Silly Memoirs

Kings Peak

2009-07-19T22:17:00.001-07:00

Tallest Peak in Utah? Check. Photographic evidence to prove it? Check. 30 Miles and 5000 ft elevation change in three days? Check.

Mad Dog and I just through Gunpoint Pass.

View from Kings Peak. Wow.

Tallest character in Utah. You're welcome for this NOT being a close-up. Very nasty facial hair was brewing at this point.

High-altitude-snow-run-off-lake swim? Yes, please.

High Altitude sun bathing? Twice as effective? Par for the course.

Happy Birthday, America!

2009-07-05T18:14:00.001-07:00

From Carrie

Parents and I at the Cedar City Parade.

Showing off Cedar City's 'Guns'...What other Parades have tanks? Communist countries.

A "Happy Birthday, America" CupCake. By Jenny.

What a Vanimal

2009-07-05T18:13:00.001-07:00

Holidays mean more time with VAN-imal. And since I find Vanimal to be the most photogenic in the family, that means more pictures. Bon apetite.

Just-waking-up-from-a-nap Van.

Hello Patriotic Suspenders.

Some of the family watching Jim Gaffigan. The kicker here, Van OBVIOUSLY loves my laugh, as this picture so appropriately captures. Favorite Uncle? Undoubtedly.

This isn't Van. Don't worry, I don't have some time-traveling future-picture-taking camera. It's Patriotic Dad at the Parade. Sleeping. Favorite shot.

Black Widows

2009-07-03T09:23:00.001-07:00

I have found TWO Black Widow Spiders in the past few days. I feel like I'm on of Expedition Africa.

At least the size of a fist....maybe just a new born babies fist though.

The famed hourglass red mark on the abdomen.

Hot Air Balloon Rally

2009-06-27T20:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe the Panguitch Hot Air Balloon Rally is so shockingly awesome because who would go to Panguitch and expect to see anything so spectacular.

The Rally is a new sort of tradition; It's tenth year. The rally has grown to 35 balloons launching each morning for a weekend. It's a kickoff everyday to some surprisingly neat things that include, but are not limited to, a "dusk glow" [balloons lighting up at night], a 5k, a FREE Pancake breakfast, a Harley Davidson Parade, a normal Parade and a DUSK GLOW Dance.

I loved it so much that I took way to many pictures [88]. Here are just a few...

The Balloons 'Waking up' [Yawn!]

Lift Off

Cool Eclipse

Cool Parents

Cool Pic

PS, Just in time for the Fourth of July, a little Patriotic love from the Corvettes in the parking lot :)

Done-zo

2009-06-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Some pics of the assembled Nishiki...

*Assembly

*Assembled

TODDSShoes

2009-04-25T09:15:00.001-07:00

The Title is in reference to a pair of TOMS Shoes I just ordered. I'm very excited about these little guys. I'm posting this because a year ago I talked about how I wanted to try out a pair of these. Well, this is follow through...I have follow-through-ability. Very important. [Tawni, do you read this?]

Should be a good summer shoe.

It's taking a Village

2009-04-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

It takes a village to raise a child. As far as bikes are concerned, that's true. I decided to repaint the Nishiki, so I enlisted the help of SuperStar Painter and Bachelor of Fine Arts Major David Hawkins. His attention to detail and skill were a great value to the project. Cousin Rob helped disassemble the bike and the sanding and painting got underway.

Rob and I doing some late night heating and scraping. [The family resemblance is obvious in this picture. We're hair-identical twins]

Setting up the frame and fork at B-66 to use some power tools.

Using the power tools. It was exciting and a little disheartening. What took us hours and hours to do was getting done in a matter of minutes. 15+ hours sanding by hand = 45 minutes in the shop.

Nishiki, Japanese for.....

2009-03-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

I saw a preview on TV not to long ago for a new Debra Messing TV show called The Starter Wife. It looks horrible. Just last week I bought my first road bike, a Nishiki Olympic 61 cm; My Starter Bike. It's already much more promising.

The bike is in good working order [right now]. I've had no flat tires, no chain / derailleur malfunctions and I've even received a few whistles from passers-by [Some of that last statement was false]. Even though in good working order, the list of potential upgrades is already growing. The first modifications are aesthetically functional; so look for some updates soon!!

Fenway, of course!!!

2008-05-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

May 20th we went to Fenway to catch a Red Sox game. My first in Fenway. The event started off memorable enough, we got free parking! Parking in Boston isn't like parking out west, which there is a lot of. Out east, the parking is limited and the cost is high. So we drove up to Yawkey Way and decided to work from the inside out, to see if we couldn't stumble upon some great parking. Right at Fenway we asked a cop [sidenote, all cops are used as traffic mediators in Boston...they do no actual crime solving...strictly traffic enforcement] if he could give us some tips for where to park. It was useless....Better said, the Cop was useless. He told us that the $30 parking was as good as any and that we should pay it. We explained we were from back West, and $30 isn't something you pay for parking. He then officially welcomed us to Boston. We drove another few hundred feet and saw a parking garage...Someone was leaving. The mechanical arm that would have normal blocked our entrance was stuck up. After a slick maneuver worthy of a James Bond movie, we slid into a spot in the back of the Garage. Unbeknownst to the parking attendants, we had scored a Parking spot, feet from Fenway. This was destined to be a great experience.

The game was memorable, and the Bostonian crowd was in Good spirits/form for the event. There was a slight nip in the air, and the possibility of rain hung heavy over the stadium.. But the scare of the clouds was much worse then there light drizzle bite. Fenway Park has this cool thing outside of it, at Gate B, called the Scalp Free Zone. You go there looking for tickets and you can buy them from other people, but the cool part is that you buy them at face value. You work through a Red Sox employee and he acts as the mediator for the transaction. Genius. Pictured is the Scalp Free zone.

We got to the game, a little early but there were no complaints from any of the three of us. It was our first trip to Fenway and it seemed that we needed the extra time to soak in the experience. We arrived at the stadium about two hours early, and it was surprisingly full. That was our first hint that this was going to be a different experience. We got to our seats [ ] right next to Pesky Pole. We walked around the stadium for a minute and got out to Yawkey Way. We were done exploring the historic ballpark and headed back to our seats in time to hear the introduction to the lineup. The Red Sox were playing the Royals, a matchup I had seen at Kaufman Stadium four years earlier. Jon Lester pitched the 18th No-Hitter in Red Sox history the previous night, and the crowd seemed especially alleviated knowing that history was made the night before. The chill in the air was becoming stronger and stronger as the night progressed, but so was the excitement in the air. Before long, we were standing and stretching in the seventh inning. Every hit ball, even if for a split second, seemed like it was heading our way, only to land sections away in the glove of another lucky fan. Tradition runs deep at Fenway and the eighth inning we stood and sang Sweet Caroline. I felt apart of a club. There was a brotherhood there. Before we even sat down, Jonathan Papelbon was running onto the field to "Wild Thing." Chills were running down our necks. The stadium was electric. They played Drop Kick Murphy's "I'm shipping out to Boston", the song that IS Boston in my eyes.

Boylston St. Apple store......the Playground.

2008-05-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

The Boylston Street Apple store is our new Boston Playground. Macrumors reported that the store, which opened on May 15th, is the largest apple store in the U.S. It's three stories, with the top story dedicated purely to software, the second story dedicated to purely Macbooks, Macbook Pro's, Air's and CPU's, and the first floor to iPods...I've been in Boston less then two weeks and we've already been by twice, with a semi-major purchase in the works for tomorrow morning :) I love the playgroud.

Battleship Cove

2008-05-25T21:48:00.001-07:00

Fall River Massachusetts is home of Battleships Cove which houses the USS Massachusetts, the USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, the USS Lionfish and some german boat called the Hiddensee. The day we went, it was drizzling rain at the Cove but there wasn't any wind. The light rain gave everything a feel that it had just been cleaned, and the boats seemed even more brilliant then when we had passed them the days before.

Looking through a Periscope. Very U-571 of us.

Fall River also has a large Portuguese population. 47% of the population describe themselves as being of Portuguese descent, the largest percentage of any city in the United States. The Portuguese came over back in the 1940's and 1950's because Fall River used to be a large port for fishing, and that was something they were super good at in Portugal. This is a picture of the Portuguese Navy at Battleship Cove.:)

Rhode Island

2008-05-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

Rhode Island is the funniest state in the Union....Well, the funniest state we've been to so far.

To its credit, Rhode Island is, as seen on the sign, Home of the 2008 World Scholar Athlete Games, Hall of Fame Tennis Championships, College Sailing National Championship, and the Golden Retriever National Specialty. But just to be cool, we saw the Ocean, in the Ocean state. Bam. To it's credit, It was the best twenty minutes of that trip.

Famous Friends

2008-05-07T11:35:00.001-07:00

Thank you magmypic

Britten Newbill

2008-05-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

Im getting sick of having to log onto Britten Newbill's MySpace page to listen to his music, but its so good that I can't stop it. Britten is a really good friend of Truman's from Nashville. Story has it they performed in Show Choir together at Beech HS. Britten went on to the Berklee School of Music in Boston and now writes and makes music in Nashville.

I have to keep going to his myspace page because he never gives out his music to anyone. I bet we can get it from him eventually. Im gonna send him a message on Facebook asking to break the tradition. Hopefully this blog shout out will help.

My two favorite songs are 'SHE' and 'REAL ONE.' Listen up

The Health of Blogging...my renewed sense of writing.

2008-05-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

Everyday I read CNN for my daily dose of worldly news. Todays cover page featured an article about the health benefits of Blogging. In the interest of personal health and social satisfaction, heres todays blog.

Writing about health, I'd like to mention in blog my schedule, which was planned, for my day yesterday.

This is the schedule from my iPhone.

Tuesday, May 6th.

9.30 AM Running [With Casey]
10.30 AM GYM
12.00 PM Argentine Food at the Tango House [State St. and Bulldog]
1.25 PM Pool and Tan
3.00 PM Detail Boat [MasterCraft X45. We're going boating on Thursday]
7.15 PM Softball Game [Supposed to be City League but we went to the Intramural Game]
9.00 PM Laser Tag at Laser Assault for Lauren Lefevre's Birthday party
11.55 PM Take out the Trash

The retired life at 22. Geez. Get a job.

Sneaker Peek

2008-04-10T16:29:00.000-07:00

Writing about Sneak Peeks made me wanted to write about a 'Sneaker Peek.' Here are some sweet kicks I've been peeping online.

A Shoe that skyler was wearing that I've always thought looked like a slipper. On him it looked a little more dressy then bed wear. He also said they were comfy.

Same type of shoe [Alpargatas] but made by Paez. They have a sick Checkered one as well

Some Creative Recreations, the Cesario Lo that are money. Brad and Tanner say they aren't a '10' on comfort but they still look fresh.

Sneak Peek at what could have been

2008-04-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

To show how we were thinking, here are two ideas that we scratched. The first is really the path we ended up following. The letters being 'more 80's' as it was described to us and louder. Its easy to see how we got from there to the actual finished design. The second was the letters in the effigy of the constellation Orion. It fit well theoretically with the idea of the letters as stars, but not in reality with the letters being to hard to read.

The Sneak Peek

2008-04-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

Because this is what Blogs are all about, I'm leaking the Rock the Block Design.

Our artist for the letters was Tom Nance who did an awesome job and delivered. Hopefully we can use him on future projects. Garett and I did the Graphic Design work. American Apparel provided the shirts in Heather Plum and Asphalt. The Heather Plum shirt is going to have the logo in black ink and the Asphalt shirt is going to have the logo in white ink. Ink Spot on University Ave. and 3rd north is doing the printing. They're the best.

Childhood Fantasies come true

2008-04-09T18:50:00.001-07:00

Tuesday night, April 8th, Tawni and I attended the 'Y Awards', BYU's own version of the ESPY's, or the Oscars, Emmys, or Tony's for BYU Athletics, which ever helps you understand. Tawni got nominated for Female Crowd Pleaser of the Year [not only because she performs in a bathing suit, but because its so fun to watch]. What was even more fun was that all of these childhood heroes of mine from BYU teams of yesteryear were there as presenters. Rob Morris was there, Reno Mahe, even Shawn Bradley. There was a point in the evening when I was riding the elevator with Shawn Bradley, Max Hall and our respective dates. Shawn Bradley put his hand on my shoulder and made a joke about how tall he his by raising to his tip toes and hitting his head on the top of the elevator. What a pleaser.

Being around BYU is filled with so many rad experiences, and I commonly find that I have those moments where i catch myself thinking, 'I can't wait 'til I have kids so I can tell them about this!'. Until then, telling my blog is just as satisfying.

Hello Hammock

2008-04-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

Living in a house really amplifies the seasons. Theres something adult about living in a house. Strolling the property in the afternoon the weather was fine enough to try and string the Brazilian hammock up. I say brazilian hammock because we have three hammocks in the house; a brazilian hammock, a mexican hammock, and a hammock [found, no known nationality]. There is an old hammock holder in the yard and Rob thought it would be to small to hold the two person [luxury] brazilian hammock. We tried, Rob was wrong and it worked!!

Thats the view of Mt. Timp / our backyard from the hammock.

We're Young Again!!!

2008-04-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

Rob, Tawni and I went on a walk this afternoon around the river. Rob and I were talking about how long its been since we've seen our really good friend Taylor Zmoos, who is still in Canada speaking chinese on his mission. The last time I personally saw him was right after my 19th birthday, he flew out to my house in Scottsdale, AZ and we kicked it for a week before I went on my mission. So I threw around some mental calculations and thought i figured out that it would be around 4 1/2 years before we see eachother [tear]. I told these calculations to Rob. Upon repeating the number outloud, doubt creeped into my mind. Had it really been this long? I asked Rob, 'Hey, cous, how old are we?' Response: "22 cous." And like finding $20 in your pocket or scoring a free meal at your fav restaurant, I was instantly a year younger!!!

For some reason the topic of how old I am has been popping up in an abnormal amount of conversations of late and I've been responding '23 of course!' But, due to clerical errors and having friends that are all in their mid to [gasp] late 20's, I've been wrong lo these many months.

Ohh to be young again...Well atleast for today we are!!

Old Music

2008-04-03T16:13:00.001-07:00

I have a 100MB external hard drive and there are around 20,000 songs on it. Today i decided to destroy that. So about an hour ago I started deleting artists by folders and I started with 1800 folders and right now I have 553. I don't know how many songs that adds up to yet but it freed up over 30 GB's of space on my hard drive. The reason for this musical renaissance? Spring is here. and because Rob promised me his new FTP invitation. Im sure that 553 will be cut in half by the end of the night.

Old books

2008-02-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

I'm studying on the fifth floor of the HBLL, on the northeast side next to the Fine Arts section. I'm minding my own business, being productive and writing a few papers and these two books are staring at me. Its a penetrating stare. Representative Painters of the XIX Century, published in 1899, and Dictionaire Historiqu Des Peintres, published in 1866. I want to take them off the shelf and rustle through there pages, and handle something that old. How exciting! Its a very enticing proposition. That's the biggest distraction I'm facing right now. Chris Koontz just found a book printed in 1806....We need to find a new place to study.

Worth a shot

2008-02-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

Internet -
Writing a blog is worth a shot, so i decided to take one [bang].

Formally named Toffler's Adhocracy, I give credit to Alvin Toffler for popularizing the idea of advocating the organizing style of an adhocracy, which is, in the words of Robert H. Waterman, JR. "any form of organization that cuts across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results."

Two characteristics of an adhocracy that greatly apply to this blog are
a] its highly organic structure, and
b] little formalization of behavior. So this blog will be more responsive, as in a response to what's going on around, whether in the world [don't count on to much of this one], in the country or locally; in my life or yours; to my friends or ours.

Thanks for taking a shot and checking out the blog.

Policy v.

2008-01-15T01:04:00.000-08:00

It worries me that the majority of our conservative Presidential candidates are so staunch against changing their positions on political policies, but so ready to change their hearts and most noteworthy, wives. Whats more, those who have stuck by their policies are rewarded in a party that is founded on conservative values. While trying to Unite a party, it seems that more have succeeded at dividing their families. But have they really stuck by their passions? I would rather have a candidate who has had one spouse and changed policies [ Romney, Obama ] then someone who has stuck by their political guns only to have their families go to ruins, numerous times [read multiple divorces/affairs per candidate]

It's well documented that Rudy Guilliani's kids hate him and don't support his campaign. The mayor used NYPD as protection for his mistress who he was having an affair on his wife with at the time, and costing the public millions of dollars. But hes hard on terror. Thats fantastic, then maybe he can stop terrorizing his family.

Whats going to happen when they fall out of love with being the President? Wouldn't you imagine it would be a lot like a marriage. It seems very glamorous in the beginning, and you quickly become infatuated with it, but you soon realize that it takes hard work to keep it going.