Canyons and Stuff

You know what the problem is with getting new hobbies and interests? There is a crap-load of new stuff that you have to get if you really want to get involved. There is always the option of borrowing stuff, but then you are at the convenience of other people and not yourself. And it's not even necessarily that it has to be the high quality equipment, just the basics. For example, I love golfing, and I've been going almost every week, although it doesn't really show it in my golf scores. Getting into golf has been costly - clubs, balls, clubs, tees, not to mention all the fees for actually playing.

Want another one? Amy is a huge fan of camping and canyoneering. We've attempted three other times to do some canyons, and only this past weekend were we able to finally get to it. I'll do another post and talk about the experience once she gets me some of the pictures, but I have to say that it was a really fun experience. In the meantime, let me relate a little side story to the trip.

On the last day, we ended up going to Medieval Chamber in Moab. It has two pretty sweet rappels of about 100 feet and 100+ feet. When we got to the first rappel, two other groups proceeded us, so we had a wait time of over two hours for the first one. By the time we got to the second one, one of the groups went ahead of the other, and we were left watching as the other group was finishing up.

When I got to the scene, one of our canyoneers was helping a little boy of about 12 go down this over 100 foot descent. The kid was paralyzed with fear, only able to take a few steps down before freezing completely as his only movement came from the sobs and whimpers his body convulsed with the prospect of having to climb down the rock face. Amy was so sympathetic to him, but I could only laugh at his plight. With camera in hand, his father looked on while shouting words of encouragement. We all were rooting for him, although I couldn't help but laugh at his terror. As the member of our party coached and comforted him enough to get him down the rappel, the father mentioned to us as he chuckled, "poor kid, I owe him a big ass ice cream cone."

On the right is a bridge, and the left is the rock face that we, and that little boy, all rappelled down. What's really cool is the last part where you're descending about freely only hanging on to your rope for about 30-40 feet.

I laughed even more at that thought. I know that I've been that kid many times growing up. My parents enrolled me in a number of different things to try and get me good experiences and to help my brother and I assimilate into the culture around us. I have cried, whined, and whimpered many times about not wanting to do plenty of things, but I feel like in the end that's what has helped me have enough confidence to try and embrace new experiences. One of my friends expressed about his own kids that he never wants them to be able to say no. I don't really know anything about parenting, but I feel like that's one philosophy that I would also like to have.

When I am growing through my own life's trials, and I'm paralyzed with fear and sobbing to myself, I wonder if Heavenly Father looks down and says to himself, "oh man, I owe that kid a big ass ice cream cone," just like that other father did. I'll bet that he sees our aches and pains, and looks forward to the time when we'll emerge from those troubles and sorrows, ready and eager to give us the prize on the other side.

I suck at golf. I spend as much time enjoying the game as I am frustrated and annoyed with it when I'm out playing, but I still want to figure it out. I've never really been a camper, but I'm acquiring a taste for it and all of the adventure of the outdoors. And I suck at working on my thesis, but I want to blow through this thing.

I feel like there are a lot of things that I'm pretty good at, and then there are a whole lot of other things that I'm not any good at, but I like to think that I have a pretty open mind to at least trying them out. It takes a lot of time and practice of just trying new things, whatever they may be, to get to the point where it becomes comfortable trying something previously unexplored. Pretty rarely, I feel, is it the case where new experiences are not beneficial. I just hope that I can always stay open and eager to try them as they come along.

Shark In The Water

Going down to Moab for the second weekend in a row. Going to attempt to go canyoneering again. This will be the third such attempt. I'm kind of thinking that it's not something that you actually do, but just talk about doing and get disappointed every time because there is some extraneous variable that always prevents you from actually doing it. That's my experience with canyoneering thus far.

In the meantime, enjoy this song, and have a great weekend:

I Always Seem to Forget

When I get back into marathon training, there are always a few things that I forget:

• I like getting the calcium fortified orange juice to drink before my long runs. Calcium is a key electrolyte, and I'd rather do without having my digestive system try and process milk before and during my run (although the digestive system does shut down during vigorous exercise).
• It takes me a few hours after a run of 12+ miles to feel like I can function again.
  
• Running on shoes that are on their last legs is not a good idea on long runs. My feet start to get increasingly sensitive the longer the runs, and the effects of the pounding increases disproportionately in a negative way.
• It's always, always, always better to run in the mornings than any other time of day, for me at least. I'd rather run in the morning and little sleep or with a poor night's rest instead of with plenty of rest in the middle or at the end of the day. Unless it's really late at night. I don't mind that at all, but it keeps my wired for a few hours if I do that. Running in heat is equivalent to running at higher elevation and can slow you by as much as 10-20%. Beat the heat by avoiding it altogether.
  
• I love the feeling of accomplishment following a long run, and I guess that's enough to offset how much I hate doing them in the first place.
• I sleepy terribly the night before a long run. Always.
• And the biggest part is probably just all of the preparation that goes into doing my long runs. It starts the night before with what things I'm eating, and what time I try to get to bed even though it never really matters because it's either going to take me a long time to get to sleep anyway, or I'm just not going to sleep well as it is. I set my running clothes aside before going to bed. I map out my long run on Walk Jog Run. I wake up and fight all of my thoughts about how much I don't want to run, or I think maybe I can shorten it and make it up another day, until I get out running and go ahead and go through with it. I drink a glass of OJ, take some vitamins, and eat a banana, while I go and plant my Gatorades along my route. I come back and rub out my legs and stretch, and then I'm off. It's very involved, but I think my whole routine gets me into the frame of mind to go ahead and get on with it.
  

So what is it that I never forget about marathon training?

...that I hate marathon training.

The nice part about this time around is that today I ran 13 and felt fine. I am about 4 weeks ahead of my schedule from last year, and this year the race is only one week earlier so I hope the payoff is that I'll have more time to devote to building endurance over the last 4-5 miles of the race. I did some hill repeats this past week and me being the nerd that I am, wrote down all my times and made a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress. I hope that I can be a weekly thing. Doing those made me much more sore than anything else I've done up until this point. We'll see, I guess.

Here's an ad campaign from New Balance that captures well the running dynamic.

Well Would You Look at That

The US won in the 91st minute of today's game against Algeria, staving off elimination, winning their group, and allowing them to advance to the Round of 16.

At the 89 minute when Beasely got that yellow card and Algeria made another substitution I was beginning to resign myself to another American disappointment, but then Tim Howard (the goalkeeper) started a fastbreak, and all of a sudden it looks like we can get a very favorable draw in the next round.

I'm not usually a TV yeller, but I totally was today. I couldn't believe it. Bless those players, they played their little hearts out.

It's been an amazing sports week. There really is nothing like seeing your team down, on the brink of defeat, only to comeback and snatch victory from the gaping jaws of defeat. There are going to be a lot of good games coming up in the Round of 16. Here's to the games coming up this weekend!

***UPDATE***

And now for some video of the goal...


USA 1-0 Algeria

Simão | MySpace Video

World Cup Fever

I've come down with a case of it. I watched a couple games last week and didn't feel like I was that invested, but it's finally come around and now I can't get enough of it. I wake up every morning wide awake just before 8am and I'm ready to watch the World Cup. It's my first thought every morning now - who won the early morning game? Who's playing next? Which superstars/superteams are playing today? and on and on...


I've been impressed with a few things:

• David Villa of Spain is a stud. I think he kind of disappeared in the Switzerland game, but that guy was eating up every guy on his side of the field yesterday. His first goal yesterday was my favorite of the cup. It was pretty unreal, and an amazing individual effort.
• Landon Donovan. The guy kind of stunk at the last World Cup, and I was really disappointed with him when he couldn't hang in the Bundesliga, but his transfer to Everton this past year really gave him a lot of confidence. The guy is about as good as anyone is right now with set kicks that are of the crossing variety, and he works and does great things for the US. The guy is finally playing at an elite level. His goal against Slovenia was pretty awesome too.
• Portugal. I thought they stunk in the game against the Ivory Coast, and I didn't even see them destroy North Korea, but anytime a team wins 7-0, it's a big deal. Very impressive.
• I always hate Mexico, but Dos Santos is pretty fun to watch. The guy has endless energy and I feel like if he had some more talent to work with, he would be really top notch.
• Is Fernando Torres the most handsome soccer player in the world? He blew some good chances yesterday, but he also had some pretty sweet moments in developing plays. It'll be nice to see him match-ready again.
• I know I'm a little biased because I served there, but isn't Chile kind of fun to watch? Those guys run non-stop and are down on the ground on like every play. They play really hard, and aren't falling all over themselves like so many of these guys in the cup. I hope they advance.
• Brazil looks pretty good to me, but I can't really tell much about them until they play an elite team. That Portugal game is going to be quite the fixture. I don't know much about Fabiano, but he looks pretty decent. The hard part about Brazil is that they make everything look so easy. I thought they played an okay game against North Korea, but then they just kinda packed it in at the 80th minute. They did a similar thing in the Ivory Coast game, but they really handled those guys.
• England looks terrible. They almost have an all-star team, but those guys look so tight to me. Rooney is pressing way too hard, and there is no cohesiveness. There's no way they should have tied Algeria, and they should've had a much easier time with the US than they did. I hope they get it together just because I like most of the guys that they have. Heske looks awful up top. He's a huge black guy that should be a much stronger presence than he has been. They're all looking pretty bad.
  
• I haven't seen any of Argentina's games, so I'm excited for their match against Greece, but those guys seem very formidable. Messi is amazing.

I'm really excited for the pool play to be done with and start having more match-ups between these big time teams. Time for the good stuff to start!

Mike and Lauren, Together at Last!

How easily Mike and Lauren came together makes me laugh. Once they started dating, it became pretty clear within a several months that these two were going to get married. At his younger sister’s wedding I joked with his dad that Mike makes getting married look so easy – so Mike has shown me that all it really takes is getting up to BYU, pick out the first girl that you think is cute, go out with her, kiss her about a week or two later, become bf/gf right away, and then get engaged. Why didn’t I ever think about that?

What’s really cool is seeing the ways in which Lauren has helped make to stretch himself and become more than he would otherwise be on his own. They got married this last weekend up here in Salt Lake City, and had their wedding reception that same night at American Fork Amphitheater. The really nice part about all of this was how perfectly it worked out for me. I went on Amy’s family vacation a little bit earlier in the week, was able to still take care of some of my responsibilities midweek, and then all of the Reids came out this way to celebrate Mike and Lauren’s nuptials.I was really excited to have everyone that I really love and care about all in the same place for this weekend, but I was a little disappointed that Greg wouldn’t be able to come out and celebrate with us. I had called him on my way back to Provo from Zion and he gave me his story about how he wished he could make it, but between finals and another trip he has planned next week, it just wasn’t going to work out blah blah blah. Come to find that at the rehearsal dinner the night before the big day Greg walks in with his flowing locks and surprises us all. I should have known that was coming because Greg does love surprises. Freshman year when he went back home during winter semester to save money, he made a trip back to Provo to hang out, and he came a day early and it surprised the heck out of me. I still remember him walking into our prison cell dorm room and my jaw dropping, not being able to say anything from the shock of seeing him there. Anyway…

This wedding was more in line with traditional weddings that we don’t normally see in the church. Far from being the kind that holds a reception in the cultural hall of the local church and saving on every expense possible, Lauren’s family was the kind that could afford the sky’s the limit sticker price for her wedding, and she was the kind of bride that was going to maximize on that opportunity. Unfortunately for her, she had to wake up to cloudy skies and rainy weather for the one day in her life when she was dreaming of crystal blue skies and warm temperatures.

The sealing was at the Salt Lake Temple. I swear, I always get so much out of the brief talk that every sealer gives before performing the actual ceremony. This temple sealer also happened to be the mission president that preceded Mike’s mission president in Texas when he was a missionary, so he had a loose tie to the couple. My favorite part about the sealing was sitting on Mike’s side, facing Lauren across the altar, and seeing her lips quiver throughout the entire ceremony because she was trying to smile, but trying to hold back her tears. It was so endearing to see and made me feel a little choked up as well.

There were only a few pictures outside of the temple with the photographer, which worked out just fine because it also happened to be the wettest part of the day. As always, events took a little bit longer than expected, so everyone was cutting it close getting back to American Fork in their attire to do photos and be ready for the dinner that was before the general reception. The dinner itself was really nice, but my favorite part of the food provided was the dessert bar and the ice cream going around with the servers.


The nice part about the day’s events was that sun finally peeked from behind the clouds for the reception and when everyone had to be outside. A tent was setup that was lavishly decorated, with dozens and dozens of different kinds of flowers.

My favorite part of the day? By far it was the dancing. They had a dance floor on one side of the tent, and they had a DJ playing for a portion of the evening, but even better was the band that they had hired to play for the wedding. I couldn’t believe how good they were, and they had a male and female singer so that they could do a variety of different songs, not to mention that no song was outside of their range. My favorite was probably when the guy did a Bee Gees medley that I thought was amazing. You want to know another thing? I love dancing. I was a little bummed that all my buddies that I like dancing with only stayed out there for a few songs, but luckily for me Amy also loves to dance so we were on the dance floor for most of the evening. That’s the one thing that I want to make sure of at my wedding – that there is good music. I feel like so many receptions just become about visiting with people and just putting your time in, and getting in and out as quickly as possible that it becomes much less about the fun and celebrating that should be had. This was by far my favorite reception that I’ve ever been to. In fact, all of my favorite receptions had some element of dance involved. Lauren’s brother and sister-in-law and some other friends put together a choreographed dance number to top off the night for the happy couple. But you know who loves dancing even more than I do? Ryan and Tyler. Those kids had endless energy and moves on the dance floor. I thought it was so funny that they didn’t even care who they were around. They were just out there to let their little hearts scream out in their hopping and break dance moves. It was so funny.

In the last few months, there have definitely been times when I’ve felt a little put out by how much time Mike (and obviously Lauren) had to put towards wedding preparation, but in the end everything really paid off. Everything looked so beautiful, I think there were elements for everyone to enjoy that attended, and the importance of the sealing was not lost amidst all of the effort that went into preparing for the wedding day. Amy made a good point when we were talking about some of the events surrounding the wedding, that it’s important to remember that the day is more about a marriage than it is a wedding, and I’m so glad that it looks like both of those things will work out just fine for those two kids.

World Cup 2010

Are y'all ready for this? It is 4 years in the making, and a month long celebration of the world's most beautiful sport. It starts tomorrow. Want a preview? Visit Kent's blog here. For a complete schedule, go here. Want to fill out a World Cup bracket? Try this one here. I don't know of any good ones out there, so point me to 'em if you know 'em.

I have a couple of allegiances when it comes to the World Cup - USA and Brazil. I guess it's nice that Chile qualified, but I don't really expect them to do anything special. Team USA has a good draw this year with England (not the good part), Slovenia (good part), and Algeria (also good). Brazil has Ivory Coast, Korea, and Portugal, which would have been really tough, but the Ivory Coast lost their best player to a broken arm last week.

Being that the tournament will be played in South Africa, games will be on early with starting times at 5am, 7am, and 12pm. I kind of like that. US opens up against England this Saturday at 11:30pm, which would have been great, but some idiot decided that he was going to get married right in the middle of that.

It's always so fun to watch everything as it unfolds, all the drama surrounding the matches, the upsets, and the rising stars and underdog teams overperforming. It's really awesome.

And if you're still having a hard time getting excited, try watching this Nike commercial:

Waiting for "Superman"

On Monday nights I usually have a crew of people that I'll watch some TV with, and normally the show is 24. A few months ago we got into this pretty heated discussion that started with the health care debate that then went into education. One of the girls argued vehemently for public education as it currently stands, that there needs to be some way to be able to reach all of the less privileged kids and families that might not have the means for private education. I had a hard time engaging in the argument with her because she knew absolutely nothing about charter schools and the immense, obvious, and proven benefits that they provide as opposed to public education.

One of the best examples of this is the Harlem Children's Zone. It's unreal what they're doing, and the impact that it's having on people over there. I'll let this segment from 60 Minutes explain more (this is the first part):


The man who started this program, Geoffrey Canada, was also featured on This American Life. The website for the program is here.

Anyway, what's really cool is this documentary that's coming out that will be tackling this topic. Check it out:


The movie looks like it is going to be a very high quality film. Go here to see the website for the film. Something really cool that some people associated with the film are doing is a pledge system, where once they reach 50,000 pledges from people to see the movie, the foundation will donate 250,000 new books to struggling schools across the country.

LDS Scripture Citation Index

Have you all had a chance to use this yet? This is something developed by some of the people here at BYU. The LDS Scripture Citation Index allows you to reference any scripture, or groups of scriptures, and see any General Conference talk from 1942 to the present, and from the Journal of Discourses that references those verses. It's amazing. It's totally made some of most recent studies so much better. You can find it by clicking here.

Here I Come, St. George

So this week kicks off the official start of my 18-week training program leading up to St. George. You know what? I was feeling nervous about all of it until last week. I had been kind of battling a cold for the previous week or so, and I hadn't run much at all. I finally started to get over it last weekend, so I decided that last week I would get a full week in of good running. I ran 5, 5, 6, and then 8 miles Saturday which I hoped would clue me in as to whether I'd be ready for the 10-miler I have this upcoming Saturday. I wasn't sure that my previous base fitness level would carry me through all of that running, but it totally did. The 8-mile run I did went from my place up and around the temple. It was pretty killer, but I had no problems during the entire run and I managed to run it in decent time to boot.

That's the thing about anything. The mountain is always its tallest when you're standing at the foot of it and you haven't started climbing it yet, but once you start making your way up there, it turns out that the apprehension you used to have about scaling it starts to vanish. Running is that way too. You can get so caught up in the miles, and the time and all the preparation for it that it seems almost impossible to ever do, but if you can just convince yourself to get out the door and put one foot in front of the other enough times, pretty soon you'll realize that you'll be ready for, and able to finish the full 26.2.

The program I'll be using can be found by clicking here. It's just straight running, no interval training or anything crazy like that. But it does bump up the runs from the 4-day weeks that I had used previously, to 5-days a week, and it covers 625 miles of running before the marathon, which is about 200 more than I have done previously. Those things give me pause, just a little bit, but you know what? I realized also while running on Saturday that it's good to push myself, and not cut corners, it is also okay to take days off and maybe run a little bit less depending on how my body is feeling. Sometimes I forget that these training regimens are not set in stone. I can adjust them according to what fits my needs. I'm also hoping to start swimming. It won't be more than once a week, but I need to get some use out of my 24 Hour gym pass (which only costs me $49 a year, woo!), and swimming is the best cross training that you can do.

I kind of forgot until last Saturday how much I love running. I love how all the aches and pains go away after the first 20-30 minutes and then I finally settle into my groove. I love all the self-talk that I have to go through while I'm working up the stones to finish the full run, take on every hill, and make sure that I'm giving myself every opportunity to maximize on my fitness. I love the weight loss and transformation that my body goes through as I get into marathon shape. In the last couple of weeks I have dropped several pounds, and I am already getting leaner after my 25 miles from last week. I love the post-run high.

You know what's crazy about St. George? You get in based on a lottery system, but I know four separate people who registered independently and they are all running it too. The lottery is supposed to make it limiting, but everyone I know that tried registering have all gotten in. I'm really excited for this one. It'll be nice to do a well-run (pun intended) marathon that's dedicated only to the marathon, with a good amount of participation from other runners, as well as the community at large.

Anyway, so like last year, but not the year before, I'll probably have some running posts now and then, but not on a weekly basis. It's funny how much that time to myself spurs my thinking. I'm excited for round of marathon training. Up until last week happened, I wasn't really looking forward to it, but now I am. So here I come, St. George.

This song has no relevance to the post. I heard it yesterday for the first time in awhile and remembered that my old roommate used to listen to this song every night when he came home from work. I miss that guy.

Summer Reading

It's been a little while since I've dedicated any amount of time to just pleasure reading. I guess I'm always keeping up with current events and politics, and sports, but there's nothing like just sitting down with a good book and getting all wrapped up in the story and characters. School has a way of interrupting my normal flow.

Then this past week the power went out in my neighborhood, I couldn't work on any school-related stuff, so I took to reading, and oh, how good it was. I've been working on The Book Thief for a little while now, and I finally got to a point where I've become very involved in the storyline. The writing is unique and engrossing, and the plot is thoughtful. I kind of have very little idea about where everything is heading, and I really enjoy that about the book. Throw in the fact that chapters are very short, about 5-7 pages a piece, and it's easy to get caught up in just trying to finish the next one.

Other books I'm putting in my Bookflix cue will include:

• The Merchant of Venice - ever since I saw a stage performance of As You Like It in March, I've been been wanting to read another Shakespeare play. I'm even thinking I'll take the class here at school because why not? I'm paying tuition and I get it for free after that. I love that about school. Nobody is better than the Bard. I can't believe how witty and thoughtful that guy is. The man can write and create stories and humor that lasts for centuries. It's amazing.
  
• Dandelion Wine - this is a Bradbury novel that Amy really loves. I've only read two other Bradbury's, Farenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and I love them both so I figure it's worth a shot.
  
• Churchill - biography by Paul Johnson. I like that it's short, less than 200 pages, I think, but Johnson is a renowned conservative biographer so I think it should be really interesting.
  
• Born To Run - this one has just recently popped up on my list, but most runners are very well aware of it. Some of them consider it their own kind of bible, they love it that much.
• Willful Blindness - this is written by the prosecutor of the 1993 WTC bombers, and how people are turning a blind eye to the terrorist threat.
  
• Cocktail Economics - this book talks about investment principles using everyday ideas.

That list is a pretty wide swath of reading. I try and keep some variety to it. It doesn't always keep me as engaged as I'd like, but I think it helps broaden me. The last couple have been in my library forever, but I've just never gotten around to reading them. I'm kind of an idiot in the sense that I always have no problem buying more books, but don't always get around to reading them right away.

I think that's a pretty good starting point, maybe that will take the whole summer even. Do y'all have any recommendations? For my own part, I highly, highly recommend The Book Thief. It's very good.

Geeked About Glee...Mostly

I was turned onto this show about halfway through the first installment of the first season. It's funny and clever, the characters are over the top, and the performances are first rate. One of my favorite things about the show is how well they are able to write the songs into the storyline of the show. I loved when Finn did Jessie's Girl. Good stuff.

This is what I don't like...

It was showcased extensively in last night's episode, but I do not like Kurt's storyline with his father, and now Finn and his mom moving in with his family. There was some discussion of this last night with some of the people I watched. I get Kurt's father wanting to protect his son, and wanting to make sure that no one tramples over him. The part about the whole thing that I find somewhat disturbing, however, is that while there has to be so much respect accorded to Kurt and his choice in lifestyle, that somehow obligates everyone else to acquiesce to his tastes, namely, his extreme flamboyance.

I can understand the need to be respectful and not hateful towards another person, because as a simple matter of humanity, that is how all people should be treated, but shouldn't Finn also receive an appropriate amount of respect from Kurt as well when it comes to respecting his own beliefs and preferences. At the end of last night's episode, Finn capitulated and ended up putting on an extremely loud and gay costume that was supportive of Kurt, but completely negating himself and his own beliefs, when the whole premise of the episode was about expressing who you really are. Why is it okay for Kurt to be so flamboyant and grossly feminine and not okay for Finn to want to be masculine and conservative in his own right?

I think this is one of the fundamental problems with the gay debate. The homosexual community just wants to be "respected" and "left alone," but this comes at the expense of those who oppose that lifestyle who want to have their own freedom of expression and belief. What ends up happening is what occurred in the show last night - in order for a straight person to be tolerant and accepting of another person, he must reject himself in the process. People on the other side of the debate do not realize this one point. It's a fundamental difference that loses its expression in the argument for either side. The two camps have two different systems of belief that do not reconcile well with one another. And the answer isn't as simple as just being more loving/accepting/tolerant, and anyone who pretends it is that way is denying the other side its validity as a point of contention.

Besides that I think Glee is really fun.

Little Less Conversation

My favorite little brother Mike Reid is getting married two weeks from this Saturday. For the last few weddings we've made it a bigger deal to have awesome bachelor parties and we thought that this time around Mike also deserved to have a nice little sending off into married life as well. Previous bachelor parties featured a snowboarding-cabin trip to Mammoth (Dave) and this is actually our second trip to Vegas to play golf and just kind of mess around in the City of Sin (Mike Liu).

This trip works well for our people because of the proximity of Vegas to both the California and Utah locations. Highlights of the trip include:

• The Valley of Fire. I have wanted to stop at that location for years. It's about 10-20 north of Vegas on the I-15, and I have always been fascinated with the fireworks sign posted in the front. Knowing that we had time because the other guys were running late, Nick, Mike, and I stopped and to my delight, it was even better than I had expected. Once you walk in the place, it is pretty much a grocery store full of fireworks. I didn't even know that so many varieties were available, but there they were, lining the rows of several aisles. I ended up getting a few, but was restrained in my purchasing because I knew that I would be passing by again before going home for the 4th of July.
• Finding a range card with enough money left over to pay for everyone to warm up before the first round of golf...and the next day too.
  
• Mike Liu checking into the hotel, playing a few hands of blackjack, and winning enough in his first half hour in Vegas to pay for his whole trip. Is it still gambling when you have those kinds of skills?
• Too much sushi. The problem was letting Doug order in the first place. Five of us sat at our table, and we seriously must have had about 20 rolls come out to us. The best idea of this part of the evening was getting the completely raw shrimp (not a fan), but then having them fry up the shrimp heads and legs (even less of a fan). I couldn't believe how gross it looked. I feel like I've come a long way with my sushi boldness, but when the eyes are still in the heads and the legs look like spiders legs, I just can't stomach it. The good news was that at any all-you-can-eat sushi place, you have to eat EVERYTHING or they charge you more. This turned into having Doug eat everything he could, passing some to Mike, and then hiding the rest under dishes and the ginger. The specialty rolls were amazing, and being Vegas, they all had lewd names which goes over well on a dudes-only trip. Wet dreams, anyone? You know what's not good, though? Post-sushi burps. Not as good going out as coming in. Not even close.
• Second day of golf - hitting my driver and feeling something go drastically wrong and realizing that the head of my brand new, twice-used club, had just flown off. Even more maddening was the fact that my tee was still in place, meaning that I didn't even hit the ground or anything. It just came right off. When that happened to Dave years ago, I thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I doubled over in laughter and couldn't contain myself. This time around I didn't even know how to react. I wasn't even that mad. I just couldn't believe that it happened. Other highlights of that round...Mike Reid getting an eagle. "Burning rubber" in the cart and getting yelled at by the marshall. Playing sixes on the final three and getting yelled at by some other old guy. Dave annoying the crap out of said old guy. Figuring out that I can actually hit my woods and hybrids pretty well. Those vanilla cream cookies.
• Pool time. More specifically, playing pool-basketball, which inevitably turns into a wrestling match. Nick's shorts were ripped. Doug had a huge scratch across his chest. And after two hours of holding on for dear life, or tearing at arms, extending legs into a person's torso, or holding someone underwater until they dropped the ball, everyone was pretty wiped out.
• The Stratosphere. The best part about it was probably Joe and how nervous he was about going on the rides. Somehow the Big Shot is a thousand times better when one of the people you're going with is deathly afraid of heights. We tried the X-Scream, which turned out to be only X-Mediocre. The Big Shot was closed that night due to wind gusts of about 45-60 mph, so we hit it up the next morning.

I think the nicest part about the trip was just how well we all mix together. Everyone is super easy going and it's so nice that all of our friends mix so well together. I'm really looking forward to everyone coming up for Mike's wedding in a couple of weeks. Probably some more golf, some times with the childrens, and just hanging around making dumb jokes. It's the best.

Some Things You Should Know

It's funny how when I really start to get into something I start drawing all these life metaphors using that new obsession of mine. The latest culprit...golf. It's amazing how much repetition you need before you really have any idea what you're doing with a golf club. After several weeks of class and hundreds of swings, today was the first time when I actually felt like I had any idea about what the mechanics of my golf swing were like. I started to realize which swings felt right, and why the ball might be slicing, or how I'm pulling the ball. This will be a future post some day, but I think the key to being great at anything really comes down to complete control. A musician is great because he has complete control over an instrument, knowing exactly how to move fingers or to blow wind through the instrument. Picasso was a great artist because he had complete control over his brushstrokes and how he wanted to distribute his paint on a canvas. I am learning to hit a ball straight and far because I am learning how to control my hands, wrists, arms, and torso as I pull back swing the club in alignment. It's interesting stuff to me....

I didn't get this feeling last year, but I feel like the Angels are a .500 team this year. It hurts for me to admit that. Still though...Erick Aybar has to emerge from his slump at some point. Hideki Matsui is a better hitter than he's showing. And maybe Brandon Wood will figure out MLB pitching. He has to. We have too many years invested in him for him not to be productive. Our starting pitching looks good, but our bullpen is atrocious. Namely, Brian Fuentes. Shieldsy isn't looking very good either. We'll see. Jered Weaver is looking like an ace though, and I'm so glad that Lackey and Figgy are struggling in their new homes. Especially Lackey. I'm so mad that guy ditched us for the team that I hate most in all of professional sports. Get this...I don't even hate the Yankees that much anymore. Weird.

I love that the Lakers just look better and better with every game in the playoffs. These first two games with the Suns have been a joke. I loved loved LOVED that the LA fans last night were chanting, "We want Boston!" That's going to be such an epic series. Yes, both the Magic and the Suns are already history. The Magic lost both their games at home, and the Suns didn't even show up to either of the first games. Done. Let's get to the Finals.

All the uproar over the Arizona immigration law is sickening. They're just trying to enforce the law. And our lame President and ambassadors to China are pretending like that law is equivalent to what the Chinese do to their political prisoners. And former Utah Governor John Huntsman kowtowing to the Chinese, too? Shameful.

Anyway, if you want to find me this weekend, please direct all correspondence to my address at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I'll be golfing and hanging out by the pool for the next 48 hours.

Also, I love BoB. His rapping just does it for me. This is a crappy version, but I wanted to protect your innocent ears. You'll just have to deal.

Breaking Ties

The last few weeks I feel like I've been around a lot of breakups. A friend of mine is going through a divorce. My roommate is fresh off a divorce. Another friend of mine just broke up with her boyfriend of the past 8 months. These are just some observations, so don't read too much into this stuff...

I'm just a single kid, so I don't have my own family and know what marital problems or problems with children are like, but in my situation, I don't think there is a worse kind of pain than breaking up with someone. It just kind of rips your heart out, almost like a piece of you is being surgically removed with a dull, rusty, hedge trimmer. And I wish there were a better answer than just time, but I always think that's the only thing that really softens those wounds. Fresh memories and experiences are raw and they hurt, but time and experience has a way of putting some distance between the pain of the past and allows us to recover and move on.


After Becca, it used to be that I couldn't listen to this song without feeling all of those old wounds open up again. I can still remember the morning she came over and we were sitting on my couch, listening to this song, and she told me that she had never been happier than in that moment, and I wanted more than anything to freeze that moment in time so that we could always have it together, but things didn't work out. This is the neat thing about moving on - the salience of the memories that you have tied to the triggers, whether they be songs, places, smells, etc. become dulled as you receive continued exposure to those things and the trigger draws new associations with other things.

This is a shortened version of my advice on moving on: cut all ties, allow yourself to mourn, but don't dwell or wallow in the past, and look for new relationships, not replacement ones. You know what really surprised me? Just how good the advice is in this WikiHow article about breaking up.

You know what's a nice part about breaking up? Life moves on. One way or another you're going to wake up tomorrow, the sun will rise, and you have another opportunity for a new start. Getting to know new people is a good thing. Forming new relationships is a good thing. And having another opportunity to get things right is the best thing.

Honest and Refreshing

I thought this video of the recently elected New Jersey governor Chris Christie taking on a reporter was pretty great:


I was talking with a friend not to long ago about how she was having a conversation of a similar sort with a guy that she knows. As soon as she countered any of his claims on certain topics, all of a sudden their conversation turned into a confrontation. Sometimes disagreement leads to digging in of one's heels, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I just liked that his response was so off the cuff, but so well articulated.

Sports, Sports, Sports

I meant to write about this a long time ago, but I'm kind of out of the habit of blogging now. You'll never guess who had an awesome NFL draft that is being lauded all over the place by the pundits. Yup...da Raiders! They picked up the premier middle linebacker that QB'ed Alabama's national championship defense, they picked up other receivers and linemen, and with picks that most others would consider a reach, they used appropriate picks that were worth the gamble. It's seriously as if someone else has taken over management from Al Davis and wants to turn this team around. And they released Jamarcus Russell, and traded a 4th round pick to the Redskins to get Jason Campbell who is an instant upgrade over everyone else they have on their roster. Nothing like the offseason to get me excited about that team. The only problem is the actual season that always seems to let me down.

Went to Game 4 of the Lakers v. Jazz on Monday night. They pretty thoroughly crushed the Jazz. Can you believe this? That was only my second Lakers game in my lifetime. The other one was during the Showtime era when they played the Rockets. Yeah, we're talking late 80s. It was a really fun game though. The Lakers crushed the Jazz, and I almost felt bad for the Jazz fans. You could feel them wanting to get into the game, especially in the 3rd quarter when they cut the formerly 22 pt. lead down to 5, but then just couldn't sustain it. The Lakers pushed it out to 12 by the 4th quarter, and from there you could just see that the Jazz were not a good enough team. Gasol had an awesome game, and Kobe has been a steady dose of great in the last five or six games.

You know what I'm most happy about though? How much the Cavaliers are struggling. I get why people hate the Lakers, and I totally would too, but the Cavaliers are everyone's favorite front-runners. I understand the Lebron love, but I don't like how some people are pretending like this is rooting for the underdog. Rooting for the Cavs is rooting for the 2x MVP on the team with the best record, who were the favorites to win the title. What kind of underdog is that? The guys I'm really scared of are the Orlando Magic. They look pretty much unstoppable. When you have Vince Carter as your third or fourth scoring option, you know that you're a deep team. I just can't believe how much the Celtics creamed the Cavs last night in Cleveland. Crazy. The conference finals should be pretty entertaining to watch.

The Angels stink. Guess who's looking awesome and who stinks right now? Guerrero and Matsui. Ouch. It's still early, but it looks like I was wrong on that one. Kazmir can't pitch past the 5th inning. Our bullpen is super weak. I wish we'd use Rodney instead of Fuentes as our closer. Aybar is not consistent enough yet. Abreu can't get on base like he normally does. Hunter and Morales still look great. Wood is still struggling getting use to MLB pitching. Kendrick is respectable. Mathis was on fire before breaking a bone in his hand. You know who our MVP right now is? Jered Weaver. He's got the weight of being our bulldog, and he's carrying it well. The season is still young, but we have some troubles right now. It comforts me some that Figgins is really struggling over in Seattle. I'm not hoping for a down year, but it would be a big boost to stockpile some talent in our farm system through better draft picks.

In other news, I love golf. If I didn't feel like a moron staying through the second hour, I totally would stay after my class and into the next one to continue practicing. I can't wait until the Reids come up here and we can play a round together before Mike's wedding. That will be so fun.

Can you believe this? We are exactly one month away from USA v. England in the World Cup. It starts in 30 days. I can't wait...

I Won The Lottery!

I found out this morning via text from my friend, then through the website, then through an email, that I won the lottery!

...and got my entry into the St. George marathon, which will be October 2nd. I'm actually really excited that I have a tangible goal in mind now when it comes to my running. I had been planning on running San Francisco in July, but the timing is just too close, so I was starting to look for other marathons because I wasn't sure that St. George would work out. Now that it will, I'm content to resign myself to running only that one this year, maybe run a half in July sometime, and then maybe run the Arizona Rock & Roll marathon in January (although I have no idea what I'll do for the long training runs that will come in some really cold weather here, we'll see).

I was a lot more excited than I thought I would be. I registered with a team of other runners, and then two other friends registered independently and all of them got in. There were 11,000 applicants, and they gave out 7,200 entries, meaning that there was a 67% chance of getting in, which also means that there was only a 30% chance that all my friends would get in also. Pretty crazy, huh?

Anyway, I'm excited. You know what else is nice? Not really having anything to do this weekend. I'm going with some friends to see Iron Man 2 tonight, which I think will be really fun, and then who knows what else...maybe a long run tomorrow. Or long boarding in the canyon. Or golfing. Or napping. Or writing a play. The possibilities are endless.

Well, I hope you have a great weekend, dear ones.

Quick Hits

I have a few current events and random items that I wanted to share:

• I think this is something that would do well here in Provo - there is a website dedicated to the sale of your breakup bling - wedding rings, jewelry, other sundries that you got from an ex. The website is called Out of Your Life, and can be found be clicking here.
• I have mentioned this before in some other posts, but people reify environmentalism as religion as much as Christians and Buddhists and Muslisms do their own beliefs. You can't access the Wall Street Journal article anymore unless you're a subscriber, but they did include these points about the Church of Environmentalism -
  

  There is a holy day—Earth Day
  
  There are food taboos. Instead of eating fish on Friday, or avoiding pork, Greens now eat organic foods and many are moving towards eating only locally grown foods.
  
  There is no prayer, but there are self-sacrificing rituals that are not particularly useful, such as recycling. Recycling paper to save trees, for example, makes no sense since the effect will be to reduce the number of trees planted in the long run.
  
  Belief systems are embraced with no logical basis. For example, environmentalists almost universally believe in the dangers of global warming but also reject the best solution to the problem, which is nuclear power. These two beliefs co-exist based on faith, not reason.
  
  There are no temples, but there are sacred structures. As I walk around the Emory campus, I am continually confronted with recycling bins, and instead of one trash can I am faced with several for different sorts of trash. Universities are centers of the environmental religion, and such structures are increasingly common. While people have worshipped many things, we may be the first to build shrines to garbage.
  
  Environmentalism is a proselytizing religion. Skeptics are not merely people unconvinced by the evidence: They are treated as evil sinners. I probably would not write this article if I did not have tenure."

• Regarding Socialism, Ludwig Von Mises said:

  "The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!
  
  Against all this frenzy of agitation there is but one weapon available: reason. Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords."

• Jay Nordlinger has been writing journals from a human rights conference that he has been attending in Oslo, Norway, (access this one and others by clicking here) and it's amazing the kinds of stories that he's relaying. Not the good kind, but the kind that make you feel like you have been living under a rock because you never ever hear about these kinds of stories in the mainstream media, and it's a tragedy. A couple of them:

  Sophal Ear, an American, is a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. He was almost a casualty of the Cambodian holocaust. He tells us the story of his family, using photos: We see his mom and his dad, young and in love. Life in Cambodia was pretty good, envied and copied by others in Asia. Then the Khmer Rouge came to power, with their diplomas from Paris. They remade Cambodian society, killing a quarter of the population in the process. Ear’s father was one of the victims. The rest of the family managed to escape to Vietnam.
  
  The Communists wanted to create an “agrarian utopia,” Ear says. “You know the John Lennon song ‘Imagine’? ‘Imagine no possessions, no religion’? That’s what it was like in Cambodia. The only thing people had was a spoon, for eating the daily pourridge. And that pourridge was grossly insufficient for the work they were made to do in the fields.”
  
  I don’t believe I have ever heard the John Lennon song cited negatively. It is thrilling.
  
  Ear mentions that Pol Pot died untouched, in his bed, at an advanced age -- which is slightly annoying.
  
  He also talks about Tuol Sleng, the school that was turned into a torture center. Some 16,000 people were tortured to death; twelve are known to have survived. I find that a stunning statistic -- twelve.
  
  We see a sign listing the rules of Tuol Sleng: It says that, when you are tortured, you cannot cry out. We see photos of boys who are deemed enemies of the state. They have numbers pinned to their skin -- that is, the pins go through their skin, as though it were a shirt. I cannot look at the photos.
  
  But worse, possibly worse? Ear reminds us of all the Western intellectuals who loved -- loved, loved, loved -- the Khmer Rouge. Many of them were in my hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich. Ear shows us pictures of the “Kampuchea Conference” that took place in Stockholm, in 1979. Stockholm is not very far from here. The purpose of the conference was to promote the restoration of the Khmer Rouge to power. Jan Myrdal was the keynote speaker -- the famous intellectual who is the son of Gunnar and Alva. Ear also quotes Noam Chomsky, others. Chomsky is still making moral and political pronouncements, and so is Myrdal.
  
  Being on the left means never having to say you’re sorry. They just glide on . . .
  

  And another:

  Like Kang, Marina Nemat has written a book: Prisoner of Tehran: One Woman’s Story of Survival Inside an Iranian Prison. That prison was one of the most notorious in the world: Evin. A place of darkness and sadism -- unrelenting sadism. Evin is the symbol of the Khomeinist revolution, really.
  
  At the podium, Nemat says, “It is an emotional experience for me to be here. Hearing all these stories” -- the testimonies of other former prisoners -- “I feel energized.” Nemat is going on from Oslo to do a European speaking tour. “Thank you for reenergizing me.”
  
  She was only a teenager when she was a political prisoner. And there have been thousands of teenage political prisoners since the revolution triumphed in 1979, she says. “This situation has been going on for 30 years. It is going on today.” She comments on the pictures of Cambodia that Sophal Ear has shown us. The torture chamber reminded her of what she saw in Evin. Chains tied to bed legs and so on. She says, in essence, “You’ve seen one torture chamber, you’ve seen them all.”
  
  She also describes a visit to Auschwitz she had. During that visit, she saw a great pile of shoes, taken from the victims. “And that made me wonder, What did they do with our shoes?” She remembers the shoes she went in with: “They were Puma running shoes, white with red lines on the sides.” What did they do with our shoes?
  
  She tells her story simply, plainly, matter-of-factly. She was “just a normal girl” who rode her bike in the streets and wanted to become a doctor. Her father was a ballroom-dancing instructor; her mother was a hairdresser. The family was Catholic. She was 13 when the calamity of the revolution struck.
  
  At 16 -- this took unbelievable nerve -- she asked her calculus teacher to teach calculus instead of the Islamist propaganda of the regime.
  
  She was arrested in the middle of the night, and blindfolded upon arrival at Evin. This is standard operating procedure. And then she was tortured. She does not go into details, here in the Christiania Theater. “They are in my book.” She was told that they would arrest her mother, father, and boyfriend if she didn’t “marry” her interrogator-torturer and convert to Islam. She submitted.
  
  This was “legalized rape,” as she says. “I didn’t have a choice.” Interesting about her “husband”: He had been a prisoner himself, under the shah, and tortured -- tortured for three years. Now he was the torturer. Three months after the “marriage,” he was killed -- “assassinated,” Nemat says. Curiously enough, it was his family that pleaded for her release. They secured it.
  
  She went home to her parents. At the dinner table, they talked about the weather. No one asked her what had happened inside the prison. “It would have been nice if someone had said, ‘When you’re ready to talk, we’re ready to listen.’” But no one said anything. The experience was just swept under the rug.
  
  She married her boyfriend, who was the organist at church; she herself was in the choir. “The marriage was an act of defiance. I converted back to Catholicism when I married André. This put another death sentence on my head, because if you convert to Islam, and then convert out of Islam, you are automatically condemned to death.”
  
  Years passed. Nemat was living in Canada. And it was in 2002 that “I lost the ability to sleep. The past caught up with me. I started having nightmares, flashbacks, and I had to do something about it: either go jump off a bridge or tell my story.” She took the latter course.
  
  She stresses that what happened to her in Evin is going on every single day, with other girls. The only thing that has an effect, she says, is international pressure.

That's all for now.

30, Flirty, and Fun

Came back last night from California. I was there from Wednesday until Sunday, but it may as well have felt like 5 minutes. Everything about it was perfect - Utah decided to have snowy, frigid weather while I was away, and California welcomed me with temperatures in the 70s and hardly a cloud in the sky the whole time I was there.

I managed to:

• Catch the Angels' game Wednesday night - the walk-off win on a bunt single by Howie Kendrick.
  
• Visit with my dad on his birthday.
  
• See my mom after she was stuck in Brazil for 45 days.
• Play soccer Wednesday night on 3 hours of sleep and after a baseball game and 9-hour drive before that. I was better than I would have expected, especially since I haven't played at all since January. Devastating, I know. That's the longest stint without soccer in my entire life, except for the mission.
  
• Hot tub twice.
• Magic Mountain without any lines the whole time. We just about walked onto every ride, and we got so spoiled that when they said waits extended to 15 minutes, we would just walk away instead. Nothing beats X2, but you know what else? Don't ride rollercoasters on an empty stomach. The whole time I kept thinking I was just getting old and not cut out for them anymore, but then I ate something and felt fine after that.
  
• Caught the Hurley warehouse sale and bought lots of new stuff.
• Got me some new business Rainbows.
• Spent time walking on the beach, watching rugby on the grass field in between A and B streets, walked the peninsula, and ate a corn dog at Jane's Corn Dogs, which, incidentally, are awesome. As good as any corn dog I've had.
• Went for a run in Peter's canyon.
• Hung out for Dave's birthday party, which turned out to be great, thanks to the efforts of his lovely little wife.

And now I'm back here, to my semi-real life. Coming back from vacation is really not so bad when all you really have to wake up for is golf class at 9:00 am. Even then, I debated with myself this morning if I should go or not. I did, of course, after reminding myself that I really wanted to take the class and work on my game. Tomorrow night our stake softball league is starting up, and I'm thinking that I should probably join, especially since I don't have my bowling night anymore this summer.

You know what's really great? Realizing that I have so many wonderful friends and a great family. Sure, my dad is kind of weird to me a lot of times, but he's a really decent person and does the best he knows how. My mom is the sweetest person in the world. And I have amazing, amazing friends. I also realized that I have lots of really awesome couple-friends, which can be kind of hard to find because adding another person makes it that much trickier. I wanted to drop by Laura's on the way back from Magic Mountain because I knew it was a bad time to drive home (4pm on a Friday through LA), but for some reason decided against it. Anyway, I just love that I'm from such a cool place and home is punctuated by the fact that I have so many people that make it so great. I really can't say enough about how great I have it with all the people in my life.

So here goes...trying to work on my thesis, get into a regular running schedule, fulfill my calling, and everything that's involved with life back here in Provo.

I'd post pictures, but as has been the case over the last year, I don't have a camera, so I have nothing to show for it. But trust me, it all happened, and it was all great.