Rollin' In My 6-4

Breakin Up

2012-01-27T23:38:00.000-08:00

Last night Amy and I watched 500 Days of Summer. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten about the movie. I was also surprised by just how good the movie is at depicting the ups and downs of a largely one-sided relationship.

I love the method of story-telling in the film. I love both of the actors: Joseph Gordon Levitt is just always so good and Zooey is just perfect as the sometimes interested, but often distant not-quite-girlfriend. She's very selfish, but he's foolish for falling so helplessly. And the soundtrack is just perfect. Always, always love that.

As the movie proceeds, you get a non-linear story of what their relationship is like, jumping between different days, and early on he ruminates largely on the good parts, glossing over the many deficiencies that his relationship had, which doesn't really come until the end.

Without revealing too much (although I'd be surprised if anyone reading this hasn't seen that movie yet), the movie ends on an positive note, which makes it easier to revisit the movie because it doesn't leave the sour taste of disappointment with the viewer.

Mostly, it just made me really glad to be done with the dating part of my life and having to cope with the highs of potential and possibility, only to be met by the crushing agony of despair and dejection. I really am glad for the experiences that I had, and I think going through real, soul-crushing heartache is good because it gives you so much depth, I'm glad that whatever kinds of difficulties that are yet to come my way don't have to be of that variety.

Breaking up is just hard to do.

Lots of great scenes, but I'll just leave you with this one. I love how happy it is:

SOTU and the GOP

2012-01-27T23:19:00.000-08:00

Amy is out of town and I'm left fending for myself. That meant that tonight I had steak nachos for dinner, and I watched a man movie: Walking Tall. You can't tell me that Dwayne The Rock Johnson isn't the best action star in Hollywood right now, although I think Daniel Craig is pretty darn close.

Anyway, just thought I'd comment on a few things:

Didn't really catch the State of the Union, but we happened to tune in in time for the GOP response to the SOTU given by Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana. I was thoroughly impressed. It was such a concise and direct response to Obama's weak oratory. The only part that I really caught of the SOTU was when Obama was talking about investing in green energy and it just made me so mad to hear him talk down to American citizens as if Solyndra and all of the other failed green companies that were loaned enormous amounts of money didn't already fail, and that we have an opportunity to get ourselves on the way to energy independence and he won't sign off on the Keystone Pipeline. For this reason, I loved Mitch Daniels' response:
The President's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it...

As Republicans our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life's ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves.

In our economic stagnation and indebtedness, we are only a short distance behind Greece, Spain, and other European countries now facing economic catastrophe. But ours is a fortunate land. Because the world uses our dollar for trade, we have a short grace period to deal with our dangers. But time is running out, if we are to avoid the fate of Europe, and those once-great nations of history that fell from the position of world leadership.

So 2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality. The challenges aren't matters of ideology, or party preference; the problems are simply mathematical, and the answers are purely practical.

An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.

The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.

Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say 'First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.'

"The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy. It must be replaced by a passionate pro-growth approach that breaks all ties and calls all close ones in favor of private sector jobs that restore opportunity for all and generate the public revenues to pay our bills.

"That means a dramatically simpler tax system of fewer loopholes and lower rates. A pause in the mindless piling on of expensive new regulations that devour dollars that otherwise could be used to hire somebody. It means maximizing on the new domestic energy technologies that are the best break our economy has gotten in years.
Not sure if Romney has actually been performing better in the debates, or if the tide is just turning against Gingrich, but Romney is coming back in the polls that matter: Florida. Polls through the 23rd had Gingrich pulling ahead of Romney, all the ones following the South Carolina results, but since then Romney has rebuilt his lead. Florida will go a long way in determining how long the not-Romney-moment lasts for Newt Gingrich. I just hope that he's learning that he needs to be a little more impassioned and human instead of so deliberate and prosaic. He needs to connect with voters and he has a hard time doing that outside of his regular supporters.

That's all I got for that, as of right now.

Can't Hold Onto Anything These Days

2012-01-23T09:56:00.000-08:00

I used to kind of pride myself on not losing things. I'd forget things, or misplace things, sure, but I'd never actually lose things. My stuff had its places and I always knew where things were, although I can be absent-minded about remembering to take things with me. I'm bad at that.

But it seems that I'm bad at holding onto my stuff now. I blame marriage. Not my wife. Just marriage. That's the only thing that's really changed since I started losing EVERYTHING.

A few months ago I misplaced my wedding ring. Didn't have it for at least 2 months. Then all of a sudden I found it. Just sitting on the ground below my nightstand.

I thought I lost our GoPro chest harness, which had our tripod mount in the bag as well. I thought I might have left that in Vegas since that was the last place I can remember having it. It wasn't there. Wasn't anywhere. Then I ended up buying a new tripod mount. Turns out it was in my backpack this whole time. Found it this morning.

This morning I spent 20 minutes trying to find my keys. 20 minutes! I've NEVER been that person, but now it's happening all the time.

Now I can't seem to find my Ipod shuffle, which is actually a pretty big deal. I love having that thing on my long runs and I'm about a month away from ramping up my training for Utah Valley. I thought I left it in my office, but it turns out that it's, in fact, not here.

Ugh. I'm an idiot.

*UPDATE: Found my shuffle. In a pocket of my backpack that I would've never thought to look in if I wasn't actually looking for something else already. Phew. Doesn't change that I'm still dumb.

A Few Impassioned Items

2012-01-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

Not me so much, but from these writers.

I've mentioned him before on here, and quote him frequently, but if you don't know Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe, you really should get to know the guy. I get his weekly feeds and he has the greatest perspectives on so many different topics, and he speaks so intelligently. I think he's pretty moderate, but leans conservative. He had an article last week about Tibet and the oppression from the Chinese government. He went on act length about self-immolation (burning oneself alive) and the kind of desperation that leads to someone committing that kind of suicide. Here is the article, and an excerpt from it:

NEAR THE KIRTI MONASTERY in a Tibetan area of China's Sichuan province, 21-year-old Lobsang Jamyang publicly set himself on fire last Saturday. It was the fourth time this month that a Tibetan protesting Chinese repression had resorted to self-immolation. When local residents attempted to retrieve his body from the police, Chinese security forces fired into the crowd, reportedly wounding two.

So far little is known about this latest Tibetan to burn himself alive. A few days earlier, however, a 42-year-old "Living Buddha" -- a prominent Tibetan monk named Sonam Wangyal -- swallowed and doused himself with kerosene, then set himself aflame in the western province of Quinghai. Sonam was an admired spiritual leader who had run an orphanage and a home for the elderly, and was regarded as the reincarnation of a high-ranking lama. Radio Free Asia reported that before immolating himself, he prayed and burned incense on a hilltop, and distributed leaflets calling his death a protest "for Tibet and the happiness of Tibetans."

Buddhist monks hold a candlelight vigil in Dharmsala, India, after learning of the self-immolation by Tibetan monks at the Kirti Monastery in China.

The Chinese Communist Party crudely suggested that Sonam had killed himself after being discovered having an affair with a married woman. Such vulgar insults say more about the regime that spreads them than about the martyrs it seeks to defame. So does Beijing's propaganda accusing the Dalai Lama -- the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate -- of orchestrating the self-immolations.

Since last March, 16 Tibetans -- nearly all of them Buddhist monks and nuns -- have set fire to themselves, desperate to open the world's eyes to the relentless brutality with which Beijing tyrannizes their people. The world is noticing. The wave of fiery suicides, the State Department's spokeswoman said last week, reflects "enormous anger, enormous frustration with regard to the severe restrictions on human rights, including religious freedom, inside China." In response, the Chinese foreign ministry sourly warned Washington not to use "Tibet-related issues to interfere in China's domestic affairs."

If you're anything like me, the "Free Tibet" slogan seems something trite and not really something consequential in my life, but it should be, you know? It's unreal the kinds of atrocities that go unnoticed because nobody really wants to rock the boat, except for some very brave and very desperate dissidents.

And then a post from the guys over at Powerline. I guess Obama, over the weekend, while commemorating the Roe v. Wade decision said, "government should not intrude on private family matters." That comment led to this post about all the ways in which public officials have intruded on private affairs. A long excerpt:

The subject of Obama’s declaration was abortion. But suppose your teenage daughter can get an abortion without your even finding out about it: is that a government intrusion on “private family matters?” Sure, but one that liberals like Obama favor.

How about the electricity that your family uses? If you have a large family, or one with a lot of computers and other electronic equipment, you probably use more electricity than your neighbors, and are willing to pay for it. But in many communities, there is a sliding scale for usage, so that if you consume, say, 20% more electricity than your neighbors, you pay a 40% higher bill. This is because liberals believe it is their business how we live, and how much power we consume.

Electric power reminds me of light bulbs. Did you think that your choice of light bulbs is a “private family matter?” Until a few years ago, it would not have occurred to anyone to disagree with you. But not today, as President Obama and his allies in Congress now dictate what light bulbs your family can use to illuminate your house.

Disposing of garbage used to be a “private family matter.” Not anymore. Every community has laws and regulations about recycling that inject the government into your garbage.

One might have said that providing for your family’s health was the quintessential “private family matter.” But that was before Obamacare, which not only will require you to buy health insurance, but will require it to be in a form dictated not by you and the insurance company, but by the federal government, so that you pay for dozens of coverages that your family doesn’t want or need.

Did you think that how your children plan their futures is a “private family matter?” That isn’t what the Democrats believe. If you have children in public schools, you are aware that they are constantly bombarded with global warming propaganda. Several years ago, when my youngest child was in the 4th or 5th grade, she had a homework assignment in which a series of questions hectored her as to what she intended to do in her future life to combat global warming. I was proud of her when she wrote answers like, “I will never fly in more private aircraft than Al Gore,” and “I will never live in a bigger house than John Edwards.” (That, by the way, was before we suspected that Edwards was destined for the Big House.)

Speaking of school: is where you send your children to school a “private family matter?” Of course not! The District of Columbia had a school choice scholarship program that allowed parents some discretion in selecting schools for their children, but Barack Obama and the Democrats killed it.

When parents think about private family matters, one thing that comes to mind is babysitters. Until now, you could negotiate a reasonable fee with a 16-year-old neighbor and, if you live in a neighborhood like ours, feel confident that your kids will be well cared for. No longer; not here in Minnesota, anyway: Minnesota’s Democrats are pressing for unionization of all child care workers! If they have their way, you and your wife won’t be able to go out to dinner without dealing with union bosses–not because of your free choice, but because of government intervention into private family matters.

The idea that liberal Democrats like Barack Obama regard anything as a “private family matter” is ludicrous. As far as they are concerned, every single thing that you and your family do is a proper subject for government regulation. The doctrine of “choice” ends once your child is born. If you think that there is some other aspect of your life, or your family’s that is so personal and so private that the Democrats couldn’t possibly want to regulate and control it–well, then, you are a fool.

I just thought both of these pieces were kind of cool because the writers feel so impassioned about the topics, particularly the latter of the two. I don't normally read their tone as being especially upset, but this time John Hinderaker was, and I think that's admirable. Not everything has to be measured, you know? Especially coming from someone who does approach things with a level head, it's nice to have the occasional outburst.

This and That

2012-01-19T15:07:00.000-08:00

A few things:

Romney is having a hard time right now and it mostly has to do with his decision to release (or not) his taxes for previous years. I was listening to Michael Medved and he thinks it was a huge mistake for the Romney campaign to not have anticipated having to release his tax returns in light of the fact that he would be running for the presidency and be subject to some pretty intense scrutiny. The reason why is because it's looking like he probably only paid the 15% rate on capital gains, which is lower than what most citizens are paying and further paints him into the corner of being among the elites who are out of touch with the country. I can see Medved's reasoning, but I can also sympathize with Romney. It's not likely he does his own taxes and whoever is in charge of his money probably thought they were doing him a favor not paying just a little bit more in taxes so as to avoid this issue. I don't know. I do think it's a mistake that they aren't acting more quickly on this and just getting the issue out of the way. Romney seems to have a lot of these types of seemingly non-issues that tend to become bigger ones because of how his campaign decides to confront them.
The Muppets movie is adorable. It's just so happy and very funny. Everyone should go see it.
I love Coinstar machines, the ones that count your coins. I had been avoiding these kinds of machines because they normally charge a fee to count your coins, but you can get e-certificates free of charge, and Amazon is among the retailers you can get them for. Perfect! I love Amazon, and now I love Coinstar. $40 in mostly pennies later and who knows what I'll be getting. It's awesome.
Perfect practice makes perfect. That's what I'm counting on as I take the GMAT (again) this next month. Here goes!

Put Away Childish Things

2012-01-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

Don't be misled by the title of this post. This isn't going to be too serious. I was just noticing the other night this guy that had gone out on a date. This was at least a second or third, and I was just taking note of his wardrobe for the evening. Knowing that he was interested in the girl, I was a little disappointed in what his "going out" clothes for that evening were.

When you're an older single, I think it's a good idea to have some go-to dating clothes. It's not that a person has to invest heavily in clothes, but it's definitely appropriate to have clothes right for the occasion. I think that's part of being a man, no? If you go to a wedding reception, out to the theater, or other somewhat adult functions, you need to dress to match. If you dress up for church, isn't it also a good idea to dress up for other things too, right?

Which is funny that I bring this up, because my brother doesn't have the same kind of philosophy. Even though we were both seemingly raised by the same parents, he has very little regard for clothes and the occasion, as evidenced by his wearing jeans and a pretty casual button-down shirt to my wedding.

Come on, man. Our parents are tailors. They fix clothes for a living. We should have a better sense of how to dress. Anyway, I digress.

When you're approaching 30, it's time to know. Time to put away childish things. Spend a paycheck on some decent shirts. Future you will thank me for this wise piece of advice.

Signs of Prosperity

2012-01-14T10:06:00.000-08:00

There are certain times in my life when it becomes all too clear that I really have it good. This isn't a story that will make you go aww, but it still seemed so clear the time that it happened that I thought it worth mentioning.

I was on my way to school and I was listening to a Ted Talk using an app on my phone, while my phone was plugged into the audio jack that I installed in my car about 2 years ago. If you don't know what Ted talks are, you really should get acquainted with them. They are often these really inspiring talks given by really impressive people on an array of topics. The that I happened to be listening to was called, "Don't Regret Regret." Really good.

Anyway, I excited my car while still listening to the talk on my way to my office and it just dawned on me how good I have it.

I just can't believe how fortunate we are. Amy has a great job, and I have great opportunities ahead of me. We have this amazing technology available at such a cheap price, and I can ponder esoteric things like regretting regret without worrying about my health, finances, or living situation. It may be a down time, generally speaking, in the US economy, but neither Amy nor I have any concerns about our future prospects. I have a paid off car that has never given me problems.

We just have it so good. That's all I wanted to say.

Next: South Carolina

2012-01-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

This is about Romney's win last night in New Hampshire from Rich Lowry:

New Hampshire is good, home territory for Romney and he’s worked it hard. It showed. The exit polls tell the tale of strength across-the-board: Romney won men and women; he won everyone over age 40; he won all education groups; he won everyone make $30,000 and up; he won Republicans by an impressive 49 percent; he won moderates, somewhat conservatives, and very conservatives; he won voters who support and who are neutral on the Tea Party; he won Born Again’s and Non-Born Again’s; he won Catholics and protestants; he won voters who think leaders should compromise and voters who think leaders should stick by their principles; he won in urban, suburban, and rural areas.

So, like, everyone, right?

I like Romney all right. I definitely was more all for him in 2008, but for some reason, I'm kind of skeptical of him right now. It's hard for me as a member of the LDS Church to want one of our own in such a prominent position of power. The Church becomes even more of a lightning rod than it already is, and I'm not entirely confident in his capacity to rise to that capacity. It's a little scary, isn't it?

What gives me more pause, however, is that he hasn't actually worked in an actual political capacity since his one-term as governor of a very liberal state, and his positions do seem a little too politically expedient, don't they?

But I don't have a better answer. I don't want to get behind the guy just because he's one of our own and that means I trust him, but I'm all for hoping that he will rise to the moment and be the type of person that the country needs him to be. For that, I think his life is a good testament to his unimpeachable character and dedication to right, and that's why I think I can support him in all good conscience.

Last night's win was especially big because it was so dominant. Yes, NH is right next door to where he governed so he had a built in advantage, but no other candidate can really seriously challenge him given how divided the rest of the field is. There is no single person for voters coalesce around, and Romney is already leading in the polls in South Carolina, in spite of whatever anti-Mormon sentiment may come from evangelical voters.

Like Rush Limbaugh and some others have said, Gingrich and Perry's attacks on Romney's professional career only highlights the strengths of the GOP argument versus what rhetoric the Democrats have when it comes to the strengths of capitalism.

At some point people will begin to favor Romney because he really is the one with the most viable shot of unseating the current incumbent. So, onto South Carolina, and eventually (hopefully), the nomination.

GOP Nomination

2012-01-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

I read this the other day from my guy, Jay Nordlinger:

Obviously, Romney has done a lot of tacking in his political career: first on the Massachusetts stage, now on the national stage. “Tacking” and “tacky” are words that sound an awful lot alike.

I believe that Romney is a conservative, and that he would make a very good nominee and a very good president. Furthermore, I believe he is the only Republican candidate who can win.

But how can you prove such things? You can’t, is the answer. Any of these propositions would have to be tested. Think Newt can’t win, or Santorum? The only way to prove it is to nominate him and see. Think Romney would go all Elliot Richardson on us if he were in the Oval Office? Only one way to find out. Think he’d be more like Reagan? Only one way to find out.

Etc. A very great deal of political discussion is speculation -- informed speculation, maybe, speculation of varying intelligence and credibility, but speculation all the same.

When people speak in absolute tones, as though their political opinions were chiseled on tablets from Sinai, watch out. The more people know about politics, I find, the less absolutely and obnoxiously they speak.

I really appreciated that. Anytime anyone tries to be an expert about this stuff, they are probably way off-base. Jay posted some of his reader response to this topic and one person who had close ties to someone that was highly successful in the market wrote about his exchange with this expert about what he thought about the upcoming year, to which he replied, "your educated guess is as good as mine."

That's all any of the punditry is. Careful of guys like Paul Krugman that pretend to be experts, and more especially, those who refer to him as if his columns were handed down from Mt. Sinai. That guy, and many others, most assuredly, are far from knowing everything about everything, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise.

Anyway, with all of that, just a few thoughts.

My brother-in-law-in-law (that's right) made some comments on Facebook about Romney winning the Iowa caucus. I loved the short dialogue we had on there about it, and what I mentioned on there I'll say here also: That result is especially interesting because from the media spin, it would be hard to know that Romney actually did win that one. So many people, and many among the media, are in the mode of anyone-but-Romney. So far, Romney is the only GOP candidate not going away, unlike Bachmann, Cain, Perry, and Gingrich. Santorum will likely be the same, but we'll see.
The nice thing about this primary season, and something that I had forgotten until I read about it recently, is that this year most states are going with a proportional system instead of winner takes all. Maybe you are aware, but in case you're not, in the primary season, a candidate receives the nomination by winning the most delegates from all of the states. States have a certain number of delegates allotted according to their populations. Formerly, and as recently as 2008, many states were winner-take-all. This meant that although a candidate might have only gotten 40-50% or so of the votes in a primary, that candidate would receive ALL of the delegates. A proportional system awards them based on proportions. Super Tuesday, which will be in early March this year, kind of became moot because candidates would drop out early because they wouldn't get awarded delegates because of the winner take all system and the cost of continuing what appears to be a lost campaign. This year, it will take awhile before the nominee is determined because there is no obvious favorite in the GOP field, including Romney. He's still the most likely, but it will be a fight until the end. But I think that will be a good thing because...
This is the President of the United States we're talking about here. The last time we ended up electing....the current President of the United States.
A lot is at stake, as always. May the nomination go to the candidate most likely to defeat President Obama, which at this point still looks like Romney.

California Christmas

2012-01-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

I am behind on blogging. Sorry, folks.

Something that I always love about Christmas time in California is the stark contrast that it is going from Utah to California, but this year has been probably the most mild winter I've ever seen in Utah. It's unreal. I've been outside running twice this week and it's early January.

In any case, California still didn't disappoint in that department. We got there late Thursday night and stayed until Tuesday afternoon and the temperatures ranged from high 60s to low 70s and even the 80s while we were there. I got to go do my favorite run in Peter's Canyon while we were there.

The trip was supposed to be more low-key this time because we thought more people would be gone. Dave and Caitlin were the most notable absentees, but we just thought there really wouldn't be anyone around. We thought we'd have all kinds of time to explore the Southern California only things that I've never really had a chance to do with Amy, but instead it was one appointment after another, which we really love more than anything.

We started our first full day in California by heading to Magic Mountain. Always a favorite. We hit all of the big rides, and especially having the proximity of time for our last Disneyland trip so close, it was easy to compare the magnitude of awesomeness for each of the rides. Disneyland really is so much about atmosphere, which is amazing, but nothing compares to those rides at Magic Mountain.

I was going to just try and describe some of the rides, but I have some footage so I may as well let that do the talking:

MMCA11 by silva888
Our schedule looked like this:

Friday - Magic Mountain; Matt and Laura; Crash
Saturday - Redfords and visit with Greg and Laura, Mom and Bro's family; Doug and Kris for games and snickerdoodles (woo!)
Sunday - Our very first married Christmas morning; Church; Dad's; Doug and Kris to pick up present; Greg and Laura for games
Monday - Shopping; Dave and Vanessa for lunch; Shopping; MI4 with Greg; Games with Greg
Tuesday - Spur of the moment change in phone plans and upgrading to the Cool Kids Club with smartphones.

Someone was telling us that it gets kind of tired running around and trying to see everyone, but I hope I never feel that way. Seeing everyone and spending time with people was the best part of the trip. I can't believe how blessed we are to have so many great people in our lives. It's so great.

But yeah, we upgraded to smartphones now. Amy and I had been wanting to make the move for a long time now because with the Sprint family plan, it's actually cheaper for us to be on there than it would have been to continue like we had been. Dumb. We had been searching for awhile for someone to jump on with, when it finally occurred to us that Greg and Laura are not only family, but they would be good candidates to do it all together. So, without having to switch numbers even though none of us were local and we had a couple different area codes, we got our new plans that even came with a student discount for University of Pacific (BYU has one too, although not as good), and we've upgraded to this decade. Amy spent a good portion of the car ride black playing on her phone, while I spent much of the following week getting every free app that I thought would interest me.

And Amy and I made out pretty well for Christmas. She got a 35mm lens; I got a new laptop; we really upgraded our board game collection; some new clothes, and other fun things.

We had a long trip home because of Vegas traffic on a Tuesday afternoon. What? But we made it, and we were happy to be in California, but happy to be back now too.

Giving

2012-01-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

This is a little late in coming, but still a great article by Jeff Jacoby. This is a big chunk of the article, but check it out:

I wouldn't presume to argue with the pope about the religious significance of Christmas, and I will readily acknowledge that the holiday shopping season can certainly be stressful, expensive, and more than a little materialistic. Nonetheless, as a measure of cultural and communal health, I can't help seeing this yearly impulse to shower friends and family with presents as one of our society's most endearing and heartening traits.

Ten days ago I took my 8-year-old son Micah to a local Dollar Tree Store, where he was eager to spend his savings -- 11 dollars and change, grubbily folded into a miniature wallet -- on Chanukah gifts for his family. We had done this together last year, and Micah had been besieging me to pick an evening when the two of us could make a return trip.

I found it a wonderful experience, no irony intended. Dollar Tree isn't exactly Tiffany & Co., and in any case Micah chooses gifts with all the sophistication and refinement you'd expect from a rambunctious third-grade boy who loves bugs and can never seem to keep his shirt tucked in. The presents he picked out for his mother included a desktop picture frame for her office, glow-in-the-dark necklaces ("Mama can wear them if she goes for a walk at night"), and two boxes of Milk Duds; for his teen-age brother he found an air horn, Lemonheads, and a container of "noise putty" that emits flatulent sounds when poked. A devotee of Martha Stewart Living the kid is not.

But whatever Micah may have lacked in style and taste, he more than made up for with the unfeigned delight he brought to the whole project. He couldn't wait to turn his little clutch of dollars into presents for the people he loves. He wasn't consciously trying to be altruistic or selfless; and he's never given 30 seconds' thought to the meaning of generosity. He was simply excited by the prospect of giving -- and indeed, when the moment came a few nights later to bestow his gifts on his recipients, he was practically bouncing up and down with elation.

If this is crass commercialism, let's have more of it.

Would modern society really be improved if the happiness of gift-giving were not an integral part of one special season each year? Granted, anything can be overdone, and materialism is no exception. And it is important to remember that the hustle and pressure of buying presents for loved ones doesn't reduce our obligation to give charitably and generously to the poor.

But how diminished our culture would be without that hustle and pressure. Children learn an important lesson when they see the adults in their world treat the joy of others as a priority worth spending time, money, and thought on. No one has to teach kids to be acquisitive and selfish -- that comes naturally -- but what an inestimable asset they acquire when they find out for themselves that it really is more blessed to give than to receive.

It is only a coincidence of the calendar that links Christmas and Chanukah; theologically the two holidays have little in common. But essential to both Judaism and Christianity is the principle of imitatio Dei, of striving to walk in God's ways, above all by being kind to others as He is kind to us. Isn't that what underlies the expense and scramble of our holiday gift-giving? In lavishing gifts on others, we reflect the openhandedness with which God lavishes gifts on us. Maybe that's not the entirety of the season's "true joy and true light." But if my 8-year-old's unaffected joyfulness is any indication, it makes a great start.

Hope your Christmas was merry and bright.

Pushing Against the Boulder

2011-12-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I'm saying prayers, it feels like I'm pushing against a boulder. I'm asking for some things indefinitely, and while I'm hopeful, I'm not always (definitely) sure that those things will come to pass. I think part of that has to do with my own lack of faith, but I think part of it is just being unsure about whether what I'm asking for corresponds with the will of Heavenly Father. I try to pray at least a couple of times a day, and there tends to be a few things that I'm asking for at any given time.

And that's where the boulder comes in. I'm pushing and heaving, hoping that this massive object will move, feeling like there's no effect, but hoping that my efforts are, in fact, making a difference. Sometimes it'll take weeks, other times months, and still other times even longer - years, even.

Then, all of a sudden, that thing that I had been pushing against has actually been moving. I didn't know it, but my hands became calloused in the process and I'm able to push with greater frequency and force. Where my hands and shoulders may have been thrusting, now there are hand holds and indentations that allow me to get greater leverage. And after much time, effort, bruises and hardening of skin, muscles, and determination, the huge obstacle has actually begun to roll.

I've been thinking a lot about this recently with some prayers being answered after months of constant pleading. Some of these prayers weren't even for my own direct benefit, but I still never get tired of seeing how those prayers get answered and that thing that seemed so far off has actually been attended to by Father.

I thought about this last night as Amy and I were able to attend the temple. Admittedly, I got very little out of the endowment session itself, but once I got into that last room and began to think over some different things, I just felt so grateful to be there.

It reminds me of when Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John, and probably not knowing what else to say, but still feeling the magnitude of the moment, Peter says aloud, "Lord, it is good for us to be here."

I often feel that when I'm in the temple, and I think Amy and I always end up actually saying that to each other once we meet in the celestial room: "It is good for us to be here."

The biggest boulder in my life that finally moved was being single. Even though we're coming up on almost a year of being married now, Amy and I still remark to each other frequently about how we can't believe that we're actually married, and that time is now and we each have finally arrived. I think it's a little different when you get married a little bit later like we did. Some others will get married much later, and some not at all, but I think we're still further along in the spectrum than most LDS couples when it comes to age at nuptials.

It's different when you've had severe heartbreaks and actually consider that maybe marriage is not just around the corner, but you wonder whether it will happen at all in the way and to the person that you hope it will be.One thing that kept me going through all of my years of singleness was something my best friend said to me in Del Taco in Provo after my first real heartbreak: "If you want it that much and it is right, then imagine how much more the Lord wants it for you, who sees all things perfectly, loves you perfectly, and knows all things. It will happen, just trust in him and let him work in your behalf."

It's not far off from what one prophet of old said, "how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him."

During this Christmas season, it's a hard thing for us to imagine how much people looked forward to and yearned for the coming of the Lord. It amazes me to think about the believers in the book of Helaman, and faced not only with ridicule and scorn, but also with the prospect of death and how they must have agonized for the coming of the Lord, for the signs to be shown so that everyone might know that what they believed in and had been living for all of their lives was actually true. Then to imagine what that felt like as those prayers were finally answered.

At this time of year we celebrate all of the figurative boulders that have been and will be moved in our behalf. We celebrate the literal fulfillment of thousands of years of prophecies that have led each of us to this moment in our lives. And what's more, we celebrate the literal moving of that final boulder that would attempt to symbolize the squashing of all of the prayers and faith that sat in waiting in that garden tomb. But move, it did, and with it came, and will come, the evidence of our faith and of God's supernal love for us.

Have a merry Christmas.

Those Who Are In Charge

2011-12-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

I thought this picture was really interesting. It's a shot from Earth's orbit of the power usage of North and South Korea. It helps illustrate a lot about the country's (North) lack of development. The CIA estimates that GDP in North Korea was $1800 per capita, which is comparable to what the GDP in the US was back in...1847. Unreal. (HT: Mark Perry at this post).

The editors at NRO have come out with this statement about how the US needs to take advantage of the shifting of power in that country due to the death of Kim Jong Il and apply some real pressure so that the country can make some real advancements.

It's amazing what is done by those who are in power. North Korea has been selling nuclear arms to hostile countries, it has openly killed South Koreans, and no one will do a thing about it. They are a legitimate threat to our peace, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. And even if they're not, they're a threat to their own people, right? This is the kind of case when it illustrates just how off base Ron Paul is as a viable candidate for the POTUS. He does have a lot of views that are quite commendable, but his stance on isolationism for the United States is completely unacceptable. It is not simply a matter of, if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. That wasn't the case with either of the World Wars, and more recently with the terrorism that has visited our shores. Enough about that though...

I meant to get to this little excerpt about the treatment of a Chinese dissident:

According to reliable sources, Huang, while in prison, was transferred to the Liyang Psychiatric Hospital in Changzhou because he appealed his sentence and refused to kneel on one knee while speaking with prison authorities. After being returned to prison, he was placed in the strict supervision block, where he was subjected to torture and physical and verbal abuse, including beating, being shocked with an electric baton on his legs and mouth, having his toes crushed, and solitary confinement. During this period, he was forced to run 150 laps a day on gravel, and, when he could not run anymore, was dragged through gravel, which tore through his clothes.

The abuses and torture resulted in torn cartilage in both of his knees and torn ligaments in his legs. He developed traumatic arthritis and inflammation of the joints. At his worst moment, he was unable to stand to walk and lost some of his ability to care for himself. The prison hospital refused him treatment.

Again, this is from those who hold all of the cards. Even actor Christian Bale tried to visit a Chinese dissident and he was strong-armed by plain clothes officers of the Chinese government to leave the premises.

It's scary how much real evil is out there. Another example? Take Egypt. Read this post for more news on the crackdown on protests there, but I think more useful is the recent appearance by the interim Egyptian Prime Minister who broke down and wept openly in front of journalists, saying that the Egyptian economy is "worse than anyone imagines." It's really something for the leader of a nation to have that kind of breakdown in public. For more on that story, go here.

Anyway, that's a lot of what's wrong in the world.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2011-12-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

We have been getting into the Christmas season quite well these last few weeks starting with having our fresh tree up by December 1st, which now is not as great with our tree going from a nice hunter green to a light shade of brown, but it's the spirit that counts, right?

This month has been great so far, though. There was Amy's work Christmas party, a few different get togethers with friends, but the Christmasy events have been really fun too. Just in case you had any doubts about it, the Silvas are very cultured people.Early this month we swung by Temple Square to check out the lights, and last week we caught The Nutcracker performed by the Ballet West dance company.

I hadn't seen it since I was really young, but I think the music is really great and although I probably wouldn't go and see ballet on a normal basis, it's fun to see something so classic performed that's so appropriate for the season. It's pretty amazing what they can do, and I can definitely appreciate that. The performance that we saw seemed like a pretty traditional version of it, which is neat to think that this is the same kind of dance that has been done for over a hundred years.

Last night Amy and I went up to Salt Lake to a local stake center to see a performance of Handel's Messiah. I had never seen that live before, and what I really liked about it was that it was a professional level performance just put on by some people in the community. The concertmaster is a lady that is actually in the Salt Lake Symphony, and it featured 70 voices in the choir, and 40 instruments in the orchestra, including a harpsichord! I thought was really cool. Not sure if I have ever heard one live before.

The story behind The Messiah is one that is really amazing. Handel, at 56 years old, in near poverty, and with no significant pieces to his name was commissioned to write a Christmas piece, and in 24 days he wrote the whole thing. Speaking of his masterpiece he said that if it only entertains, then he has failed; it should inspire men to be better people. It was pretty cool.

One of my favorite things, however, was watching a Charlie Brown Christmas yesterday. I read this article a few weeks ago and it gives a lot of great background to the special:

The executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

“They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,” explained Melendez.

“They basically wrote it off, like, hey, this is just isn’t going to be interesting to anyone, and it’s just going to be like a big tax write-off.”

Melendez himself was somewhat hesitant about the reading from Luke. “I was leery of the religion that came into it, and I was right away opposed to it. But Sparky just assumed what he had to say was important to somebody.”

Which is why Charles Schulz was Charles Schulz. He knew that the Luke reading by Linus was the heart and soul of the story.

As Charlie Brown sinks into a state of despair trying to find the true meaning of Christmas, Linus quietly saves the day. He walks to the center of the stage where the Peanuts characters have gathered, and under a narrow spotlight, quotes the second chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, verses 8 through 14:
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.
“ . . . And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus concluded.

The scene lasted 51 seconds. When Linus finished up, Charlie Brown realized he did not have to let commercialism ruin his Christmas. With a sense of inspiration and purpose, he picked up his fragile tree and walked out of the auditorium, intending to take it home to decorate and show all who cared to see how it would work in the school play.

When CBS executives saw the final product, they were horrified. They believed the special would be a complete flop. CBS programmers were equally pessimistic, informing the production team, “We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.”

The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island. To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

Anyway, we don't have much left on our Christmas event plates besides time with family and presents and such, but all of that is probably the best stuff anyway.

The Charlie Brown special is really great because even all those years ago people felt like Christmas was being overrun by all of the commercialism, and lucky for us, there was a man like Charles Schulz to help us collectively regain our bearings and realize what the season is really about.

So go watch your It's a Wonderful Lifes, Christmas Carols, or Charlie Brown Christmas specials. And don't forget to crack open your scriptures to those wonderful words penned by Luke and the other prophets and apostles. It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Flash Mob, Christmas Style

2011-12-15T15:25:00.001-08:00

Condemn Not

2011-12-14T18:44:00.000-08:00

I hate when people misuse the scripture talking about judging. Not everyone has the JST for that scripture that includes the adverb "righteously," but still, you'd think it's intuitive. Obviously you have to make judgments, the caveat is the nature of your judgments. I prefer to think of it as condemn not, and that helps me figure it out.

There have been a few things in the last week that has made me think a lot about this topic. The first one being the signing of Albert Pujols (yes, that's pronounced "poo-holes") by the Angels this last week. A lot of people are jumping on him, mainly in St. Louis, because he seems to be leaving the Cardinals not only for greener pastures, but just plain ol' more green. The result has been a barrage by him and his wife saying that they didn't do it for the money.

Leaving that rationale aside, is there anything wrong for him doing it for the money? The Angels offered him $40 million more to play for them, and that's not including the continued involvement that the club wrote into his contract once he retires from actually playing baseball. $40 million is a sum I can't even comprehend, but what about a 20% increase. Wouldn't most people choose the higher offer if they were given the choice between $50k and $60k a year?

There are many other factors that went into that decision, and I think the thing that bothers me the most is that people are applying to others criteria for behavior that they wouldn't impose on themselves. I'm sure that I fall for that tendency myself, but this seems to be one of those things that's really easy for me to pick out because I tend to think about these personnel moves so often.

The other instance comes from one of the recent ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries that they had recently about Todd Marinovich called The Marinovich Project. He was a former Raiders QB so that's why the story piqued my interest, but it was an incredible story about the development of Todd as a can't miss prospect for the NFL. He grew up in Newport Beach, played at high school powerhouse Mater Dei, went to USC and won the Rose Bowl his freshman year, succumbed to drugs and seemingly wasted his talent and opportunity.

I thought he asked the most interesting question though: Just because you are good at something, does it mean that you were meant to do it?

In the film he goes on to talk about how when he was on hard times many people would look at him with derision and openly criticize him for wasting what he had. I really felt for him. What is it like to be forever known for and judged by people for the worst thing(s) you have ever done when you have paid your debts for those offenses? That's a question I've wondered a lot about.

I know this is an area that I need to work on a lot myself. It's so easy to cast aspersions when we're on the outside looking in. I just thought these were two very interesting instances of that phenomena.

Freaking Out

2011-12-08T11:04:00.001-08:00

I have been checking feverishly the last several days ESPN.com and Sportscenter to see what was going to happen with the big free agent signings for the Angels. I had a feeling that something big was going to happen, and even aside from the Angels interests I have, I was interested in seeing where Albert Pujols was going to go. Just as a fan, it was going to be huge news if he was going to be moving anywhere. For you baseball uninitiated, it's as big as Wayne Gretzky moving to Los Angeles after his time with Edmonton. Pujols is one of the best players of the last 50 years, easily. He just came off a World Series performance where he had one of the greatest games in World Series history with his 3-home run outburst in Game 3. The guy is amazing.

But I didn't think there was any realistic chance the Angels would sign him. Not in a million years. We have been swinging and missing a lot on the big guys the last several years. I thought at most we would pick up CJ Wilson and add depth to our starting rotation. I thought that was both realistic and very good for our ballclub.

So you can imagine my reaction this morning when I woke up and checked first thing on ESPN.com for any updates about the free agents and baseball winter general manager meetings and discovered this kind of headline:

Sent From Heaven: Albert Pujols signs with the Angels for 10 years, 250 million.

And then this was my reaction:

Is that not the funniest thing you've ever seen?

And THEN, they signed CJ Wilson shortly thereafter, adding to what was already their greatest strength.

Some baseball commentary: I just can't tell you how big this is. The best and brightest star of the last ten years signing with your team for the next ten years. It remains to be seen if this will really be beneficial over the next ten as it was for the last ten, but still, you can't doubt that adding someone of his caliber to your roster completely changes the make-up of your team. With just his added presence in the line-up we shore up our greatest weakness, and all of a sudden, our "stars" that were carrying us before have that huge burden lifted immediately from their shoulders and if they can just go back to having what is for them average years, then the Angels will surely be in contention.

I'm pretty sure this move will precipitate further moves with either Trumbo, Morales, or Bourjos. We could end up moving those guys in their positions, or even to other teams. We got bullpen help, upgraded our catcher, and here is one thing that no one else has mentioned yet: We still have what is widely regarded as the best prospect in all of MLB only a year or two away from becoming a mainstay in our lineup in Mike Trout.

I desperately want to be there for the first home game at Angel stadium.

And as I said before, this is in addition to securing for ourselves an ace in Wilson who would be the number one starter on many other pitching staffs, and he comes in probably as a number 3 or 4 starter. Unbelievable.

It's just so wonderful. I want to go to spring training. I want to live in Southern California this summer. I want I want I want.

The landscape of the American League has dramatically changed on this day.

Hallelujah!

Now it's just time for the Lakers to follow suit and pick up Dwight Howard and CP3.

Around the Web

2011-12-07T14:45:00.001-08:00

Some interesting articles from around the interwebs. This article talks about how higher taxes drive down home values. With having few other ways to account for budget shortfalls in government, oftentimes money is stripped from homeowners through property taxes. I know that is certainly the case in places like California where so much is committed to government spending without other sources of revenue. Property taxes are hugely expensive, and have become worse over the years, and this helps to relieve government debt. It wasn't an issue before when property values were soaring, but is felt now when homeowners are looking for ways to absorb losses from their home equity.

This article is an op-ed from the Professor over at Harvard whose students walked out on his economics lecture. Not sure how many of you heard of that, but the students were trying to express solidarity with the OWS movement. The professor is an adviser to the Romney campaign, and he gives a very measured, thoughtful response, mainly, "know what you're protesting." He mentions:

[My] reaction was sadness at how poorly informed the Harvard protesters seemed to be. As with much of the Occupy movement across the country, their complaints seemed to me to be a grab bag of anti-establishment platitudes without much hard-headed analysis or clear policy prescriptions. Ironically, the topic of the lecture that the protesters chose to boycott was economic inequality, including a discussion of recent trends and their causes.

I loved this article from Michael Lewis about the 1%. He's the same guy who wrote Moneyball and The Blind Side. He has also written some other pieces about the economic crisis and writes for Bloomberg. I really like his insights. In this piece he writes from the perspective of the 1% and writes ironically. It's great. An excerpt:

Hence our committee’s conclusion: We must be able to quitAmerican society altogether, and they must know it. For too longwe have simply accepted the idea that we and they are all insomething together, subject to the same laws and rituals andcares and concerns. This state of social relations between richand poor isn’t merely unnatural and unsustainable, but, in itsway, shameful. (Who among us could hold his head high in thepresence of Louis XIV or those Russian czars or, for thatmatter, Croesus?)

The modern Greeks offer the example in the world today thatis, the committee has determined, best in class. Ordinary Greeksseldom harass their rich, for the simple reason that they haveno idea where to find them. To a member of the Greek Lower 99 aGreek Upper One is as good as invisible.

He pays no taxes, lives no place and bears no relationshipto his fellow citizens. As the public expects nothing of him, healways meets, and sometimes even exceeds, their expectations. Asa result, the chief concern of the ordinary Greek about the richGreek is that he will cease to pay the occasional visit.

That is the sort of relationship with the Lower 99 we mustcultivate if we are to survive. We must inculcate, in ourselvesas much as in them, the understanding that our relationship toeach other is provisional, almost accidental and their claims onus nonexistent.

Very clever writing.

And lastly, this one about the pro-life 'good war' and the anti-same-sex-marriage 'bad war.' The pro-life is enjoying some pretty widespread support, and as far as the social conservative movements goes, it is both a winning and more easily supportable cause than the anti-SSM movement. For one, the victims of abortions are obvious, but the homosexual marriage victims less so. The author gives some very thoughtful insight:

After more than a generation of no-fault divorce, the very concept of “traditional marriage” is seeping out of our cultural DNA, replaced, sadly, by the core conviction that marriage is no longer a covenant, but a contract — specifically a contract for the fulfillment and enjoyment of adults. Our churches not only acquiesced in this cultural change, many of them continue to facilitate it even as they argue against same-sex marriage. There are many taboos in the modern evangelical church, and one of them is “judging” anyone’s divorce. Even wayward and unfaithful spouses will rationalize their betrayals through long lists of real and imagined slights, and church discipline for adultery and divorce is largely a thing of the past.

What kind of message does this send? Imagine the incredulity of a Christian college student — themselves too often the product of a broken home, where they had a front-row seat to their parents’ contentious festival of self-love — watching a thrice-married fellow congregant rail against gay marriage. It just doesn’t add up.

The battle over marriage, frankly, needs to broaden. We shouldn’t necessarily speak of “defending traditional marriage” when traditional marriage has already been mortally wounded by no-fault divorce. Perhaps we should instead emphasize marriage restoration over marriage defense. What do social conservatives want? To restore marriage to its rightful place and definition in our culture (which includes defining it as a covenant, not a contract) and to repair what is broken. To be sure, making and winning such an argument is an immense cultural challenge, but as the pro-life movement has demonstrated, courage, persistence, and truth can turn the tide.

Couldn't agree more.

The Best in Worst Christmas Things

2011-12-02T15:09:00.001-08:00

There are some monumentally bad, but amazing Christmas songs out there. My friend Doug posted this one on FB this week:

Dave likes to send me a link to this website this time of year, which features some pretty awful remixes and original work as well. Unfortunately, nothing is posted on YouTube so you'll have to visit that site to partake of that treasure. As a preview though, one of his songs borrows heavily from Depeche Mode's People are People, but titled, Jingles Bells Jingle. Good stuff.

Although The Biebs' Christmas song Mistletoe is reasonably catchy, don't let that distract you from the pure awfulness of his rendition of Drummer Boy:

And just in case you're still searching for a gift idea, try this one. Totally not a joke:

Have a merry Christmas!

A Very Vegas Thanksgiving

2011-12-01T15:09:00.001-08:00

This was my first year heading down to Las Vegas as part of the Polley-Walton-Redford-Thompson Thanksgiving party. It's an every other yearly tradition for Amy's family to go down to stay in Vegas and celebrate the holiday with her mom's side of the family.

Between Amy's family and my connections with the Redford side, I knew that I was going to really enjoy the weekend. I wanted to get a lot of video of the weekend, but as it turns out, I messed up the two time-lapse footage that I was going to use and just quit trying in frustration after that. Turns out, not even Amy really does much photo-documenting during the weekend. There would have been a lot of fun videos to capture, but so it goes.

Anyway, so here are a few brief highlights from the weekend:

55 people staying in two houses next door to each other. The Redfords and most of the Thompsons in the neighbor's house, and the Waltons, Polleys, and a few Thompsons in the Polley home. Amy and I were lucky enough to get put into an office with glass doors, but more importantly, also houses two main computers which everyone likes using, so we didn't really have a private space. It was fine for most of the weekend, except for when I started to get sick at the end and just wanted a place to lay my weary head.
Visit to Grandma and Grandpa Polley's graves. I have had very little interaction with Jim Polley prior to this weekend, but I was really impressed with him. We arrived at the cemetery with the entire family (including family dog) in tow. It was a nice Fall evening in Vegas, as every night and day was during this trip, when he introduced us to the burial sites of his parents. "This is my mom and dad," he said, voice cracking from his obvious affection, and I think at that moment everyone felt the love that binds not only those adult children to their parents, but everyone present to each other as they continue on with this Thanksgiving reunion in their absence. It was really touching.
Much food, many games, and many pies. Most of the family played volleyball Thanksgiving morning, which was really fun. Volleyball is not one of those sports that I think I really get into, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. There was a ping pong tournament which crowned the dark horse candidate Mark Redford as the champion. The Walton boys started off strong, but had a rough final couple of matches. One of my favorites ended up being horseshoes. It's just fun. It just is. There weren't as many board games as I would have liked, but we managed to keep ourselves occupied.
Probably my favorite part was getting to spend a good chunk of time with Greg. It's so funny that we each happened to marry cousins, and it's funny how close you can be to certain people and forget that until you start spending time and realize how well they know you. I just really loved that.

You know what else was funny? Teenage boy affection. I got along pretty well with the Polley twins and it's funny to me the way that boys show affection. Every time one of them would walk past me he'd hit my arm or kick my foot, but then other times be just really nice and asking personal questions. That grudging respect is funny to me.

Amy and I grabbed some sushi with some Redfords one night, and then Chinese with her family the next night. I was able to go running outside every day that I was there, which kind of surprised me that I was so motivated. While the temperatures were inviting, the terrain was boring. Ah well.

And there you have it. Sorry for no visuals, but it turned out to be a pretty great weekend.

Our California Adventure

2011-11-21T16:02:00.001-08:00

CA Adventure by silva888

Thoughts from Around the Web

2011-11-21T10:11:00.001-08:00

Mark Steyn is a really great writer over at NRO. He posted some thoughts here about the Penn State scandal, and had this to say:

Defenders of McQueary and the broader Penn State protection racket argue that “nobody knows” what he would do in similar circumstances. In a New York Times piece headlined “Let’s All Feel Superior,” David Brooks turned in an eerily perfect parody of a David Brooks column and pointed out, with much reference to Kitty Genovese et al., how “studies show” that in extreme circumstances the human brain is prone to lapse into “normalcy bias.” To be sure, many of the Internet toughs bragging that they’d have punched Sandusky’s lights out would have done no such thing. As my e-mail correspondents always put it whenever such questions arise: “Yeah, right, Steyn. Like you’d be taking a bullet. We all know you’d be wetting your little girly panties,” etc.

For the sake of argument, let us so stipulate. Nevertheless, as the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle wrote some years ago: “When we say ‘we don’t know what we’d do under the same circumstances,’ we make cowardice the default position.”

I quote that line in my current book, in a section on the “no man’s land” of contemporary culture. It contrasts the behavior of the men on the Titanic who (notwithstanding James Cameron’s wretched movie) went down with the ship and those of the École Polytechnique in Montreal decades later who, ordered to leave the classroom by a lone gunman, meekly did as they were told and stood passively in the corridor as he shot all the women. Even if I’m wetting my panties, it’s better to have the social norm of the Titanic and fail to live up to it than to have the social norm of the Polytechnique and sink with it.

That’s the issue at the heart of Penn State’s institutional wickedness and its many deluded defenders. In my book, I also quote the writer George Jonas back when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were revealed to be burning down the barns of Quebec separatists: With his characteristic insouciance, the prime minister Pierre Trudeau responded that, if people were so bothered by illegal barn burning by the Mounties, perhaps he would make it legal. Jonas pointed out that burning barns isn’t wrong because it’s illegal, it’s illegal because it’s wrong. A society that no longer understands that distinction is in deep trouble. To argue that a man witnessing child sex in progress has no responsibility other than to comply with procedures and report it to a colleague further up the chain of command represents a near-suicidal loss of that distinction.

A land of hyper-legalisms is not the same as a land of law. I’ve written recently about the insane proliferation of signage on America’s highways — the “Stop” sign, the “Stop Sign Ahead” sign, the red light, the sign before the red light instructing you that when the light is red you should stop here, accompanied by a smaller sign underneath with an arrow pointing to the precise point where “here” is . . . One assumes this expensive clutter is there to protect against potential liability issues. It certainly doesn’t do anything for American road safety, which is the worst in the developed world. We have three times the automobile fatality rate of the Netherlands, and at 62 in the global rankings we’re just ahead of Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea.

But that’s the least of it: When people get used to complying with micro-regulation, it’s but a small step to confusing regulatory compliance with the right thing to do — and then arguing that, in the absence of regulatory guidelines, there is no “right thing to do.”

In a hyper-legalistic culture, Penn State’s collaborators may have the law on their side. But there is no moral-liability waiver. You could hardly ask for a more poignant emblem of the hollow braggadocio of the West at twilight than the big, beefy, bulked-up shoulder pads and helmets of Penn State football, and the small stunted figures inside.

And Jeff Jacoby had this to say in his article about American optimism:

Reno isn't the only Commentary contributor who points to America's ability to assimilate outsiders as a singular advantage in the present, and an ongoing reason for optimism about the future. Yes, remarks Harvard's Joseph Nye, China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, "but the United States can draw on a talent pool of 7 billion." From every corner of the globe, dreamers, strivers, and self-starters have been willing to uproot themselves for the chance to make a better life in this astonishing land of opportunity.

"Optimism, by nearly all accounts, has been an integral part of our national DNA," writes James Ceaser, a scholar of American politics at the University of Virginia. The crises of the moment -- a limping economy, soaring government debt, a stifling bureaucracy -- are undoubtedly serious. But they are far from insoluble, and they certainly aren't grounds for terminal pessimism.

The nation that transformed an undeveloped wilderness into history's freest, most prosperous superpower; that overcame the cancer of slavery; that trounced totalitarianism; that still inspires the persecuted and downtrodden -- that nation isn't about to fade to gray. We have licked worse problems than those we face now.

Optimistic or pessimistic about America's future? The Gipper had it right: Our best days are yet to come. This nation has had a remarkable run, but you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Friday Round-Up

2011-11-18T14:45:00.001-08:00

Random bits:

So among the worst passwords of 2011 are the typical "1234" or "password" but I guess a lot of people are also using "monkey," "dragon," "trustno1," and "letmein." I love those. I hope some of you are using them. I think I might pick one of those up.
The Denver Broncos keep winning. No explanation whatsoever. It's so weird. That is all.
I hate BYU's sports schedule. I don't care about any of these games. Have you seen the basketball schedule? How in the world am I supposed to be interested in a win against Dixie State or their game tonight against Longwood? Where in the world is Longwood? I've never even heard of that school. Don't worry though, tomorrow we play powerhouse New Mexico State in football. Look out Aggies! You'll be the second team of Aggies we'll beat this year. Yay?
I can't believe how spoiled some people can be by just a little success from their sports teams. I had some back and forth last night with a guy on Facebook about the Angels being able to bounce back after last season. He thinks we're in bad shape as an organization, but they've made the playoffs in 6 of the last 10 years, and the 2002 World Series is still pretty fresh on my mind. How bad can they really be doing, right?
The Help. We saw that movie earlier this week and I really enjoyed. I really like the lead, Emma Stone, and I love movies that take place in the South, and I love stories about race relations. While there is still much progress to be made, it's amazing to think of all of the progress in just the last several decades. In the lives of many people still alive, things have gone from intolerable to pretty good. Very good movie though. For a time I was pretty fascinated with literature from black authors, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, and the like. Here's a famous one by Hughes that I always liked: What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?
Not sure how I missed this song before the last couple weeks, but I just love it. Have a good weekend, y'all.

Keystone Pipeline Nixed Until After the Election

2011-11-18T14:32:00.001-08:00

Something that's kind of crazy that you maybe haven't heard anything about? The pipeline Keystone pipeline that is supposed to be built between Canada and the US that would not only provide thousands of jobs, but also increase our energy independence. Go here for a story from the WSJ, here for one from The American, and one by Charles Krauthammer at NRO. I'm going to include some excerpts from each story without distinguishing. I don't really want to take the time to divide it up. It's all worth reading though:

Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Incidentally, Mr. Harper has said he wants to turn Canada into an energy "superpower," exploiting its oil, gas and hydroelectric resources. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his environmental base in Hollywood and on campus. Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada.

Recall as well the president's gut reaction in 2010 to the BP Gulf oil spill: an order shutting down deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. The effect on blue-collar workers in that industry was devastating. Writing in these pages this week, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski described how Mexico, the Russians, Canada and even Cuba are moving to exploit oil and gas deposits adjacent to ours, while the Obama administration slow-walks new drilling permits.

Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Henninger argues that President Obama is leaving private sector workers out to dry on Opinion Journal. Photo: AP.

No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means people making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion.

This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion of the public-sector middle class. Just as private business has become an abstraction to the new class of public-sector Democratic politicians and academics who populate the Obama administration, so too the blue-collar workers employed by them have become similarly abstracted.

Here comes the craziest twist: if the opponents of the XL succeed and prevent its construction, there is a strong possibility that Alberta’s oil sand-derived oil will be piped westward to Canada’s Pacific coast and loaded on supertankers going to Asia, to feed China’s grossly inefficient industries.

And there is more. The XL is to deliver an equivalent of about 6 percent of total U.S. crude oil consumption in 2010, a small share that the country should be able to do without. Indeed, it could have done that already in the past if it had steadily improved the performance of its vehicles rather than keeping it flat for two decades between 1986 and 2006.

The new pipeline would add just over 1 percent to the already existing network of crude oil and refined products lines that crisscross the United States and parts of Canada.

Either way, the United States will need oil imports for a long time to come, as even the fastest conceivable transition to non-fossil energies cannot be accomplished in a matter of one or two decades. If the United States chooses to cut itself off from its largest, most reliable, and most durable supply of crude oil, from where will it, with its continuing high use of transportation fuel, get its future imports? Crude oil production in two other major U.S. suppliers in the Western hemisphere, Mexico and Venezuela, has been declining (by, respectively, more than 20 percent and more than 15 percent between 2005 and 2011), and in the Middle East the United States faces enormous competition from China.

So what happened? “The administration,” reported the New York Times, “had in recent days been exploring ways to put off the decision until after the presidential election.” Exploring ways to improve the project? Hardly. Exploring ways to get past the election.

Obama’s decision was meant to appease his environmentalists. It’s already working. The president of the National Wildlife Federation told the Washington Post (online edition, November 10) that thousands of environmentalists who were galvanized to protest the pipeline would now support Obama in 2012. Moreover, a source told the Post, Obama campaign officials had concluded that “they do not pick up one vote from approving this project.”

Sure, the pipeline would have produced thousands of truly shovel-ready jobs. Sure, delay could forfeit to China a supremely important strategic asset — a nearby, highly reliable source of energy. But approval was calculated to be a political loss for the president. Easy choice.

It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over nation. This from a president whose central campaign theme is that Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass political ends.

It's pretty huge news that really isn't making the rounds. This is the American president sabotaging our interests for the sake of his political career.

We're Going to Disneyland!

2011-11-17T14:17:00.001-08:00

For a few weeks I had been begging Amy to go down to California because the Raiders happened to be playing a Thursday night game against San Diego down in San Diego. There aren't a lot of opportunities for me to see my guys and I wanted to take the opportunity to do so. She wasn't convinced until she learned that Scott and Elisha were coming down to go to Disneyland, and that we wouldn't be seeing the Reids at all over the holidays, so we made a weekend of it.

We flew in Thursday and took advantage of some of the somewhat shady deals that people advertise on Craig's List to get some discounted tickets. It's a lesson in economics really. Charge exorbitant prices for something that's in high demand and someone else will figure out how to make a buck supplying it for a cheaper price. The nice part is that I now have my buddy who works at the Grand California that I can call on for when we want to visit the park in the future.

It was a lot of fun to visit. I hadn't been in a couple of years, and I was never really a Disneyland veteran like most of the people who live down in Southern California. I never got an annual pass, but now it seems like everyone I know who lives down there has one. My brother, best friends, single friends, everyone.

The really great thing about Disneyland is that everything is so professionally done. The rides are good for mid-level type of thrill-seeker, but the decor, the shows, the look and feel of everything is absolutely top notch. My favorite has always been the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Toy Story. The holiday decorations were really amazing, especially on Haunted Mansion. We didn't get to see It's a Small World, but I'm sure that was great too.

It was a really fun weekend. I enjoyed the parks more than I thought I would, but the sad part is that my sole reason for wanting to in the first place - Raiders game - didn't even happen. My brother wasn't up for spending up to $100 for tickets to the game when they hadn't been looking so great. Turns out Carson Palmer really turned it on, Michael Bush killed the Chargers, and the Raiders pulled out the win. Happy for the win, disappointed I wasn't there in person. I can't believe that.

There will be some video up shortly, but just wanted to get something posted because it's been a long time since I've come back around.

There ya go.

Sports Innocence Lost

2011-11-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I was listening to sports talk radio and they were talking about when each of them had lost their sports innocence. You can probably figure out what they meant, but just in case it's not clear, they were referring to that point in time when they had realized that the sports world isn't entirely magical. Athletes are people and sometimes they are unfaithful to their wives, sometimes they cheat, and sometimes people associated with sports can be more than selfish.

I don't remember what their various responses were, but for me it was easy to pick out exactly when my sports innocence was lost. 20 years ago yesterday was the day that Magic Johnson announced that he had contracted the HIV virus and that he would be retiring from professional basketball. I was 11 years old at the time and the Lakers were just coming off their NBA Finals loss to Michael Jordan's Bulls. I remember sitting on the leather couch and watching the screen and having no idea what HIV or AIDS was, and wondered how something could be so serious that it would derail the career of someone so iconic who was not far removed from the peak of his athletic abilities.

I had never even heard of the disease before then, didn't know how it was contracted, or what it was capable of doing, but if it could pull down both Magic Johnson and the Lakers, then it was something really serious.

If I had to name another time, I think I would have said either Bo Jackson destroying his hip in the AFC Championship Game against the Bengals or OJ Simpson's epic drive in Al Cowling's Bronco. I loved Bo for obvious reasons (Raiders RB and EVERYONE loved Bo Jackson), and I loved OJ because of the Naked Gun movies. Those movies came at the perfect time for a boy my age. Each of those events I remember very vividly.

Anyway, I bring this up not only because it was the anniversary of that announcement, but because of some of the recent swirling going on with Penn State and Joe Paterno. I am not a fan of Penn State, and I wouldn't even say I'm a huge fan of college football, but the news about the possible blind eyes that were turned about the defensive coordinator and former heir apparent of Paterno sexually abusing young boys is just heartbreaking. On more than one occasion I've heard of people refer to Penn State with reverence, even calling it Camelot. It's such a sad story to associate with the program and with Joe Pa only because he was otherwise probably one of the most revered people in all of college athletics.

It's just a sad thing to lose your innocence. What's weird is that sometimes it feels like you can lured back into believing that some things are just unthinkable, and then it happens, and you're left with nothing but heartache. It's a sad time for those boys and for Penn State.

Provo Halloween Half

2011-11-08T15:13:00.000-08:00

There has been a theme for me this year of not preparing very well for my races. I had been running in the weeks leading up to this one, but not as regularly as I would have liked. With a pretty steep drop in elevation, about 2000 feet over the 13.1 miles, I thought it was going to shred my quads just like the Deseret News Marathon did. That one only had 1000 more feet in elevation drop, but then again, twice the distance. I also played a soccer game the night before, and although that one was too tough, I thought maybe I was self-handicapping too much to have a decent race.

Turns out I was okay. I thought I would come in somewhere around 1:50 or so because I felt less prepared for this one than I was for the Thanksgiving Point Half, and I ended up finishing that one in 1:48. The race started out right next to Aspen Grove with a temperature somewhere around 35 degrees or so. I've learned this past year that race temperatures aren't that big of a deal to me unless they are really cold ( below 30, apparently, for me) or really hot, anywhere above 85 degrees.

I didn't end up having anyone run this one with me, but I did bump into a few people I knew during the race. I ended up recycling an old mad doctor type costume I had used a few years ago and I think it worked out pretty well. Costumes are funny, because there are different audiences for each. There is the funny costume crowd, but there is also a very loyal gross costume crowd that really appreciate blood and gore. Turns out my fake blood splattered all over the front of my scrubs did the trick for these people.

I tried to hold myself back over the first several miles where the descent was steepest, but I still ended up running about seven and half minute miles over the first six miles, which was when we exited into the Provo Canyon.

Sam Cassell hitting the game winning shot: Large Marbles

My favorite: The chicken-walk

High-steppin to the end zone

The race is really spectator friendly as it follows along the Provo River Trail. I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again, I LOVE LOVE LOVE running along the Provo River Trail. It's scenic, downhill, and just wonderful to run on. With so many parking lots scattered throughout the canyon, Amy had an easy time finding me and getting pics of me. As a result of that, I ended up coming up with as many different kinds of run-bys that I could.

Once I finished I couldn't believe how good I felt. I finished somewhere around 1:43. I didn't feel a huge need to stretch or even sit down, which turned out to be good because I had to spend the next 45 minutes sorting through bags to find my own because they were so disorganized. They still don't have race results posted even. It's a very poorly managed race. It's funny, but every time I finish one of these I have very specific complaints and suggestions that I'd like to make. It really makes me want to organize one of these some day to see if I could put together a better race. In any case, I had more fun at this race than I have had in a long time. My energy felt great, legs never gave me a problem, and I just really enjoyed the course. I'll most likely end up doing this one again. Oh! And I can't forget to mention the shirt and medal - two big reasons why I even wanted to run this one in the first place - black, longsleeve shirt with skull and crossbones, and a medal to match it.

Friday Round-Up

2011-11-04T14:15:00.000-07:00

Couple of articles that I thought were interesting:

This one by Charles Krauthammer about who is responsible for us losing Iraq. This excerpt, to me, is the most significant part:
The second failure was the SOFA itself. The military recommended nearly 20,000 troops, considerably fewer than our 28,500 in Korea, 40,000 in Japan, and 54,000 in Germany. The president rejected those proposals, choosing instead a level of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.

A deployment so risibly small would have to expend all its energies simply protecting itself — the fate of our tragic, missionless 1982 Lebanon deployment — with no real capability to train the Iraqis, build their U.S.-equipped air force, mediate ethnic disputes (as we have successfully done, for example, between local Arabs and Kurds), operate surveillance and special-ops bases, and establish the kind of close military-to-military relations that undergird our strongest alliances.

The Obama proposal was an unmistakable signal of unseriousness. It became clear that he simply wanted out, leaving any Iraqi foolish enough to maintain a pro-American orientation exposed to Iranian influence, now unopposed and potentially lethal. Message received. Just this past week, Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurds — for two decades the staunchest of U.S. allies — visited Tehran to bend a knee to both Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It didn’t have to be this way. Our friends did not have to be left out in the cold to seek Iranian protection. Three years and a won war had given Obama the opportunity to establish a lasting strategic alliance with the Arab world’s second most important power.
And this other one by Victor Davis Hanson about how Obama has staunchly resisted the wake-up call that last November's midterm elections were. An excerpt:
Aside from the fact that the midterm referendum clearly illustrated that the proverbial people wanted a change in Obama’s policies and voiced that desire by, in the president’s words, “shellacking” his party, LaHood’s allegations about Republican partisanship, even if they were true, still make little sense. From January 2009 to January 2011, Obama controlled the presidency, the House, and the Senate. Congress passed everything he asked for in order to revive the economy and, he said, to create jobs: Obamacare, more stimulus, new regulations, serial $1 trillion–plus deficits, almost $5 trillion in new aggregate debt, and record extensions of unemployment insurance and expansions of food stamps. Nothing seemed to help.
And lastly, I think this one should be the most upsetting. From the guys at Powerline, they talk about how the Solyndra execs ended up leaving with taxpayer money. Lots of it. It's amazing that this company handed out such large bonuses to its executives and with hardly any passage of time, months only, they went bankrupt. An example:
Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing, received two $55,000 bonuses on April 15 and July 8 of this year, on top of her $250,000 annual salary.
And there's more in there about that.

I'll get to my experience running the Provo Halloween Half Marathon this weekend, I think. Just wanted to drop that on y'all.

This song has been my anthem this week.

Have a great weekend!

Around the Web

2011-11-02T10:01:00.000-07:00

You know what's crazy? The world oil boom that has been going on. This post talks more about it. Do you know where it's not happening? The middle east. This has huge implications on world events and all the strife that is happening overseas. It's happening mostly in Canada, the US, and Brazil. There is more oil here in the United States than in all of the middle east combined. And for all of the efforts to curb drilling in Alaska and in other places, it has been exploding in North Dakota. It is so big there that there is actually a budget surplus. They are considering repealing state income taxes because there is an overflow of money. The state has a real estate shortage, and unemployment is down to 2-3% statewide. You know what else they're good at? Education. People are flocking to North Dakota. Weird, right? You won't see me there, but it's amazing what's happening.

Only a few decades ago the middle east became relevant in global economics because of the huge oil reserves found in those countries. Those countries and their issues won't disappear, but they won't have they same effect on the rest of the world that they do now.

This article is pretty interesting. It talks about "fracking," and how all of this money went into clean energy, but the real breakthrough came in traditional energy - oil. I'm going to post a good chunk because I know very few of you will follow the link, but it's worth learning about:

Venture-capital investing is inherently high-risk, so it shouldn’t surprise or bother anyone that many of these startups failed -- some rather spectacularly. Solyndra, the solar-cell company, for example, went bankrupt even after receiving a $535 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Energy Department. But similar failures happened during the dot-com bubble. Remember pets.com and its infamous sock-puppet TV ads?

What is worrying is that almost a decade of energy investing hasn’t produced any home runs -- no green-energy equivalents of eBay, Amazon, Google or Facebook. The modest, incremental advances we have seen don’t perceptibly move the needle on the energy problem.

In the meantime, however, a real revolution has happened in traditional energy -- one that poses a serious challenge to companies and investors betting on alternative energy. This breakthrough is arguably one of the greatest advances in energy production since the 1960s. And it came not from a Silicon Valley company, or from MIT or Stanford, but from George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherd who immigrated to the U.S.

After graduating from Texas A&M, Mitchell tinkered with a variety of long-known techniques that had never been used in combination. One of these was horizontal drilling, which originated in the 19th century, was adapted for oil production by the Soviets in the 1930s and was perfected by oil drillers in the 1980s. A second idea was to inject fluid into the rock to fracture it into lots of pieces, thus allowing the gas and oil inside to flow more easily.

A third technique that Mitchell tried was adding sand to the water to help prop open the cracks that formed in the rock. Together these approaches, collectively called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” allowed drillers to inexpensively recover gas from tight shale rock.

Not so long ago, many people believed that the cost of oil and gas would rise indefinitely, thus supporting the market for alternatives. Mitchell’s miracle has changed that calculus, much to the chagrin of the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who caught the green-energy bug."

Anyway, kinda neat.

Lastly, there is this article that I shared on Facebook last night that asks the question, are public teachers underpaid? The answer, as you might guess from knowing anything about my politics, is no. It's an interesting article though, and if you read, you'll be ready to respond to all of the annoying Facebook posts about how nobody appreciates teachers and they are grossly underpaid and all that garbage. After posting it last night, a couple people commented at length on it, asking questions that were actually answered in the article itself, not the blurb that's posted in that link. What's interesting to me is how emotional the conversation gets anytime anyone mentions anything about teachers and education. It surprises me that the subject is as touchy as it is. I'm excited to watch Waiting for Superman.

For all of you who made it this far, congrats. I feel like no one ever gets through these politics/current events posts.

Is it possible for feet to look gay?

2011-11-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

Because I think these do. I was looking for the white cotton, striped socks that were so common in the 70s and 80s, but seemingly impossible to find now, and I came across this pic. Those are supposed to be a man's feet, but those socks and that pose make me wonder.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to offer today. I was going to post some stuff about the oil boom in the Americas and an article about pulling out of Iraq, but that is completely unrelated to the holiday at hand. My two favorite days to be driving around are on Valentine's day and Halloween. I love looking in the car next to me and seeing someone in full get-up. It's so fun. This morning while walking to my office I saw a couple of guys, one sitting on the other's shoulders, and they had a long black robe-type thing. The best was that I was approaching them from behind, so I only saw the 11 foot or so long cape draped behind as they were walking on campus. Love this day. Hope you enjoy it, too.

Don't be lame and not dress up or not go out and do anything. At the very least, watch a scary movie, read a scary story, hand out candy and try to scare kids, but just make sure you do something! I was so mad at my roommate's last year when we came back from our Halloween festivities and they were just sitting around on the couch watching The Bourne Supremacy.

Don't be lame. Have fun tonight. Play some tricks or give someone some treats. Don't be dumb.

Have a good one, y'all!

Here Comes Halloween

2011-10-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

So what happened? I don't know. I just haven't been much for blogging lately. I am, however, quite disappointed that I haven't done more to honor what's one of my favorite holidays.

We actually haven't even really done much Halloween stuff. It wasn't until last week before we actually did anything at all related to the holiday, and usually I'm quick to post Werewolves of London on here and announce the arrival of the day on the first of the month. I haven't even read a scary novel this month like I've done for the last 3 or 4 years. I know. Something is seriously wrong.

Part of this is because we've been busy. Another part is that my wife and I have different perceptions of what Halloween should be. I like scary Halloween. I like haunted houses and scary movies. Amy likes funny Halloween. So this leads to a clash of what our costumes end up being. I'm learning how to handle it. But don't worry, someday I'll be a mummy, frankenstein, and skeleton. It's inevitable.

I think this is mostly reflected in our upbringings. She grew up in a nice household. Not that mine wasn't nice, but mine didn't have the same standards when it comes to movies and such, nor did she have an older brother 8 years her senior who had her watch all of the scary movies that he would watch. She and I were watching Scream the other night and she was hidden behind her computer screen most of the night flinching at even the sounds of the slasher film, whereas I wasn't phased at all. I don't know. I'm just densensitized in that way, I guess. I was the 10-11 year old kid who reveled in reading the scariest ghost stories I could find alone in the dark in a house by myself. I just loved that stuff. That's where our differences lie. She's nice. I'm the soulless monster who is looking for the scariest thing he can find just so he can feel some kind of emotion, even if it's only fear. That sounds like a scary story right there.

Also, I LOVED the Twilight Zone. Couldn't get enough of it. I would watch the Twilight Zone marathons all day long when it would happen on Thanksgiving and the 4th of July. I lived for that. Which brings me to my next thing: Something Halloweeny that I think is worth reposting is this short story by Jerome Bixby, which Twilight Zone episode had the same name - It's a Good Life.Such a creepy story. Here are the opening few lines:

Aunt Amy was out on the front porch, rocking back and forth in the highbacked chair and fanning herself, when Bill Soames rode his bicycle up the road and stopped in front of the house.

Perspiring under the afternoon "sun," Bill lifted the box of groceries out of the big basket over the front wheel of the bike, and came up the front walk.

Little Anthony was sitting on the lawn, playing with a rat. He had caught the rat down in the basement--he had made it think that it smelled cheese, the most rich-smelling and crumbly-delicious cheese a rat had ever thought it smelled, and it had come out of its hole, and now Anthony had hold of it with his mind and was making it do tricks.

When the rat saw Bill Soames coming, it tried to run, but Anthony thought at it, and it turned a flip-flop on the grass, and lay trembling, its eyes gleaming in small black terror.

Bill Soames hurried past Anthony and reached the front steps, mumbling. He always mumbled when he came to the Fremont house, or passed by it, or even thought of it. Everybody did. They thought about silly things, things that didn't mean very much, like two-and-two-is-four-and-twice-is-eight and so on; they tried to jumble up their thoughts to keep them skipping back and forth, so Anthony couldn't read their minds. The mumbling helped. Because if Anthony got anything strong out of your thoughts, he might take a notion to do something about it--like curing your wife's sick headaches or your kid's mumps, or getting your old milk cow back on schedule, or fixing the privy. And while Anthony mightn't actually mean any harm, he couldn't be expected to have much notion of what was the right thing to do in such cases.

That was if he liked you. He might try to help you, in his way. And that could be pretty horrible.

If he didn't like you ... well, that could be worse.

I'm also more than a little upset that I missed two different zombie runs that are held in the state of Utah. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard of these especially since I am both a runner and a fan of all things Halloween. Night of the Running Dead is one of them.

Lastly, here is a surprisingly catchy zombie love song a friend of mine turned me onto this morning.

Have a good one, y'all!

Throughout the Universe Displayed

2011-10-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't really gotten back into the writing portion of this blog. Not sure why. Anyway, I wanted to make a note about our most recent trip to Havasupai. Well, more the first night of the trip. We arrived sometime around midnight (the last three words are supposed to be sung to the tune of the song with that title) to the Hilltop. It was a weird evening driving through Peach Springs, finding the nearest gas station to the reservation, and then driving into Supai country. I actually wanted to write a short story about the drive, a kind of ghost story. Maybe I still will. Maybe.The parking lot was quiet, and we happened to pull into the area that is designated for tribe members only. The moon waxed that night to nearly being full. It was cold, but camping cold. The kind that you can get away from when you're zipped up in your bag, especially if you're in a tent. Our car didn't bother with the tent, which would have been a mistake except for that when I woke up in the night and stared at the night sky after the moon had set, the sky was still entirely lit up with all of the stars. It was amazing. I have this experience and same line of thinking every time I go camping. The hymn How Great Thou Art floods my mind, I wish that I knew about every star and every constellation and related mythology that litters the sky, and I think about how anyone could ever look at something like that and not believe in God. And every time I start into this train of thought, I think about what it must have been like for Abraham laying down to sleep on a nice summer night in the desert of the middle east, and it seems perfectly obvious to me why he was such a star gazer and how he so easily understood the grandeur of the heavens and man's insignificant place within it all. This time, however, I started to think more about a friend of mine who ended up leaving the Church because he couldn't reconcile his understanding of the world with the gospel and God. He shared with me a story before, probably more faith promoting than historical, about how one of the great scientists of the world, Galileo or someone else, had built a model of the galaxy with the planets and their orbits and such, and left it out for another friend/colleague of his to discover. The friend marveled at the display as he happened upon it, and then asked the scientist where it had come from, to which the scientist replied, 'what do you mean? It appeared here the same way that you assert that the actual galaxy appeared - out of thin air.' The response is meant to be absurd. Of course someone created it. Something that complex doesn't just appear. But my friend has lost sight of that. Having recently read from Alma 30, I thought about Alma's challenge to Korihor to disprove God, and then his statement that "all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." It's so true, isn't it? It's funny to me that we're cast off in this lone and dreary world, but then you go to places like that - see the skies, the waterfalls, and the deep turquoise water - it's hard to believe that we were relegated to this space, that this is the least of all the prizes that God has for us. I am glad that Amy's one criterion for our marriage was that we go camping at least once a year. Being outdoors really helps me to get outside of myself and realize how much more is out there. In a funny way, it's nice to be made to feel insignificant like that because it lends truth to the fact of God's existence.

Honeymoon in Cancun (baby!) Video

2011-10-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

The clips from this video were taken with the Bloggie (may it rest in peace) that Dave so kindly gave us for our wedding present. If it weren't for that little guy, we wouldn't have any pictorial or video remembrance of our honeymoon, so we're glad that we had it for the amount of time that we did...even if it was only about 9 days.

Anyway, this vid feels very home movie to me a la the Wonder Years where everything is sped up and not the best quality, but fun nonetheless. Here you go.
Honeymoon by silva888

Havasupai Video

2011-10-16T22:34:00.000-07:00

I kind of disappeared there for a bit, eh? We went to Havasupai last weekend and tonight we had a dinner with everyone to swap photos and such, so I wanted to wait to debut this video until I showed it to everyone else. It really is fun figuring this stuff out, and I think with every video I"m learning more about this stuff. I've got myself a fun little project upcoming that will hopefully improve some of the quality of these videos.

Anyway, without further adieu, here it is! Voila!

Havasupai by silva888

Daily Dozen

2011-10-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

I think for almost the last year now I've been looking at Nat'l Geo Traveler's Daily Dozen. They are reader/viewer submitted photographs from around the world, and they have new ones each week. I thought that I used to like photos, and then I met the Walton family, and now my appreciation just doesn't compare.

Anyway, we've had a fun house guest these last few days and he was showing us the other night some of his latest pics. They, of course, are really good. So impressive.

Anyway (again), I came back this week to the daily dozen and some of these I thought were just so cool. Just yesterday we finally got back our GoPro after sending it in for some warranty servicing, and for a moment I actually thought that it might have been lost in transit, but it showed up in our mailbox much to my delight. I'm so excited to have it in Havasupai this weekend.

So this first photo was actually taken from a GoPro sequence. How awesome is this?

The eerie Northern lights:
Although the size of the waves might make you think that these kids are about to get swallowed up and drown in the depths of the sea, you can see from their expressions that those kids are actually playing in the waves:
I'm really excited to be headed down to Havasupai this weekend. We have a fun group, and it's just a good setting for some great photography and videos to be had. Stay tuned!

Feels Like the First Time

2011-10-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

I heard about this over the weekend, but only just now saw the video. This is probably the sweetest thing you'll ever see.

Here's an article that has a little bit more to say about it. The woman speaks very clearly and in the article she mentions that she's always worked really hard at her grammar and speaking so that she would fit in. It's just such a sweet moment. I dare you not to cry.

Say it Frenchie, "Colmar!"

2011-10-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

We left for Colmar, France on Monday morning. The forecast suggested that we pick another day, but with the rest of our week already planned out, there wasn't much maneuvering we could do so we went ahead and made the trip to Colmar.

That was the exact right decision. It turned out to be a beautiful day and although I really did love the rich greens and beautiful mountains and countryside that Switzerland offered us in our weekend there, I really fell for Colmar with its half-timbered buildings and bright colors and canals. The town really does look like an amusement park setting with the buildings slightly leaning slant-ways after having stood for hundreds of years, the building facades shining bright colors, and French youth everywhere. It's just a beautiful little town.

It's in a part of France that sits near the German border, and over the years has exchanged hands between the two countries a number of times so it has characteristics of each country. What's really fun about traveling to all of these places is just the novelty of everything. There's nothing like the "first time" and when it turns out to be something so exciting to begin with, it only heightens the experience.

We spent the day walking through the town listening to Rick Steves' narration. Lunch was served at a little shop with outdoor seating, which is so very typical of European dining, and some partook of some savory sausage crepes while I had a delightful grilled panini. Most of the day was spent walking the streets and just looking around. Rick Steves suggested we visit the Unterlinden Museum as it was one of his favorites. He set my expectations high, and while the museum was interesting, I thought there would be more. More of what, I'm not sure. Just more. It was still good though, but that was towards the end of the day my dogs were barkin'. We met up with the rest of the Johnsons at the park that was situated near where the cars were parked.

Great, Great Night for Baseball (not so much for Boston....YES!)

2011-09-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, let's get something straight. My team had nothing to do with last night's drama, but that's just the magic of sports. I was trying to tell this to some friends of mine the other day. It's not just the competition, or the excitement of your team. It's everything that's involved with it. There are teams and rivalries, big names and snubs, and the most amount of drama you can imagine. The most amazing part of it all? You can't script any of this stuff. Sports are so much better than anything else you will ever watch or participate it because it not only becomes a part of you, the craziest things happen and you can never anticipate that kind of outcome.

A team with over $160 million in payroll, the Boston Red Sox, were practically handed the World Series trophy before the season even began, and for four months the regular season, all those prognosticators looked to be spot on. And then September happened.

The team that had been the best suddenly became the worst. They had a 9 game lead for a playoff spot and then when 7-19 in September to fall into a tie with the Tampa Bay Rays who have a quarter the Red Sox payroll. 6 months of regular season play and a 162 game season come down to one last game for two teams battling for either a playoff berth or a playoff for the playoff berth. It's unreal. I had to teach my class while everything began to unfold, but I was checking on the scores all along the way. When my class started, the Rays were losing 5-0 and Boston was up 3-2. Finish class and all of a sudden Tampa is down 7-6 with one inning, and Boston and the Orioles are in rain delay. Race home to find Tampa has tied it. Flash to the Sox-O's and watch their collapse in the bottom of the 9th inning. 4-3 Orioles. Game change to Tampa Bay in the midst of Evan Longoria's at-bat when he hits a home run in the bottom of the 12th to win the game and get the wild card spot that the Sox had choked up. As close as that is to read in text was how it happened in reality. 3 minutes after the Sox blew their 9th inning lead Longoria hit a walk-off home run.Unbelievable.

I wish there was a better quality video, but this will suffice. The guys on Sportscenter are always kind of juvenile, but I loved Stuart Scott and Scott Van Pelt because you can see that their reactions are so genuine. And Scott Van Pelt's lines are priceless. My favorite that's not in this video was, "I wanna vomit and I don't even have a dog in the fight."

"Sports are better than anything else. Always." Truer words have never been spoken. I remember when Bo Jackson destroyed his hip in the playoff game against the Bengals when I was 8 or 9. I remember when Francisco Cabrera knocked in Sid Bream with David Justice running up his back in 1991 to win the NLCS in the bottom of the ninth. I remember a lot of sports night. And I'll remember this one for many years to come. Just amazing.

Europe Video

2011-09-27T09:30:00.001-07:00

My first attempt at putting together one of these videos. I'm no Dan, but this was fun. I'm really looking forward to Havasupai now.

A few things...

2011-09-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

Oh man. Is it a perfect Fall season or what? I can't believe the weather lately. I had my first full week of running last week since probably weeks before the Deseret News race and it felt amazing. I had a six mile run up towards the mountain near us and it was awesome. Climbed 400 feet, sun was setting, and I was just cruising. It felt perfect. I started thinking while on that run that I might never train intensely enough to ever qualify for Boston or do an Ironman, but I think I will always run, and probably always run marathons for as long as my body and time will allow. It feels so good to just be out there moving, sweating, and just feeling good. I'll have more about how to get started running, or to run more, in a post forthcoming. I've been thinking about that one for awhile.

I read the most interesting article today about Bush 43. You can find the article here. W is a very impressive man. I haven't gotten into his biography that my brother gave me for Christmas, but now I'm really looking forward to it. About Obama, Bush said, “No matter who wins, when he hears what I hear every morning, it will change him.” I thought that was a really telling line about why Obama has pursued the foreign policy that he has, and this was something I said even before O got elected to office. Getting daily reports of national security threats changes your perspective on things. But how about a brief excerpt from the lengthy article:

The president gestured for me to sit facing the beautiful, sunny vista, and he sat facing me, his back to the yard. We lit up, puffed on our cigars, caught up on family news, talked briefly about my memoir and my column in the Post-Dispatch, which he had read. I could think of only one question to ask him: “What is it like to be president of the United States?”

President Bush leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and stared at me intently. “Are we off the record?”

“Yes.”

And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”

President Bush—and he was, no doubt, by then a real president—talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me. Perhaps a half hour into the conversation, we were joined by Bush’s campaign media adviser, Mark McKinnon, whom Bush had nicknamed “M-Kat.”

“M-Kat used to be a Democrat, too,” Bush quipped, referring to me. “I converted him.”

After about an hour, Bush said that Laura was out of town and asked if McKinnon and I would like to join him for dinner. We did, of course, and we moved into the residence dining room, where Bush sat at the head of the table, McKinnon and I on either side, while the president’s black cat, Willie, lounged on the far end. Really, he just kept talking. I thought perhaps it was my naiveté that was making the evening seem so remarkable. But when the president was called away from the table for a few minutes, I asked McKinnon if working in the White House was as demanding as Bush had said. He said it was, and then he got a sort of faraway look in his eyes. “But then you have an evening like tonight,” I remember him saying. I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn’t answer.

“I’ve never known you to be speechless,” she said, genuinely surprised.

I finally said, “It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets.”

Cool, right?

My teams mostly fared well over the weekend. The Angels shot themselves in the foot by giving up 4 runs in the 9th to the lowly A's to fall two games back. Darn that Jordan Walden. His 10 blown saves cost them the playoffs.

But BYU did great and we have the luxury of deciding on a whim to go to the games. Without tickets or any advance thought, we showed up at the stadium and bought tickets for $5 a piece off some guy. Fun game.

Even better? I think I can start to hold my head up high after the Raiders beat the Jets yesterday. Darren McFadden is the real deal. If he stays healthy, he's an MVP candidate, and I don't think I'm one to throw around that kind of claim lightly.

Lastly, this song. I can't get enough of the new Sublime album. They return to fill a void in music that only they can fill. Great punk/reggae sound. Love it.

Have a good one!

Warren and Obama Are Dummies

2011-09-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you've heard of some of the news recently regarding Obama and his recent proposals. I'm not even sure how else to label them. Economic? Reform? Jobs things? Not sure. Anyway, much publicity has been directed towards Warren Buffets comment about how the rich need to shoulder more of the burden for government revenues, i.e. taxes, but his own situation is very unique indeed. The most controversial comment that Buffet made recently was about how he pays less taxes than does his secretary.

Thanks goodness for these guys and their dumb comments, right? Because of them, a lot of people have been fact-checking recently because it just doesn't seem to make sense. How can one of the richest people in the world be getting away with paying less than someone who maybe doesn't even make .01% of what we makes in a year? It's jarring to think, so as a result, a lot of people followed up on it.

This story from MSNBC gives a good overview. The truth is the wealthy bear most of the burden. From that article:

The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Economist Larry Kudlow elaborates further saying that the top 1% pay 40% of all the taxes, and 50% of income tax filers don't pay any taxes at all. He also says in this post:

No one even knows what the targeted group is going to be. A New York Times story suggests that the Buffet tax will hit three-tenths of 1 percent of taxpayers, which could be 450,000 people out of 144 million tax returns.

A Wall Street Journal story suggests the Buffet tax would have hit just 22,000 people in 2009, those households making more than $1 million annually and paying less than 15 percent of income in federal income taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center, doubling the tax burden of those 22,000 would raise just $19 billion a year. How silly is this?

...

And Paul Ryan makes another key point: Tax investment more, and you’ll get less of it. If these kinds of tax hikes are ever passed, the economy will be doomed to stagnation over the long-run. Penalizing incentives will do that. And lower growth means higher deficits.

Why in the world doesn’t President Obama follow the overwhelming consensus for fundamental tax reform to lower marginal rates and broaden the income base? Economists of all stripes agree on this.

At the end of the day, it sure looks like our president wants to raise taxes on wealthy Americans and large corporations in order to spend more and enlarge the size and scope of government. From the standpoint of jobs, growth, and prosperity, it just won’t work.

And I thought this blogpost was especially insightful from Mark Perry over at Carpe Diem. He cites a couple of WSJ articles that I can no longer find. But here are some excerpts from the post:

(WSJ: Millionaires Go Missing)"Those with $10 million or more in reported income fell to 8,274 in 2009 from 18,394 in 2007, a 55% drop. As a result, their tax payments tanked by 51% (see chart, from $110.8 billion in 2007 to only $53.7 billion in 2009). These disappearing millionaires go a long way toward explaining why federal tax revenues have sunk to 15% of GDP in recent years. The loss of millionaires accounts for at least $130 billion of the higher federal budget deficit in 2009."

(Perry) Even taking every last penny from every individual making more than $10 million per year would only reduce the nation's deficit by 12 percent and the debt by 2 percent. There's simply not enough wealth in the community of the rich to erase this country's problems by waving some magic tax wand."

Bottom Line: As the WSJ points out, "If Warren Buffett wants to reduce the deficit, he should encourage policies to create more millionaires, not campaign to tax them more."

And here's another post where Perry relates a Canadien perspective on the Buffet case. His point is mainly that Buffet pays too little in taxes, not because he's so rich, but because the US tax system is so poor.

The Obama plan to simply increase personal income tax rates on the rich and hike capital gains and dividend taxes will hurt rather than help growth. Higher personal tax rates will reduce the incentive to invest by entrepreneurs, who are most responsible for growth. Capital gains and dividends (subject to federal-state personal tax rate of 20%) are currently highly taxed at more than 50% once taking into account the 39% corporate income tax rate that reduces the amount of profits distributed to shareholders or reinvested by the company. More double taxation of dividends and capital gains hurts the economy.

Already the highest-income taxpayers — about 5% of taxpayers — pay almost 60% of U.S. income taxes. The bottom half of the population pays only 3%. So any tax increase imposed on high-income earners should be in areas where some, like Warren Buffett, are paying far less than other wealthy individuals. Warren Buffett’s 17% tax rate results only because he gets a large number of breaks that other wealthier Americans, like doctors, cannot use.

Which gets to the main point. The United States needs major tax reform, rather than playing at the edges to make the system more progressive than it is already. U.S. income taxes are complex, inefficient and highly unfair. The statutory rates, once taking into account federal and state income and payroll taxes, are already high, even with the Bush tax cuts. The problem is that too many targeted preferences reduce the amount of taxes paid, undermining economic growth.

The list of special preferences in the United States is mindboggling and could fill a book on how not to run a tax system. A major tax reform that lowers rather than increases personal and corporate tax rates and eliminates a number of special preferences would make the tax system more efficient and fair, and it would grow revenue over time by growing the economy.

Anyway, if you didn't watch it last week, watch this video now. It does a really good job encapsulating what needs to happen with tax reform and why.

Meet Us In Switzerland

2011-09-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

Our flights were mostly uncomfortable, the day felt twice as long, and we were running on the fumes of the few hours of sleep that we had gotten in the prior two nights, but nothing could dampen the excitement of flying over new terrain that you know to be a world that would be new to the both of you. We landed in Zurich, Switzerland sometime around 8 AM on Friday. Our task now was to find the train that would take us to Bern, then to keep ourselves occupied until we would meet up with the Johnsons who were on their way from Germany. What we thought would be a minimum two hour train ride only turned out to be a half hour one. For about $100 Swiss Francs ($113 US) you would think that we would have been traveling a much farther distance, but this initial cost would hint at the high costs that everything in Switzerland would entail.

We arrived in Bern, the Swiss capitol, several hours ahead of the Johnsons. Exhausted, but excited to start wandering this new city and country, we had to find a place to unload our luggage. I was surprised that it took so long to find someone who spoke English who could direct us to where we could dump our stuff. I guess I am that Me-centric American that just assumes everyone would speak English. It was only a few minutes before we unloaded our things and began touring around on foot.

The were several highlights of Bern that day. One was the beach volleyball tournament that handed out the body wash and shampoo that I would use the rest of the trip. The train station had a very prominent Coke Zero promotion going on that whole day so anytime we needed a zero calorie, but tasty, pick-me-up all we had to do was walk through there. A public pool provided us with some shaded area and grass to perch ourselves, and a lovely lesson in how comfortable Europeans are with their bodies. Nicer still were the cobblestone streets, the gigantic cuckoo clock, local farmer's market, and the general taste of Swiss-European culture.

The arrival of the Johnsons was a nice boost to our travel-weary bodies. A family of 8 is always a spectacle in Europe as I would come to find out, but was an especially welcome sight when Amy and I had walked just about as far as we could walk while also not wanting to dish out more money just yet. With everyone together, we explored Bern with the help of Rick Steves. We went to the local cathedral and checked out the sights from up high. The warm weather left us desirous to jump in the river running right through the middle of the city, which was about when we realized that the locals commonly float the river as we saw some guys jumping off a bridge, the first one doing a backflip.

We left the city that evening to travel to what would be home for the next several nights. We had a lot of trouble before coming out finding a place that would not only accommodate 10 people, but also for a reasonable price. Given all of that, it shouldn't have been so surprising to find that our housing was everything that it was advertised as: a 400 year old farmhouse in a Swiss village not really close to anything. The ceilings were low. There would be no locking the front door at night, not just because the place was so safe, but because there was no lock anyway. But the place had its own charm and although we'd laugh about it for the rest of the weekend, it very adequately filled our needs.

The next day we visited Lauterbrunnen and took a gondola up to Mannlichen which is located up in the Swiss Alps. Before heading up we picked up lunch from a local Swiss grocery store. This place was so novel to me with all of its foreign (to me) products that I couldn't help but get excited about every item that I looked at. We eventually settled on salami and cheese sandwiches and a bunch of snacks that we had brought with us.

When I look back now on the pictures I'm still blown away at how amazing all of it is. From the peak we were on you could see down to some little Swiss villages, hear the clang of cowbells hanging from the necks of actual cows, and see the vast expanse of green lands and majestic peaks. It was really cool. What was supposed to be a 30 minute or so hike turned into a hike that lasted somewhere between one and two hours. I guess we were just enjoying the countryside from our perch on the side of the mountain.

After touring Lauterbrunnen for a bit, we had to forage for dinner. We eventually found a lakeside Italian restaurant that could serve us pizza for a very reasonable (for Switzerland) price. Amy and I got one that featured parmesan and gorgonzola cheese, with prosciutto and basil. So Italian, right? It hit the spot.

Our last day in Switzerland was on the Shabbat. We made our way out to Church that day, I forget where, but on the way we found a perfect spot to get some pictures of the cows that we could hear off in the distance from our rustic farmhouse. (Church was in Lausanne). Finding our lady photographers a curious sight, the cars pulled over and the cows wandered right up to the fence and Lisa and Amy were able to get some really great close-ups. They both lamented having to get back in the car for Church, but somehow pulled themselves away.

Church may have been my favorite part of the day. We happened to be in the French speaking part of Switzerland and without any hesitation or prompting, one of the young men who had blessed the sacrament was translating all of sacrament meeting for us. I was just so impressed by him and touched that he would serve us so unflinchingly. During the meeting I heard an American name I recognized mentioned in a French accent. Not thinking I would ever randomly run into someone I know on the other side of the world, I didn't think anything of it, that is, until the end of the meeting when I looked back and it was my freshman high school English teacher whose father was in my home ward growing up. I couldn't believe it. We had some fun catching up, and then I started talking to one of the missionaries in the ward. He impressed me so much. His family is Chilean so we had a connection there, and then he was also from Southern California, so he and I both had a good little conversation.

Turns out vacation church is some of my favorite kind of church. It's just so cool making connections with people, new and old, and seeing how easy it is to connect with other people in spite of cultural and language barriers when we all have a common gospel connection. It's inspiring and fortifying.

Lunch ended up being hosted by a local gas station in Montreaux on our way to the Chateau de Chillon that sits perched on the side of Lake Geneva. The gas station food turned out to be some of the best we had in Switzerland. The Chateau was just gorgeous and fun to tour through. I loved hearing (or was it reading?) the stories about famous writers from previous centuries visiting that same castle. Lord Byron was so inspired by a prisoner's story that he wrote a ballad about him, The Prisoner of Chillon. I'm pretty sure I heard Victor Hugo's name at every place we went. That guy seemed to get around.

And we ended that night playing Dominion. Always Dominion. I love that game. Loved Switzerland. For Amy's pics in Switzerland and blogposts, go here, here, and here.

Monday, Monday, Bah, Dah....

2011-09-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

You know that song, right? And onward...

For all of you who have been waiting to get one ever since you saw the Rocketeer, you're about to be very satisfied. The Martin Jetpack goes on sale in 2012 for $100,000. If you're worried about where you might be able to fly this thing or whether it's "street" legal, worry no more. It will comply with FAA regulations. You'll be able to fly up to 63 mph with a flight time of 30 minutes. Go here for more info.

My life is weird right now. The work I do doesn't have much to speak of in the way of tangible output. I have my own schedule that I set. I basically do what I want when I want. I've never had things this unstructured before. I'm getting used to it. I came up with a spreadsheet to divide up my time, downloaded an online timer that stresses the Pomodoro Technique, and have my whiteboard with my To Do's listed (I know that's not possessive, but it looks weird just as "Dos," right?). It's still weird though. My time will be divided between on-campus office hours, grading papers, working on my thesis, working on my fellowship, and now studying for the GMAT. It should be enough to keep me busy, but I'm still figuring out how to manage this stuff.

Speaking of GMAT, I talked with a few people I know that are recently enrolled in this year's MBA class. They couldn't have been more excited about what they were doing. I'm still leaning that way, but not decided yet. We'll see, but in the interim I have lots of math to brush up on.

I bought the STP greatest hits album the other day after discovering that I don't own have any digital copies of their music. It surprised me because I had a few of their tapes. You read that right: tapes. Anyway, I've been digging on this song lately:

Which has led me back to this song that I just loved during high school. In the mid-late 90's there was a Led Zeppelin tribute album and this was their contribution. I just loved it.

And then one last thing. Read this article from a pro-lifer over in the UK writing for the Spectator. You just don't get the same kind of writing here in the US. I just wanted post a few excerpts:

If you’re still convinced that all abortions, even the late ones for babies with hare-lips, are good, then here’s a question: how do you feel about killing kittens? I ask because it’s often abortion’s greatest fans who feel most indignant on behalf of animals. They’ll go to the wall to save a chicken-killing fox from hounds, but sod the babies. There was a story last year about a group of scientists who had decided that dolphins were so intelligent that they should be given official rights. ‘The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin relations,’ said the zoologist. Well great, let’s fund an inquiry into dolphin rights, I’m all for it. But what about that group of pre-born living beings whose neuroanatomy might suggest an even greater psychological continuity with our own?

If you want cold-blooded reason, look at it another way. A utilitarian calculus would, I’m pretty sure, tell you that the most ethical thing to do with an unwanted pregnancy, what would make most people most happy, is for the reluctant mother to carry an unwanted baby to full term and give it up for adoption. The adopted parents will be thrilled, and their happiness has every chance of lasting a lifetime — longer than the biological mother’s discomfort. And then there’s the child’s happiness to consider. It’s daft to ask which it would prefer — what would you prefer? Anyone would rather be adopted than aborted. To suggest otherwise is to spit in the eye of life.

That’s what I think of this very gung-ho attitude to abortion — it’s just bloody ungrateful. A spit in the eye of life. Yes, nature’s pretty cruel, but no sane, well-fed bitch would kill her healthy puppy because its lip was twisted. There’s a tragicomic horror about a society in which every year a few couples undertake the incredible business of making a new human, only to throw it away because a tiny bit of it’s folded wrong, and you know, the corrective operation might leave a scar. But far worse is a society in which even to raise some doubts about this is to be considered a laughable lunatic. The best and only explanation I can come up with is that secretly we all know this; we know the current consensus is wrong, but it’s just easier to stay in denial.

Just thought that was interesting. See ya!

Paul Ryan Explains Economics

2011-09-16T12:03:00.000-07:00

Paul Ryan is a rising star in the GOP. He's a representative from Wisconsin and he is doing a better job than any other politician of clearly explaining economics. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, he is leading the way in economic political discourse by coming out with a series of videos explaining how America can get back on the path to prosperity. You can find the committee's YouTube page here.

This is the third video in that series of videos that explains tax reform and loopholes. Even if you're not interested in politics, this is explained in a way that's very accessible to the common citizen. It's amazing to be honest. It's really great. Please watch at least this video:

A Celebration...About Time!

2011-09-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night, I don't even remember the rest of the details of it, but the essential message was that I didn't get the sports consulting fellowship. I was really bummed in my dream. The reason they gave was insufficient funding, which I thought was weird because it's already an unpaid fellowship, so how do you get cheaper than free, right? I was disappointed, but I accepted it pretty quickly and felt like I was content to move on to other things, even after I had woken up.

I had a phone interview the Friday almost two weeks before we left for Europe, so that was August 26th or thereabouts. The guy said he'd let me know the following Monday. When I got no call, I followed up to let him know that I would be out of the country until the 11th. At first I was nervous when I didn't hear back, but then he let me know that he was also out of the country and would be getting back to me.

When we came back from our trip and I still hadn't heard anything, I thought that was a good sign because I figured if I didn't get it, I would have just gotten an email saying I missed the cut. But after a few days of being back and not hearing anything, I got nervous again, hence, the dream.

Then about a half hour ago an email notification popped up and the guy's name with the word "Congratulations" was immediately invisible and I got really excited after that. How do you celebrate at about 8:30 in the morning when everyone is at work and doing stuff, and you don't see anyone online?

The work is basically this: I will be assisting some professors at the University of Pittsburgh in research and manuscript authoring in behavioral trait research as it relates to sports. I will work directly with a senior member of the company and gain greater knowledge and experiences within the greater sports industry. Fun, right?

It's only 15 hours a week and I set my own schedule so I'm excited as this is just another resume builder for the next few months and one that could potentially lead to work directly related to my degree field in something that sounds right up my alley.I have to say, it's just really validating to get job offers and opportunities. When everything first started to unfold and it was looking like I was a shoe-in, I was feeling really confident about my career path and opportunities, but when it started to peter a bit, I was left feeling unsure of myself.

Don't worry though, because I'm feeling back on top of things. It's a nice feeling.

Back in the Saddle

2011-09-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

Well, we're back. I have to say, I think it's so much easier to adjust to the time difference traveling back west than it is to go east. I don't think I ever really got used to being on Germany time, but after just the first night back, I feel like I'm already back to MST.

The trip was a blast. Switzerland is beautiful. The one piece of France we saw was so quaint. And Germany was just awesome. I had repeatedly had the thought that of all of the places to live in Europe, Germany has to be at or near the top of the list. Stable country and economy. Beautiful countryside. Rich history, even if some of it is simply awful. But just all around great and near so many cool places.

Our trip involved the following:

7 Rick Steve's walking tours
Hike in the Alps
A palace and 5 castles
5 or more cathedrals
Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Rise of the Nazi Museum in Nuremberg, and Museum of Torture in Rothenburg
The night watchman tour in Rothenburg
A bundesliga game in Stuttgart
At least 10 hours of Dominion
Many croissants, crusty roll sandwiches, some streussel, and some kind of turkey or pork steak with handmade noodles
And pictures. Many, many pictures

Amy is working on her pics, and I'll link to her blog and post some of those on here also, and I'll start working on my account of our time in Europe.

And that's your preview, folks.

Time To Move On

2011-08-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

Time to get going, what lies ahead...

Yesterday was my last day at the COB. Some things I'll miss about being up there every week, 2-3 times a week, in no particular order:

The cafeteria. I LOVED their sugar cookies, and I loved the sandwich bar they had. Just great soft bread with a bunch of different meats and veggies. So great. That was my last meal there yesterday.
Knowing the going ons of Public Affairs and the things that they're up to. Sitting in on meetings and hearing how thoughtful and in tune the employees of the Church are. So impressive.
The people. Always people are what you miss about places, right?

Some things I won't miss:

The time drain of going to and from Salt Lake.

I think I'll leave that as the only thing, if only to emphasize just how nice it will be to have the rest of my schedule free up. I want to make significant headway on thesis and finish that in the next six months. I'm also still keeping my fingers crossed about that sports consulting fellowship. Was supposed to hear back Monday, but turns out the guy is out of the country.

One thing I also really appreciated was how going up there somehow made that distance between Utah Valley and Salt Lake City seem not nearly as long as it used to be. I like downtown Salt Lake. I like the difference from the valley here. It's not the chore to go up there that it once was to me.

And I'll be moving on tomorrow to Europe! Woo woo! Amy and I head out in the morning for the next bit and we couldn't be more thrilled. Just some packing ahead of the both of us, and then about 17 hours of traveling later and we'll be in Zurich, Switzerland, trying to find our way around. Should be lots of fun.

I'll be taking a break for the next while, so until our happy returns, have a great one dearhearts!

Fun Work News for Me

2011-08-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

So my time at the COB is wrapping up next Tuesday. Wow, NEXT Tuesday. I can't believe it's been a whole year. I thought it would be a little more bittersweet for me, but mostly it's just tasting kind of sweet right now. The intern I replaced last year expressed a lot of excitement about being done with the internship, and I can understand why now.

Although the work is interesting, the people are great, and most everything about it is really satisfying, it's also a big drain on my time and energy. I guess I'm in a different mindset than someone who is looking for a place of employment in which to reside permanently. I still have my program to finish up, and I'm not sure that it's a place I'd like to work at long term.

So with the imminent end of my internship looming, I've been thinking about what additional kinds of work experiences I might be able to get to continue to beef up my resume that might carry me from this year to next. (The life of a student is funny that way. Not a lot of permanence, just kind of whatever gets me from here to there, assuming that there is always a there to be had, and that here is not for long.) I've been considering changing course in my degree program, maybe applying to the MBA program and dropping the PhD, and whatever else out there might be available to me. In doing so, I've been keeping my eyes open to new opportunities.

I just didn't really expect for anything to line up in such a timely manner. I've been on a couple of email lists for a long time. One through university recruiting services and the other through the MBA school. Both of them have not been very fruitful thus far. Judging opportunities by the subject line, I rarely even opened the emails themselves, and when I did, they were rarely worth even the few seconds I took to look at them. Until last week.

Last Monday something came up in Sandy that seemed related to my experience in HR that I thought might be a good fit. Then only a few hours later an internship opportunity came up from a sports consulting firm based out of Chicago. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to apply to both. I updated my resume for the first time in more than a year, and I shot off my one response to the sports consulting opportunity. I didn't bother with the HR one. Less than a day later I got a response telling me that they liked my resume, and that I had to complete an assignment by this upcoming Friday. Doing so would likely get me the job. I can do the job remotely, so I don't even have to worry about a commute. Woo!

The company itself is in the business of helping athletes improve at their sports. Check them out here. They do a lot of research into things like what predicts success in the NHL, what mental traits determine success on the field, understanding the value of ground balls, among other things. Knowing me, it sounds like a perfect fit, right? I can do academic type research into what makes an athlete successful. Sign me up! The only downside is that it's not paid, but it's not a huge commitment in terms of hours per week or duration of internship. We'll see if it works out.

Then in one of my final meetings at the COB today, my boss mentioned bringing me back some time in the future as a consultant for future projects. Cool, right?

I feel so fortunate to have such cool opportunities. It feels funny sharing about it here, but it's what I'm most excited about right now, so there you go.

Recap: Walton Family Party In Reno

2011-08-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

Warning: Will be boring for anyone who isn't interested in personal details about my life.

We made our way out to Reno last week for some Walton family togetherness last Wednesday and got back this past Sunday. Why Reno, you ask? It's not as bad as you might think. Check that. As I might have thought. For outdoor enthusiasts, apparently, it has a lot of things that those types might enjoy. I'll tell you one thing though - that drive between here and there is quite mind-numbing. I don't understand the draw for some people to go to Wendover. That place is garbage. It's like a mini Las Vegas but without any of the fun of Vegas, so what's leftover is cigarette smoke indoors. Gross, right?

Anyway, Reno was a lot of fun. All of Amy's immediate family made it out with the exception of the Johnsons who still reside in lovely Germany. Many games were played including Seafarers, Bang, and Telephone Charades. We went to a terrible waterpark one day, which still was a lot of fun, and then we went to Lake Tahoe the next.

Tahoe, I think, had to be my favorite part. I have never swum in water so fresh. I've been to Tahoe several times on ski trips, so I have some fond memories there, but of the lake itself, I have none. One thing I do remember is the flight attendants always saying as we were about to land was that Lake Tahoe is among the freshest bodies of water in all of the world. It sure does taste like it. Swimming in there felt like what I'd imagine it to be like swimming in bottled water. It was amazing. And just so crystal clear, no matter what depth you're at. I swam out to a buoy and even in that deeper area you could see straight down to the lake floor. We did some rock jumping there, and the kids never seemed to tire of playing in the sand just kind of crawling around on the shore. Then again, when do kids ever get tired of that?

We played many games of ping pong. Amy and I were able to score some new wardrobe items at the outlet mall. And Reno is home to what is supposed to be the world's largest sporting goods store. I believe it. It's like if you were to walk into a huge Macey's dedicated to all things sports. And fudge. And home decor. And some other random things.

One thing the Reno trip conjured up for me though was that I'm on a mighty losing streak. I'm not faring well in board games, ping pong, or any other type of competitive venture. It's kind of irritating.

Last thing: the Walton family is amazing. I tell Amy this all of the time, but it's amazing to be around an entire family that all loves being together so much, and who are in themselves, all so easy to get along with. Even all of the in-laws are really, really awesome. I could hang out with Elisha or Sarah all day long if I had to. They're just all so great. They have come from that kind of circumstances their whole lives, so I wonder if they (YOU) all realize what an amazing, amazing blessing that is. It's incredible to be around a family that is so stable and loving toward one another. It's not just a facade. They're like that all of the time. It kind of throws me off sometimes, but of course I just love it.

The trip was especially fun for me because I feel like I was able to form some closer bonds with Dan and Sarah's girls, not to mention most of the rest of Amy's family. And I can't wait for Germany next week so that I get to do the same with the Johnsons. Fun, fun.

Magical Mystery Tour

2011-08-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Ours is continuing to Reno later this afternoon. We just spent a weekend in California with wonderful family and friends, attending an awesome wedding, and just having a great time. This weekend it's Reno. Two weeks it's Europe! Woo woo!

Life is just great. We have trips and such planned through the second weekend of October. Just about every weekend between now and then is booked and I just love it.

Something I've been wanting to comment on that I don't have time for right now: I have several friends getting back into lengthy relationships after having done the break-up and get back together cycle multiple times. Don't worry. It's not any of you that I'm talking about. I haven't even spoken with either of these people in months, but it still breaks my heart nonetheless. These are people who have been in relationships that have gone on for longer than a year and have broken up and gotten back together more than five times (which in itself should tell you something about the relationship, right? Stability, people! That's what we're shooting for with long-term relationships).

A word to the wise, or to the oft-lonely and broken-hearted: Do not get into or stay in a relationship because you're feeling lonely. The old adage, it's better to be in no relationship than a bad one, is still true. And it only gets more true with marriage. Be not faithless, but believing! If you think that it's God's plan for you to one day get married, then let his plan work itself out for you. The worst problems arise when we are trying to assert our will above His own.

I was talking to a friend of mine today and he's training to become a clinical psychologist. Not that it really makes him smarter about relationships, but he does spend a lot of time observing people. I mentioned this pattern to him and he said that he thought that people often get caught into bad situations when they can't envision for themselves anything better than what they're currently getting. Makes total sense, right? So envision for yourself great things! Envision for yourself happiness and security and a healthy life-balance and eventually you'll happen upon it. Don't settle for mediocrity, or think you can't do better unless that's what you really desire. Dream great things! Work towards that and you'll eventually find it.

Sorry for that. I just hope that we can all desire more for ourselves. I was talking with a coworker yesterday and he asked me simply, "what kind of difference do you want to make?" And then we had a long conversation about what we would like to do and the visions that we have for ourselves. It left me feeling inspired, and made me wonder how much alignment I've had in my life lately between my day-to-day and what I'm working for in a year, or five, or 20.

My mission president always used to say, "if you have petty thoughts, when will you ever have time to achieve great things?" Small minds live simple lives. Desire and yearn for great things! I think we all deserve it.

I'm done now. Have a great week(end), dear ones!

(I just love this song, Actually, this album. Just great. Beatles are great.)

The Gathering of Israel

2011-08-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things on Facebook that just bug me. I'm talking about comments that people make on their statuses, especially political ones. I was just telling Amy the other day that I hate bumper stickers. Even when I agree with them, I just don't like seeing them because I don't really think that we need to be inflicting our opinions on people at every opportunity. (Obviously I feel differently about the blog, because you intentionally come here, although I'm not entirely sure why, but I do appreciate it. Anyway, it's your choice to have my opinion inflicted upon you.)

I don't mind articles or videos because they're at least informative, but I just hate statements that people make because they inevitably are going to fire someone up, right? And you may be surprised by this, but a lot of people just don't know what they're talking about. They just don't. Surprise! Most of the time I feel like I can just brush things off.

And then there are other times when something just sets my on fire.

I think to myself that there is no way that I can't respond to such and such inane comment about the government or whatever. That person has to know that someone else has an opinion in direct conflict with what he's saying. That's when I chime in, and fifty or ninety comments later, it's over. I'll usually participate for about a dozen or so responses, and then I'm done. Mostly because I don't want all the email notifications.

I have one friend whose comments I just cannot stand. I like him in real life, but his online persona bothers me to no end. I vehemently disagree with everything that he says.

This brings me to my point. I started thinking about this yesterday after speaking up on Facebook, about how some people become so grossly misguided about governance, politics, and the like. Disagreements about politics was a driving force behind so many of the wars in the Book of Mormon. In the last half of Alma, it talks a lot about the kingmen and how they lobbied for power, but the freemen put down their rebellion for the sake of the Nephite nation. It is this same kind of conflict over freedoms that prompted the pilgrims to settle in America. It's what prompts most of the world conflict today. And it will be what precipitates and serve as the cause for the wars and rumors of wars that will precede the Second Coming.

You can see evidence of it by the way the country divides itself politically. The borders of the country are clearly blue states (Democratic) while the red (Republican) states are in the mostly central part of the United States. There is not a perfect delineation between the people in these areas, obviously, but it's becoming more polarized, and you can see moving patterns that suggest that people do move their residence towards friendlier political climates. Texas has seen a huge surge in moving because they support conservative principles, so there is a huge shift in people moving from places (California, especially) for that purpose. That's based on actual data, although I'm not going to bother finding the source right now.

This is how the gathering will occur. People don't realize it, but it's truly that way. In the coming years, people will continue to coalesce into like-minded groups and they'll be receptive to the gospel because much of what propelled them to gather to where they have will be based on the ideals that they share in their localities. That's how it's happened before, and will continue to play out in the future.

It's just amazing to me to think about the signs of the times and how watching current events will give so much insight about how things in the scriptures are, indeed, coming to pass. You can see the patterns unfold and the circumstances develop to where those events prophesied of in the future will eventually come to pass, how it will occur.

The gathering is happening. It's going on right now. People don't need to be told by a prophet to go to certain areas because they can already anticipate the changes that are unfolding. They sense the shifting ideals in the places where they live and will go to new areas that will be more welcoming for their kind. This is as true for those with the gospel as those without.

I just hope that it's in a place with nice weather and a body of water nearby.

Kersploosh!

2011-08-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

Can you believe this character....

Is the same as this one...

Or this one?

For the record, I actually really, really love the TV show. It's so campy and goofy and just wonderful. And, I also really loved Michael Keaton as Batman, way more, in fact, than Val Kilmer or George Clooney.

Anyway, just that first clip was awesome, and then it blew me away to think that these were all supposed to be the same character. For the dorks out there who read this, they're all correct. Batman in the comics was at one point that campy, cartoony character, but then in the 80s Frank Miller reinvented him as the dark character we've become more familiar with in his graphic novel, The Dark Knight returns. There ya go.

Life in a Day

2011-07-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite blog reads these days has been the National Geographic Travel blog. I know that I've said that a few times before on here. They always post fun things on there, this movie trailer being one of them and I thought I'd advertise it for y'all. Something about it made me feel kind of emotional. It looks so interesting to me. And then I lamented that we don't really have more independent theaters around here even though the Sundance Film Festival takes place right around the corner from us. Weird.

A caption for the video reads:

What happens when you send a request out to the world to chronicle, via video, a single day on Earth? You get 80,000 submissions and 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries. Producer Ridley Scott and Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald took this raw material — all shot on July 24, 2010 — and created Life in a Day, a groundbreaking, feature-length documentary that portrays this kaleidoscope of images we call life. National Geographic is bringing it to theaters starting July 24, 2011. Prepare to be amazed.

Amy and I went on a date with a couple that lives downstairs from us. They just got married about a month ago and I think we're going to become really good friends with them. Couples dating is really funny. We walked down one night and invited them to dinner and to play games with us and it felt like asking for a date. Amy and I had a post-game chat afterwards about how much we liked them. You know what else? They asked for the next date with us while we were still on the date, so you know that one went well. Plus, they friended us on FB the very next morning.

Really, we have been so blessed to have so many people around us that we love spending time with. We are never hurting for things to do or people to hang out with, and I couldn't love it more. The people in our lives are easily the greatest blessings that we have, of which there are many. It's really great.

Sundry Comments from NRO Contributors on Marriage

2011-07-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

As a response to what happened in New York recently these writers write the following.

Ed Whelan:

The idea that a man could “marry” another man (or that a woman could “marry” another woman) could be taken seriously only in a culture that has become deeply confused about what marriage is. That confusion is largely the result of what heterosexuals have done to marriage in recent decades. It will not be easy to rebuild a sound marriage culture. But the spread of same-sex marriage would make that rebuilding project impossible, as it would sever permanently the societal understanding of the inherent link between marriage and responsible procreation and child-rearing. The more confusion there is about the mission of marriage, the less well marriage will perform its critical mission. And the millions and millions of victims — children born into unstable or nonexistent families — will continue to pile up, with all the attendant disastrous consequences.

Matthew Franck:

What has been gained by the forces behind this act? Certainly not marriage for same-sex couples. They have gained a name, but not the thing it names. They have only destroyed a word’s meaning. And they have harmed the thing it does name, by teaching — one of the things the law does — that marriage has no connection to children and families, but instead is just a bundle of privileges from the government, to be taken up if it is in one’s self-interest. New York has struck a great blow, in the name of a false “right,” against real freedom. Same-sex marriage is inseparable from authoritarianism, as we will see when New York’s Christians, Jews, and Muslims lose the religious freedom to act on the truth about marriage as they know it.

Glen Stanton:

Marriage is so much more than a religious, Western, conservative, modern, or legal idea. Anthropologist Donald Brown, in his book, Human Universals, examining the qualities that all cultures at all times hold in common given their shared humanity, lists marriage as one of these universals. And for all the varied ways that different cultures have done marriage, one thing remains commonly consistent – or at least it did until the last few nanoseconds of our human experience. Marriage always brought the two amazing and mysteriously distinct parts of humanity together into an exclusive, socially valued, and protective union. Marriage has always existed to solve the paradox that humanity exists in male and female.

Each of the couples we will see on Sunday — together with the New York legislature which enacted this new law — is proclaiming with a loud and powerful voice that male and female are now merely sentimental terms. Have a husband and wife, mother and father in your family if you like, but no one really needs them anymore. Male and female become to the family what the service agreement on your new SUV is: optional, based on your personal preference. This is exactly what New York marriage law now teaches, and it will not be without widespread consequence. How can it not?

Just thought those were some interesting points. Emphases are my own. For the whole article, go here.

Sasha and Twitch

2011-07-26T15:15:00.001-07:00

One from last week's performance episode. I love Sasha, and anything that Twitch does has me sold too. It's just another one of those where everything just intersects perfectly - dancers, choreography, music, and performance. Loved, loved, loved this one.

Barefoot Running

2011-07-25T21:12:00.000-07:00

This is all for you, Laura. Before I forgot to say anything about it. Yes, I've read Born to Run, and read some other things about the barefoot running revolution. These are all just my person opinions. I'm not an expert, but I guess I have some idea about this stuff. Here's my take on it:

If it isn't broke, then don't fix it, right? If you're running and everything is feeling okay, meaning that when you are in decent shape, you can run 3-5 miles without any unusual kind of pain, then it seems that regular running shoes work well enough, right? I have run 4 marathons. I'm partial to the Brooks brand of shoes. I have a neutral gait, so everything works pretty well for me.

I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. One of the biggest reasons why people get injured is because they don't have the muscle composition to support the activity that they are doing. Being strong and having good muscle tone is the biggest factor in preventing injury. I think I've been able to run with so little injury concerns is that I've always done running activities my whole life, and before I even took up running, I was regularly working out 4-5 times a week. That, in addition to eating well, are the two biggest factors in allowing a person to exercise without injury concerns.

Anyway, the people who are the most fit are fit in every way. That's what's so good about people who do Cross Fit, because it's a whole body work-out regimen. That's why triathletes are so fit, because they are wholly fit. They can run, bike, and swim. The best runners are the ones who can do all of those things, and will do a variety of different kinds of runs - hill work, speed work, long runs, interval training, etc. Running only short runs, doesn't necessarily mean you are fit. It just means that you can do short runs. And runners should try and run on a variety of different surfaces: grass, sand, dirt, asphalt, etc.

I think the same applies to barefoot running. Although the type of stride is different when running barefoot as opposed to running in shoes, I think it gives you dimension in the way your body can bend, flex, react, and absorb different patterns of running.

I'm actually interested in trying it out at some point, just to see if it can help me add some depth to my running. The Vibram 5 fingers are popular. I think I'm most interested in some of the other minimalist running alternatives. The Nike Free shoes sound pretty cool, Nike Zooms, FeelMax, among others. I think all the major brands are coming out with their own variety.

Anyway, take it for what it's worth.

Deseret News Marathon

2011-07-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

I had all kinds of hesitations about this race. I was worried about the race temperature because of a mid-summer race time; I was worried about how that temperature would affect my training; More recently I've been worried about how an achy back from sleeping on a bad mattress would affect my running. There were a number of things concerning me.

And all of that has contributed a lot lately to just not wanting to run much recently. I got through my 20+ long runs, but my most recent one was my worst ever. I couldn't run the whole time. I had weird chills going through my back and shoulders. I just really struggled with it. My previous one was fine, but it just really left me not feeling very confident at all about my training.

Flash forward to this morning. We got a nice hotel room at a nearby Marriott and Amy took me at 3:00 to catch the 3:15 AM shuttle up to the start of the race. The temperature was fine down in the valley, but we started from Big Mountain which is 7000 feet higher in elevation, so I was pretty cold up at the top. I had about an hour and a half to kill before the start time which would be at 5:30 AM.

One of my favorite things about running these races are the random little friends you make along the way. I happened to meet a guy named Carlos, about age 30, from Brazil, also running his fourth marathon, also in a Phd program. Turned out we had a lot of things in common and we talked for about 30 minutes, and then we ran about the first 5 miles together before he dropped off behind me.

I felt okay for the first half of the marathon. I did have to go to the bathroom once, which is not great, but once I did that I didn't have much problem with my digestive system afterwards. My first half was about 1:50 or so. Not great, but okay considering that I wasn't trying to set any PRs this marathon. And that's when the struggles began.

Around mile 17 we finally got out of the mountains, crossed up around, over, and passed Hogle Zoon, and I was just having the hardest time. I was not in the right kind of shape for this marathon. My calves were tightening and I had to stretch them out a couple of times. The quadriceps become your shock absorbers when you are going down an incline, and mine were just shot. I told Amy that the very fastest I would run would be 8 minute miles, but I was nowhere near that. I was between 9-10 minutes from 17-22, and then almost 10 through the end of the race.

The night before the race we had seen the mile marker for 21 which was right by our hotel, so I was pretty sure I would see my wife there. I thought really hard about just giving up when I saw her. I was worried about having her get back to work at a decent time, and I really was just dying. I knew that I could finish a marathon so that wasn't a motivating factor for me to get through the end. I knew that I wasn't going to break any records either. To tell you the truth, I'm really not sure what it was that kept me going through the end. I knew that I would have a horrible time, and it's actually kind of humbling for me to acknowledge finishing at such a slow pace for me, especially when I remember how old and slow the runners were who I ended up finishing with.

My first half put me on a 3:45 finish time, but my second half slowed down to a near crawl, closing up at 2:24, so a full half hour longer than my first half for a total time of 4:14. I walked a lot of the last few miles, but I did manage to run most of the last couple miles, albeit at a very slow pace.

I thought the course was really pretty. For a small marathon, I actually thought it was pretty good. So far the Long Beach marathon is my least favorite of them all. The weather was very, very accommodating today too. I think the race start temperature was in the low 70s, and was overcast at the end, maybe high 70s.

I finished it. This was by far my hardest marathon. This was about 100x harder than running the 3:28 in St. George was last October. I didn't have enough training for this one. The 7000 feet of descent just destroyed my legs to the point that I couldn't really run on them from mile 17-18 on. I was in so much pain, in fact, that I was just about in tears following the race. I didn't have much cramping afterwards because that actually came during the race. It was just really, really hard, but I did it. I finished it, even though I didn't have anything to really prove, other than the fact that I'm just kind of stubborn. This is going to sound dumb, but I think my two biggest motivators were that I knew Amy had to get back to work, and I wasn't going to see her anywhere else other than the finish line, and that I wanted the finisher's medal. I wanted to have this race under my belt and say that I had run it, even though it just about killed me to do it, and I'm not proud about my time or how poorly prepared I was for it.

I'm happy I did it. I didn't injure anything. No muscle pulls/strains, and my joints are all okay. Everything is pretty sore, and climbing down stairs is a huge chore, but that's always the case with marathons. Amy asked me immediately after I finished if I wanted to run another, or take a break for awhile. I just told her that I couldn't answer that question yet. It really is the furthest thing from my mind at that point. All I could think about was how much everything was hurting.

My sincerest thanks goes to my wife. I hope she already knows that. I think I thanked her at least several times on the way home. Thanks also to all of the wonderful, wonderful volunteers, especially the policemen directing all of the traffic for us slow runners even though we totally held people up. They never made me wait at an intersection, and they really were just so cool the whole time. I really do want to volunteer more for race support at these things. I can't even say how much I appreciate all of the people who help out through the whole thing. Thanks to the random girls at about mile 23 who were handing out Otter Pops. That really did save me at the time, even though it did make me walk.

And thanks, race people, for playing Milli Vanilli when I was running through the finish. Now this song will be associated with the Deseret News Marathon for me.

Overcoming Pride

2011-07-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I take the bus to work. Every time I take the bus to work, I end up getting pretty good naps in. While it takes a little bit longer to take the bus (a little over an hour, as compared to about 45 minutes driving myself), I don't have to pay for gas because of my awesome bus pass that only cost $100 and is good for the whole year. The biggest selling point for the bus, however, is that I get to take a couple of good naps. Frankly, I'm amazed at how rested I feel with them even though the seating is just a little bit tighter than is comfortable, and it's mostly upright.

Well, sometimes I'm really sleepy on the bus, even after I take my nap. And sometimes I wake up a little late and miss my exit. It's never been more than one or two exits which is not a bad walk.

But maybe this time I woke up and nothing looked immediately familiar to me. And maybe this time I realized that I was almost in Orem, which would be about two cities over from my home destination of Pleasant Grove. With my wife out of town, I didn't have the obvious person to call, but there were still others that I know in the area that could have helped me out.

Sometimes I'm prideful, so prideful, in fact, that I would rather just walk the two plus miles in my suit and in about 90 degree weather.

Sometimes I think I have too much pride. And then sometimes I post things on my blog and I think that if I can laugh a little bit about my plight, then maybe I'm overcoming my pride.

Just a little bit.

This and That

2011-07-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article about sprinting a week or so ago. A researcher of the mechanics of running said that the root of sprinting is essentially how hard your feet hit the ground. He then said that the world record holder in the 100m hits the ground with more than 1000 lbs of force with each stride he takes. 1000 lbs!
But in the end, humans are naturally adapted to running long distances. This is our evolutionary advantage over other animals. We're not even close to being able to run faster than other animals, but we can run much longer than any of them over long distances. Even horses.
Read this post yesterday about what brick and mortar restaurants and Borders bookstores have in common. A hint: adaptability.
There is a trailer for the Amazing Spiderman movie that is coming out next summer. It looks cool, but I can't believe they're rebooting the series so soon. It's been less than 10 years since the first, and I thought that one was really good to begin with, soooo...why the reboot?
I run a marathon in 4 days. I'm feeling okay about it.
I miss my wife. She's been gone since Sunday. My house is quiet. I think the solution is for us to get a dog to keep me company.
I love these:
Funny how white that audience is, isn't it? Like totally white. As evidenced by the dancing.

That's it. That's all I got.

The End Is Here: HP 7.2

2011-07-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

Amy and I caught the last Harry Potter movie on Friday. It was really good. It's hard when expectations are skyscraper high, but I think mine were just about evenly met. What's really nice about the movies is that they are able to stand alone. Having read the books, you can watch the movies and still really enjoy them without feeling like they didn't get it right. And you can probably watch the movies without having read the books and still be quite entertained. They do a really great job with all of it.

I can understand that the nature of the story is not one that grips every reader/watcher. Fantasy and magic and wizards and witches just may not be your cup of tea. At the same time I still have a hard time understanding when people feel like the series is overrated. Set aside the thing about how Rowling creates this whole alternate world and weaves a wonderfully fantastic tale through 4200 pages of literature. Every time I revisit the story I remember how perfectly she illustrates core principles and values that everybody should cherish and yearn for more of always - loyalty, devotion, determination, courage, among others. Are those not things that we yearn for?

I wrote this post a couple years ago when I got through reading the series, and I still feel this way now:

Several years ago Orson Scott Card spoke at a symposium at BYU. From what I can remember, his topic focused mainly on the importance of fiction and how it shapes societal trends and values. He brought up an example from the TV show Friends when Ross's ex-wife gets married to her lesbian partner. The ceremony is performed, and sanctioned by a religious minister, and one of the father's of one of the bride's attends in his military uniform. Symbolically then, the show portrays the acceptance of same-sex marriage by both religious and government leaders. This was not by accident.

Card's point in this example is that fiction often presents the breeding ground where ideas and principles are placed. How we embrace the stories put forth often leads to the adoption of the associated ethics and morals that are on display in the piece of fiction, and conversely, our rejection of the story necessarily leads to the denial of those same values. I've made this point on here before, so I'll spare you the same argument again other than to simply say, it's not ever just a story/book/movie/tv show. Our patronage of these products facilitates their growth and acceptance, not of just the final product but what values they promote.

My point (as well as Card's) in bringing all of this up is that Harry Potter is the kind of story that we should want to embrace. It is the kind of book that parents should be reading to children. Not only is the story itself very compelling and entertaining, but Harry is truly a heroic character in spite of the flaws that Rowling clearly portrays him having. He constantly sacrifices, conquers in the face of heartbreaking tragedy, and triumphs over evil. His friends perfectly characterize loyalty and devotion. The story deftly illustrates good and evil and the type of dedication that is required to overcome. Rowling draws from her own loss of her mother to describe Harry's struggles with loss. In the form of the dementors she personifies the suffocating effects of clinical depression. It really is amazing how much real life is captured in her fictional books. I love love love these stories.

And the story really is so much about relationships. You see it when Professor McGonagall stands up to Snape. You see it in (spoiler!) Snape's relationship with Harry's mother and how much he cares for the boy, but Rowling does so well to keep that point hidden until the very end, when it becomes most crucial to the plotline. You see it with Harry and his friends, Harry and Dumbledore, Harry and everyone else in the story. And then of course there is the contrarsting example of healthy relationships that is portrayed through Voldemort and all of his followers. His hold was always tenuous at best over his minions simply because he governed through fear when love is obviously such a greater tactic. The flaws of his leadership is characterized best by the Malfoys who desert him in the end because of the love that they share with one another, even though they may hate Harry.

This series reminds me of growing up reading the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid. I just loved Peter's courage and I wanted to be him. Obviously Aslan was an inspiring symbol as he was used to represent the Savior. But this is my point. So much teaching comes through these stories, and we could do worse than to have kids wanting to be like Harry, to be the kind friends that Ron and Hermione were, and to entertain ourselves through literature that supports the kind of values that we hope to perpetuate.

Oh, California (Shakes head, disappointingly)

2011-07-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

Friend of mine posted this article on FB today about the new mandate from the governor for public schools to teach gay history. What's the point? Isn't history, history? It's not like teachers ignore the contributions of gay members of society. We read several pieces from Oscar Wilde, and you know what? I love his stuff. The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite books, and the Importance of Being Earnest is probably one of the most clever plays ever written. Did our teacher mention that he was gay? Yes. Did it matter to anyone? No. History is history. Does it really make a difference who made it? Shouldn't those details come naturally as a part of the course of learning? Why this emphasis?

Special interests groups. Always special interests.

And you may have heard about the "Amazon" tax that California passed recently that forces online retailers from California to charge sales tax. The idea was to try and cover some of the budget shortfall, but it recovers very, very little and will only serve to alienate companies from doing business in the state.

This post here by economist MJ Perry talks about how businesses are leaving California in record numbers. An average of 5.4 businesses leave California a week. A week! Where do they go? In order:

Texas
Arizona
Colorado
Nevada/Utah
Virginia/North Carolina

It breaks my heart, this California business, or lack thereof. Every time I go home I remember just how much I love it down there, but I really cannot think of a place that is more hostile to my interests than that state. It's so upsetting.

Something I do love about California? Still love KROQ. Sometimes I'll pop over to the website to see what new songs I'm missing and I am always surprised by how much of the stuff I just don't know about. Everything takes so long to filter our here to Utah. I really, really like this new song from Incubus:

Plus, the morning show is pretty funny. Nothing here in Utah even comes close. Well, 97.1 has some people that I do enjoy. This morning KROQ is having a contest for people to win tickets to an LA show and the trick is that they have to tell them which orchestral version of RATM song the guys in the studio are singing. Awesome, right? It's probably enhanced by the fact that I'm listening up here at the COB in a suit and tie and these idiots on the radio are doing guitar riffs and drum beats with their mouths in the most obnoxious way possible.

That's what I got for now. Have a good one, dear ones.

The Other Shoe Has Now Dropped: Here Comes Polygamy

2011-07-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons conservatives opposed the state sanctioning of same-sex marriage was the natural extension that it could open the door to allowing for polygamy. "But that's just not true! People wouldn't jumped to those kinds of conclusions!" cried the libs. Well, here it comes.

(Ironic that Mormons are largely conservative, so ideologically we would naturally oppose this when this was a Church endorsed practice for a good number of years. Some members of the Church even think that this practice will follow after this life. But you knew all of that already and I digress...)

Kody Brown, of Sister Wives fame, was forced to move from the state of Utah after the television show made their lives plain for all to see. Utah, afraid of the association between itself and its past "lurid" history, tends to come down pretty violently on any open attempts at polygamy (think, Warren Jeffs). As a result, the Browns, all 21 of them, moved down to a Las Vegas suburb to escape some of the heat that they were facing. (Incidentally, when Amy and I traveled down to California last and stayed in Vegas on the way down, her cousin(?) had actually come back that night from hanging out with one of the kids belonging to that family and had been taped at Yogurtland by TLC, doing the things that polygamist kids do, which apparently is go eat frozen yogurt by the pound.)

(I'm going to try and limit any more parentheticals.)

Anyway, here is an article that gives a basic rundown of the events. An excerpt:

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.

More commentary on the topic from Matthew Franck over at NRO:

Of course the complete dismantling of all civil regulation of marital relations and sexual conduct is exactly where we have been heading ever since Justice Kennedy’s deeply foolish Lawrence opinion. The Times manages to find one law professor willing to stick her fingers in her ears and say “la la la I can’t hear you” to the proposition that the Lawrence reasoning has propelled us in this direction. And Professor Turley, dutifully speaking for his client, wants us to believe that his claim is a moderate and limited one. But literally no one else has reason to believe such tripe. Here we go. Here we have always known we would go.

And then there is this from Stephen Hayward at Powerline:

Meanwhile, I have been waiting for the next shoe to drop before commenting on this issue, but I didn’t think it would happen as quickly as it has. A polygamist has brought a lawsuit in federal court arguing that laws against polygamy should be struck down on the very same “right to privacy” grounds that the Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case. What, exactly, is the argument against polygamy if gay marriage is justified not simply on an expansive “right to privacy,” but also, as Justice Kennedy notoriously put it in his famous “mystery-of-the-universe” clause that each individual has the right to pursue their “own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”? Law professor and uber-blogger Ann Althouse comments, “I think the Lawrence-based argument for decriminalizing polygamy is much stronger than the Lawrence-based argument for requiring the government to give legal recognition to same-sex marriage.” Gay marriage advocates always dismissed the question of why gay marriage wouldn’t open the door to a revival of polygamy as absurd whenever it is brought up, ignoring that polygamy has a much longer record in human history than gay marriage—indeed it is still widely accepted in the Islamic world. Further, what, exactly, is the argument against polygamous gay marriage?

What's interesting about Kennedy's Lawrence opinion is that he states that the state doesn't intrude into private matters of the home and does not pretend to be omnipresent, but it really does in so many other ways. Obviously when it comes to endangering other citizens The State will go to great lengths to enter into the home. But even with simpler things like education. Heck, especially education. I just learned the other day about how Amy's sister was threatened by their school district because of the family's affinity for taking vacations, even though their kids tended to be the most academically accomplished of all of the students. In any case, The State takes a great interest in governing parental behaviors while ignoring other ones that may not be politically expedient at the time. Such is life.

So there you have it. Just like Franck said, "Here we go. Here we have always known we would go."

Little Moment of Win

2011-07-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

Amy and I bought a mattress just before we got married. Our only experience prior to this was buying our own very cheap individual mattresses, but now we had a little bit of money, we wanted to get something that would last a long time. We happened upon a sale at Macey's, chose something probably a little too quickly, and that was supposed to be the end of it.

Then over the course of the past several months it has just been slowly wreaking havoc on my back. I know Amy doesn't like it all that much either, but it has been really doing a number on me, to the extent that I can point to the specific vertebra in my spine that is taking the brunt of it. I wake up in the morning and it hurts to take deep breaths and my back always feels tight. It's even to the point that it's been affecting my running. The mattress is just too soft.

We're well outside of the return period, but I thought that if I called their customer service and pleaded my case enough, I could get them to take it back and we could get a different one, probably with some penalties, but worth it.

I never got belligerent or demanding. I don't do that as well as some people, but I was really persistent and kept thinking of everything I could to plead my case. I called today and it took about an hour of begging, but I finally got them to agree to it. The customer service rep talked to her manager at least four times, and in what was probably my last ditch effort, she cut me off mid-sentence and told me that they would do it with a restocking and delivery fee.

Hallelujah!

Field of Dreams 2

2011-07-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Loved this video.

Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout with Taylor Lautner from Taylor Lautner

"I walked through two miles of cornfields. Let's play some football."

The most interesting thing though: Dennis Haysbert as this generation's James Earl Jones? I like it.

Party Rockin

2011-07-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

A few things I wanted to post:

I've totally gotten Amy into So You Think You Can Dance. It's kind of awesome. The show is promoting a national dance day on July 30, and they have several different tutorials on dances to learn. I'm hoping that we'll really do it and get into it. Start with this video if you're interested:

Over at Powerline, I read this blogpost about the conservative case for taxes. I thought it was really insightful. Here is a key excerpt:
But here’s the case: one problem with our current tax policy is that at the moment the American people as a whole are receiving a dollar of government for the price of only 60 cents. (I don’t say a “dollar’s worth of government,” but let’s leave that snark for another time.) Any time you can get a dollar of something at a 40 percent discount, you are going to demand more of it. My theory is simple: if the broad middle class of Americans are made to pay for all of the government they get, they may well start to demand less of it, quickly.

There’s corollary point to this. Back in the Reagan years, there was a vigorous internal debate about whether to resist tax increases because “starving the beast” would hold down spending. But evidence is now in: this strategy doesn’t work. My witness on this point is the Cato Institute’s chairman, William Niskanen (who was chairman of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers at one point, and a person whose libertarian credentials are hard to beat). Niskanen noted this striking finding [1] in a Cato Policy Report a while ago:

In a professional paper published in 2002, I presented evidence that the relative level of federal spending over the period 1981 through 2000 was coincident with the relative level of the federal tax burden in the opposite direction; in other words, there was a strong negative relation between the relative level of federal spending and tax revenues. Controlling for the unemployment rate, federal spending increased by about one-half percent of GDP for each one percentage point decline in the relative level of federal tax revenues. . . One implication of this relation is that a tax increase may be the most effective policy to reduce the relative level of federal spending.

Other economists have reached the same conclusion [2]. In other words, if you want to limit government spending, instead of starving the beast, serve the check. (Well, I can hear everyone now, there’s goes your invitation to Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meetings! True that.) Right now the anti-tax bias of the right has the effect of shifting costs onto future generations who do not vote in today’s elections, and enables liberals to defend against spending restraints very cheaply. Time to end the free ride.
An article over at NRO talks about a case of overly restrictive separation between Church and state. Article is here. An excerpt:
This isn’t the first episode of such trouble. In May, with the approach of Memorial Day — always a day of proud and sorrowful reflection at veterans’ cemeteries, typically characterized by invocations of God’s mercy and His blessings on our country — Ocasio required that the ministers who planned to speak at the cemetery submit their proposed prayers to her in advance. Pastor Scott Rainey of Living Word Church did so, and was told to revise his prayers to be more “inclusive” — by excluding specific reference to his own religion. Appealing to the VA in Washington, Rainey was referred to a deputy in the general counsel’s office, who backed Ocasio.

Rainey took his case to federal district court in Houston, where Judge Lynn Hughes sharply rebuked the VA and Ocasio, issuing a restraining order against them on May 26. As Hughes said in his opinion, “the government cannot gag citizens” in the name of “some bureaucrat’s notion of cultural homogeneity.”
I read a pretty cool article on ESPN about what The Decision (Lebron's televised decision to choose the Heat over the Cavaliers) looked like through the eyes of the kids at the Boys and Girls Club where it was televised from. It was a really fun look, and it also reminded me of how important the Boys and Girls Club was for me when I was growing up with two parents who worked and no one else who could look after me in the summers. I still even remember one of the guys that I really looked up to - George Gorey. I ought to look him up. It takes a village...and I feel like I had all sorts of people that I owe so much to because of roles that they played for me during my childhood. Here is the article.
A friend of mine will occasionally send out songs or albums that she's really into, and I do the same thing every time. I'll just set it aside for a month or three, start get into the music on my own, and then remember that she sent it to me way before it all got big. That's happened at least three times that I can think of right off the bat. Anyway, the latest is this song. And I just love love the video.

Party in the USA

2011-07-07T09:03:00.000-07:00

This is very journaly and sans pictures, so brace yourself.

I had my last long run before the Deseret News Marathon on Friday. It just about destroyed me, and maybe I'll write about that somewhere else, but not here. Because of that run, I thought beforehand that I wouldn't want to drive the full-length of I-15 between Utah and California so I suggested to Amy that maybe we should stay with her aunt and uncle in Las Vegas, stay the night, then drive the rest of the way in the morning. That plan would have been fine, but it ended up making the drive feel much longer than normal, and it made Saturday feel pretty darn short, even though we got in around lunch time.

We arrived to have lunch with the Dave and Caitlin and company, then parted to do some shopping and take care of a few things. That left us with just enough time in the afternoon to drop by the pool before we would go to the Angel game that night. Living in not-California means that I only have a couple of opportunities each baseball season to catch an MLB game at Anaheim stadium. We had terrible seats, but at least they were inexpensive, and the Angels did us the favor of actually putting some runs on the board. They've been pretty hot as of late with their veteran players finally stepping up to lead the team. Jered Weaver pitched the game against Clayton Kershaw, which should have actually been a premier match-up, except that Kershaw was overmatched and Weaver was in his All-Star form. There's nobody's pitching motion that I like more than Weaver's. He has long limbs that really just whip that ball out over the plate. It's a really cool thing to see.

Sunday turned out to be a really busy day between making sure that we saw both of my parents, managing schedules, while still trying to make sure that we made a full block of church meetings. Normally we would just go with the Reids, but we needed a more accommodating time for our appointments, which meant that we would go to church in a random ward. I thought the Irvine stake would work out well for us since I would know people in just about any of the wards and it would be fun to see old faces. We weren't able to attend my old family ward, but I thought it would be a good idea to see if we could make one of the wards on the other side of Irvine where the Redfords go to church. Turns out that we picked the right ward, just the wrong Sunday, as they happened to be away on one of their Shasta trips for the summer. It mattered little, however, because I was able to run into a guy that I had signed up with for last year's St. George marathon. I got to catch up with him, and a few other people that I just happened to know, people who I forgot would also be apart of that ward. One guy who bore his testimony in sacrament meeting had some familiarity to me as well, but I couldn't place it until we were in Elders Quorum. When I heard his voice again, saw his face up close, and heard his name, I put together that we had both served in Chile together as part of the same group of missionaries that arrived and left together. That was a fun little reunion for me.

But the best part of the meetings was how Amy and I felt while there. We have appreciated our family ward here in Utah, but in some ways people have been slow to acknowledge our presence. It was a couple of months before anyone from the bishopric met with us, before we got home and visiting teaching assignments. Even now, three months later, we still don't have callings. When we dropped into this Irvine ward we had all manner of people come up to us and ask our names, our lives, if we were visiting or staying. I even had a few different soft pitches from people saying that I should move there and be a part of the ward. The classes were all so engaging. The quorum and relief societies felt united and interested in each other. There was a great sense of familiarity with everyone. It was exactly how anyone would hope to feel attending a new ward. It was a really great experience. Amy and I are hoping that we can be the kind of people who would lead the way in making our own ward as welcoming as it was in the Irvine Westpark ward.

Every evening in California ended with games. Always games. Glorious games.

The day of the 4th started quickly. We left at eight to pick up some items for a salad, some last minute essentials, and then were ready to leave just a little after nine. We celebrated the day with about five other couples and three sets of kids. Although the parking is very limited at Newport, that also naturally limits the number of people who are actually on the beach, leaving us with plenty of free space for whiffleball games, catch, and whatever else we can think of. The day was hot, but with the water cold it was a perfect situation to be in. It was just so nice to hang out in the ocean water. There were even these little fishes that would swim up the shore, lots of shells buried in the sand, and just a clear, clear blue-green water. It was just spectacular. Freedom dawgs graced our festivities, along with a couple of other salads, a number of red fruits, and plenty of desserts to snack from.

That night we watched a fireworks show right over by Tustin High School. They were fun.

It's just fun to be at home, around people that I love so much. I love how familiar Mason is with Amy and I. He seems to have a pretty good crush on her too. I love being around Ryan and Tyler, especially how much Ryan is growing up and wanting to be a part of everything. I love being at the beach all day long. I love napping on the warm sand with the rolling waves drowning out the sounds of everyone who is at the beach. I love free and plentiful snacks to munch on the whole day long. I love playing games with people that just really love playing games, even if I only seemed to lose the whole weekend long. And I just love being around people that are so close to my heart. You know what else I love?

America! God bless the U-S-A!

I Got You

2011-07-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

In years past, I used to blog pretty regularly about So You Think You Can Dance. I had review posts of the show. I've seen a live taping. I even went to the tour a couple years ago. And then they had it on straight from summer and in the fall season, and it was just too much. I liked it as my summer show because there wasn't much else on, and I liked leaving it there. Plus, having it back-to-back like that was just overkill for me. I saw a few last summer, but not much more. I don't even know who won.

I wouldn't quite say I'm back all the way into it, but I do still really enjoy the show. I think it's so fun, the dancers are so impressive, and I just love dance as an art form and as an athletic sport. There is so much to it, and so much expression that comes through it.

Anyway, this past Wednesday had one routine that really impressed me. I watched it again just a minute ago and it still gives me chills every time I watch it. I'm a sucker for the lyrical hip hop routines that Napoleon and Tabitha come up with, and I just loved the concept for this one, the dancers, and the music. It takes a lot to have a stand-out performance because you need the right intersection between all of those factors. Plus, Melanie is just adorable. Lots of impressive dancers this season. I think this one got it:

It's awesome, right? I just love that one. I'll probably even watch it again once I'm done writing this.

Well, this is me signing off for the weekend. Time to head back to California for Summer Christmas, catch a ball game, some beach time, and hang out with some of the people that I love most in this whole world. I'm so excited for it.

I probably will have one more post coming this weekend in honor of the 4th because I have been reading some interesting articles related to our country's military, so maybe check back in a few.

Oh, and I better give a shout out to Canada day. Lots of great things happening this weekend. Have a great holiday, dear ones!

NY Legislature Endorses Same Sex Marriage Bill

2011-06-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

Last week it became legal in New York for all, gay and straight alike, to marry. This was another instance of legislators taking it upon themselves to award same sex couples the legal to right to marry in the eyes of the state. Want some reading?

These ones all come from NRO: From the editors, interview with Maggie Gallagher (head of the National Organization for Marriage), interview (very long) with Robert George (Princeton Professor who lectures extensively on marriage and conscience rights), and an article by George Weigel, and this one from Mona Charen.
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.
And what may be the most interesting of them all, an article in the New York Times by Katherine Franke, professor of law at Columbia University who is a strong same-sex marriage advocate.

Now for some excerpts. From George Weigel, who talks about this from the moral relativity angle:

But the analogy simply doesn’t work. Legally enforced segregation involved the same kind of coercive state power that the proponents of gay marriage now wish to deploy on behalf of their cause. Something natural and obvious — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” — was being denied by the state in its efforts to maintain segregated public facilities and to deny full citizenship rights to African Americans. Once the American people came to see that these arrangements, however hallowed by custom (and prejudice), were, in fact, unnatural and not obvious, the law was changed.

What the gay lobby proposes in the matter of marriage is precisely the opposite of this. Marriage, as both religious and secular thinkers have acknowledged for millennia, is a social institution that is older than the state and that precedes the state. The task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution; it is not to attempt its redefinition. To do the latter involves indulging the totalitarian temptation that lurks within all modern states: the temptation to remanufacture reality. The American civil-rights movement was a call to recognize moral reality; the call for gay marriage is a call to reinvent reality to fit an agenda of personal willfulness. The gay-marriage movement is thus not the heir of the civil-rights movement; it is the heir of Bull Connor and others who tried to impose their false idea of moral reality on others by coercive state power.

A humane society will find ample room in the law for accommodating a variety of human relationships in matters of custodial care, hospital visiting rights, and inheritance. But there is nothing humane about the long march toward the dictatorship of relativism, nor will there be anything humane about the destination of that march, should it be reached. The viciousness visited upon Archbishop Dolan and other defenders of marriage rightly understood during the weeks before the vote in Albany is yet another testimony to the totalitarian impulse that lurks beneath the gay marriage movement.

What's interesting about the NY situation is that Republican politicians all backed out of the way to let this happen. This could have been sent as a referendum to the voters of New York, and it's possible, maybe even likely that they would have voted it down, as has been the case in every other state where it has been put to a vote.

There is also some interesting evidence that maybe this isn't something that same-sex marriage proponents are really that excited about; not so much that they're really interested in the institution of marriage itself, but just a validation of their lifestyle. Mona Charen notes in her article:

Supporters of gay marriage (most prominently the New York Times, which reported New York’s legalization of such unions last week with about as much hoopla as it did the Japanese surrender in 1945) are ecstatic.

Actually, the first sentence of this column might be misleading. While it might seem, from the intense activism on the subject, that gays are impatient to reach the altar, it may not be true. Surveys in countries that have legalized gay marriage have found comparatively small numbers of homosexuals seeking marriage (between 2 and 5 percent in Belgium, and between 2 and 6 percent in Holland). It’s quite possible that legalizing same-sex marriage is sought mostly for symbolic reasons — as a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on homosexuality. (Just by the way, the funniest sign at a recent Obama speech was held by a gay-marriage advocate irritated by the president’s claim that his views on the subject are “evolving.” The sign read, “Just Evolve Already.”)

And then the editors make reference to the article by Katherine Franke. She writes:

While many in our community have worked hard to secure the right of same-sex couples to marry, others of us have been working equally hard to develop alternatives to marriage. For us, domestic partnerships and civil unions aren’t a consolation prize made available to lesbian and gay couples because we are barred from legally marrying. Rather, they have offered us an opportunity to order our lives in ways that have given us greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage.

It’s not that we’re antimarriage; rather, we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security. Like New York City’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been in a relationship for over 10 years without marrying, one can be an ardent supporter of marriage rights for same-sex couples while also recognizing that serious, committed relationships can be formed outside of marriage.

Here’s why I’m worried: Winning the right to marry is one thing; being forced to marry is quite another.

How’s that? If the rollout of marriage equality in other states, like Massachusetts, is any guide, lesbian and gay people who have obtained health and other benefits for their domestic partners will be required by both public and private employers to marry their partners in order to keep those rights. In other words, “winning” the right to marry may mean “losing” the rights we have now as domestic partners, as we’ll be folded into the all-or-nothing world of marriage.

Of course, this means we’ll be treated just as straight people are now. But this moment provides an opportunity to reconsider whether we ought to force people to marry — whether they be gay or straight — to have their committed relationships recognized and valued.

Doesn't that thinking seem convoluted? Is marriage about permanence, monogamy, and exclusivity? It seems from Franke's point of view, marriage is restrictive and not all that advantageous. Is this the reason why in other countries that have embraced same-sex marriage, those people seem to rarely engage in the practice themselves, because the institution no longer holds that meaning?

In his interview, George makes this point:

As Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and I argue in our Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article, once one buys into the ideology of sexual liberalism, the reality that has traditionally been denominated as “marriage” loses all intelligibility. That is true whether one regards oneself politically as a liberal or a conservative. For people who have absorbed the central premises of sexual liberation (whether formally and explicitly, as liberals tend to do, or merely implicitly as those conservatives who have gone in for it tend to do), marriage simply cannot function as the central principle or standard of rectitude in sexual conduct, as it has in Western philosophy, theology, and law for centuries. The idea that sexual intercourse (the behavioral component of reproduction) consummates and actualizes marriage as a one-flesh union of sexually complementary spouses naturally ordered to the good of procreation loses its force and even its sense. The moral belief that sex belongs in (and only in) marriage, where it is of unitive as well as procreative significance, and where the unitive and procreative dimensions are intrinsically connected (though not in a mere relationship of means to end), begins to seem baseless — the sort of thing that can be believed, if at all, only on the authority of revealed religion. As a result, to the extent that one is in the grip of sexual-liberationist ideology, one will find no reason of moral principle why people oughtn’t to engage in sexual relations prior to marriage, cohabit in non-marital sexual partnerships, form same-sex sexual partnerships, or confine their sexual partnerships to two persons, rather than three or more in polyamorous sexual ensembles.

The editors at NRO go on to note:

Though they supported its passage, you see, Franke and her partner will not seek a marriage license under the new law. They fear that in practice it might force them to be legally married in order to hold on to shared employment benefits and social respectability. They want to keep their domestic partnership, which gives them “greater freedom” than “the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage”—the freedom to form relationships that “far exceed, and often improve on, the narrow, legal definition of marriage.”

Franke leaves out just how these relationships “far exceed” marriage, perhaps not trusting her readers to see them as improvements after all. But then the Times had already divulged the empirically supported “open secret” about how often partners in same-sex civil marriages expressly reject sexual exclusivity.

For years, we were told that same-sex marriage was necessary for meeting couples’ concrete needs. Then, that it could and should be used to make same-sex couples live by marital norms. More recently, that relationship recognition was necessary for equal personal dignity. Now Katherine Franke, on the day that same-sex marriage passes in New York, tells us that that was all wrong.

That point in there, that same-sex couples are rarely exclusive, is one that is not often brought up, but is a fact born out by research (this post I wrote here in the run up to Prop 8 has some of those numbers, which are quite astounding). It really puts a damper on the argument that these couples just want the same lives that heterosexual couples have.

Not really going anywhere with this. Just thought those were some interesting points.

I Do Love Utah

2011-06-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's funny when I try and have this conversation with people. I begin by saying something like, "you know, as an undergrad, I just hated living here. I was always so sour about it, the weather, the people, whatever, and I couldn't wait to get out," and then the other person chimes in and I never really get a chance to explain that however strongly I may have felt that before, I don't feel that way anymore. I was talking to a single friend about this some months ago and I did manage to get to the part where I say I do like it here, and then he responded with, "well, it's more enjoyable when you're married." Screeeeeeeech!

No. That's not the reason. That feels like such a cop-out response. There really are some great things about being here. It's affordable, the weather is comparatively mild to much of the country, and really, there are some great things about living among so many people share similar values (although for my own reasons I'd like to raise my kids apart from a Church culture, which is a lot like why I think people should travel abroad to experience different places, it just broadens you as a person).

My favorite things about Utah, however, really have so much more to do with its geographical elements. The snow here is an obvious draw for many people, but in the last year I just haven't been able to get enough of the warm weather aspects. Amy and I have been golfing for our past two FHEs and it's just wonderful, even if it was above 90 degrees yesterday. My newfound love for troping is obvious, but I wanted to give a shout-out to Southern Utah and canyoneering.

Rappel into Great Cathedral in Pinecreek

My dad grew up playing around in the rain forest as a kid. Some of my favorite times with him were just listening to his stories about playing in there, getting lost and not finding his way out for a couple of days, building tree forts and the like. And even though he has plenty of love for the outdoors, camping was just never something we did as a family. But the nice part is that I had member friends and some of my first experiences with the Church were scouting trips.

We went to Southern Utah and mountain biked in Moab, camped and hiked the Narrows in Zion, and had a lot of fun. We did a few other trips in the ensuing years, but nothing consistent.

Luckily for me I married someone who has such a great appreciation for camping and the outdoors. You know the funny thing about Amy? One of her stipulations about getting married was that I had to promise her we would go camping at least once a year. (What's mine you ask? Baseball. She had to come to love baseball.) At our current rate, we already have the next 5 years covered, maybe more.

We met up with a couple of our friends down in Zion this past weekend and it was only a 24 hour trip, but it was so much fun. Our friends, Jessica and Andrew, got some passes to go to Keyhole, and it just so happened that we were camped next to a couple of Andrew's buddies who had two extra passes to Pinecreek. There were several rappels in each canyon and a good amount of still, murky, foul-smelling water to wade through. So great. Later that night after we had arrived home, I felt the similar swaying motions from the rappels like you sometimes do when you've gone to an amusement park for the day.

Now I have my very own harness and a good base level to my outdoor equipment. I'm excited to explore some different areas of Utah, do some stuff up in the Uintahs, and to just keep on getting out.

It's beautiful here. I'm glad I finally figured that out.

Do you have $100k I Can Borrow?

2011-06-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

Or if you're looking for early Christmas presents, this is on my list:

I also like this video from the same guy:

Saying Sorry

2011-06-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

I read a pretty cool article this morning by Chuck Colson, former council to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. You can read the article here. He went to prison for a time, found God, then went on a crusade to help other prisoners find religion.

And now some excerpts. He brings up an interesting point here about how the secularization of society brings about a moral relativity that negates the need for seeking and expressing forgiveness:

The ability to forgive is one of the most powerful forces for good in any society. It can reconcile the most grievous altercations, which are an ever-present reality in a fallen world. Forgiveness brings about shalom — the biblical term for concord and harmony — between people who have the greatest differences imaginable and can transform institutions and even warring nations.

America is rightly known for its forgiving nature. The land of second chances, we like to say. What other nation in history has simultaneously fought major world wars against two mighty military powers — Japan and Germany — eventually conquered its attackers, and then turned right around to rebuild the very countries it fought?

And yet in recent years, Americans have become a deeply cynical and unforgiving people. A 1988 Gallup poll revealed that 50 percent of Americans do not believe that they could forgive others; another revealed that “forgiveness is something virtually all Americans aspire to” (94 percent) but “is not something we frequently offer.” Only 48 percent acknowledged attempting to forgive others. And yet, as Melissa Healy, in the Los Angeles Times article “The Science of Forgiveness” noted a few years ago, a refusal to forgive those who have harmed us can increase the risk of heart attacks and depression.

How and why did we reach this tragic place?

Some saw this sad state of affairs coming. In 1973, psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote a popular book titled Whatever Happened to Sin? Good question. What happened is that sin has become the most politically incorrect subject we can possibly raise in polite company, because it involves being judgmental.

But a society that doesn’t take sin seriously has difficulty taking forgiveness seriously: After all, if nobody does anything wrong, there’s nothing to forgive.

[Emphasis mine] I think he makes a really good point there. In a world where morality is relative, the standards for right and wrong become hazy, leaving many things up to question.

Here is an example of forgiveness that he mentions in the article:

For instance, many years ago, a young woman named Dee Dee Washington sat in a car waiting for her boyfriend, a young man who, unbeknownst to Dee Dee, was purchasing drugs. The boyfriend got into an altercation with the drug dealer, whose name was Ron Flowers. Racing from the scene, Ron pulled out a gun and shot Dee Dee as she waited in the car. She died of her wounds, and Flowers was convicted of her murder.

For 14 years, Ron denied killing Dee Dee. But then he became involved in Prison Fellowship’s ministry. In our Inner-Change Freedom Initiative (IFI), offenders are confronted with the harm they have done to their victims and the families of victims.

Ron finally admitted to the murder. He then wrote to Dee Dee’s mother, Anna Washington, expressing deep remorse for his crime. Every year of Ron’s sentence, Mrs. Washington had written to the parole board urging them to deny him parole. However, the week Ron confessed, Mrs. Washington felt an overwhelming conviction that she should meet with the man who killed her daughter.

When the visit was arranged, a repentant Ron told Mrs. Washington how he had come to kill her precious daughter, and he asked to be forgiven. Mrs. Washington took his hands in hers. “I forgive you,” she said.

I attended Ron’s graduation service in the prison. As he was walking toward me to receive his certificate I saw out of the corner of my eye a tall, handsome, African American woman stand up in the crowd and come toward us. She threw her arms around Ron and announced, “I am the mother of the young girl that Ron murdered.” She proceeded to tell the stunned crowd the story, and ended by declaring, “This young man is my adopted son.”

After his release, Mrs. Washington helped Ron Flowers adjust to life back in the community, invited him over for dinner, and even attended his wedding. This beautiful ending to a tragic story could only happen through God’s grace. Only he can bring about such reconciliation and healing.

I think it's in forgiveness where people do things that are extraordinary, seemingly superhuman.

Just thought that was interesting. Have a good weekend, y'all!

The Center of the Universe

2011-06-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

When you're single, the subject of dating, or the lack thereof, is the center of your universe. A high percentage, upwards of 80-90%, of your energy, attention, and time goes towards dating when you are not married. I've got a pretty healthy list of different blogs that I subscribe to and a good amount of them belong to my single friends, and so many of the topics are about what's wrong with guys (most personal blogs belong to women), why nobody knows how to date, or not wanting to be defined as being single.

It's kind of a funny time for me (and Amy, probably). We're recently married, and it's as happy as can be, but we're not consumed with talk about any one thing in particular. We don't have kids so we don't gravitate towards those kinds of discussions, but we're also married so there is no concern about our relationship status because it simply is - we are married. That is it. There's no question about our commitment to each other and where we are going in the future.

What strikes me as funny is that being on this side of things, or between things, I've just kind of forgotten how consuming it is to be single. When you're single, you're concerned with where you could move because of the social scene that is available to you. You worry about your roommates and whether they're involved, either with someone, or with the local social scene (ward). You go to activities and parties and gatherings because you want to make friends and be noticed and be impressionable without being overbearing. For the insecure, you make decisions to make you appear favorable because you're compensating for those areas you think you lack. Your conversation revolves either around why you're not dating, what's wrong with the opposite sex, why you're hesitant to commit or why he or she won't commit to you, and you come up with endless amounts of theories and entire methods of analysis and new approaches to philosophy that attempt to coherently and rationally explain everything in its current state. "Why I am single and nothing works out for me." Your prayers plead for opportunities to meet people, to feel safe with someone, and to meet a person with whom you'll finally click and where things will eventually fall into place. Even your family and friends might pray for that too.

It's completely consuming. And then you get married. Then it's just not anymore. You get home and you play a round of 9 holes for your FHE activity and decide that you'll read from Exodus that night. You'll work on your contribution for your mother-in-law's birthday. Or watch TV in bed together. Or plan your next vacation. Or just look forward to the weekend and just hanging out together and with your friends.

It's the most wonderful thing in the world.

Anyway, I read a talk this afternoon that I thought was really insightful. The Uses of Adversity. Here are a few paragraphs:

I commend the gospel with all of its auxiliaries and the temple to you, but I do not want you to believe for one minute that if you keep all the commandments and live as close to the Lord as you can and do everything right and fight off the entire priests quorum one by one and wait chastely for your missionary to return and pay your tithing and attend your meetings, accept calls from the bishop, and have a temple marriage, I do not want you to believe that bad things will not happen to you. And when that happens, I do not want you to say that God was not true. Or, to say, 'They promised me in Primary, they promised me when I was a Mia Maid, they promised me from the pulpit that if I were very, very good, I would be blessed. But the boy I want doesn't know I exist, or the missionary I've waited for and kept chaste so we both could go to the temple turned out to be a flake,' or far worse things than any of the above. Sad things—children who are sick or developmentally handicapped, husbands who are not faithful, illnesses that can cripple, or violence, betrayals, hurts, deaths, losses—when those things happen, do not say God is not keeping his promises to me. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in event of pain, and when that pain comes (and it will come because we came here on earth to have pain among other things), when it comes, rejoice that you have resource to deal with your pain.

Now, I do not want to suggest for a moment, nor do I believe, that God visits us with all that pain. I think that may occur in individual cases, but I think we fought a war in heaven for the privilege of coming to a place that was unjust. That was the idea of coming to earth—that it was unjust, that there would be pain and grief and sorrow. As Eve so eloquently said, it is better that we should suffer. Now, her perspective may not be shared by all. But, I am persuaded that she had rare insight, more than her husband, into the necessity of pain, although none of us welcome it.

This is the main thrust of this essay:

So I do not want you to think that I believe anything good about pain. I hate pain. I hate injustice. I hate loss. I hate all the things we all hate. None of us love those things. Nor, as I say, do I think God takes pleasure in the pain that comes to us. But, we came to a world where we are not protected from those things. I want to talk to you not in behalf of pain—heaven forbid—nor do I think that all pain is for the best. I'm certain that's not true. I'm certain pain destroys and embitters far more often than it ennobles. I'm sure injustice is destructive of good things in the world far more often than people rise above it. I'm certain that in this unjust awful world, there are far more victims that do not profit from their experience than those who do. So I do not want you to think I'm saying that pain is good for you. Pain is terrible.

I want to talk rather about when pain unbidden and unwanted and unjustly comes—to you or to those that you love or to these eleven-year-old girls as they get along in their lives. I want to discuss how to encounter that pain in such a way that it does not destroy you, how to find profit in that awful and unrewarding experience. I want to share with you some stories, mostly not my own, although I'm in all of them, but the pain is mainly someone else's. Some of the pain is my own. All of it is real, and all of it taught me. What I want is not to lecture to you or to sermonize you, but to share with you some lessons I have learned through pain, my own and others', that are valuable to me and, in the end, to share with you what I think I have learned from those incremental experiences.

If you have 20 or so minutes, I highly recommend you give a good go of it. He gives a great qualified and insightful voice into adversity. It's also very real adversity he speaks of - abuse, tragedy, etc.

In a lot of ways, I think I have been spared a lot of pain in my life. In just about every way I can imagine, I have had a relatively easy go of things. Life for me is not just good, but "great" coupled with every superlative you could ever think of. I have many moments of wonder about why I should be so blessed when others are not, but my hope is that I can lay up in store for those times when the coffers of blessings begin to empty. I think that essay does a lot to help reorient back to that kind of perspective.

I guess I'm linking the topic of dating to adversity because...well, it should be obvious. Dating is a great treatise in adversity.

At Last: Troping

2011-06-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

So down in Mona (where is Mona, you ask? Why it's just past the lavender farms if you're heading south down the I-15, but before you get to Nephi) there is a pond of pure exquisiteness. This little town is devoid of any real attraction that would ever bring anyone but Mona residents within its city boundaries. It boasts a population of 850 citizens that is 98% white, which is crazy to me.

But yeah. Nothing there worth going to see, except for this one thing...

Troping. Some guys we know coined the term which is this - TRee-rOPE-swINGING. I have been wanting to go and visit this place ever since I first heard about it, which was a year or two ago. It is at least my new favorite thing in 2011. I am in love with it. There is this lake/pond down there, with trees that are strong enough to bear the weight of some pretty large men which hang out perfectly over this blissful oasis.

On Saturday when we went it was a very pleasant 82 degrees. The water is a little brisk, but not even as cold as most of the lakes up here. Our friends have even gone to the extent of naming the two trees where troping happens, Ruth and Maryland. We spent our whole afternoon with Maryland, awash in her cool shade while she lifted us to fits of joy that usually demand a cost of admission. These guys also bring with them their own ropes which are fashioned out of webbing and a ski rope handle.

Doesn't just the sight of it take your breath away? Anyway, it's a place where dreams come true. Ever since we went on Saturday I really can't stop thinking about it. I'm totally serious when I say I'm obsessed. I would go everyday if I could. You know how I get kind of fanatical about certain things that I really love it? That's me and troping right now. For more pictures and a video, visit Amy's blog.

Conan Speaks!

2011-06-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Is there a more gracious person than Conan O'Brien? I posted about his sign-off from NBC and I really appreciated how he handled his situation with so much class. I just loved how he handled that whole thing even though he totally got the raw end of the deal.

Anyway, he was asked to give the commencement speech to the graduating class at Dartmouth college this year. (Here is the text of his speech.) He is self-effacing and very funny throughout the first 16-17 minutes or so. In spite of earlier protests against Bush Sr., he gives the elder statesman some very complimentary remarks which I just love. What's really cool, though, is how thoughtful and personal his comments were to those students. Here's an excerpt I'd like to direct you towards:

Yes, you parents must be patient because it is indeed a grim job market out there. And one of the reasons it's so tough finding work is that aging baby boomers refuse to leave their jobs. Trust me on this. Even when they promise you for five years that they are going to leave—and say it on television—I mean you can go on YouTube right now and watch the guy do it, there is no guarantee they won't come back. Of course I'm speaking generally.

But enough. This is not a time for grim prognostications or negativity. No, I came here today because, believe it or not, I actually do have something real to tell you.

Eleven years ago I gave an address to a graduating class at Harvard. I have not spoken at a graduation since because I thought I had nothing left to say. But then 2010 came. And now I'm here, three thousand miles from my home, because I learned a hard but profound lesson last year and I'd like to share it with you. In 2000, I told graduates "Don't be afraid to fail." Well now I'm here to tell you that, though you should not fear failure, you should do your very best to avoid it. Nietzsche famously said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting. What Nietzsche should have said is "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning."

Now, by definition, Commencement speakers at an Ivy League college are considered successful. But a little over a year ago, I experienced a profound and very public disappointment. I did not get what I wanted, and I left a system that had nurtured and helped define me for the better part of 17 years. I went from being in the center of the grid to not only off the grid, but underneath the coffee table that the grid sits on, lost in the shag carpeting that is underneath the coffee table supporting the grid. It was the making of a career disaster, and a terrible analogy.

But then something spectacular happened. Fogbound, with no compass, and adrift, I started trying things. I grew a strange, cinnamon beard. I dove into the world of social media. I started tweeting my comedy. I threw together a national tour. I played the guitar. I did stand-up, wore a skin-tight blue leather suit, recorded an album, made a documentary, and frightened my friends and family. Ultimately, I abandoned all preconceived perceptions of my career path and stature and took a job on basic cable with a network most famous for showing reruns, along with sitcoms created by a tall, black man who dresses like an old, black woman. I did a lot of silly, unconventional, spontaneous and seemingly irrational things and guess what: with the exception of the blue leather suit, it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don't understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged—and this is important—had more conviction about what I was doing.

I just think it's so cool how much he insight he gives about how much he was able to grow from what is probably his greatest disappointment. I think Conan just jumped into the short list of people I'd like to meet someday. He just seems awesome. And here's the video if you're interested in watching any of it. He's really funny throughout. You'll be glad you read/watched it.

Face to Face, Strung Out at The Complex

2011-06-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

I really hate the venue. It's really one of the crappiest that I've ever been to. The building itself has no appeal. The acoustics are terrible. The speakers hang from well out in front of the stage so if you're close to the front, you can't really hear the music very well. It's just what you'd expect to have if you set up a stage inside of a warehouse that had no embellishments inside of it. The parking is nice though. Anyway...

Face to Face was headlining this tour, so Strung Out got a pretty short set which was a little heartbreaking for me. Strung Out leaned most heavily on Twisted By Design and An American Paradox, but playing most of the songs that you'd expect at their shows. Jason Cruz is still the coolest lead man ever. He came out with his American Choppers cut-off tee, black hair hanging just over his bandana, complete with a handlebar mustache. It was a sweet look. The highlight of their set for me was when they were playing one of their old songs off Support Your Troops and they broke into Pantera's song Walk. I just kept laughing, and they only got through "Re! Spect! Walk!" before Jason yelled "psych!" and broke back into their own song. They closed with Matchbook like they do every show that I've ever been to which is now either approaching or has surpassed 20 shows. One of their guitars didn't play for about half their set which is especially sad considering how big a component of their music that is.

The last, and only, time I saw Face to Face was at a New Year's Eve show back in 1998 (1999) where Strung Out also opened for them. I loved them before then, but that's where a band really makes its mark on you - just how good they are when they're actually performing live.

They are every bit as good as I remember them from when I was 18. They played a few new songs, which were actually still good, but they relied heavily on their old stuff which was really what everyone wanted. Some of the high lights included just about EVERYTHING that is featured on their live album. I especially loved Don't Turn Away, A-Ok, and I Won't Lie Down. Trever Keith is a really fun front man. I also forgot just how complicated their bass lines are. Just really good stuff all around. I thought that I had heard just about every song that I wanted when they finished, but they came out for an encore and finished up with Not For Free (?).

I thought it was weird when there wasn't a pit for Strung Out, but it got pretty good for Face to Face so I jumped in for a few songs. Utah will never match the energy of a Southern California show, but the crowd was still pretty amped for this one by the time Face to Face came out. (At home, when you go to a show, it's a whole-body experience. Getting to the front means constantly pushing on the guy in front of you so you don't get crushed by the crowd trying to fight their way through you to the stage. This results in pretty tired arms by the end of the night.

Anyway, it really was such a good time. Going to a live show is really one of the things that I just live for. Strung Out opened up with Too Close to See and I just couldn't stop grinning as they were playing. Not only because the live version of the song is much better than the original, but just because it's so fun to hear your favorite bands play your favorite songs live.

The Weekly Roundup

2011-06-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Our summer is quickly becoming very, very busy. This past week I ended up saying goodbye to a friend of mine that is going back to his real life in New York. In just short of a year, he has seen the dissolution of his marriage, ended up taking a leave of absence from work, came back to Utah for a few months, and is now returning to everything that is facing him out there. I won't get into more details than that it has been a very trying experience for him. What's been amazing to me has been witnessing his progression from very low-lows back to a level that is contented and quite accepting, especially given his circumstances.

I've loved having him back here for my own selfish reasons of just enjoying the rekindling of that old friendship. He was ushered out this week by the arrival of the Reids as they all came to celebrate the marriage of their father's second marriage.

It was a mostly understated and nice event. The kids came with all their kidlets and we played more games than anyone can really handle. We ate many meals out and my favorite part was the further development of mine and Amy's relationship with Dave's kids. We didn't get to see some of the other quasi-nieces and nephews as I would have liked, but it seems like Amy and I are pretty grounded into Mason's consciousness, and I couldn't be happier about that.

What's so amazing about all of this is witnessing firsthand the devastation that divorce brings, combined with the reasons that initiated the divorce in the first place. It devastates a person and is just about one of the most traumatic events that could ever happen in a person's life. However, in spite of how soul-crushing and heart-breaking the experience can be, people find ways to bounce back, and I have to attribute that to the healing and peace that the Atonement brings. The miracle of the Atonement includes not only the miracle of forgiveness, but the miracle of binding of the broken-hearted.

What's more is that I've also been a witness to a lot of success stories from my close friends and family to my new family that now includes the Waltons. The marriages and families of these people have the blueprints in them of everything that I yearn for in my own life, and the wonderful part about all of it is that it becomes available through temple covenants and faithfulness to each and the gospel.

And that was this past week. Now back to work, running, and everything other responsibility that I have been neglecting.

Something reminded me of this SNL clip this week, so just thought I'd share. Love this one:

Really?

2011-06-08T14:12:00.000-07:00

SNL has a pretty funny skit where Seth Meyers questions all these things stupid that people do.

I had a few "really" moments this past week:

Last week at work I was talking with my coworker in our cubes and then the HR guy for the finances department came over and asked us to keep it down. At first I didn't even realize what he was talking about, thinking instead he meant for us not to put anything on top of the high shelves, then realizing he meant our volume. It was just weird, though, because the guy was obviously uncomfortable doing it, but I didn't even think we were very loud and I was just surprised that the person couldn't just come over and say something him-/herself. That person decided he/she had to email the HR director to come talk to us, really?
Dropped off some things at DI last week. We pulled up behind a trailer and this person was just unloading a trailer-load of crap and clearly unusable items. With every item you could see the worker pick it up, look at it questioningly, and then move it over to a pile that had been pretty clearly designated "garbage" pile. Really? You're going to go through all of your too-big-to-toss-in-the-garbage items and take them to DI and make them deal with your crap, really? It was just so disrespectful. I couldn't believe it.
In my old bishopric there was one councilor who I really thought was pretty great. He always seemed very friendly with everyone and even though I always wanted to engage him more in conversation and get to know him better, I never got the feeling that he wanted to engage me any further. Once we got married, he didn't attend our reception or acknowledge anything really about our wedding, I kind of thought that would be the end of that association. But then I got a text yesterday that said, "Hey Chris, I work for Brother So and So doing financial advising and right now I'm helping people be better insured, how would you feel about reviewing your policy?" Really? You're not going to personally engage me in any way while I'm in the ward, but then you're going to pass my number along to some guy so that he can try and pitch me on your business? Really? Really not cool.

Just kinda funny the things that happen. This one isn't a "really" clip, but I just thought it was really funny. Enjoy!

Adventure Running

2011-06-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

This season of running has been interesting for me. For the first time ever, I decided to run with a carrying case for some Gatorade instead of stashing it somewhere along my route. I've been running with less planning, which has meant having to occasionally do some long laps (6 mile loops) or just running based on my time. A contributing factor has just been not knowing where good places to run 20 miles are by my houses so then I just kind of pick a far away point and try and run to it. And I have to admit, it's been really nice.

I've been stressing less over where and the length of distance that I'm running for, and that's resulted in just taking in scenery in and concentrate on making the distance on my long runs. If I'm feeling good, then I'll just go ahead and try and reach a farther point. It's been really nice. The results have been good, mostly in the fact that I haven't missed any of my long runs.

For previous marathons, there have been at least a couple weeks that I'll really scale back on and I'll cut out a few long runs. Although I have cut out some of my shorter ones, I haven't missed anything long, even if that has meant running on a weeknight or in middle of the day when it's been probably too warm to go out running for a couple of hours.

All of this means that I'm on pace for hitting all of my runs, even a little ahead of schedule, for the Deseret News next month. I shifted to a different training schedule which required jumping up in mileage for several consecutive weeks, but the payoff is that I've already got a 20-miler under my belt (last week), and I have seven weeks to get a few more in.

Elisha (Amy's sister-in-law, so I guess we're in-law-in-laws, or simply...family), a real runner, was asking me last night if I've trained at all for speed. No. Only in the most basic forms. Sometimes I'll push the pace on a short run or through in some more hills, but I don't do anything like track times or run real intervals.

I think for this marathon I'm just using it to get into shape and I'm halfway considering picking up another one sometime in September or October, and maybe seeing if I can pick up some more speed in one of those ones. I dunno.

The world is my oyster right now and I've been having more fun training for this marathon than I have for any of the others. I dare say, this is actually something that is getting pretty easy to do, and I might even make a real, whole-hearted attempt to improve my times. We'll see.

And that's what you get.

Interesting Things

2011-06-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

I was listening to some talk radio yesterday, Michael Medved specifically. I had kind of forgotten how much I used to like listening to that stuff. I really miss the sports shows, but I do miss listening to Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, and Rush, among others.

Anyway, Medved was talking about a recent Gallup survey that asked what people estimated to be the percentage of gay people in the total population. Before I tell you or link you to anything, what's your guess? 25%? 10%? 5%?

And...

now...

for...

the...

results...

You can see the findings yourself here. I was really surprised at how high the estimates were. Americans estimate that 25% of the population is self-identified as homosexual. Really? 25%? 1 out of 4 people? I just couldn't believe that.

While in San Fran this past weekend, I actually thought a little bit about how openly liberal that city is, but if you're just walking the streets and seeing families and such, it looks pretty much like any other city. I don't remember seeing any obvious gay couples. For the most part, it was just your typical families like anywhere else. Not anything like the numbers that people are estimating.

One popular number that people throw out is 10%. Wrong. That figure was popularized by Alfred Kinsey who did his sex research mostly on prison populations, i.e. a skewed population to begin with. The figures I've heard based on actual research is more in the range of 3-5%, but there was actually a recent study that puts the figure at 1.4%. (For that info, go here for a Medved article about it. For the actual findings, go here.) What's also surprising is that this >2% figure is actually one that is supported by gay advocates (here for that reference).

So what are the implications? Well, it goes to show how loud the voice is that belongs to same-sex advocates for one. More loosely, it also illustrates the weight that they carry in bearing on public perception.

Also read this article recently by Jeff Jacoby. He talks about the ban on circumcision in San Francisco (here for that one). A lot of the reason behind that is the work done by a group who equates circumcision to female genital mutilation, which it is very clearly not at all related.

What's most interesting about that restriction is this fact: In a city wherein we find the largest voice advocating the rights of individuals who number less than 2% of the entire population, we also see a ban on a centuries (millennia, actually) old practice of religious ceremony that also affects a group that numbers less than 2% of the population, Jews. While calling the disagreeing portion of society bigoted for rejecting same-sex marriage, they project their own prejudices on a similarly sized population. Ironic.

We Party Right

2011-05-31T08:20:00.001-07:00

We just got back last night from a trip to San Fran to visit Greg and Laura, in what is now a visit with family and not just friends (what the?...). Amy and I chatted briefly on the ride back from the airport about the trips we've been able to do this past year (since Memorial day of last year):

Zion on the Walton Utah family vacation of a lifetime.
Moab to go canyoneering with Mike.
Moab again with our ward.
Summer Christmas in California.
Vancouver for my first visit to Canada over Labor Day weekend.
St. George to run the marathon.
Thanksgiving at home.
Post-Christmas and New Year's in Vancouver.
President's Day in California.
Cancun on our honeymoon.
Back to Vancouver for an open house.
Again in Cali for another open house.
Goblin Valley a couple weekends ago.
San Fran this past weekend.

Most of that is dominated by trips back home, but I think that's totally cool. And that doesn't even include trips we've made on our own (twice more to Cali for me, and a , California, Chicago and Japan for Amy's work) or the few that we did just after we started dating (Vegas, Cali, Zion). That makes for 90 hours of car rides and 10 different flights in the past year for us. Kind of crazy, right?

I'll post more on the weekend once Amy finishes editing the photos, but we had so much fun with Greg and Laura. They live in such an awesome location in the Presidio, and San Francisco is just such a fun place. I dated a girl who was from that area and I got well acquainted with SF in that time with her so I've never lost that affinity for it. Plus I had a cousin who lived up there for a bit. It's just a cool, different place.

Anyway, we have a lot more planned this upcoming summer. The preview goes something like this: Cali again for the 4th, Reno Walton family Vacation of a lifetime, Cali again for a Redford wedding, and...drum roll, please...Europe in the fall! Woo woo! We just booked that one on Sunday. Throw in some more camping trips in there and that about rounds out our travel plans for the summer.

One last thing. Since Amy is the one with all of the photos, I'm just going to link to her posts that give the visuals on everything we've been up to, for whoever may be interested:

I'll probably just link to her blog once a month or so for the pics.

More Than a Number!

2011-05-26T14:15:00.001-07:00

In the construction of this post I ended up publishing it to see if the formatting was working on some of the elements I wanted to include. It didn't work, so I subsequently deleted it. That's why you've seen a couple lines of this before. Anyway, this is the full post.

A friend of mine had a post recently about not allowing how much you weigh determine your self-worth. You can find her post here. I tried posting a comment on her blog, but for some reason it wasn't working then. I know she comes around here sometimes anyway, so I'll just go ahead and move on with my response here. She comes from an MFT background, so she runs into these issues a good amount, so I have a lot of respect for where she is coming from.

She's right: everyone is worth more than a number. There is a very real concern for women especially about appearance, and all too often, weight literally becomes the measure of attractiveness. An interesting study recently carried out by a BYU professor helps illustrate that even among women who self-report that they have no concerns with body image, they do still subconsciously react to images of obese women. It's actually a pretty interesting study. Read more here.

But...

I don't know. I guess I think it's a bit of an extreme perspective to take. Weight, as indicated by the "enemy" scale, is an objective measure. When it comes down to it, that's what it really is. So there's a part of me that feels like this reaction is just a little too extreme, especially when I consider it with respect to how prevalent obesity is in comparison to eating disorders.

According to the NIMH, eating disorders in 2008 afflicted only about 3% of the female population. Add in the fact that many other women suffer from less severe disorders that probably wouldn't even qualify as disorders in the first-place, and that number no doubt goes up to cover a good amount more of the population, so bump that number up to wherever you please. Let's say 10%? Something like that.

However, the prevalence of obesity is just exploding in the last few decades. I wanted to post it on here (which is what I was trying to post on my blog, but it wasn't working right), but there is a really great powerpoint presentation that the CDC put out that helps illustrate how much obesity is exploding across the country. You can see that here (look at the map). Nationally, about a quarter of the population is overweight, and when you consider that the leading cause of death in the United States is heart disease, an affliction highly associated with obesity, then this is something that is also a very real concern among our population.

This is probably easier for me to say it because I am male and guys are for the most part not tormented to the same extent with body image issues that women are, but the objective measurement that the scale is telling us is not the enemy: the real problem is the subjective interpretation that we bring to it. While knowing how much I weigh does not constitute healthy behavior, it is just one of many possible indicators about where I'm at in terms of my health and can help me make any necessary adjustments. I just think it's a good idea to be a little more moderate in this respect.

I am not a number when it comes to my weight, anymore than I am my IQ, SAT, ACT, GRE, GPA, annual income, height, bowling score, or any other number.

U2 at Rice-Eccles

2011-05-25T10:20:00.001-07:00

It was my first time entering into enemy territory, and happily, it was a very good visit. Forever ago I did a post about must see concerts. At the time, I was only partly sold on going to a U2 concert as being one of the must-see concert experiences, but when I heard that they were doing the 360 tour, I thought it would be worth checking out.

Amy and I started dating, she was down with the idea, and we just planned on showing up to the concert and trying to buy the tickets off of a scalper. Then Bono hurt his back, they postponed the tour, and we had to wait a year.

Then last night finally came. We had the same plan as last year: just show up to the concert and see if we can find tickets cheaply off someone outside the venue. I had been looking at ticket prices on KSL and Craig's List and was pleased to see that so many had been put up for sale. I felt like we could get something for pretty cheap.

We put $100 limit on what we would spend for the both of our tickets. We found a free parking spot a couple of blocks away, and we made our way towards the stadium. I was actually a little surprised that we couldn't find more available. The Fray was playing and the music was pouring out of the stadium, and we were anxious to get inside. At first I thought we'd have to pay at least $50 for decent seats, but then I revised downward based on how many ads I saw online, but with the paucity of scalpers, I revised back upward.

The first pair were going for $100 each for general admission tickets that had $58 printed on them. The next guy was asking $90 for the same ones, and I told him we had $100 total, at which point he screamed at some other guy, and he sold us seats that were straight out from the main stage, just about halfway up - $95 for the pair. At first I was a little disappointed that we couldn't get cheaper, that is, until we ran into a friend of mine (Anna, yup, that one) who paid $100 each for her tickets. Phew! And we were lower and had a better angle on the stage than they did.

They opened with Even Better Than the Real Thing. The stage really was a 360 stage, and they had huge screens above them that went all the way. We later learned those screens expanded downward to fill the huge gap of space from the structure above the stage almost to the stage itself. They had some really impressive visuals, and lights and smoke really made it something spectacular to see.

I was impressed with the range of audience from young to old. I guess I shouldn't have been, but there were lots of kids and lots of adults, and everyone seemed to enjoy it equally. I guess that's the thing about U2 - they have managed to stay relevant for decades, and not just in the picture, but on top of the world for all of that time. They literally have dozens of songs that anyone would recognize, and as you'd expect, they just put on a really good show. They gained popularity in the 80s as a live act, and it shows. They're great.

Another thing that surprised me: I was a lot more emotionally affected than I thought I would be. They played Beautiful Day, a song which I don't even really love, but it really got to me. I was just so excited to hear them live, and they really are just so good musically, and great performers.

My favorites:

Sunday Bloody Sunday - there was a guy next to us that was obviously a HUGE U2 fan. He went crazy when this song came. I think the song kind of surprised everyone once it started playing. It's just a really cool song.
All I Want Is You - I've always just really, really loved this song. Great ballad.
Elevation - really got everyone going.
Pride (In the Name of Love) - classic!
Where the Streets Have No Name - this was the second to last song. I thought they would end with it, but some other random song followed.
One - it followed a really moving tribute to the Burmese leader who was released in this last year.

It's just crazy to think how much time that band has spanned, and how many memories everyone has associated with their songs. My earliest U2 memory is of my brother coming home with the CD single for Desire and him playing that over and over again. I grew up listening to Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum.

You know what else is impressive about them? Not only are they not pretentious as could very easily be the case with them, but you really, really, really, really get the sense that they really do try and use their celebrity to further good causes. They are very socially aware, and not about things that are really touchy issues. They support freedom and democracy, and they are wonderful strong advocates for those causes. Going to their concert and hearing them perform and hearing Bono advocate their causes, it's just really inspiring. It was all done in a really tasteful way, and it really felt like a lesson on some important world causes.

It was just a really cool experience. One of the best concerts I've ever been to, and one of those bands that I think everybody should see in their lifetimes. I know not everyone feels this way, but there are artists that you just really need to see do their thing live. It would have been cool to see Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. Everyone should have seen Michael Jordan play basketball. I got see U2 sing With or Without you, and it's an experience I won't soon forget.

Dating Blows

2011-05-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

I have an office on campus next to a guy from my cohort that I just really like. Previously things had been going really well for him and this girl, so it was high times on the 10th floor of the SWKT. (Yes, guys get excited for each other too.)

As a side note, it's funny how you can be feeling something and not realize how much more you are communicating about that feeling beyond the words that you are saying. People said that about Amy and I on our wedding day. And he said that about me when I was talking about how great it was to be married when we talked soon after I had come back from our honeymoon.

Today was the recounting of another low in the endless torture that is involved with dating. I really felt for him. Insecurities get exposed, people act irrationally, and things just feel off when your love life is off-kilter. I totally remember that.

The nice thing, however, is just how right things feel once they do sort themselves out.

I want to hearken back a little ways to the post that I put up recently about YSA men and dating. My main contention was that I think the GA's in the Church are mischaracterizing the young men in the Church. Are there a lot of great YSA women who aren't married who totally deserve to be? Absolutely. I think the bigger problem is that there aren't enough men to satisfy the women.

I was going to go through the exercise of actually counting out numbers in trying to explain why girls are dating more and how it's not because guys aren't dating enough. I won't bother to anymore, but I will say this - in every ward, there is typically an imbalance in guys to girls, and if everyone basically thinks that anywhere from one half to only one tenth of the population is really datable, well then a lot of people are going to go unattended to. Also, it's just a fact that 10% of the girls do 90% of the dating. Guys are selective, but so are girls. And with their being few guys compared to girls, all the numbers get skiwampus. There.

Anyway, to further validate my point, I was at a department brown bag some time ago and some of our researchers had carried out a study on YSA trends in the Church. Even the researchers in that meeting said that while Church leadership is still very much concerned about YSAs waiting so long to get married, their (researchers) general feeling was that most active YSA men are not putting off marriage for invalid reasons. And that's my feeling as well: if you have a guy who pays tithing, does his home teaching, and goes to Church, it's likely that he does actually want to get married, and will actively move toward that end.

Then, one of the researchers spoke up and said that if we are going to follow the research, it probably is a good thing that people in and out of the Church are waiting longer to get married anyway. Getting married at older ages tends toward more stable, long-lasting marriages.

Which brings me to my final point: The Census Bureau recently reported that marriages are lasting longer than they have in the recent past, and they attribute this largely to the fact that people are waiting to get married later in life.

So there you go. Not necessarily a bad thing. It could lead to more moments like this:

So two things worth remembering while dating:

Psalms 23 - The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
D&C 122:7 -...these things shall give thee experience, and [really!] shall be for thy good.

Even when you're down in the dumps because it just seems like things will never work themselves out or even when you're getting in your own way.

They do, and you'll learn to get out of your own way. It's great.

Caring for the Poor and Needy

2011-05-15T13:20:00.001-07:00

I had kind of a neat opportunity this morning to go and help some of the people that live over at the Developmental Center that is right next to the temple. It is a center for the mentally retarded.

I ended up going by myself, mostly because they only asked the elders in the ward and the youth to help out. This seemed to be a good idea probably because I think my better half would have probably been in tears for most of it anyway. There is a chapel that is north and west of the Mt. Timpanogos temple, and the center is almost attached to it, although it's still state-run and not directly affiliated with the Church.

We received some instruction in a meeting beforehand, then they walked us over to the patients and we wheeled them over to the chapel where they participate (and maybe that word should be in quotes when referencing some of the experience the patients had there) in church meetings.

I happened to be paired up with Doug. He wouldn't engage anyone in conversation, which is pretty typical of most of this population, but there were moments that you could get his attention, and he would make his ba-ba-ba noises towards you. He also laughed a good amount. He must have been in his late 60s if I were judging him by my normal standards, but I don't know if these people age differently than most people do.

The ward leaders like to have as many of them participate as much as they can in the meetings, so they ask them to give prayers in church, some to administer the sacrament, and even say the sacrament prayers. Some of those were kind of funny to me because the words were indecipherable, I'm pretty sure to anyone, but they had them say the prayers nonetheless. They didn't have them repeat the sacrament prayer even when it just came out as a bunch of grunts.

The patients are incredibly sweet. They make noises the whole time; they're very affectionate, and they never hesitate at expressing their feelings, good or bad, though I only saw good this day. They don't really communicate with words well, or at all, so physical contact is the only way many of them communicate. They want to help and join in at any point that they're asked to without any reservation about any kind of social norms that the rest of us obey. And I think that's one of the most interesting things about them. They're clearly adults in body, but so incredibly child-like in spirit. The developmentally most mature of any of them were only teens at best, and there were only a few of those, but most were like 6-18 month-olds.

A ward choir was formed where volunteers and patients alike were asked to sing I Am a Child of God and the few patients who got up sang proudly and with little concern about the musicality of their words.

Anyway, it got me thinking a lot about these kinds of people, their purpose here. Any one of those people automatically requires a number of caretakers. One-on-one would never be enough to meet all the needs that any of them has, unless that person ministering sacrificed his life entirely for that individual. For a center that houses more than 200 patients, I imagine it requires a staff of at least 2-3 times that many people to ever meet the immediate needs that all of them have, not to mention the amount of money that must be generated for the resources that they all require. All of a sudden, well over a thousand people have to contribute so that they can go on with their lives. And that's only at the present moment. Like I said, my guy looked to be at least in his 60s, so that means for decades these people will go on living without anything to offer back besides their own sweet spirits, which I guess is what they're there for - to help us become more like them: "as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

It was just a neat experience that I thought was worth sharing. I'll revisit this topic more later.

This and That

2011-05-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorite blog entries are the ones that I don't publish. I just noticed recently that my blog is approaching/has approached 1000 posts. I thought that I would reach that number much sooner, especially if you look at the sidebar over on the left and see how many posts I had in the first few years of this blog's existence.

It's crazy to think that this blog has years under its belt, as well as hundreds of posts, and around a 1000 at that. I say around 1000 because every hundred or so posts I have a few drafts of posts that never got published, so the published ones are still probably just under 1000.

They don't get published for a variety of reasons - they aren't well-developed enough, the topic loses my interest, or the topics are too close to home, or they refer too much to someone that might read this blog. That might all be surprising considering the kinds of things post about, right? Seems like all my posts have some level of application to all of those things to some extent. But now you're curious, aren't you? Well, I'll never tell. Or maybe not. We'll see.
I was supposed to run 8 miles yesterday, and 12 this Friday before we go camping this weekend. The day kind of ran out on me, so I thought I would only run 5, until I got out there and realized how great I felt. I ended up pushing the miles up to 8 without even blinking, and I would have gone to 12, but I thought my absence out running in the dark at 11pm might worry my wifey. When I got back, I realized that she's not really fazed by that kind of stuff, so I probably could have gone longer. Not my point, however. Point is, I felt great, and I just loved being out there on the lonely streets, putting one foot in front of the other, as I explored Pleasant Grove/Lindon in the dark breathing the brisk night air. It felt perfect, and I probably could have run all night.

Something really neat happens when you mix up the distance of your runs, throwing in occasional long runs, with medium and a short ones. Even altering the speed at which you run makes you a more adept runner. All of it helps make the running experience one that is richer and more expansive. I can't even tell you how good it feels to come back from running more than an hour and feeling like it wasn't enough. It's bliss.

I was recently talking to a friend who just found out she got in the St. George Marathon. It's her first, and I tried convincing her that her time really doesn't matter on this first one, but of course she started asking me about how she can start running faster. It's funny how that is everyone's tendency. Just focus on completing the 26.2 first, and worry about your time once you've got a few of those under your belt. Funnier still was that she asked me if becoming a faster runner means logging more miles. It made me laugh. "No, I said, running faster makes you a faster runner." Not sure why that was so funny to me. You get better at something by practicing that specific thing, right? Not by practicing other similar somethings hoping that it might help with something else that's different. There aren't shortcuts for all of that.
I'm helping out as part of a research team, and the main topic we're pursuing is intentionality. I'll probably write more about that in a separate post, because I doubt anyone has come this far, and it deserves a fair treatment. It's interesting is all I will say right now.
People at home, or I should say from home, want to protest the closing of a pizza place that we all grew up with. Some even want to stage a peaceful protest. You know what's a better way to protest the closing of a business? Patronizing it. Strikes me as silly that everyone is trying to prevent it. If you want it to stay around, buy their pizza. What do you want them to do? Run it without a profit so that when you go home you can drive by it and look at it nostalgically, but not actually buy anything from there? Makes me sad, but what can you do and what do you expect them to do?

Lastly, Chris Brown has made quite a nice comeback, no? People forget bad history pretty quickly when you're really good at stuff. Anyway, I downloaded some of his songs last week, and I've been digging on this one lately. Here you go:

Aftermath to OBL: Part II

2011-05-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Found this article over at NRO over the weekend where Daniel Krauthammer makes the following comment:

Is America’s joyful reaction then a sign that we have strayed toward darkness? Were the crowds of chanting, hooting, dancing youth in Washington and New York actually America’s equivalent of the so-called angry Arab Street, which, egged on by the ideological compatriots of bin Laden, burn American flags, behead effigies of our leaders, and chant “Death to America”?

Absolutely not. In fact, the surface similarities serve only to highlight just how opposite are their meanings and motivations. The celebrations across America did not glorify death. In fact, they weren’t really about death at all. The crowds didn’t lynch effigies of bin Laden; they didn’t burn Korans or trample the flags of Muslim nations; they didn’t raise armed soldiers on their shoulders or shoot rifles into the air; they didn’t chant for vengeance or death to other nations, peoples, or religions. No, these crowds of all races and creeds came together and raised American flags, sang patriotic songs, drank and made merry, embraced and shook one another’s hand. They did not glorify death, but rather affirmed life — their own lives and the life of their country at its moment of great victory over an enemy dedicated to bringing death to its shores.

That enemy was not just Osama bin Laden the man. It was the real, operational threat he posed to the life of every single American citizen around the world. And it was the organization, the mission, and the very ideology of terror that he represented and of which he had willfully and masterfully made himself the ultimate symbol during his decades-long career. The moral confusion about the issue has come about because the end to all three of these different conceptions of the bin Laden enemy — the man, the threat, the symbol — occurred simultaneously rather than separately, as they did, for instance, in the case of America’s last encounter with a larger-than-life evil: Saddam Hussein.

I agree.

Also, I think we're getting a little carried away about how we're viewing those people who were celebrating in the streets last week. In social psychology there is the concept of actor-observer bias, wherein people who are present in a situation attribute the causes of their behavior to stimuli inherent in the situation, and observers tend to attribute causes for behavior to the actors themselves. This concept goes to the heart of social psychology - how there are social tensions that create circumstances that have great effects on our behavior.

Most of what came out last weekend I think is attributable to mob behaviors. And I think most of us would have acted similarly if we were present with those people. People get in a group and they feed off one another until their reactions are completely different than what they would otherwise be if they were by themselves.

However, as was mentioned before and in my previous post, I don't think people were just celebrating the death of human being. I think they were mostly excited at the resurgence of American power and the arrival of some long overdue justice.

Thoughs on the Social Networking Aftermath of the Death of OBL

2011-05-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Weird that it's taken me so long to comment on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, right? Politics and current events used to be the bread and butter of my blog, but I've kind of shifted gears these last several months. I did, however, want to comment a bit on the fall-out of the OBL stuff.

I had several friends make comments, write posts, and put up falsely attributed quotes all in the name of talking down people who were celebrating OBL's death. Let me start by saying that I don't think most people were solely cheering for the death of another human being, and then let me add that pretty much anything anyone does in the form of a mob is not really a good descriptor of anyone's true feelings on a matter. Individuals are smart, mobs are dumb, so while there were plenty of images of people cheering and dancing in the streets, I don't think his death was the only thing they were so excited about.

Let's remember who it was that was killed over the weekend - Osama Bin Laden - the same guy who was the symbol for, and the driving force behind the terrorist movement for many years. This is a guy who would not hesitate for one second to kill you or anyone you care about, all in the name of pushing his brand of religion on you. There are few individuals in the history of the world who are recognized the world over as being "evil," and this guy was unequivocally one of those people. When people were celebrating and everyone who wasn't started chastising them for doing so, they're ignoring the triumph of a small measure of justice, and is it really such a bad thing to celebrate when something truly right actually comes to pass?

No, the war on terror isn't over, but it has taken a very large and unmistakable step forward in alerting evil-doers across the globe that the world's lone superpower will not stand for injustice, even if it takes 10 years to come to pass. And that's a really good thing, and something that should be applauded. While some of the demonstrations of glee may have been in poor taste, the only thing most of these people are really guilty of is getting overly exuberant about something that is long overdue.

Plus, why do you want to be the dirtbag who gets on Facebook and tells everyone that they're dumb for celebrating such an important moment? Do you really want to be that guy? Really?

Also, why is everyone so insistent that anything well-spoken must be attributed to someone famous for it to have any real validity? The rise and fall of the MLK quote was quite comical, but true words are true words, regardless of who said it. If something is said wise and correctly, it's still useful and edifying even if spoken by a fool, is it not?

I put up a status on Facebook earlier this week related to these points and a friend of mine sent me a message asking if the quote was my own, and if he could steal it. That made me laugh.

Just thinking out loud.

The Hardest Part

2011-05-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

The key to getting ahead is getting started.

It wasn't really much of a fortune, but I think it was the wisest thing a cookie ever told me. It's always the thing that I have the hardest time doing. Once I'm in the activity/work-out/writing process/work/whatever, I never really seem to have much difficulty keeping it up, but it's always the getting started that's so hard for me.

Take yesterday, for example. I had 8 miles to run, but time was fast running out on the day, and I really just didn't feel like doing it. With much debate and prodding from my better half, I decide to get out the door and do 6 miles, but once I got started it was easy to just continue and get up to 7.5. That stuff really isn't hard for me once I'm out the door, but that's always the problem, getting there.

Anyway, I'm officially getting started on my marathon training because I finally registered for the Deseret News Marathon on July 25th. I'm excited about this one. I'll be done earlier in the season, and I'm actually looking forward to moving onto some other kind of work-outs later in the summer, especially since we will probably be gone for 4 weekends between August and September and long runs just won't be very realistic.

One thing that I think I'd like to try out is Crossfit. If you have any friends involved with Crossfit and you are FB friends with them, then you also realize that it's almost a cult. I have two friends who do it and I'm pretty sure it's the only thing they do. They post Crossfit pics of themselves as their profile pics, and post their times/lifts whatever, and all they do is work-out. They have affiliates all over the place, but I was looking at their website today and it's pretty cool because they have scaled down versions of the work-outs that you can do on your own, and it actually looks kind of enjoyable. What's really appealing about it also is that they emphasize overall fitness so that you're not limited to one specific kind of strength, if that makes sense. Check it out here.

You know what else? I think I might volunteer to help with the Utah Valley Marathon.

That's all I've got.

Thanksgiving Point Half

2011-05-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

You can find Amy's post on this here.

This is the second half marathon that I have run. It's kind of funny that I jumped straight from casually running straight to the full marathon. The first half that I ran was Provo City April of 2009. From that year on, they started scheduling it in May so that they would have better weather because it ended up snowing that Saturday that we ran...

Flashforward to two nights ago and it happened to snow that night as well. The night before I would run my second half. Lame.

This one was kind of funny because I haven't been on too consistent of a running schedule lately. I was really good just before the wedding, and then I took three weeks off, and then I came back on for a few weeks, did a 10 mile run about two weeks ago, but then only ran twice two weeks ago, and then twice this past week. But having run the 10 made me feel fine about running this one, and plus I knew that this would kind of jump-start my marathon training for this summer.

Thursday I went for a nice 5-mile run at about 10pm. It was just a little windy, but the temperatures were nice. Felt great. Not even two days later the temperature had dropped 30 degrees and when I woke up at 5:30am to get ready for the race there was a 2-3" snow covering on the ground. Awesome.
I was pretty whiny about everything up until about 15 minutes or so before the race. Kira ran this one too, so it was fun to see her there. Her dad also happens to work at Thanksgiving Point so it was fun to see him in various places during the morning.

I had on my running tights, shorts on top, long sleeve shirt, t-shirt on top, and then a jacket that I sometimes run in on top. I also had gloves and a headband. Gear-wise, I'm doing pretty well these days. I have just about everything I'll ever need to run in any kind of weather (although I'm kind of starting to think that I'd like some trail running shoes, but that's for another day).

The cold was pretty miserable in the beginning. It just felt like it seeped right through my clothing. They had no heaters. Just cold that morning. But I knew that once I got going temperature wouldn't be a big deal.

The race started, and sure enough, by about 1.5 miles in, I had already taken off my jacket. Lucky for me, my sweet little wifey had already gotten to another part of the route and I was able to strip it off and leave it with her. Eventually I took off my headband, stuffed that into my pocket, and then took off my gloves and held those the whole time too.

The race was fine. It was well-organized, had plenty of aid stations with the right stuff, and good post-race treats. I just didn't like that it was so early, and that it doubled back over so many parts of the race. I really just hate seeing other runners that are ahead of me doubling back over parts that I know that I'm going to be running in just a little bit.
I ended up doing well enough, finishing in about 1:48. Kira raced well too, considering that she's PREGNANT! Crazy, right? But that's Kira. She's tough as nails.

Anyway, although I was a big baby before the race started, whining so much about the cold, I was glad that I participated once it was over. And even more, I'm just so glad that I married a girl who loves me enough to get up with me at 5:30am on a Saturday in 30 degree weather just to come and cheer me on and take some pictures.

Weddings and Such

2011-04-29T12:16:00.000-07:00

Was chatting this morning with a friend about The Wedding. Not mine, mind you. Kate and William. Kind of silly isn't it? How much attention it's getting. People are just crazy about it. I don't really care for it. At first I thought it was dumb, and then I read this article over at NRO about it, and now it doesn't seem so bad. It's a good thing they're getting married, right? And so if all the histrionics associated with the royal wedding do nothing more than highlight the institution of marriage itself, then it's a good thing, isn't it? Allow me to quote a little from the article:

You needn’t be a royal watcher to join wholeheartedly in the rejoicing at a wedding. And we should celebrate — not because the principals are royalty, but because marriage itself badly needs reinforcing. For the past several decades, we’ve been conducting an experiment to determine whether marriage really matters all that much to society. The results are in. But the news hasn’t yet been taken on board.

People like Kate and William (absent the title) — college-educated, upper-middle-class strivers — are not the ones who need reminding about the importance of marriage. Among the upper-middle class, marriage continues to be the norm. Among the lower-middle class though, marriage rates have collapsed.

This has created a cultural gulf between classes in America that affects every aspect of life, and arguably threatens the cohesion of America itself. This territory has been explored by Kay Hymowitz in her 2006 book, Marriage and Caste in America, as well as by scholars such as Sara McLanahan, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and David Popenoe, among others. Charles Murray’s forthcoming book, Coming Apart at the Seams, which he previewed in a recent lecture at the American Enterprise Institute, examines marriage as one of four key virtues that conduce to a healthy polity (the others are industriousness, piety, and honesty).

Echoing George Gilder, Murray notes that marriage is crucial because it “civilizes men.” Married men don’t just earn more and have significantly lower rates of criminality, substance abuse, depression, and poor health than single men. They also contribute more social capital to society. Married men are far more likely to coach little league, volunteer at church, and shovel their elderly neighbor’s walk. Married people, far more than singles (there are exceptions of course), take responsibility not just for themselves and their children, but for the community.

Anyway, it made me realize also that I haven't directed you over to my lovely wife's blog for all of the pictures she posted from last weekend's open house in Irvine, as well as our wedding and reception in Utah. Open house here. Wedding pictures outside the temple here. Reception pictures here.

And with that, I send you off this weekend with the little ditty that I've been grooving to the last few days:

Have a great one, y'all.

Thoughts on Marriage...so far

2011-04-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

Everyone's first question when they see us these days is, "how's married life?" Now that we're past our first month, the Chris and Amy Marriage tour is over with, and we're more or less settled into our place, there's not a whole to say to most people.

Marriage is great. Great great great. My wife is as sweet as can be. We have lots of down time now, which is actually kind of weird. Even before we got engaged it always felt like our weeks were packed, and we always had plans, but these days it seems like we have a lot of evenings where we're just kind of hanging out.

Being married has alerted me to a few things:

After several years of not having a room-roommate, I'm being reminded that I'm a pretty active sleeper. Dave has lots of stories about things I would say and do in my sleep. Last night before going to bed, Amy asked me, "so do you remember at all sitting straight up in middle of the night and saying, 'do I need to make some hot chocolate??? It is freezing in here!'" That is pretty much par for the course for me. I guess I used to laugh in my sleep a lot. I'm sure there will be lots more of those kind of stories.
Marriage has an interesting way of really forcing you outside of yourself. When you're single, and even when you're dating, it's easy to just do your own thing. Now that I'm married, if Amy starts making dinner or doing our laundry - and I realize that she's flitting about doing stuff for us while I'm just watching ESPN or dinking around on the internet for me - then I feel dumb. I still have a ways to go in this department, but I just hope she's not feeling like she's alone.
It's really fun trying to establish our marriage/family habits. It's nice to read scriptures, pray, have family home evening, and go to the temple together. As we're getting better at carrying these things out, it really does help me to feel closer to Amy. It's funny that at the same time, even though I recognize all of the benefits, sometimes it still feels like a chore. I've got such a stubborn natural man.

That's all I've got. We hit our one month mark just over a week ago, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed we'll make it to two, but I think we're on our way.

And Then There Were None

2011-04-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

Hi, blogging. I haven't see you for a little while....here we go. Let's do a week in review:

I went to see Unwritten Law in concert last weekend when my sweet wife gave me the concert tickets as a present. You would think that I would outgrow these punk shows at some point, but I still just love them. The one thing, however, that I will never really like is how much amplification there is with the music. It should be loud enough to hear it, but not so much that it destroys your hearing, right? I was reading Jay Nordlinger this morning and he was ranting about that, and that guy reviews classical music. What would he think at a rock concert? Anyway, they were fun. Whenever I come back from a show I always say that music was meant to be heard live, and this time it's no different. They played a good smattering of songs from all of their albums except for Oz Factor, which really breaks my heart. My favorite song of theirs live continues to be Rescue Me. I never even liked that song so much when I heard it on the album, but something about hearing that one live that I just LOVE. They came out for an encore and did a cover of this song. I dug it. And now you can get a taste of it (at least of the original song) here:
The Chris and Amy tour finally wrapped up this past weekend with our final stop in California. When we came back from Vancouver I was not interested at all to go to California, but as it got closer I got really excited for it. Mostly because we'd get to visit with a few people, and I was really looking forward to hanging out with Los Reids. I just love love love those people. And a special shout out for Laura and Matt, which brings me to my next point...
It kind of amazes me the bonds that we formed with our friends from freshmen year. I'm still close to several friends from that time period, and my friendship with Laura has always remained strong, regardless of how little we see of each other. She has an awesome husband in Matt, and I am always excited as can be to see the both of them. I didn't mention this to Amy, but I'm desperate to meet up with them in Arizona for Spring Training one year. It's also funny that I'm now related to two people from that freshmen year.
We had kind of an adventure coming home. It rained in spots during the trip, but there was one 300 foot stretch of highway where rain turned to pretty heavy slush, causing our car to hydroplane in a couple of spots. In that area we saw at least 5 cars either spun off the side of the highway or completely overturned with the top portion of the cabin smashed in. Then I realized I forgot my backpack when I asked Amy to look for my scrips, meaning that I did not have my keys, including keys to our apartment. That led to our first break-in as a married couple. That one will get its own post later. Then the next morning Amy looked out at her car from our kitchen window to see that the rear passenger window was shattered. I've never had such an eventful ride back.
It was Black Sunday last weekend as far as our sports teams are concerned. Lakers lost. Angels swept by the city I hate most. Canucks lost. Ducks were eliminated. Bad day. The world was angry my day, my friends.
Amy's birthday celebrations continue tonight at Jump On It. I'm sure pics will follow.

I have some other posts a brewing, but I just thought I'd spill all that out for yas.