Thoughts pt. 2

This week has been kind of interesting for me.  I feel like I've learned something.  (which would be great if I wasn't DEAD!)*  Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.  Sometimes life gives you lemons.  Sometimes life even kicks you when you're down.  

But you know what?  Life goes on.  When life gives you lemons, throw them back and then punch life in the face.*  Tell life that you are not going to stand for that business.  Then mom sends you and life into separate corners for a time out.  After that, you're friends again, and you go do epic things.

Speaking of epic things, this weekend will be pretty epic.  Ward activity, party, leadership meeting, basketball game, and Divine Comedy, all in the next 36 hours or so.  Wish me luck!  I hope I survive.

*see me afterward if you don't get the movie references.

In other news, check this out.  I'm kind of excited for this summer.

The Return of Gideon

So this one time, I made a 101 list.  Most (all?) of you who read this blog know this.  One of the items on said list was to dye my hair.  Item # 29, to be precise.  I didn't have any specific plans of how or when to go about this, but I had been asking some friends what color they thought would look good on me.  I was debating between dark-ish brown and red-ish.

Anyway, a little over a week ago, I was just watching the Jazz game on a Friday night with some friends.  All of a sudden, the girls (Kellie and Alyssa.  You guys rock, by the way.) were like, "We should dye your hair right NOW!"  After some coaxing, I gave in, and we went to the store to get some hair dye.  I mean, let's be honest; when else am I going to be able to be this random and spontaneous?  I let the girls pick which one would work best, which was an awesome idea.

I ended up compromising and doing a dark-ish red-ish.  I really like how it looks.  It's kind of a subtle change, nothing too ridiculous.  Here's a couple pics.  The first one is kind of dark, so it's hard to tell.  The second one you can see the color better.

Also, sorry about how funky my eye looks in the second one...... I don't know what I was doing.

So that's that.  #29 checked off my list.  Until next time!

Weekend of Awesome

So, this weekend was rather awesome.  First off, Friday night we had a Stake opening social, followed by a dance party.  Although our ward didn't 'officially' win any awards, we know we're the best, simply because we were like the only ones dancing to start the dance party.  Also, our bishop and his wife joined in the dancing.  Coolest bishop ever?  Perhaps.  After the dance was over, (it was held outside, btw) we saw that the sprinklers were on across the field.  So some of us ran through them.  And it was fun.  And then we came back to my place and watched Better Off Dead.  Such a great movie!

Saturday was also full of awesome.  I got up and played ultimate in the morning, then got ready to host the football watching party at my apartment.  I had made bean dip for the occasion, and other people brought cookies and brownies and other snacks.  There were lots of good games to watch, which is a good thing, since watching the second half of the BYU game was just painful.  Oh well, there's always next week.  Except we'll probably get owned by Florida State this Saturday.  Oh well, there's always the NEXT week.  :)

Then yesterday was a ridiculously long day, but way sweet.  We had a regional conference in the Marriot Center, with two Apostles in attendance and speaking.  Then later in the evening we had a CES fireside with another Apostle.  Add that to the awesomeness of our ward sitting together for both of these events, and then ward prayer and such afterward, and you get a pretty rockin' day.  Now it's Monday morning, and back to the grind of work and school and homework.  Not much has changed since last week on that front.  I'm still getting my trash kicked, with not much time to play, (other than weekends, of course) but it's all good.  Well, that's all for now.

P.S. LP's new album is still amazing.  Full review forthcoming.

Waiting For the End

There just aren't enough hours in the day.... So, these first couple weeks of school have kind of been kicking my trash. I don't really have a whole lot of time to play anymore, which is really sad. There are some things that I'm just making time for, like the ward intramural ultimate team that I'm playing on tonight. I hope we do well. Also, watching the football games on Saturdays. That's another priority. Anyway, I've been listening to Linkin Park's newest CD on repeat for all of yesterday and today, and it's kind of blowing my mind. The whole album has a very different feel from their previous records. I won't give a full review yet, but here is just a section of lyrics from one of my favorite songs, 'Waiting For the End.'




waiting for the end to come,
wishing i had strength to stand
this is not what i had planned
it's out of my control


flying at the speed of light
thoughts were spinning in my head
so many things were left unsaid
it's hard to let you go


i know what it takes to move on
i know how it feels to lie
all i wanna do is trade this life for something new
holding on to what i haven't got


................


picking up the pieces now, where to being
the hardest part of ending is starting again




Until next time, may life be as un-busy as possible. :)

Lagoon!

So last Saturday, I went to Lagoon with a whole bunch of friends. And it was awesome.  The end.




Just kidding!  We went as kind of a last celebration of a summer full of awesomeness.  We left Provo at about 9:30, and stopped at IKEA on the way up for breakfast.  They have these way sweet breakfast plates for like 2 bucks and they're actually really filling.  After that, we headed up to the park.  I'm actually kinda surprised at how much we were able to fit into one day.  We started with Wicked and Colossus at the one end of the park, and just rode pretty  much every ride on the way over to the other side.  We had a couple of food breaks, but other than that, we were just riding awesome rides all day long.

We finished up the day with a ride on the ferris wheel, then one more on the Samurai in the dark.  We had about an hour left, and we decided to go ride Colossus and Wicked as many times as we could before the park closed.  We ended up going on Colossus like 3 or 4 more times before they closed it.  All in all, it was a ridiculously fun day, although also crazy tiring.

So, funny story:  at the first food break, I'm waiting in line and I see that they have this deal where you can get a 44 oz. mug and free refills all day long for 12 bucks.  I'm debating with myself whether or not it would be worth it.  I figure, if I refill it twice, I'll have gotten my money's worth.  It turns out that  I ended up sharing it with everyone else in the group, so we refilled the mug 10 times!  Plus, now I have a mug that I can take to the gas station and refill.  I think that was a pretty solid purchase.

And that's the story of the awesomeness of Lagoon.


P.S.  I got Metroid: Other M yesterday, but I've only played it for like an hour and a half, due to work and school and other obligations.  My early impressions are that it's a way fun game, but with more action and less exploration than other Metroid titles.  Full review to come.

P.P.S.  I bought a Moleskine notebook at the bookstore today.  I don't really know what I want to do with it yet, though, so any ideas/suggestions would be welcome.  :)

Six days.......

I'm sure that I'll be writing another post about this topic in a couple weeks, but for now, I'd just like to express my excitement for Metroid: Other M.  I've been anticipating this game for a year and a half since it debuted at E3 in 2009.  It finally comes out August 31st.  I will spend most of the first week of school playing it.  For your viewing pleasure, here is one of the many trailers.



For now, I think that is all that can be said.  In a couple weeks, once I've played it, I'll let you all know what I think of it.  (sneak peek: I'm sure I'm going to love it!)

Until next time!

I like to watch movies!

Here goes another round of movie reviews.  Yay for movies!

The A-Team - (watched 8.6.10) This is another movie that I'm glad I waited to see in the dollar theater.  I knew that I was going to at least enjoy it because it has Liam Neeson in it.  Other than that, it was a fairly standard action flick.  One thing that I did enjoy is the huge amount of humor in the movie.  Even though some of the action scenes were ridiculously over the top, the jokes were always funny.  Final rating: 3/5

District 9 - (watched 8.7.10) (disclaimer: I watched an edited version, so some comments might be directed at that. (further aside: any time I review an 'R' rated movie, it will be edited, just so I don't have to clarify that every time.))  I was actually quite impressed with this movie.  I think that it definitely deserved the Best Picture nomination.  The cinematography was awesome, and the story really made me think.  Rarely do you have a film that falls so completely in the Sci-Fi category that is also this critically acclaimed and thought-provoking.  The editing in the version I watched was very well done, and I could only tell in a couple places.  If you're a fan of Sci-Fi in general, or alien movies in particular, I'd recommend giving this one a try.  Final rating: 4/5

Primer - (watched 8.14.10) To be honest, when I finished this movie, my brain hurt.  The premise goes like this:  two engineers accidentally invent a time machine, and paradoxical craziness ensues.  I feel like I need to watch it several more times to actually comprehend what's going on, but I was impressed, especially for a movie that was shot on a budget of $7K.  Final rating: 4/5

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - (watched 8.14.10) Holy crap this movie was freaking amazing!  I've been excited to see this movie since I saw the trailer for the first time back in May.  I bought all the comics (from amazon.com, even!) and read them in like a week.  The whole movie (and the comic series that it's based on) is basically a love letter to everything video games.  And I love video games, therefore, I love this movie!  The acting is spot-on, the dialogue is extremely funny, and the fight scenes are very well done.  My only minor complaint is some small but fairly significant changes to the comics.  I understand that these are necessary to squish 6 books down into two hours, but still....  Final rating: 4.5/5

Seven Pounds - (watched 8.20.10) Honestly, the less said about the plot of this movie the better.  Before watching it, I had heard a little bit, but even that was too much.  In many ways this is kind of a successor to The Pursuit of Happyness, also starring Will Smith and directed by the same director.  Will Smith's performance in this movie is amazing.  It's very different from any of his action movies, and in my opinion, even more demanding than his role in Happyness.  If you enjoyed that movie, I would recommend this one.  Fair warning though, it might make you cry.  Just sayin'.  Final rating: 3.5/5

Pick of the post (something new I'd like to try): Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
For all the reasons I listed above and more, go see this movie!

Best movie ever?

So, I just got back from watching Inception for the second time.  (I know, it's taken me too long to see it twice, but oh well.)  I was just as impressed as the first time.  Honestly, I think that this might be my favorite movie.  I know, I have lots of favorite movies, and my favorites change from time to time, but this is definitely going to be one of them for a long time.  I don't think I can find a single thing to complain about.  Also, I absolutely love how the whole thing is pretty much open to interpretation.  I haven't talked about a single movie and what it could mean this much in a really long time.  The point of this post is basically to convince anyone that hasn't seen this movie yet that it's worth seeing, and to convince anyone that has seen it that it's worth seeing again.  It's just that good.

I'd like to say a few words....

These are some of my favorite words to say, in no particular order.

- Excalibur
- paprika
- kukuruza (Russian for corn)
- moist
- endeavor
- whistle
- ennui
- rather
- pulchritudinous
- kerfuffle
- splendid

Apologies for going over the one week mark by a day.  I've been rather busy at work, and all the kerfuffle has left me not a moment to spend on this splendid blog.  I shall endeavor to do better in the future.  Until next time, may your days of ennui be few and far between.

Road Trippin' (you know, the Chili Peppers song....)

So, this past weekend, I went on an awesome road trip with some friends in my ward.  Here in Utah, we get the 24th of July off of work/school for Pioneer Day, so we decided to celebrate... by leaving Utah and going to the beach!

One of the guys in my ward lives in Covina, CA, which is only a few minutes (ok, more like an hour, but still....) from the beach, so he offered to let us all stay at his house.  A group went down Wednesday night, stopping in Vegas along the way.  That's the ones who could get Thursday off of work.  I was one of the unfortunate half that couldn't get work off on Thursday.  Also, I was the one with the car.  So, come Thursday night, I gather up my things, and throw it all in my trunk, along with all the rest of the people who are riding down and their things, and we set off at about 9:30.  Yes, that's 9:30 in the PM.  From Provo it's a 9+ hour drive to Chad's house in Covina.  And yes, we drove through the night.  That was an adventure in and of itself, tell you what.  When we got there, (about 6 in the morning, local time) I shuffled into the house and promptly fell asleep.

A couple hours later I woke up to waffles cooking in the kitchen.  Let me just say right now that Chad's family is rockin' awesome.  His mom made some of the best homemade food ever, and his dad was just cracking jokes like the whole weekend.  Anyway, so we all get up and eat some food, and by then I was about ready for a nap again.  (remember, I'm running on like 2 hours of sleep)  So I took a nap, and then we all headed out for the beach.  We all had a blast at the beach, playing in the sand and the water.  Honestly, I don't think I'd ever gone 'swimming' in the ocean before.  I mean, I know I've been to the beach and at least waded into the water, but I'd never gotten soaked and ridden waves.  Tell you what, it was a rush!  I'm not a big fan of the salty water in the mouth thought.  We also built an entire city of sand buildings and then knocked them down, Godzilla-style.  After that, we played a quick game of ultimate right there on the beach.  Running in the sand was really tiring, so that didn't last too long.

After more chilling on the beach, we headed back to Chad's and on the way stopped at In-N-Out for some classic California cuisine.  When we got back, we cleaned up from the beach, and then we all sat down to Avatar in Blu-Ray on Chad's awesome HDTV.  That is definitely the way to experience that movie.  Pretty much everything is better in Blu-Ray, I've decided.  I'll admit, I dozed several times during the movie, but hey, I was tired!

Saturday, we got to sleep in (yay!) and then Chad's mom made awesome homemade egg muffin sandwiches.  They were pretty much the breakfast version of heaven.  After that, we headed out to the LA temple to take some pictures.  It's one of the prettier temples that I've seen, and I think Chad said it's also one of the biggest.  On the way back from there, we stopped at another burger joint called Tommy's.  At this place, everything they serve comes with chili on it.  It was way intense!  Then we came back and rested, chilled, napped, etc.  Honestly, we kind of all turned into little kids again.  Chad's nieces and nephews were over, so we got to play with them, and we all just sat in a circle and threw a ball around for like an hour.  It was great!  Later, we had a barbecue, with amazing burgers, chips, watermelon, the works.  After that, we played duck, duck, whatever.  How it works, is instead of saying 'goose,' you say another animal, and then the two that are running around the outside have to be that animal as they're running.  It was great!  We had unicorn, penguin, velociraptor, and my personal favorite, amoeba.  Later that night we went to a neighbor's place and swam for a bit before we all decided it was time to call it quits for the evening.

Sunday morning we got up and went to Sacrament meeting early, then after that we headed out about 1.  We got back into Provo a bit before 11, so not too ridiculously late.  Also, my car hit a milestone of mileage on the way back.  My car hit 177777 around Scipio, Utah.  I tried to take a picture, but we were on the freeway, and all I had was my phone, and it was dark, so it really didn't work out at all.  Oh well, I saw it happen, so that's cool.

This summer I've discovered that I really do like road trips.  I figure I've got to enjoy them while I can in college.  When you get married, they're not called road trips anymore.  You still do them, but then they're called visiting family, or vacation, but with kids, it probably just seems like work.  Then again, maybe that's just me being cynical, which has been known to happen from time to time.  The moral of the story is, I'm sure this won't be the last road trip I go on with friends.  :)