My Missionaries

These are the best missionaries in the MTC.

Belated Birthday Wishes!

Here's a little belated Happy Birthday to my sister Brittany...


HAPPY 18th BIRTHDAY!!!!

(on September 26th)


and to my bud Mike Kleinman...


HAPPY 22nd BIRTHDAY!!!!

(on September 28th)


Have some cake...

My fantasy weekend getaway

So even though I've only been at school for a few weeks I already feel like I need a vacation. Here's my plan (if my funds were unlimited):

Flight from SLC to Las Vegas: $278.50


The Palms Casino Sky Villa: $70,000 for two nights

Description from The Palms.com
Our two story suites give you more than 9,000 square feet to relax in and you can add a connecting salon suite. These rooms feature a media room, massage room, balconies off the bedrooms, a revolving bed, your own glass elevator, double height parlor space, cantilevered Jacuzzi^® pools with glass end wall and spectacular view of the Strip.



Absolutely beautiful.




Notice the pool looking out over the strip.


Two tickets to KA, by Cirque de Soleil- $350.00




Lastly, I'd need, um, like $10,000 to do some shopping and eat some awesome food.


TOTAL weekend getaway price- $80,600

It doesn't hurt to dream, right?

The air is thinner up here

So when I got home from my mission I wanted to work as hard as possible to keep the weight off that I had lost on my mission. Dad got me signed up with a personal trainer and I spent the majority of my summer vacation at the gym. My waist got smaller, I got much stronger, and I just felt plain healthy.

Well, now I've been here in Utah for a month and haven't really kept up on the habits I developed over the summer and I really don't have anyone to blame except the freaking AIR. It is so much thinner here in Utah. I've never had problems with endurance during my cardio before but now I can barely run a mile without getting nautious and light headed. It's horrible. I think I'm just going to have to continue to acclamate little by little to the Utah elevation and keep trying to push myself a little bit every day. Because I really don't want to appear on this show in a few years. Even though I do enjoy watching it.

Here's my list of fall television:

The Office
Grey's Anatomy
The Biggest Loser
America's Next Top Model

and probably the most shameful of them all: 90210. Please don't tell anyone that I like it.

A little sun at the game

This last Saturday I went to the BYU-Wyoming football game with Trent and Brittany Platt (a buddy from my mission and his sister; they're now my neighbors). It was my first time going to a college football game, and since the arts school I attended for middle school and high school didn't have a sports program, it was really the first time I have been able to get caught up in school pride. I had a great time as I cheered the Cougars on. I don't really think they needed it since they squashed the Wyoming Cowboys 44-0. Another Cougar shutout. I hope we can bust the BCS and make it to a BCS bowl this year.


The only downside to the day was the intense sun which burned one half of my face throughout the game. I didn't really notice how bad it was until the next morning when I saw small blisters on my forehead. Here's how I looked Sunday:

The burn didn't really make me feel too comfortable.

Those aren't zits on my upper forehead, they're little blisters. And they hurt like heck.

Lessons learned: BYU football rocks. Wear sunscreen.

Blogs

I guess being away for so long has left me clueless in how popular it is to have a blog. I remember the days of livejournal, back in middle school and high school, when it was popular to start a fight over the internet, or write emotional poetry with lots of metaphors and drama, etc. Those were great days. But now people blog about everything. I've got friends who put their photography on their blog, cousins who send out a daily newsletter of their family with pictures and links, and other friends who just rant about their life. I'm not trying to knock on any of these reasons for having a blog, I'm just noticing. The internet is truly connecting us in so many ways these days. It is an amazing thing.

I kind of want to jump on the bandwagon as well. I just don't know if anyone cares to read...which I guess is the irony of a blog anyways. You never know if it's being read or not.


And just a little video to finish off the day: Sarah Palin/Hilary Clinton-SNL

Avoid Mountain Home, Idaho

Well, the whole idea sounded pretty good. In order to save the family a bit of money, I was to fly home to Vancouver for the weekend, stay a day, and then drive back our 1989 Honda Accord "Ghetto" to Provo with my sister as my co-captain. It was a brilliant idea, and even more brilliant that I was finally going to have a car of my own to drive around here at school. Until about 8 hours into our adventure we reached the outskirts of a town called Mountain Home. I don't know what they put on their highways but whatever it was, it ripped my back passenger side tire a new one.

Here's me attempting to put on the spare:



And the lovely damage that I-84 did:


After realizing that someone bolted on the tire ridiculously too tight, we called AAA to come bail us out. The nice/creepy tow truck driver who changed our tire told us we should probably stay the night in Mountain Home and not drive on the spare another 400 miles to Provo. He told us about a little motel on the side of the road we should stay at and guided us to it. As we saw what could of potentially been our final resting place, we decided the Best Western would probably be better. BUT, Mountain Home got us again by deciding to have an air show in town and selling out every hotel room. So we took a chance on our spare and drove 80 miles to Twin Falls, where we stayed comfortably in the Twin Falls Best Western. In the morning as we waited for Sears Auto Center to open up we visited the new Twin Falls LDS Temple, which is quite beautiful.



After a long wait at Sears we were finally back on the road. We got to SLC about 3 hours before Brittany's flight and so I didn't even get to show her my new pad, but she'll be back I'm sure.

Overall, I think with the plane tickets, the new paint job and stereo in the "Ghetto", the replacement tire, the gas money, the hotel room, and the time it took for the whole adventure, we probably saved about $10 by having me drive home and get the car. But, as I learned last week from Kearl in Econ 110, the marginal costs (about 1000) were less than the marginal benefits (about 1500) and so it was a rational decision to bring the car down. Next time though, I think I'm gonna avoid Mountain Home, Idaho. There just isn't anything good there.

i'm here

Well, it took me a while to make a blog but I finally got around to it. It has been two weeks since I got home from my mission and the transition has been...overwhelming and interesting. There are times when it still feels completely surreal that I am home and with my family and that it's ok to watch tv and be alone with girls and just relax and hang out. For the past two years I have lived at such a fast, diligent, working pace...and now it's just calm. I can't sit down to watch tv for more than ten minutes because I get bored and antsy. The only movies I have really enjoyed are The Dark Knight and Hairspray, most likely because they move quickly and were full of action (in their own ways). Overall I love being home, I'm just not used to it.

I miss Paraguay. There hasn't been a day yet that I haven't thought about it. Two or three hours don't go by before I remember the people, the culture, the smell, the country. I miss the simplicity of life there and the easy-going lifestyle. I miss speaking spanish all the time (although I have had a few chances to speak with others so far, which has made me happy). But even though I miss my mission and Paraguay and the missionaries, I realize that it is also time to move on. I feel in limbo a bit since I have a month until I leave for BYU. I think once I get down to the Y I'll feel more settled.

Well, I'm out for now. I'm going to make this a habit.

MRH