

2007-10-30T20:44:00.000-04:00

So I just got back from the Salmon River. I've been worked up their once, went back a few months later and did OK. Today was Round 3.

Steelhead are a cool fish. But they're really really hard to catch. I fished hard for about 5 hours, which is tough enough to do b/c it's hard to pay attention when the fishing is tough, and if you're not paying attention at the exact right moment, game over. You lose. Anyway, I finally stuck one, and I got a decent look at it. If it wasn't over 10 pounds, then I've never caught a fish before. It was a super bright chrome steelhead. Generally, the brighter chrome they are, the harder they fight, so this guy had plenty of steam. I only had him on the line for about 10 seconds b/c he ran downstream about 40 yards, and broke me off. It sucks that I didn't land it, and that I didn't get a picture to prove how big it was. But suffice it to say that I don't remember the last time a fish left me weak in the knees. I had to sit down for a minute to collect myself b/c wading with jelly legs is a bad idea.

So then I fished the rest of the day and didn't catch crap.

But, I did manage to land something earlier in the day, so I wasn't totally blanked.

I go fishing for steelhead, and I catch a little smallmouth. Don't ask me how that makes sense.

Anyway, here's a couple of other shots that turned out OK.

We spotted this guy from the bank, and fished to him for about 10 minutes with no response. Then my buddy walked up to him, which was weird b/c they usually don't let you get that close. Before the fish swam away, my buddy got got close enough to see that the fish was missing its right eye. Every cast he put past the fish went on its right side. I was having a hard time figuring out how the fish didn't even respond a bit to his fly. It was like the fish couldn't see it or something...

Anyway, it was a fun day, but the steelhead game is a little different than western trout fishing, where you can have 20+ fish days. That ain't going to happen with steelies. At least not for me.

Gallery o' Terror

2007-10-16T21:44:00.000-04:00

So I was looking at my brother-in-law's blog, and I realized that Halloween is a pretty cool time of year. I'm not anything close to as creative as Guy is, so this picture is the best I could come up with to participate in the Gallery o' Terror. The sad part is that Guy is the one that did this picture. So my best shot at getting in on the Gallery o' Terror is by posting something that Guy did. That's lame, I know.

The story behind the picture is actually kind of funny. A few years ago my mom paid for family pictures. The package my mom bought included pics of the whole famn damily, and pictures of all the couples in the family. Being that I am not a couple, but am actually a single, I got single pictures taken. The photographer was a total dork, and I'm pretty sure he always saw himself photographing in Hollywood, or some stage much more grand than Orem. Worse, I'm pretty sure he thought of me as his best shot to break into the big time by nailing a killer head shot for me. You'd have thought that to listen to the guy work his magic, anyway. I've never felt like a bigger tool in my life, and I've probably never looked like a bigger tool in my life (at least I hope I've never looked like a bigger tool in my life). The whole thing was pretty laughable.

Anyway, there's one particular photo where I somehow held a conflicted/pensive/sophisticated look long enough for him to take the picture. Most of the time I was laughing too hard b/c I kept on thinking of rude names to describe the photographer, and because Willus snuck into the room and was dancing around behind the guy and making faces. A bit juvenile, that one. So most of the shots are of me with a big, stupid turd-eating grin on my face. However, he did manage to get one shot of me being lame and trying to look cool. My mom loves it. I hate it. Guy got ahold of it, and with a little Photoshop magic, this picture is the result.

If I can ever get Willus to email the real version to me, maybe I'll toss it up here. It's pretty bad though, so I might not.

Better than my best day of school work

2007-10-09T12:06:00.000-04:00

So I went fishing on the Ausable River again yesterday. I fished there last year and pretty much got worked. Unfortunately, yesterday wasn't much better. Fortunately it was beautiful up there, and, despite the fact that it rained like an S.O.B. for a while in the morning, the weather felt great. Maybe that's because I got out of the 85 degree weather we've been having lately in Albany, I'm not sure. And finally, it was a day spend doing something other than school work, which makes it a good thing, ipso facto.

Anyway, you'll notice that there is one thing conspicuously missing from my fishing pictures: any actual fish. While I did catch 2, combining for a collective 17 inches of trout, I didn't feel much like taking a picture of them. Just not that impressive. It was a frustrating day of fishing, to say the least. I would love to say that it was tough fishing yesterday, and that nobody was catching fish, but my buddy Carter did pretty well, catching something like 8 or 9 fish, many of which were caught on bugs I tied. There's no justice in this world. And on top of all that, the Ausable is the trickiest river to wade that I've ever been in. I came very, very close to taking a swim on a couple of occasions.. I'm actually a little sore today from the wade, that's how much of a workout it is just picking your way through those slippery boulders.

Anyway, here are a couple of shots from the day:

Like I said, it was really, really pretty, and it was also not studying, which makes it worth every penny.

The Dally Roger

2007-09-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

So I wehrre listnin' to th'radio thusmornin', and it came to my attenshin that today be National Talk like a Pirate Day.

If thar be a cooler observed day in the calendar year, I must confess to ye that I haven't an idear what it be.

Now fetch me some rum, ye filthy curr!

Other summer shots

2007-09-15T23:03:00.000-04:00

So far, school is really lame, which is why I haven't blogged recently. Unless you want to hear about the law of wills, or 4th amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, I don't have much worth blogging about.

But I do have a couple of pictures left over from the summer that are worth posting. These are from a night when we decided we wanted to go dirtbiking through the foothills of Mt. Timpanogos, and have dutch oven peach cobbler somewhere.

This presented a couple of problems. Not only do I not have a dirtbike, I've never ridden one. Ever the problem solvers, my buddy Eric, and his now-fiance Nakita took care of all that. They rounded up a few dirtbikes, so everyone was able to hit the trails.

I think that there's little question that I wound up with the coolest bike on the mountain.

-Notice that the bike had no headlight, and it was dark. That meant that I had to wear a headlamp to see anything.

Keep in mind that this shot uses no trick photography. We were not on a hill; we were on flat ground, and only a foot or two apart. Yes, that bike really is that small. But it's not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, but the size of the fight in the dog. -That's what I always say, anyway.

That's me next to the fat cat. I wanted to ride that one, but then my buddy Derek would have had to ride the 80 with his date, and he's too fat to ride the 80 on his own, much less with someone else on the back, and the 80 doesn't have extra pegs for a rider. So with a laugh in the face of danger, I took control of that bike, and rode it like it's never been ridden before. Fortunately, I was concentrating so hard on not wrecking that I couldn't hear everyone else's thunderous laughter at how ridiculous I looked.

So I took my first ever motorcycle ride through the mountains on a bike that was way too small for a big gut sack like me, without a headlight, by light of a headlamp and whatever ambient light from someone else's headlight I could use. Suffice it to say that it wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done, but it may have been the most fun thing I've ever done.

Awesome summer

2007-08-21T18:47:00.000-04:00

Well, it's that time of the year again. Summer is over, and school has started again. That means it's time for me to spend large amounts of time trying to find something to do other than homework. The only consolation to starting school again is that I am a mere 9 months away from finishing school

FOREVER!!!

So the summer was pretty much awesome in every sense of the word. I did lots of fun stuff, despite the fact that I didn't post any of it. Unfortunately, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures of the things I did, or someone else took them, and I never got copies. But, I did get some cool photos from my Havasupai trip. Here are a couple of shots from the trip:

That's my porcelain white self in the foreground.

I'm still waiting for a girl to email me what will ultimately prove to be the coolest picture of me taken this summer. The weekend before coming back to NY, we decided to go on a night time dirt bike ride into the mountains. This was a great idea, but there was the problem that I have never ridden a motorbike, much less taken a dirt bike off road. So a friend of mine rounded up an 80 cc Yamaha that was probably intended for someone 20 years my junior. Just watching the suspension sag was all you would need to know that it wasn't designed for hauling a gut sack like this guy. Anyway, I went tooling around on a motorcycle that was barely taller than my knees. Mind you, this was in the middle of the night, and the bike didn't have a head light. So I wore a head lamp. Awesome really doesn't do the experience justice.

The very next day, we went to a place where you can jump a bike into a pond. I originally decided I wasn't going to do it. I had to be on a plane the next morning, and didn't want to risk breaking something. Then a couple of girls took the jump. I knew I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if a couple of girls did something and I was too chicken to do it, so I went. This is what it looked like:

So thanks to everyone that made this summer such a blast. It sucks that it's over, but it was all kinds of fun.

-And the greatest time of the sports year is only a week and a half away...

Stung

2007-07-30T16:00:00.000-04:00

So we just got back from an Alaskan cruise. It was pretty much awesome. I didn't take a lot of pictures on this trip, for some stupid reason, but this picture might just be my favorite.

For those of you unfamiliar with sting pong, here are the rules. Play a game to 3. Loser lifts up his shirt, and winner gets a free shot. Repeat until one player's desire for vengeance is outweighed by searing pain and the fear of getting nailed yet again, so he quits. It's a fun game.

I'll let you go ahead and guess who was on his A game on the day this picture was taken. PWN3D.

There was a lot more going on on the cruise, and when I get a second, maybe I'll post a more informative post.

Memorial Day in the Uintas with B Money

2007-06-01T19:41:00.000-04:00

So a few friends (including B Money) and I went into the Uintas for Memorial Day. Our trip to the lake was made a little longer than it normally would have been thanks to my extraordinary ability to get lost and forget where I am, even in places I'm familiar with. Anyway, we originally planned on going to Mirror Lake, but once we finally got to Mirror Lake, it was still frozen over. This doesn't make for the best fishing conditions, so we had to drive to another lake.

By this time, we had driven over 100 miles, and were getting frustrated with the fact that all the camp grounds were still closed. This gave rise to the second best B Money quote of the trip. After finding another camp ground closed, B piped up, "Hey, everything's closed. Why don't we just head back to Provo, and do this some other time, k?" You gotta love B Money.

His best quote of the night came around the camp fire as I was telling a story about a girl I knew named Mica to my buddy named Micah (not a girl). Somehow, I wound up looking at B Money and telling him that he would make an ugly girl. He got offended, and looked back at me and said, "whatever!" in a voice of indignation that only B Money can produce. Then Micah asked him if he thought he would be a pretty girl, to which he replied, "fetch yes!," and gave him a glare as if to say that he was an idiot for even asking. Suffice it to say, it loses something in the re-telling. -Seriously, for all three of my blog readers, if you don't know B Money, do what you need to do to get to know the kid. You won't regret it.

Anyway, the next day at the lake, B's mood followed a pretty funny course through the day. I think it's pretty discernible from the pictures below.

Remember: these pictures appear in chronological order.

This is the first fish of the day (and the smallest). I caught it after fishing for a while. It was slow at first, to say the least.

This is B protesting after fishing for about 20 minutes. On his third cast, he broke the only bobber he had on an errant cast that went straight into the rocks at his feet instead of the water, so his mood soured for a while, especially after I caught my first fish.

A few hours later, B got his second wind, fashioned a bobber out of a piece of drift wood, and started fishing again. All of a sudden, we heard the loudest yell that has probably ever left B's body telling us he had caught a fish.

The fishing was picking up by this point, and B was starting to get cocky. He'd talk trash when he'd catch something, and say that he wasn't fishing competitively when someone else would catch a fish.

He was really feeling it by this point.

We were pretty much dealing with the world's best fisherman by the end of the day.

So that was Memorial Day. Lots more fun than any library ever dreamed of being, and lots prettier than any part of the country east of the Rockies ever dreamed of being.

66.6%

2007-05-15T18:27:00.000-04:00

Just finished my last final of 2L! Feels good, to say the least.

The down side to finishing is that you get so used to always needing to do something that when you suddenly have nothing to do, you have no idea what to do with yourself. It's kind of like the first time you're in an airport and realize how fun it is to run on a people mover, so you start running on the thing, feeling like an olympic sprinter, but don't hear the nice voice near the end of the track telling you it's going to end soon, so you keep on running, and fall on your face when the track runs out. Yeah, something like that. Just the same, falling on my face never felt so good...

So for now, I'm enjoying the moment b/c when I see my grades from this one, I'm not convinced it's going to be pretty.

I'll be seeing some of yous' before too long.

Sitting, waiting, wishing. -But mostly sitting.

2007-05-02T17:12:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year. I just finished with classes yesterday, so nothing left between the 2/3 mark and me other than two weeks, and 4 nasty, nasty finals. My computer chair and I have spent some serious quality time together lately. I think I might be getting bed sores.

What I like about Sundays.

2007-04-22T22:26:00.000-04:00

This, combined with no homework for a day = my favorite day of the week.

The only bad thing is that it only lasts for a day, and then I'm back in it for another 6 days.

The gift that keeps on giving

2007-04-02T09:29:00.000-04:00

Recall this post.

With that in mind, here is the email I got from Lo this morning:

38 bouncy balls in my sheets tonight--courtesy of one 9-year-old and her uncle.

When I went to go return the prank and put them under her bedding (while she was "asleep") she growled, "get away!"

Happy Fools Day!

-L

How awesome is that?

Embarassing admission

2007-03-28T21:51:00.000-04:00

So you know how some of life's greatest joys can be found in re-discovering something you've known about all along, but for one reason or another have horribly under-appreciated? Well, I've recently re-discovered the unspeakable joy of something I've known about for 20+ years now:

Butt Rock & Power Ballads.

Seriously, how terrible is the idea of scrawny guys with bad perms, bangs, leather, tattoos of snakes, and other tough guy things, make up, chest hair, and head bands trying to look all bad-a, but singing sensitive rock songs? Terribly great, I say.

Honestly, how is that anything but the coolest thing you've ever seen?

Here are a few of the songs I've been re-discovering recently:

White Lion: Little Fighter
White Lion: Wait
White Lion: When the Children Cry
Night Ranger: Sister Christian
Faster Pussycat: House of Pain
Cinderella: Don't Know What You Got 'Till It's Gone
Cinderella: Gypsy Road
Cinderella: Coming Home

Those are just a few of the biggest winners that came up on my ipod's butt rock playlist. Rest assured that there are plenty more where those came from.

Look some of it up some time. You won't be disappointed.

P.S. There is an honorary spot in The Dally News Hall of Shame for anyone who can name the band pictured above.

P.S.S. The band is not in my list of songs, although that band has probably the best song on my Butt Rock playlist. Not that that helps you at all; I just thought you should know.

Back in NY Updated

2007-03-19T18:21:00.000-04:00

So I had an awesome spring break, and today was my first day back in school. Here's why spring break was awesome:

I surprised the ever-loving crap out of my mom, who didn't know I was coming into town. Seriously, one of the funniest pranks we've ever pulled on her.

I scared my nephew and niece, who also didn't know I was in town by jumping out of the back of the Suburban after Lo picked them up from school.

I went to Las Vegas to watch the MWC basketball tourney

It was in the mid-70's in Vegas the whole time.

It was in the high 60's to mid-70's in Provo the whole time.

I got to go fishing on my favorite river with my future boss.

I missed the huge snow storm that put another foot of snow on this city that STILL does not know how to handle snow.

I got to hang out with friends.

A CANCER FREE Derek Swanson moved back to Utah, and hung around with us for the weekend.

National Corndog Day!!

OK, National Corndog Day needs explanation.

Last year my buddy found out about it and told me. This year, when I realized I was going to be home for National Corndog Day, I thought I'd get ahold of my friends, who not only have all the cool gear to throw a wicked party, but love doing it, particularly since we can't hold the annual Tree Burn any more. Long story short, I registered as a party host, and the next thing we knew, Foster Farms sent us 336 corn dogs. Here's a picture of the party hosts with our corn-clad, stick impaled bounty:

Note: each white box is a case with 3 cases of 28 dogs each.

Before the night was over, we had consumed somewhere around 150 corndogs (leaving a ridiculous surplus), about 12 pounds of tots, and who knows what else. We also wound up with an astro bounce (you know, the cool inflatable self-contained rooms that little kids go crazy in at the county fair), dance music, and a green egg toss (in honor of St. Patrick's Day). Here are A few more photos:

When you see these flowers blooming, you know that spring is officially here.

B Money throwing down some rhymes before going to his debut show later on that night. Word on the street is that he brought the house down.

Green Egg toss in observation of St. Patrick's Day.

I don't know who this guy is, but I think it's safe to conclude that he was an egg toss loser.

This was our bounty. We had so many dogs, it was ridiculous. By the end of the night we had a few sitting around, and a potato gun on hand. Put them both together, and you've got corndog aviation magic.

Seriously, it was an awesome party. Big thanks to our sponsors at Foster Farms. I'll send you the bill from my cardiologist.

Anyway, the down side to being back from spring break are:

It reminded me how much fun the world outside of law school can be.

I have a ridiculous amount of work to be done in the next few weeks.

It snowed a foot the other day, and the city is still struggling to deal with it.

It's freaking cold out here.

It's snowing as I write this.

School.

*Sigh.*

Right. Anyway, spring break was incredible, and I'm glad I had more fun than I had last year, when I spent basically all of it in the library. Loads of fun. Thanks a lot Brent D., and Janet R., if you ever read this, that is.

Are you serious?

2007-03-04T22:13:00.000-05:00

30.

A quick list of the consoling(?) things I've heard from friends during the last few days:

-It's like, the new 20.
-Just think of yourself as being 20-10 years old.
-You don't look a day over 25.
-At least you're not still in school, right? Oh, wait...
-My parents were that age a while ago, and they totally said it's not that bad.
-You're only as old as you think you are.
-Buy you some Geritol?
-I think Guy was 30 for about 4 years, so it's really not that bad.
-Dude, it's really not that old. <--Except the guy who said that is 36.

Yeah, those are pretty much all things that old people tell themselves to convince themselves that they're still younger than they really are. You're old. Face it.

So in case you were wondering what I did for my birthday, and I'm sure you were just dying to know, I'll tell you.

I always felt cheated as a kid when my birthday was on a Sunday, so I took the liberty of observing my birthday yesterday. I started the day by going to the gym, which I have to do in order to maintain my uber-masculine physique. Then, I had to do laundry. Not my idea of fun, especially since it was crowded in the laundromat, and I had to wait for some guy to finish with the dryer to dry my clothes. Seriously, do you really need to throw 5 T shirts in the dryer for 32 minutes when there are tons of people waiting? Jerk. Not to mention the people who leave their stuff in the dryer, and show up a half hour after it's done drying. They say to just pull it out and put it in a basket, but I'm not cool with grabbing someone else's underoos and throwing them around, even if they did just get washed. That's creepy. I hate laundromats.

Once the laundry was out of the way, I cut to the real fun, and started up with my second annual birthday migraine. Complete with flashing lights, diminished peripheral vision, huge blind spot in the right side of my visual field, and inability to read due to flashing lights messing up my ability to focus on letters, and all. It's a choice experience, really. I don't know how one guy gets that lucky.

Having experienced the whole flashing lights thing three different times now, I know that even though my head doesn't hurt when the lights start, an absolutely unholy head splitter isn't far behind, so I threw about 1000 mg of ibuprofen at it, along with a few other drugs, and started eating. I actually got on it quickly enough that it never became a factor, and the whole screwed up vision thing only lasted about 45 minutes before it went back to normal. I was kind of tired and goofy for the rest of the night though.

Then, not to be outdone by my older sister, I ate sushi with a bunch of law school friends. Can I just tell you that I officially renewed my love affair with the Philly roll? Man alive, I've forgotten how incredible that is. Whoever thought to combine salmon, cream cheese and avocado is a genius, I say. Genius!! Anyway, after that, I hung around with some friends for the rest of the night, they got drunk for me, and that was about it.

As for my official birthday, I pretty much sat in meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting.... You get the point. Then I got another headache when I got home, so I took a bunch more drugs, ate a bunch more food, followed it with junk food, and then followed it with some really good cake that my roommate's girlfriend made for me. I'm one fat, disgusting slob right now, and I love it. I even have food stains on my shirt, and couldn't care much less. -Oh, and let's not forget when my sister had my nephews and nieces sing, "Happy Birthday, y'old geezer" to me. Thanks Lo, you're a peach.

Anyway, I think the moral of this story is that next year, around the middle of February, go out and buy stock in Advil. It will be a solid investment.

So that was it. Here's to my next 30 years. -Hey, that's got a good ring to it. Maybe I should write a country song...

Snow. Not just a little, either.

2007-02-14T18:08:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of time lapse sequences from today. School got canceled, so I sat in my apartment and worked on my article all day, and took pictures periodically. Then I went outside and shoveled snow, and did a number on my lower back. Snow out here is a lot heavier than what I'm used to, and when it's 2+ feet deep, snow blowers are the only way to go.

I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure my car is a little depressed that I didn't get to take it out in this slop.

A view from the other side:

This is the car outside my apartment window through the course of the day:

And can I say that this city SUCKS about taking care of snow on roads? All day long, I only saw one city plow truck go by with its plow down. I saw tons of private plow guys, but of course they had their plows in the air. Wouldn't want to do something you're not paid to do, would you? Particularly when you're driving the street that looks like hell anyway, and all you would have to do is pull the handle and drop your plow. Don't you just love those "not my job" types? Seriously, you should see the roads. I just had to help a guy in a big SUV with 4 wheel b/c he got stuck, and it wasn't because he was a crappy driver. Even on the traveled roads, the sloppy snow is 6+ inches deep with plenty of several foot deep banks waiting to suck you in. In fairness, there was a lot of snow today, but there is no excuse for a city that gets snow regularly to do as poor of a job handling it as they did here. If this happened in Atlanta, I could see it. But all the way up here? You're killing me.

Anyway, forgive the rant.

Here's a local jerk making the problems on the roads even worse. I saw at least 5 different cars spun out and stuck at this intersection today:

This dude had the right idea. It was probably a lot faster way to get around town today than any other.

So that was my snow day. I actually got quite a bit done, which is good. Plus, I love how quiet everything is when it snows. Tonight will probably be the first night I've had here when I don't hear big rigs and sirens back and forth on the street outside my window. While I'm looking forward to that, I'm not looking forward to the aftermath of all this snow for the next few weeks. I think it's going to take quite a while for the city to get on top of it.

PHOWNED.

2007-02-03T16:41:00.000-05:00

So apparently 40 pound dumbells and cell phones don't mix too well...

That really sucks. I kind of liked that phone.

The correct answers:

2007-01-27T23:28:00.000-05:00

The correct answers to the quiz are as follows:

1) It was a loaf of bread. I wasn't looking for anything more specific than that. OK, I admit, that one was a little easy.

2) March 21, 2006.

Given that I discovered the loaf on January 21, 2007, that makes 9 months to the day since it expired. That means I probably bought the thing around the first week of March, which would mean it sat in my cupboard for close to 10 months. To put it in perspective, if you've been following my blog, this is the post that was up when I bought this loaf of bread. Yes, that is one of the most disgusting things you've heard in the recent past.

??????!!

2007-01-21T18:27:00.000-05:00

QUIZ TIME!

OK, time for a quiz. While I was making pasta today after church, I came across this mystery food item in my pantry. Here's the quiz:

1) What type of food was this?
2) When was its expiration date?

Make sure you click on the picture to view the larger version so you can see the full detail. It's something else.

The person who guesses most accurately can expect to see it in his/her mail box within a week of posting his/her guess.

OK, just kidding. I threw it out already. -Even the rodents that scavenge my garbage turned their noses up at it.

I'll post the expiration date after a week. If you want to be part of the competition, you have to post your guess before then. The winner gets a big lip kiss from me, unless you're related to me, or are a dude, in which case, you won't get anything other than the satisfaction of a job well done. ...And maybe a star for your forehead. ...Or maybe a bouncy ball, if I can talk my nephews and nieces into giving one back to me.

B Money makes fetchin' awesome T shirts.

2007-01-14T23:40:00.000-05:00

I just wanted everyone to know that I was one of the first ones to get a custom-made B Money T shirt. I would wear it to school pretty much every day except for the fact that the permanent marker would bleed, and then I would have just a tye-dye lookin' blotch on the front, and not the most skillfully drawn llama I've ever seen.

I call this my stoic Jack Bauer look.

B Homies for life.

Yes, you are looking at the coolest T shirt EVER.

So there you have it. B Money makes the coolest fetchin' T shirts around.

In other news, school starts again on Tuesday. BOOOOO!! But I can't complain; I had a really fun break, and an adventurous plane trip home.

That is all. I promise to try to think of something worthwhile to post while I'm in school this semester, but I can't guarantee that it will actually happen.

Utah snow RULES!

2007-01-05T19:29:00.000-05:00

I really feel bad for you guys that ski in places other than Utah. I really do. Today mi hermanito y yo hit The Canyons. We were lucky enough to be there on the first day they planned to open the new Dreamcatcher lift. We were even more lucky that when we got to the top of the mountain, we saw the ski patrol guys pull the rope to access over 300 acres of new terrain. Willus was the first skiier EVER (other than the ski patrol that took their own runs first) to hit the new terrain without ducking a rope, and I was the second. It was choice, to say the least. The area was so big, and so untouched that we skiied on it for about four hours before it got all tracked out. Then we went stash hunting other places. What an amazing freaking day.

Yeah, like I said. I really feel bad for people who ski on snow other than Utah snow.

Alright, I hate most things Microsoft. So apparently Explorer doesn't show the entire screen of the embedded player. So if you're running Explorer, download Firefox. In the meantime, you can view the video on Youtube.

Balls

2006-12-25T19:55:00.000-05:00

So this idea was a brainchild of my brother and mine. We had recently watched the Sony bouncy ball ad, which inspired a way to one-up the present we gave my nephews and nieces last year (about 300 feet of blue bubble wrap).

So here you go. This is my first attempt to use Windows Movie Maker, and I had around 3 minutes to fill, and only about 1:20 worth of raw footage to work with. All in all, I thought it looked OK, for a hack job attempt at making a video.

Yeah, Christmas is a lot more fun when there are kids involved.

Does I look smarter?

2006-12-11T16:58:00.000-05:00

'Cause I is. I just finished my first half of law school. I can't tell you how it feels to be able to say that. I went out on easily one of my worst notes by writing a pretty lousy exam answer. And unlike my last post, this time I mean that it was pretty crappy. I had no idea what the question was asking, so I just started barfing up everything I knew on the subject, and hoped that most of it stuck. Nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that you studied your brains out for the last four months, only to watch it all slip through your fingers in three hours. I hate finals.

Anyway, I've learned enough to know that I won't do myself any favors by worrying about it now. Can't do anything about it any more.

So, yeah. I'm done with the first half. I have a shload of papers to grade before I take off, but other than that, I have the next month off. Wow does that feel good! See lots of yous guys in a couple of days!

Final Numero Uno in the books

2006-12-06T18:28:00.000-05:00

So I just finished my Evidence final. Final Numero Uno. I'm not convinced I did all that great. I would love to tell you all the reasons that I think I didn't do well, but it's complicated. But, I think I can sum it up. Here's a shot of me after my professor took one look at my exam.

I can handle the dunce cap. I mean, heavens know I wore it enough through grade school. But the sailor outfit, complete with knickerbockers and knee-high socks? Come on. Let a guy keep his dignity.

Actually, I don't think I did all that badly. Everyone thinks they did terribly. So if they're right, I just have to do less terribly than them, and I'll be fine. So here's hoping everyone else was stupider than I was when they wrote theirs.

Next up: Con Law! YEAH!!!

Actually, the only really good thing I can think to say at this moment is that one week from now, I will officially be 1/2 of the way done with law school.

(Update: OK, I decided to edit this post b/c I didn't like signing on to my own blog to that kind of a greeting. Just a bit unsightly).

One for the ages.

2006-11-25T20:17:00.000-05:00

33-31. BYU WINS!!

I'm not going to lie. I felt like I might throw up when Utah took the lead by 4 with 1:19 left. I mean, it would take an epic collapse of their defense to let this one slip through their fingers, right? Give Beck credit. That was an amazing drive, and an unbelievable throw. That had to be a 40 yard throw across his body while he was running the other way. You can't teach that.

What a finish. That was one for the ages.

Better luck next year, chumps. Let me know when you're done licking your wounds. I'm anxious to hear your excuses.

On we go, to vanquish the foe!

2006-11-23T09:16:00.000-05:00

It's been 5 years since I've been able to run my mouth about BYU beating the Utes, so there's quite a bit built up. So I thought I'd get at least a little bit of an early start. You chumps are gonna die.

Don't worry though, I hear that the Amway "Hey, We Want To Sponsor a Bowl Game Too" Bowl is looking for an eligible team. Keep your fingers crossed.

On another note, my computer is back from having the cancer. For those of you who don't know, my hard drive decided it would be funny to take a crap on me a few weeks before the semester ended. I narrowly avoided losing all this semester's work. Like a genius, I hadn't been backing up faithfully. But I've learned from my mistake, and yesterday went out and bought a ridiculously huge external hard drive. I wonder how long it's going to take me to fill up half of a terabyte...

Oh yeah, UTAH SUCKS!

TSA made me do disgusting things

2006-11-08T10:31:00.000-05:00

So I just flew back from Utah on Sunday. When I unpacked my bags on Monday morning, I found a nice little card from the TSA, ever so courteously telling me that my bags had been inspected. I didn't think anything of it, as I'm used to having the TSA poke me, prod me, make me take my clothes off in public, shoot puffs of air at me, wave weird looking magical wands at me, and so on.

As I pulled out the ziploc that had my toiletries in it to brush my teeth, I noticed that there was a hole in the baggie. I didn't think anything of it, so I went to brush my teeth. As I started to brush my teeth, I realized, "That's not what my toothbrush normally tastes like!" Apparently my toothbrush had fallen out of the bag and sat on my waders, which were still damp from fishing a few days before, which had infused stank wader smell/taste into my toothbrush. These waders are 6+ years old now, and any of you who fish know what old waders smell like. Can you say tom cat?

So if any of you are in the market for a fairly new toothbrush, let me know. I'll give you a good deal.

Next best thing (not really)

2006-10-28T22:52:00.002-04:00

I was supposed to go fishing today. But the forecast was calling for 2+ inches of rain in the area we were going to fish, so we decided to scrap the trip. Sucks too, because I had been planning this trip for three weeks now.

So in lieu of the huge fish I was destined to catch today, I thought I'd post a project I've been working on in class for a few weeks now. It's also kind of a shout out to anyone from the Africa program that still might be checking my blog from time to time. Thought you might get a kick out of it.

But don't be too impressed. It's the only thing I know how to draw.

School is back in session

2006-10-06T22:38:00.000-04:00

Prior to coming to New York, I had 6+ year streak going. That's how long it had been since I went fishing without catching at least one fish. I don't care how unimpressed by that other people are, I think that's pretty impressive. Last year in December I went fishing in Pulaski, fished the entire day and didn't catch a thing. All I had to show for the day were feet that were so unbelievably cold that it still hurt to walk on them a few hours later. Can't be good for you, but if that's what it takes to catch a steelhead, I'm game.

So today I went fishing on the Ausable River in the Adirondacks. It was gorgeous up there, and I have to admit, some of the Adirondacks almost approximate what a real mountain is. Anyway, the river was gorgeous, though wading it was pretty tricky. --I pulled one of the most athletic moves in the history of sport fishing today to avoid falling in, and avoid breaking my fly rod, all in the same move. I wish I had it on tape. You would have been impressed, trust me.

Anyway, my point is that New York rivers have been kicking my trash. Between the two fish I caught today, I caught about 11 inches of fish. Sad, really. It's like learning to fish all over again out here, only I have this stupid "school" thing hanging over my head, keeping me from doing the fishing I want to do. Makes it hard to cut off the learning curve, you know?

This is my buddy Carter sneaking up on what proved to be another monstrous 6.5 inch brown.

Anyway, I thought I would post a few shots that show a gorgeous New England fall day. You really can't beat the falls out here. It's nature's way of being nice to you because it knows what it's about to do to you with the coming winter.

So, yeah. That was today. I stood in cold water all day, and didn't think about school, law, or anything of the sort for a full day. Fantastic day.

A dish best served cold.

2006-09-29T16:22:00.000-04:00

REVENGE!!

Being the only BYU grad at my school, I drew a lot of heat last year for BYU's struggles, as Mendenhall began the process of digging the program out of the abyss left by the prior regime. I can't tell you how good it felt to watch BYU throttle the vaunted TCU on both sides of the ball last night.

The poetic justice wasn't lost on me either. One of the first wins in TCU's 13-game winning streak came last year when quality MWC officiating ruled that, in OT, TCU's running back had broken the plane of the endzone before the ball came lose, giving them a touchdown. (BYU recovered the fumble in the end zone, which would have ended the game, if ruled a fumble). If you haven't seen this picture by now, this picture should show you why I'm still a little bitter:

So it felt VERY good to watch the Cougs end what never should have been that long of a winning streak to begin with.

Oh, one more thing...

Utah sucks.

The best guy cancer never should have messed with

2006-09-26T19:40:00.000-04:00

Some things just don't make sense.

We're all pulling for you, D-Swan.

Much love,

-D-

The highlight of my day

2006-09-21T15:57:00.000-04:00

HIGHLIGHTER TIME!

Some of you may remember a couple of my lame goals from last year. The first one was to use a Bic rollerball pen from start to finish. I accomplished that before finishing the semester. The other one was to go through law school without buying a highlighter. Well, as I found out, they only have the BarBri table during first semester, so in spring semester, my formidable stock pile began shrinking, instead of growing. I was down to my last two as of Monday. In actual fact, I had fully planned on giving up on my goal and buying highlighters soon. Really, the only thing that stopped me from doing so was procrastination. It was a sad realization, but I simply needed to go buy highlighters.

But then, out of nowhere, today I get a text message from a buddy, telling me that the BarBri table was set up, selling courses to 1L's. This is a very good thing because it means highlighters and free mini candy bars. Just like that, I'm back in the game! I took a total of 6 today (I gave one to a friend that needed one). I have a different strategy this year, so I'm going to amass a pile to be reckoned with.

It's kind of sad, really, when I think about it. I'm paying an unholy amount of money for these reviews (I may have to take out a separate loan just to pay for the review sessions, no lie) to help me pass the bar exam a couple of years from now, and I'm feeling like I pulled one over on them by taking probably $20 worth of highlighters through the courseo of my lawschool career. Stay tuned folks, because you're witnessing the birth of a negotiating genius...

No nerds here.

2006-09-13T22:05:00.000-04:00

OK, so since my last post, I've gotten a little feedback from a few people who don't have the spine to leave their opinion on my blog, so they email me instead. Let me say this very clearly: SPACE CAMP IS NOT NERDY!

As I mentioned to a friend (with horribly misguided opinons), no self-respecting kid who ever saw the movie came away NOT wanting to go to Space Camp. Where else are you going to get to eat french fries cut like the space shuttle, ride a centrifuge that makes you almost puke up the freeze-dried ice cream you ate at lunch? Nerdy? Pffft. I choose not to dignify some statements by responding to them.

But the responses I've received led me to blow off school work for a minute tonight and look through my binder. Here are a couple of our projects we were working on during the week I was there:

I'm not sure why I was so concerned with burns covering a large part of the body. I had probably just finished a first aid merit badge, or something; I don't know. But don't worry: Dr. Young had it all locked down.

Five years or so should do it, right? It's OK if it's not enough though. You'll note we had a contingency plan.

This one was my favorite:

In all fairness, our counselor (not a mormon) suggested we put the bit about the mormons in there. We weren't going to do it, but he encouraged us. It was interesting though, because it gave me my first taste of people giving me grief about my religion. Quite a few of the kids from other groups, who had all been cool to us up until we presented our project to the larger group, refused to talk to us after that, including this really cute girl (her name was Lisa, and she was from Tennessee, and she had a HOT accent) that I kinda dug. Later, when we were launching our rockets, one kid wouldn't let me look at the grasshopper he was stuffing into his model rocket (it wasn't even the kind with the payload bay for shooting insects into the sky either; he was just kind of cramming the thing in the middle of the parachute) because he told me the grasshopper didn't like mormons. Stupid grasshopper. Must have been bitter for what our seagulls did to his cousins.

The most ironic part was that a couple of our group weren't even mormon, but thought the idea was cool anyway, so they caught all the flack that we did for no reason.

--Come to think of it, why were the non-mormons so OK with blasting us into space? Wait a minute...!

So, yeah. In addition to being one of the coolest weeks of the first 12 years of my life, here are some other reasons why it was cool:

I got to ride a plane for the first time in my life.

I got to run on the horizontal people-mover escalator things in O'Hare Airport, annoying the ever-loving crap out of countless people trying to use them how they were meant to be used.

I got to see a huge part of Chicago lose power at once from the air as we took off.

I bought a T-shirt for my mom that she STILL wears when she gardens. That's got to be one of the toughest T-shirts in the history of T-shirts b/c that thing still looks brand new.

I was in Space Camp, y'all, Space Camp. Seriously, how many of you can say that?

Yeah. It rocked. Nothing anyone says to the contrary can change that.

So all you nerds (you know who you are) can go play Magic, The Gathering, or go to a Star Trek convention or something, and leave me alone about the cool things I've done in my life.

I have a desk!

2006-08-28T10:40:00.000-04:00

OK, I have a riddle: What do you get when you combine a generous grant from the Brent D. and Janet R. scholarship fund, 9 hours of assembly time that I did not have this weekend, a drill, hammer, and a couple of cuss words? A desk that I can actually feel like a student while sitting in front of, that's what! Check it out in all its majesty. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty confident that I'm a little bit smarter just for having it in my room

Having a desk means a couple of things for me:

1) I can finally unpack all of my stuff from the boxes its been sitting in since I sold my condo in May, 2005.
2) My fly tying stuff is back out in the open, where it rightfully belongs. Not that it will get used any more this year than it did last year, but it's the principle of it.
3) I had to unpack those boxes, and I was reminded what a sentimental pack rat I am. You wouldn't believe the stuff I found when I unpacked these boxes. Here's a sampling:
3a) My binder from Space Camp in Huntsvill, Alabama. Yes, I went to Space Camp approximately 16 years ago, and I still have the binder, a polaroid of me in a space suit, and the picture I took of a counselor there (I also got his autograph) because our counselor told us he was Mike Tyson. He didn't look a thing like Mike Tyson. The similarities were that he was black, and he had a gap in his teeth. Other than that, they didn't look a thing alike. But because I was very trusting at that age, and having grown up in Provo, could count the number of black people I had seen to that point in my life on my hands and feet, I thought, "Wow, the T.V. really does make people look different. After all, our counselor certainly wouldn't lie to us..." and took a picture of the dude and got his autograph.

3b) A regular sized cassette tape and a microcassette tape. I have no idea what is on these tapes, but I'm pretty sure I made them while I was a missionary. Because I no longer own a tape player, I can't find out what is on them, but for some reason, I can't make myself throw them away.

3c)About 8 old binocular lense cleaning rags. Hey, you never know when you might need 8 soft rags to clean optics.

3d) Speaker wall mounts for speakers I no longer own.

3e) TONS of letters people wrote me on my mission. Most of these are from people I haven't heard from since then, bt I still would feel rude if I threw them away.

The list goes on... Meanwhile, I'm still stuck with a ton of clutter, and a small apartment that seriously lacks closet space for putting such things. It's driving me crazy b/c I hate having lots of stuff filling up floor space. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and throw it all away, but you never know when someone might ask me a few questions about the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters, and I would hate to be without my only reference book on the subject.

Live Big.

2006-08-19T16:32:00.000-04:00

I'm just not sure there's anything I can add to this.

Star Struck

2006-08-12T01:42:00.000-04:00

So I was just up at Sundance to watch a concert. I was walking up to the ampitheater with my parents when I noticed Ben Stiller and his wife standing in front of us. We were trying to play it cool, because that's what we do in our family, and not stare, or act like gushing morons seeing a movie star for the first time. Or at least, I like to think that's the case. The truth of it is that we were trying to play it cool, but we all rubbernecked at one point or another. At one point, my dad turned around to look at them again, and then turned back around and said, "Huh. He's not that big of a guy, is he?" Nothing too bad about that I guess, except for the fact that I'm fairly confident that they heard him say it. Good one, dad. Good one.

It made me stop and think though. I'm glad I'm not a celebrity. Stuff like that would have to get old. I mean, I'm in the limelight enough as is for being unbelievably gorgeous. Imagine if I not only had that attention, but the attention of everyone wanting to look at me because I was a star, and not simply because I'm as good looking as I am. I just don't think I could handle it.

Believe me, when you look as good as this, life is much rougher than you might think.

Back in the U.S.A.

2006-08-06T11:09:00.000-04:00

OK, so I totally loved Africa, but I was realizing the other day that it's good to be home. Here's a list of things I miss and don't miss.

Miss:
-Being the only white guy around.
-Getting to see incredible new places and things, and meeting new people.
-Having nothing to do and all day to do it while in a foreign country.
-Going on cool safaris every week.
-The people.
-Not having a cell phone in my pocket.
-All the incredible friends I made with the other students in the program.

Don't miss:
-Garbage burning in the streets everywhere.
-The lack of vehicle emissions standards.
-Being treated like I'm rich and stupid because I'm white.
-The crisis of conscience you get when you have a dirt-poor 9-year-old beg you for money, but you know that s/he'll just buy super glue to huff with any money you give him/her.
-Catty in-fighting between some of the girls in our program.
-Being on the other side of the world as my friends and family.
-Malaria medication.

So there you have it. Great to be back. I think it was the most fun summer I've ever had. I highly recommend going to a foreign country with a group of incredible people. --Particularly Kenya. If you get the chance, jump all over it.

HOLYCRAP!HOLYCRAP!HOLYCRAP!HOLYCRAP!...

2006-07-28T18:01:00.000-04:00

WARNING: This blog entry contains graphic pictures of awesome stuff, including blood and things dying. Don't look at them if you don't want to see cute animals getting killed by other cute animals.

But first things first. I just got back from the Masai Mara national park for a two-day safari. Here's how it all went down:

Right now the great migration is going on. The zebras started a few weeks ago, and are still moving through the area, and are currently being joined by the buffalo. This is pretty impressive to see, because there are something like 250,000 wildebeast moving through the area right now. That almost makes up for how ugly they are (but now quite). There are still tens of thousands of zebras around as well.

We got there in time for the evening game drive on Wednesday night. We were able to find a lioness and a cub. They're beautiful and everything, but they don't make for exciting viewing in the evening. We watched them sit there and yawn for about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, there were about 50,000 tourists just like this one surrounding them, so it was difficult to get a decent picture of them without a van behind them. I did manage to get this one though.

That was about all we saw that evening. The next morning, we got a sluggish start. Our guides told us we didn't need to get going until 8:00. I'm still not sure why they did that, but nobody complained because it meant we got to sleep, and considering that we just finished finals, nobody complained much. Unfortunately, the big predators do most of their hunting in the morning. So we missed the prime part of the day.

We did spot a bunch of vultures circling around, so we headed over. On the way, our driver spotted the cheetahs. There were three of them, and they still had blood on their faces. They just kind of hung out there before walking right past our vans. It was pretty cool to see how little fear they had of getting close to the vans.

This turned out to be a lot cooler of a picture than I thought it might be. Just goes to show that you never know which ones are going to be the really cool ones.

We were headed to the River Mara, where the wildebeast cross every morning. Owing to our late start, and our van bending an axle on a bump, we got to the river after the wildebeast had crossed it for the day. That was unfortunate because there are a lot of crocodiles in the river, and they take out wildebeast fairly regularly there, and I was really, really hoping to see one of those ugly suckers get taken down. So we missed all that action. But we did see about 40 hippos there.

There are a couple of points of interest. One, the hippos. Two, the prolific amount of bubbles coming up about 1.5 meters behind the head of the hippo. Fortunately nobody lit a match then. It could have been catastrophic. The other cool thing is the two crocodiles behind the hippos sunning themselves. The more obvious one was probably around 12 feet long. The one that looks like a log was huge. They didn't move a bit the whole time, so we never got to see how long the big one was, but it had to be around 18-20 feet long. It was amazing. I would have loved to see one of those chomp a wildebeast. Oh well...

At this point, we were in the middle of a very hot day, and the animals don't move around much when it's hot, so we headed back to eat lunch while the animals were lying down to get out of the sun, and come back out in the evening when they're more active. This marked the river crossing. I thought it was kind of a cool shot.

This is what happens if you put sunscreen on, and then stand up in a safari vehicle on a dusty road behind another vehicle.

This one is one of my most prized photographs from the whole summer. It's of a guy we named Herman the German. He had a blossoming spikey mullet. It was choice. I thought it was funny, so I decided to take a picture of him as our van drivers below us were talking to each other. What I didn't anticipate was my flash going off in his face. He gave me a dirty look after taking the picture, and everyone in our van laughed.

Later on, we caught up to a couple of males hanging out on a huge rock outcropping. It was awesome to sit and watch them, but it was overcast, and nearing twilight, and we were looking into the sun, so it was difficult to get the light to cooperate with us. I managed to get a couple of OK photos, but nothing to scream about.

There were killer skylines everywhere you looked. It was seriously amazing.

So the next morning, we got out and on the road at 6:30. Some of our group had to catch a plane later on that afternoon, so we didn't have a lot of time to deal with, but it was a last ditch effort to see something get killed. We saw a ton of buffalo, but no word of anything getting killed. Then, as our driver was heading in to take the people to the airport, a call came in on the CB, and he flipped around and started driving like a mad man. He didn't tell us what was going on, but when he drove probably 45 miles an hour over a wash board road, I figured there was something worth seeing.

This was the first thing I saw when I got there. There were about 15 lions that I saw in total. The older lionesses had wounded the zebra, and were letting the younger lions hone their hunting skills on it. That allowed the zebra to stay standing for a lot longer than usual, and allowed us to see a kill in process.

They had taken a pretty sizeable chunk out of its hind quarter. Half of the time the younger lions were trying to eat more than they were trying to kill it. Zebras have it rough. Particularly this one.

Unfortunately, my battery died right after I took this photo. There was lots more cool stuff going on, but I didn't have any battery left to get it. I did get some decent video footage, and maybe once I'm back in the states with a decent intronet connection, I'll put the video on here. Until then, trust me when I say it was awesome.

Also unfortunate was that we didn't have much time because of the people that had to catch their stupid flight. We did get to watch for about 10 minutes, but then we had to head back. I'm glad I got to see what I did see, but I was in the middle of seeing one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and had to leave before it got good. 5 minutes after we left, they took it down and finished the job. 10 minutes after that, they started hunting another zebra. I don't know if that hunt was succesful or not. But our other van did get to stay back because nobody in that van had to catch a flight. I kicked myself pretty hard because I started to get on the van without people for the airport first thing in the morning, but changed my mind at the last second. So they got a front row seat to a pride of lions finishing off a zebra, and starting to eat. To say I was a little jealous would be the understatement of the year.

So those are some of the highlites. Unfortunately, those don't really begin to show how amazing of a plaze it really is. The only way to appreciate it is to see it yourself. So call your travel agent... Seriously though, if you get a chance, Masai Mara is NOT to be missed.

So my Africa trip will be over in a few days. I'll be back in the states soon, and back to not having anything all that cool to blog about, unless you like hearing about what a second year law student is studying, in which case, consult professional help.

I'll be seeing some of you soon.

Miscellaneous pictures

2006-07-20T07:19:00.000-04:00

So stupid school has really been cramping my African vacation. I was going to try to go to Cairo last weekend, but it didn't pan out. But, as a friend of mine put it, what's Egypt got anyway? A bunch of sand, a few pyramids, mummies, sewage problems and terrible attitude toward women. So I guess I really didn't miss out much.

Also, finals are next week, so I have to do some studying. BORING!!

Anyway, I figured I'd toss a few pictures on that none of you would have seen yet. Hope you enjoy.

From my dhou trip in Lamu. The guy has to stand on the board to counterbalance, and keep the wind from blowing the sail boat over. It was good entertainment just watching the guy walk back and forth along the board.

I took this one from the top floor of this guy's house in Lamu. I stopped to ask him a question, and the next thing I knew, he took me all over the place to help me get a few pictures. It kind of gives a feel for what it looked like there.

How come donkeys always look depressed? Seriously, when they made up the Eeyore character, they hit it right on the head. Every one I saw looked like its mother had just died.

This was taken in a clandestine fashion by my friend, Chris. This German fellow was walking across part of the glacier on the top of Kilimanjaro when he fell down and smacked his head on the ice. I'm probably lucky it didn't happen to me. I only blacked out once, and I caught myself before I hit my head on a rock. Anyway, Chris got the shot, and then the girls in our group got mad at him for taking the picture. They said something about being insensitive, or something; I don't remember. I almost tried to take a picture of him, but by the time I got there, there were too many people around him to get a picture. I'm sure if the guy saw this picture, he'd be glad someone took it.

This is where we stayed the fourth night on the mountain. This spot was about 14,200 feet, or something like that. Blah blah blah--I'm like a slide show, but in written form, inflicting you with painful detail of everything going on in the shot.

This one is definitely on my list of my favorite shots I've taken this whole trip.

This was taken from the summit. I was in a total altitude-induced haze at this point. It was one of the weirdest feelings of my life. Kind of like coming out of anesthesia, but colder, and more wind. Anyway, that's another big mountain in the background (forgot what it's called). You can look at all of them on Google Earth. I checked it out the other day.

That's Chris. I just liked how this shot turned out.

And finally, I really struggled with whether or not I was going to post this shot. A few weeks ago, I let the beard go for a while, and it was getting out of control. I don't have a beard trimmer with me, so I decided to shave, but before I went to that extreme, I decided to see what the old molestache would look like on me. Judge for yourself:

Seriously, that's just scary. If I had kids, I wouldn't have allowed myself to be around them until I shaved that thing off. It still gives me a full-body shiver when I look at that picture.

OK kids, that's all for now. Next week I'll be watching the wildebeast migration. I guess there's a pretty good chance of us seeing a lion or crocodile, or something take a wildebeast down. I so hope I get to see that. So if things go well, the next post I throw on here will have some great blood and guts. Here's hoping...

Dallas: 1 Kilimanjaro: 0.

2006-07-10T10:11:00.000-04:00

I climbed the world's tallest free-standing mountain.

Heart palpitations, heavy breathing, halucinations, light headedness, sweating profusely, vertigo, difficulty thinking clearly, stumbling over words... No, I'm not talking about my first date with Jessica Stein, I'm talking about my assault on Kilimanjaro. --Or should I say Kilimanjaro's assault on me? Let me sum it up by saying this: Coolest...Climb...EVER!

They say that even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so I figured I'd make the first step as dramatic as possible, especially considering that I wasn't sure if I would make it to the last step.

We started out below the rain forest area. We hiked through a few villages, complete with kids coming out and asking us for candy. Before long, we got into the rain forest area, which felt incredible. Perfect temperature with a hint of humidity. It was even greener than New York. Even the trees have plants growing on them. At one point I counted 4 different types of plants growing on the branch of a tree.

The first few days were actually not all that difficult. We made it to this camp site on the second day. We had our guide, Victor, up front setting the pace the whole way, and we pretty much poked along at a snail's pace. It was pretty aggravating for a while, but then I realized that I should probably listen to Victor, considering that he's the expert on the mountain and all. Anyway, the slow pace gave me lots of chances to take some cool pictures, and not be totally sore the next day, so I have no complaints.

By the fourth day, we were at pretty serious altitude. We were around 14,200 feet above sea level, which was an all-time high for me. By the time we made it to this camp, one girl from our group had dropped out due to altitude sickness. She puked 20+ times during the night before, and that morning. This picture is at the camp, where someone from another group was also suffering from altitude sickness, so the guides pulled out some type of portable hyperbaric tent, or some such thing. Our guide tried to explain what it did, but I never understood him completely. I think it might just concentrate the oxygen enough to help someone recover from hypoxia. Anyway, they had the guy in there for about 4 hours before they let him out, and then they took him back down to lower altitude.

The camping spots were incredible, as were the stars. You can see the Southern Cross in this shot, which comes to The Dally News courtesy of my friend, Brittany (Britney, Brittney, or however you spell it.)

The fifth day is where the mountain really upped the ante. It got cold, and really windy, which meant that the Chacos had to come off, or face the possibility of frostbite. The hike to Kibo Hut was a lot rougher than it looked like it should be. We stayed the fifth night at Kibo Hut, which sits at 15,615 feet above sea level. (That's almost 2,100 feet higher than King's Peak, the highest peak in Utah, for those of you keeping score.) You can't really see Kibo Hut in this picture, but it's there. We had to walk across the saddle behind me to the foot of the mountain, which sounds pretty easy. But once we hit even the slightest uphill climb, we had to move at about .5 feet a second. It was the most frustrating thing ever, because if you moved any faster, you would feel like passing out almost instantly. I lost count of how many heart palpitations I had. The wind was also blowing at around 40 mph across the area, so it wasn't comfortable.

We got into Kibo Hut at about 2:00. We took a break for a few hours, and during that time, the girl that they had to take down earlier due to altitude sickness came waltzing into camp. Apparently they got her down to the first camp, and she felt a lot better, so she talked the porters and the rangers into letting her try again. She climbed almost 7,000 vertical feet to catch back up to us before we attempted to summit. Pretty incredible, considering how difficult it was just to make it to the base of the mountain.

Summit day actually started at 11:00 PM of the same day that we made it to Kibo Hut. We got up, ate a little, and then started to climb at midnight. It was well below freezing, and the higher we got, the worse the wind got. At about 1/3 of the way up, one of our party just collapsed without warning. He was pretty loopy, but came to quickly. He decided it would be best to head down b/c he was walking like he was drunk, and we were getting into the steep part of the mountain. Not long after he headed down, I started feeling vertigo pretty badly when I held still, and felt like my heart was going to explode when I was moving.

We made it to Gilman's point, the first part of the rim of the crater you reach, by about 6:00, just as the sun was rising. Orion was just setting, which was cool, because it's my favorite constellation, and I haven't ever seen it in July before. It was also amazingly beautiful, which was a big bonus. Meanwhile, I was delerious, freezing, suffering from altitude sickness, and otherwise not in the mood for taking pictures, which is why once again, this photo is courtesy of Brittany. Like a jerk, I didn't take that many pictures from the top of the mountain. Fortunately I have friends who did.

Pretty much everywhere you looked on the top of the mountain was gorgeous. I don't think there are too many other glaciers this close to the equator. Unfortunately, at the rate things appear to be going, this one might not be around too much longer. The glacier has been shrinking dramatically over the last 10 years. Most people attribute it to global warming.

5895 meters = 19,453 feet. That's really high. So were the three porters who, while this picture was being taken, were smoking pot immediately to my left.

When we got to the bottom of the mountain and left the national park, I found a fellow cougar. I thought it was awesome, especially when I noticed how stoned he was. Seriously, check out the dude's eyes. That made the moment all the cooler. Go cougs!

So that is a glance at Kilimanjaro. It ruled. I've climbed it. You haven't.

So my time in Africa is drawing to a close. Not too many adventures ahead of me, and then I'll be back to having a lame blog. But in the meantime, I've got one more cool trip for sure in a few weeks, and possibly a trip to Cairo, Egypt in the meantime. As usual, I'll keep you posted.

Lamu

2006-06-27T08:38:00.000-04:00

So this weekend I was on an island called Lamu. It's part of an archipelago along the coast of Kenya on the Indian Ocean. This picture was taken at one of the hostels where we stayed. Yes, these grounds are part of a hostel. It was amazing. Not as many frills as the one in Mombasa, but that was a 5-star resort. This place cost about 6 bucks a night. At night time I went on the roof, and you wouldn't believe how many stars you can see. I don't think I've been that far away from any major population centers too many times in my life. I got to see the southern cross again, but other than that, I really can't remember any southern hemisphere constellations.

Anyway, Lamu is a very heavily muslim island with some of the most friendly people you could imagine. Many of the non-muslims, if not most were really taking on the rastafarian lifestyle. Everyone there was super friendly. I found that they were friendly for one of two reasons: they were pretty much all really good-hearted people, and/or they were stoned out of their minds. OK, the muslim people weren't stoned out of their minds, but all of the rastafarians were. Whole lotta tokin' going on. It kept things entertaining, that's for sure. Anyway, they were some of the most mellow people I've been around. I loved it.

Anyway, it was one of the mellowest places I have been, right up there with the pacific islands. I saw two cars and three motorcycles in four days. In the same time I saw about 500 donkeys. That's how people move stuff around the island, so I quickly noticed that the acrid smell of burning garbage and diesel fumes you get used to smelling in Nairobi were replaced with the smell of donkey poo, inadequate sewage systems and rotting fish parts. But for all that, I think it was my favorite place I've been so far. There were only 15 or so other tourists there, so we were quite the novelty. It was great. It felt like turning your clock back a few thousand years. I took advantage of the time there by wandering around and doing nothing. I haven't done that for a while now. Mostly wandered the town and took photos. At one point, I asked an older guy named Hassan a few questions, and the next thing I knew, he took me to his house so I could see the view from his roof, let me take a bunch of pictures of the architecture of the place (unfortunately none of them turned out very good) and then took me to his friend's house so I could see the view from there, and answered a bunch of my questions about Islam. I really can't say enough about how nice the people there were.

There's lots of cool architecture around the place. I would have killed for a real camera and black and white film.

This is a dhou. It's a traditional muslim boat that they've been sailing through the archipelago since the 13th century, or something like that. We went on a cool ride one day. Sailing's pretty fun, even if all we did was sit and try not to get in the way of the crew that didn't speak very much english.

There are wrecked dhous all over the place. A better photographer than I would be able to get some great shots. I had to settle for mediocre ones like this.

This was the airport. When we boarded to leave, there was a guy with a lawnmower cutting the grass on the arrival/departure terminal/rest of the runway. You gotta love seeing stuff like that.

That's Lamu behind me. That's me in front of Lamu.

This was one of my favorite shots. There are tons of hagrid looking cats running around the city, climbing brick walls, and dodging the rocks that the local kids throw at them, which appeared to be one of their favorite pasttimes. Anyway, this one must not have dodged quickly enough. I came across it while combing the beach, and thought it turned out to be a cool picture.

And this one is for anyone coming here from 13 O'Clock. The one that looks like Shauna is on the front row, second one in from the left. Click the photo to enlarge it. It's pretty tough to tell from the pictures, but I've got some video of her that you can see the resemblance a lot better in. So you'll just have to trust me that the semblance was uncanny.

So that's it. My next post won't be for a while. All next week I'm going to be climbing Kilimanjaro. That one is going to take a while, but if I make it back alive, I'll throw pictures up when I can.

Samburu National Wildlife Reserve Safari

2006-06-21T14:45:00.000-04:00

This week's adventure is brought to you by the Samburu National Wildlife Reserve. There were more animals out there than you would believe. At first, we were stopping to take pictures of everything, b/c we were amazed to see any form of African wildlife. By the second day, we were becoming much harder to impress. What? Another impala? OK. Let's move on. Funny how quickly what was previously amazing became ordinary. Anyway, we probably saw 500+ impala, 50 or more elephants, 20-30 reticulated giraffes, a bunch of zebras, a couple of secretary birds, a bunch of gazelles, common antelope, a few herds of oryx, 3 ostrich, 2 leapords, a lion, and a partridge in a pear tree. It was a lot of fun, and made all the more fun by being in such a group of goofy yahoos.

When we first got to where this leopard was, the leopard was in the middle of this huge snag of a dead tree, where he was almost impossible to see. It took me a few minutes to figure out what everyone was looking at. One of my friends mused, "Wow, I wonder how they spotted him..." I responded, "They're actually born that way." Oh! Man alive. How can you handle wit like that? You can't, that's how.

Pretty sad that I'm still re-living my witty comment a few days later.

Our guide told us the calf appeared to be about 4-5 weeks old. The day before this, we had been charged by an elephant. I have video of it. Anyway, having been charged by an animal that probably outweighed our vehicle just the day before, I was a little nervous about getting that close to a mother and child. But they really didn't seem to mind our being there too much. It was pretty cool to be that close to an animal that outweighed our vehicle easily, and could probably throw it a few yards without much effort, and watch it graze along and take care of its calf.

This is a reticulated giraffe. I think the only difference between this and other giraffes is that this type has a different spotting pattern. I learned that giraffes don't do much anything other than eat. It's also really funny to watch them drink b/c it's not easy to get that wicked long neck down to the water. Other than that, they don't do much.

Uh...

This is what the front of the monkey from above looks like. It's a vervet. They're crafty little devils. Our last day there, they tried to break into our tent twice. They untied a knot, and unzipped the tent and snuck in, but forgot to hold the zipper still, b/c when it started jingling, I woke up and chased them out. Our friends in the next tent over were sleeping a little heavier than I on account of copious amounts of alcohol they consumed the night before, so vervets got in their tent, stole all their room service cookies, sugar packets, one guy's perscription sunglasses, and who knows what else. Naughty little monkey.

These are oryx. Both males and females have horns, and both males and females are known to initiate mating, which makes them unusual in the animal world on two accounts.

We had to do some hard looking, but we were able to track down a lion (I make it sound like I had something to do with it). As soon as we found the lion and our driver sent out the word of where she was, the cavalry decended in a frenzy of dust, diesel fumes, SUV's, camera clicks, gasps of awe, and admonitions from tourists-turned-African-wildife-experts to be quiet so you wouldn't scare it. (Because I'm sure she couldn't hear or smell or see the 10 diesel engines within 30 feet of her carrying stinky, noisy tourists through the brush and sticks of the area...) It was crazy. In a way, it reminded me of combat fishing in Alaska ;) Drivers jockeying for position so their people could get good pictures. Kind of comical, really. In the blink of an eye, there were more pasty-white Euro tourists snapping pictures of her than you can imagine. (For some reason I've convinced myself that I don't look anywhere near as much like a tourist as the Euros do).

And one final note: Ashleigh, you're gonna LOSE.

So that's Samburu at a glance. Gorgeous place. We also visited a Samburu village, and got to spend a little time there, and got the white-tourist-eye-view of what life is like in the village. I mostly took videos there, so I can't post much of that.

Anyway, I'm not sure when my next adventure is going to be, but I'm working on putting together a trip this weekend to an island called Lamu. It's part of an archipelago that people just kind of hang out and sail around in. Transport on this one is proving difficult, so it might not happen. If not, it might be a while before I have good pictures up again. I'll do my best not to disappoint both of the people who check in frequently though.

They really have all those weird looking animals in Africa!

2006-06-11T15:49:00.000-04:00

So this weekend's adventure was heading out to Lake Naivasha. We stayed in a nice Country Club place. This is up north of Nairobi, and kind of in higher land than what we've seen so far. There were actually a lot of places that reminded me of Utah in the high Uintas. Really heavily wooded areas on steep hills. It was pretty cool. Anyway, we went walking out on a big peninsula on the lake which is where they filmed most of Out of Africa, for those old farts reading the blog. For the younger crowd, they also filmed part of Tomb Raider II there. When they were filming Out of Africa, they brought a bunch of plains animals there that weren't there naturally for effect, and they decided to maintain the herds there b/c dumb tourists such as yours truly will pay money to walk around looking at zebras, wildebeasts, giraffes, gazelles and such without having to worry about lions or cheetahs, or whatever. As long as I'm the top of the food chain, I'm happy.

This was a younger giraffe. Our tour guide told us a bunch of information about it, but I forgot it all. It was hard to get a shot of one of the giraffes b/c there were about 25 other dumb tourists trying to get a picture of them too. I'm surprised they don't get mad and charge. It was pretty cool watching them run. They can actually move pretty quickly.

Another giraffe. Probably young. Our guide probably told me something about it, but I probably forgot it all.

Despite the fact that I think the wildebeast may very well be the ugliest mammal on the planet, this picture wound up looking OK. If you look at the mountain in the background, that's Mount Olongonot. We climbed that today. It's a former volcano that blew out a crater about 1.5 miles across and probably 500+ feet deep. I got to the top and found out that I had taken too many videos of the giraffes and my camera battery was dead. So I didn't get any pictures of the volcano. Hopefully someone has some I can borrow. Anyway, I thought that even though the wildebeast is kind of stupid looking, this is a decent shot.

We also saw a few hippos. They didn't seem too thrilled that we were taking their pictures. They mostly just sunk under the water as soon as they saw us, but I did manage to get this shot of 5 of them.

This was almost a really cool shot. I'm not sure what it needed to make it a really good shot. But I thought I'd toss it on there. It was a lot of fun.

Oops! Looks like the rain really is down in Africa. It just started raining, so I guess I'd better get my laptop back inside.

Africa is pretty cool.

2006-06-09T02:40:00.000-04:00

Just got back from four days in the most incredible resort hotel I've ever seen. Graduate students have no business in the world staying in a place this nice. It was amazing. We were by far the youngest people there that weren't with their parents. We were also the only group whose males were not wearing speedos. Crazy Euros. Dudes in Speedos... I don't think I'll ever get used to that. At least I hope I never do.

Anyway, on the way there, we saw some African wildlife. This is the only cool picture I got. We saw a few giraffes too, but they were too far off the road to try to take pictures. And we were in a bit of a crazy spot on the road. Getting smashed by an 18-wheeler is not something I want to do anytime soon, so we kept moving. But I can check wild zebras and wild giraffe off my list. We saw tons of monkeys too. I can't remember what kind they were, but they're a lot bigger than I expected. They're everywhere on the coast. The girls in the room next to ours had room service at one point, and left their dishes sitting outside of their room. I walked out later that day, and there was a monkey sitting there cleaning up after them. I tried to get my camera, but he was gone before I could get a picture.

In other wildlife news, there are geckos everywhere. We've seen a few in our apartment back in Nairobi. So far, I don't think they're the kind that makes noise at night, so I'm completely cool with having them around. It's kind of cool to have something scurry across the wall and have it not be a cockroach, or anything else nasty.

I also got to do some deep sea fishing. I was hoping to catch a dorado or two (a.k.a. mahi mahi, a.k.a. dolphin fish), or maybe a tuna, but that wasn't in the cards. We tried for them for about 2 hours, and didn't see anything other than one of the most intense rain storms I've ever seen. At one point you couldn't really even see the swells on the ocean because there was so much water splashing with the rain falling. Thankfully we were in a cab cruiser b/c I wasn't in the mood to get soaked, and I didn't take my rain jacket.

This one had already been dead for a while when I took the picture. I really wanted to get a picture of it when it was alive b/c they look so much better in pictures when they're alive. But the guides insisted that they were too dangerous to pick up. What they didn't know, and didn't understand when I tried to explain to them was that I have handled this type of fish before, and am no greenhorn when it comes to handling fish, and I frankly don't care if I get stung or bitten a little bit. Anything for a good picture.

This is what they look like when they're alive. I waited for the guides to turn their backs, and picked it up for the picture. I got cut up a little, but nothing too bad. It was worth it.

This one got attacked by a big barracuda as my buddy was reeling it in. I was really hoping to get to catch a big barracuda, but it didn't happen. Any fish that can do this to another fish with one speeding pass is cool in my book.

So anyway, this is my first Africa post. I'll try to do them every so often, but it's difficult b/c the internet is so painfully slow and inconsistent here. But I'll do my best.

AWESOME.

2006-05-29T18:09:00.000-04:00

I rule. The day before I travel to a country with known hepatitis problems, I rip a big blister on my foot. Keep in mind the fact that I detest wearing anything other than sandals. Criminy.

Anyway, it's not as bad as it looks. I doubt it's anything to worry about. It just struck me as funny that it happened the day before I left the country.

T-Minus 72 hours and counting

2006-05-27T14:41:00.000-04:00

That's right. Three days are all that remain between a flight to Africa and me. I didn't even manage to get a slight semblance of a tan first either. I'm going to stand out worse there than I did in Peru. Make sure to check the blog every so often. I'll try to post weekly, complete with cool pictures, compliments of my mom buying me a cool new digital camera for my birthday.

Resolution: accomplished!!

2006-05-16T11:38:00.000-04:00

As if it were planned this way, my pen failed on the very last study day of my first yar of law school. The Pike Balancing Test, and whether the burdens a state puts on interstate commerce are clearly excessive in relation to the benefits that accrue to the state as a result will hold a special place in my heart for the rest of my life. Gads, what a freaking geek I've become. Somebody, give me a wedgie now.

Anyway, turns out I way overestimated how long it would last, or underestimated how much writing Con Law would involve. In either event, I believe this is the first new year's resolution I have ever followed through with, and I'm sure it's the first time I've ever used a throw away pen until it was completely out of ink without losing it. Now, if I could just make and follow through with a meaningful goal...

What you talkin' bout, Willus?

2006-04-28T22:24:00.000-04:00

So my life is basically lame right now, which doesn't exactly make for interesting blogging. But my little bro went to Moab a few weekends ago for the jeep safari, and wound up with some interesting photos that I'd like share with all four people who look at my blog regularly. As you'll see, it is a cultural event to be reckoned with.

Allow me to point out some of my favorite points of this photo:
1) The pregnant chick who is about to pick a wedgie.
2) The dude looking at his phone--He's got both nipples pierced, and what appear to be Birkenstocks. Kind of a weird thing for a redneck, isn't it?
3) The guy with his pants tucked into his boots
4) Same guy, porcelain white wife beater tan line
5) Same guy, beer belly
6) Same guy, hooking his thumb on his pocket
7) Same guy, can of Cope' in his back pocket
8) Crushed beer cans on the ground
9) Dude in the back of the truck with a plug between the lip and gums and the Cat hat
10) Requisite Calvin peeing on something picture
11) Dude in the bed of the truck sporting the cowboy hat, no shirt, sunburn and white Adidas sneakers with ankle socks look. Can't know for sure, but I'd bet he's wearing cut-off Wranglers.
12) Dude with the bling sitting on the tailgate. Note the bad sunburn and broken sunglasses.
13) Dude sitting on the top of his truck in the background, top left of the photo: check out the hair and the socks.
14) Dude with the green shorts and the knife clipped to his pocket.

I'm telling you, I just keep finding more gems here. Feel free to post any that I might have overlooked. But wait, there are other great photos...

Point of interest of this photo is so obvious that it's not even worth pointing out. Next photo!

That's Willus sporting the Corona hat. Dork. From this angle, I would guess male. Gross. Next photo!

What would a redneck event be without loose women? Gotta love the hunny truck. Check out how everyone is looking at the same thing. Who knows what was going on... Here's one of my favorite parts about this picture:

Pick your jaw back up off the ground, son! And reach over and pinch your buddy with the glasses so he knows he's not dreaming. Busted gawking.

Or how about at this girl:

Note the long pants (Moab, y'all. At least 80 degrees) and look of consternation. I love it!

Whoa, man! A big thanks to Willus for sending me all the desktop background material I'll be needing for the next few months.

Now, I ask you: could it ever get any cooler? I think not.

B Money's breakout!

2006-04-20T22:20:00.000-04:00

Most of you don't know B Money, which is sad, really. There's a lot I could say about the guy, but little I could say isn't summed up in this video. He's one of the funniest people I know. Those of you in Provo might recognize him. He's probably knocked on your door and tried to sell you Brunson Brothers music, or something. Seriously, he's one of my favorite people on the earth, so I hope you enjoy the video as much as I did.

Munster's video

Welcome!!

2006-03-14T08:13:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to take a quick second to welcome any new visitors to my blog. A couple of rules:

1) No potty language. This is a family-friendly blog. I will delete your posts if you cuss or say something I deem objectionable. (However, that is the ONLY reason I would ever censor someone else's opinion. --Unless doing so was really funny.)

2) No using punctuation marks to resemble smiley faces. That's just dumb.

3) I reserve the right at all times to edit and/or delete comments (mine or anyone else's) in an arbitrary and capricious manner. If you don't like it, start your own blog.

4) I highly encourage principled discussion and reasoned argument. If you're here just to throw out rancor and acrimony, or otherwise air your dirty laundry, see rule #3.

Other than that, post away. We should get along smashingly.

In other news, I got to do some steelhead fishing yesterday. This was the best of the 4 I caught. An absolute blast. I recommend it to anyone.

I've picked my horse

2006-03-02T21:34:00.000-05:00

Resolution update: I had a few hiccups on my resolution, but I'm off and running strong. My original project pen blew up on me the day after I went public with my resolution, as you'll remember. I kind of went through a funk for a while, not being particularly impressed with any pen I'd used. But on the second day of class this semester, I had to borrow a pen from my buddy, and I didn't give it back because I was sick at the time, and I've been using it since. You can see in the pic that I've used almost 1 inch worth of ink so far. I estimate that this pen could last me through my second year of law school.

In other news, I got accepted to the Africa program I've told some of you about. So you can expect to see pictures of Africa on the blog in the coming months. And yes, the pen will go with me.

Is this weird?

2006-01-27T08:29:00.000-05:00

Is it really weird that I like it when I wake up with my eyes crusted shut with eye boogs? It happened to me this morning, and it made me realize how funny it is when you're in that dazed point between sleep and waking up, and when you try to open your eyes, you can't. That's awesome! Maybe I'm really weird, but I like it when that happens, and I'm not afraid to say it. I would have taken a picture of it, but I couldn't open my eyes to find my camera.

I like vacations

2006-01-05T19:33:00.000-05:00

As much as I have been enjoying school, this was a whole lot more fun.

Who's got two thumbs and is done with finals?

2005-12-13T12:51:00.001-05:00

THIS GUY!!

I'm it, had a fit, kissed a naked idiot.

2005-12-12T07:18:00.000-05:00

Since Lo didn't call no give-backs, I thought about just tagging her back and giving five more little-known facts about her, but then I realized that she probably has just as much blackmail material on me, and less of a conscience to stop her from using it. It's one of the perks of being a big sister. So here are five little-known facts about me.

1) I used to run around the house in my underoos, cowboy boots and a dish towel for a cape pretending to be the bionic man. (I stopped doing that a year after graduating from BYU; it was really creeping my roommates out.)

2) When I was really young, I used to pull my hair out by the handfulls and eat it while I was asleep.

3) My favorite way to keep myself awake when I'm on road trips is by pulling nose hairs. If you can get the ones along the septum, and pull them nice and slow, it will wake you up in a big hurry. Plus it gives the cars you're driving past something to laugh about if they're watching you, because you really have to dig to get two fingers that far into your nose.

4) One of my buddies had me semi-convinced that I had travelled back in time four hours one night. He dragged it on for over 18 months before he told me the truth. But before he told me the truth, I had probably told over 200 people the story on at least 10 different occasions. (It's a very long story, and maybe fodder for a blog entry once I'm done with finals.)

5) Some day I'm going to try to get on Letterman's Stupid Human Tricks. My trick? I can fit 8 quarters up my nose at once.

One item of housekeeping. I've decided to adopt a rule my friend set on his blog (13 O'Clock) and declare that I will not permit the use of punctuation arranged in any way, shape or form to resemble a smiling, winking, tongue-sticking-out-ing, or otherwise cutsie human face. It's Mickey Mouse, and I don't like it, so I have decided to disallow it here. So make sure you don't do it here. I don't want to make fun of you for it, but I will if I have to.

One down, three to go.

2005-12-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

First law school final is in the books. I think I did pretty well, but I'll reserve judgment until I see my report card.

OK, now I'm trying to re-post the picture from the last post and double check the html this time. If I don't screw it up, it should appear here:

So, the question now is, did it work?

Finals time

2005-12-03T08:55:00.000-05:00

I call this photo "The Rule Against Perpetuities." That's about the most pleasant look I've had on my face lately. I used to think girls were complicated. They've got NOTHING on the RAP. If you come across it, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

OK, mostly I wanted to kill the kidney stone talk. I never thought when I started this blog that the entry that would trigger the most activity would be a forum for mothers to talk about their kidney stones, child birth and what not.

St. Peter

2005-11-20T21:28:00.000-05:00

I thought this was pretty funny.

I was recently out doing a little home teaching. One of the guys we home teach has been having kidney stones, which sound like they are ridiculously unpleasant to deal with. Anyway, he mentioned that he was going to be seeing a urologist this week at one of the the local hospitals, which happens to be called St. Peter. Think about it. . .

Son of a...!!

2005-11-14T20:11:00.000-05:00

So I have been working on that stupid resolution since sometime in September. Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I go public with it, something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

I got to Contracts this morning, pulled my pilfered highlighter and pilfered pen out of my pocket (not pilfered) to get ready to be studious. I tried to take some notes in the column of my Contracts case book, and guess what? My d-word pen wouldn't write because it blew up!! I think it only happened b/c I just went public with my goal yesterday. Fortunately it didn't get ink anywhere other than on my hand. Great way to start a week. So I had to sit there in class next to the guy who smells like pee (I've tried to be a good person and not rip on him for that fact, but I passed my tipping point last week. I'm really tired of having a stiff back and neck from leaning WAY to my right b/c he stinks so bad.) stewing in the fact that I failed in my resolution. CRAP!! Back to square one.

So now I have to figure out which other pen I want to make my project pen. I nabbed one off a table from someone trying to sell me something today, and it looks cool, but it doesn't write well. Grr... But rest assured, I will not be deterred (whoa, a rhyme! Let's see how far I can go with it...) though my efforts seem absurd, my goal will not be abjured. OK, that wasn't too far, but it was fun anyway.

But the good news was that the same table of people trying to sell me crap had highlighters. So I filled my pockets. My stockpile is officially up to 12, and I didn't pay for one of them! This Thursday is Barbri day, and they put tons out on the table. I'm going to hook myself up phat!!

New Year's resolution

2005-11-13T20:53:00.000-05:00

OK, so my blog sucks. I frequently think about posting something, but most of the funny things that I think of day in day out are things that would only be funny to other law students. Translation: not funny at all, sometimes painfully not so. All that aside, I noticed that 152 people have viewed my profile. Who the hell are they? So far I've had my sister, her husband, one person not related to me and a blog spammer leave comments. Other than that, the only people that look are related to me. Pathetic. Anyway, on to the meat of what I have to say.

I'm of the opinion that New Year's resolutions suck. They're often tritely made with little to no intention of following through. --At least mine always were. So a long time ago I decided that the only New Year's resolution I would ever set would be not to write the wrong year on checks. I write approximately 15 checks a year now, so that isn't too tough. But I've decided to push myself and set a difficult, meaningful goal. I actually started on it back in September and have already failed, so I'm starting over now. Here it is:

During orientation week at the law school there were all kinds of organizations handing out free crap like water bottles, post it notes and what not. One group was handing out highlighters and pens. Good idea. The pen was just one of those cheap rollerball throw away kinds that Bic has deluged the earth with. Anyway, I was looking at it the other day and I realized that I don't think I have ever used one of those cheap Bic roller ball pens all the way to exhaustion. Bam!! New Year's resolution made. So my goal is to hang on to this pen I got from the New York State Bar Association until it is completely out of ink. I may retire before that happens, so this is not a flippantly made goal.

Not long after that idea occurred to me, I had an idea for another goal. Every Thursday, Barbri (a company that sells unbelievably expensive bar review classes; no lie, most people have to take a separate loan out to pay for the class, then a separate loan to pay the fee to take the bar. And then people wonder why attorneys are expensive...) has a table set up to get students to enroll in their classes. They have free pens and highlighters on the table, so I've been going by each week for the last few weeks and pilfering their supply of free highlighters. Last week I think I nabbed six. I'm going to try to get at least ten this week. But they only put out so many of them in the color I like. I figure I'm paying them a few thousand dollars for a review course, I'm entitled to a few hundred markers. My goal is to finish law school without ever having purchased a highlighter. That is a much more lofty goal than the one with the pen, as I use highlighters a lot more than pens. Sometimes I'm one of those dorks that reads a case, or article, highlighting the important parts, only to realize when I finish that I only left two or three lines un-highlit. I've burned through three highlighters so far.

So there are my goals. I'm going to use a Bic rollerball pen until it's completely dry, and I'm never going to buy a highlighter in law school. Nothing like meaningful, lofty goals, right?

Oh, and I should probably find some time go get out and date a little more. Maybe I'll leave that to be my 2007 resolution. I wouldn't want to rush things.

--A little more? All I would have to do is go on dates bi-annually and I would meet that goal at my current pace.

Jed Clampet

2005-10-07T16:44:00.000-04:00

O.K., so I finally have something worth posting.

I was on my way back from lunch today with some friends. We ate Thai food, and I tried some duck curry, which was really good. I've never had duck that I enjoy before because the only duck I've ever eaten has been duck I shot. Really gamey and oily tasting, and there's nothing worse than biting down to find a steel BB that you missed while you were cleaning them. I commented that it was the first time I had eaten farmed duck, and that I don't like wild duck. One of my friends asked me if it was any good, which I told her it wasn't. She told me that maybe I wasn't cooking it right, to which I replied, "well, I did make some jerky out of it once that wasn't that bad..." Pretty much the whole car laughed at the same time, but the humor was lost on me. I didnt' think I had said anything funny. Then one of the girls commented that she loved hearing my statements like, "I made some jerky out of it once..." that you don't hear ever day in Albany, and they all laughed in approval. I was still confused, because as far as I was concerned, there wasn't anything unusual about what I said. It was another one of those realizations of how different of a culture it is out here. I'm gaining a reputation as being a country boy, which I'm not. But then again, by comparison to many of the people out here, I'm a regular Jed Clampet.

Gas < milk?

2005-09-13T08:50:00.000-04:00

So gas fell from $3.40 a gallon at the station down the street to $3.09 overnight. Wow. That's the first drop in gas prices I've seen in months. Pretty soon gas might be cheaper than milk again. That's great because the Outback just doesn't perform as well on 2%. It prefers 85 octane much more. But my morning bowl of raisin bran might not wake me up as much as it has been lately. Milk doesn't get the ticker going quite like gasoline can.

Alcohol induced charity

2005-09-10T17:32:00.000-04:00

So the law school had a fund raiser auction to benefit the victims of hurricaine Katrina the other day. I would estimate that about 400 people showed up for it, which was a pretty good turn out for a Thursday night. When I got there, I was impressed by the table of booze they had there. Seemed like a lot for a Thursday night affair. There were several kegs and a whole lot of wine. The thought occurred to me that maybe the alcohol was there as an investment in the outcome of the auction. I had no idea how true that was going to prove to be. By the end of the night, the school had raised over $12,000. Keep in mind that there were probably around 400 people that showed up. It was an interesting night, to say the least. One auction for a pizza and beer dinner at the dean's house went for a little over $900, if I remember right. Before the night was over, one of the deans went to the front of the gym and shouted out that she had 20 bucks that she would put on the table to get the dude M.C.'ing the auction to take off his shirt. It didn't take much coersion. Dude was built like a WWF superstar too, so the crowd went nuts. But perhaps the highlite, or lowlite, as it were, was when the school rugby team auctioned off a night on the town with the team. I can only imagine what a night of unbelievable debauchery that will be. Two year's worth of sinning, one night. Sounds like fun. I pity the morning after. But it's all for a good cause, so I'm sure that will mitigate the moral implications of what goes on during the course of that night.

It amazed me that so few people could pony up $12,000. Hopefully they all turn out to be rich lawyers, because they're going to need it with the debt they're probably racking up. I was hoping to bid on something, but the only one that interested me was the bikini car wash, but I figured that I should probably avoid that.

Tasty foot.

2005-08-31T20:01:00.000-04:00

I was out on splits with the missionaries Sunday, and a thought occurred to me, which I almost shared with Elder Andher. I caught myself just before I subjected this elder to my saying something patently obvious, yet pretending like it was in the top 10 most significant revelations of this dispensation. I don't remember what it was, all I remember is that if someone would have said it to me when I was a missionary, I would have been bugged, and sworn that I would NEVER say anything like that to a missionary.

Anyway, I realized that if I wouldn't have stopped myself just before I said whatever it was I was going to say, I would have become "that guy." I can't tell you how many times I had someone make obnoxious statements to me and act like they were profound. I can tell you that each time it happened, I swore I would never be "that guy." Yet, just a few short years later, I found my foot surreptitiously inching its way to my mouth.

It made me think of other notable ways I have jammed a size 10.5 in my boca. Here's a list of just a few of them.

-When I was 5, I made fun of any idiot that would go on a mission, voluntarily submitting himself to rules that wouldn't let him watch movies.
-When I was 14, I gave a speech in my English class where I mocked BYU students mercilessly, during which I swore I wouldn't go to school there.
-When I was 20, I swore I would not be one of those guys who gets engaged a few weeks after I got home (hey, I have to be right at least once here)
-When I was 21, I routinely made fun of people who carried cell phones or pagers, and was particularly merciless toward the people who carried both.
-When I was 21, I swore that it was questionable at very best to date girls from your mission.
-When I was 22, I thought, "there is no way in the world I will be one of those losers who is 24 and still single."
-When I was 24, I thought, "there is no way in the world I will be one of those losers who is 26 and still single."
-When I was 26, I thought, "Ok, ok, ok. Seriously though, I won't be one of those losers who is 28 and still single."

I could go through and tell you when I put my foot in my mouth in regards to each of those, but I think you get the point. I won't even go into how many things I've heard come out of my mouth that my parents used to say that I swore I would NEVER say.

And here's the saddest part of this whole exercise: as I was sitting here reading what I just wrote, trying to pull the deep lesson out of this so I won't feel like this was a waste of time, and that I wouldn't have been better served by studying torts instead, all I could think of was, "Seriously though, there is no way I'll be single by the time I hit 30. No way..."

Launch of The Dally News

2005-08-28T22:00:00.000-04:00

So this is a meager beginning, but I will get some cool stuff up here, sometime. Until then, it will be a pitiful text only blog.