So you know that awkward feeling when you haven't blogged in like 6 months, and people are like hey you should blog but then you don't because your almost ashamed of how long its been? Well i do mainly because i am feeling right about now. Well world, and i use that term loosely to mean my one and only reader Josh Sponbeck, i'm back so here is a quick update on my life.
EFY been there done that got the t-shirt. But in all reality it was pretty freakin awesome. Was it hard? did i hate the dances? did the kids with sass get on my nerves sometimes? The answer YES. But was it worth every single second? YES!
School has started up againg and i am a third of the way through with my most time intensive semester yet. Homework due pretty much everyday, thats the life right, and all this of course is happening the semester that i go through with the biggest decision of my life.
UM kind of some big news . . . i'm engaged! Yep thats right peoples on October 21st 2011 i will marry the love of my life in the Salt Lake Temple! She is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to me and i am really the luckiest person in the whole world! I want to thank her for putting up with me, i know i can be a handful, and quite often i ask myself how i got to be this lucky. I love her with everything that i am, and i only want to make her happy. I am so thankful that we will be able to be together for time and all eternity because we are getting married in one of the temples of the Lord. Things have been stressful lately, what with wedding plans, me looking for a job, school, car issues, and whatever else has been thrown our way. I know it has been hard on both of us, and katie has been the one to pull me through. She is strong, smart, determined, caring, loving, selfless, service minded, and the most beautiful girl in the world! Katie I love you!
That is pretty much it, at least for now that i can think of. I'm gonna really try to be a lot better but with how busy things are i can't make any promises. I will say this, i am trying to work on better time managment. If i do that who knows how much time i may free up.
alright here it is folks, hot off the presses. Yours truly is officially being an EFY counselor this summer. Thats right, as of like 10 minutes ago i accepted the contracts they offered me and it is going down like china town! This process has been somewhat annoying since i had to fill out my I-9 form 3 different times and send it down to them. Granted the first time was totally my bad, the second time was just the fact that the goverment is super anal, and as they say the third times the charm. So what up youth from the ages 14-18 you will be looking to me as your counselor! Are the youth ready for this...who knows really, i guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Also on a completely unrelated note, i wore a Superman cape yesterday and it was legit! I'm convinced that the world would be a better place if everyone wore some form of super hero garb every once in awhile.
So as a side note to what i actually want to say, did anyone notice that the last three titles to my last three posts had exclamation marks on them. Strange, i mean I'm all for showing enthusiasm, but it surprised me three titles in a row with an exclamation mark... maybe a little over used. It reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld, you really don't want to overuse the exclamation mark that's a dangerous game, because pretty soon the actually meaning of an exclamations mark is gone and all it ends up being is just another period with a line above it. And i for one do not want to see that happen, because then to actually show that your a little bit excited about things you've got to start throwing on 2 3 or dare i say 4 exclamation marks to make your point. I for one don't have the time or money (have you seen the price on ink cartridges lately, freak those things are expensive, i find i just don't refill. I think I'm going on 3 months now on EXTREMELY LOW black ink cartridge. My printer may not be to happy but my wallet is.) for that to happen. Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't use the exclamation mark, i just feel it might be something we should think twice about before we just throw it out there. We walk a razor thin line my friends and i for one don't want to fall off.
Now for something we should be using exclamation marks for...General Conference is this weekend! Now that is exciting stuff. I just love General Conference always have. Granted the reasons for loving it have evolved over the years. As a child it meant that on Sunday i didn't have to get dressed in church clothes and i would do the whole church thing in my pajamas sitting on my couch in the comfort of my own home. That was the life as a kid, at any point you could stand up go grab a snack and no one gave you weird looks. The next stage of my love for General Conference was going to Priesthood session with my Dad and my Brothers. It was just great to go, and then of course right after go to Hires to fulfill a long lived tradition. At this point i think i may have been more excited about Hires then Priesthood session, but none the less i was still excited about priesthood session.
The next stage came right before my mission and the intensity of my love just grew while i was on my mission. I had received my call March 26th 2008 and just a week or so later was able to watch General Conference, and i even took notes cause i was just so stoked to go tell everyone i could that we have a living prophet today, that the priesthood has been restored, and that God has a plan for us. While i was on my mission i gained a new appreciation for Conference because i no longer had the luxury of sitting at home in my PJ's. Conference meant 2 full days of serious travel trains, buses, a nice walk and finally you were able to hear from the Prophet and Apostles of God! Seeing the sacrifice that some people made in order to attend Conference really opened my eyes to the importance of this great meeting. And here i am today filled with that fire just waiting to hear what the Lord wants for me for the next 6 months. So to whoever out there reads this, i invite you to hear for yourself what the Lord has to tell us through his living Prophets, it's gonna be sweet!
Well to the 6 of you who read this (and by saying 6 i am being pretty generous) buckle up cause i feel a good rant coming on. It is just one of those weeks, so sit back and prepare yourselves to be blown away by the things that chap my hide March 22 edition.
People who stop in groups on the 3 foot wide sidewalks, and refuse to step aside to let people pass. Seriously people the world does not revolve around you, and unlike you the rest of us have a class to get to, and i don't know about the next guy but i really don't want to step in the mud on either side of you.
Laziness. Now hear me out here, cause i know some of you will say "Hey have you never been lazy in your life!?" and of course the answer to that question is yes i have, and every once in awhile it is nice to take a little break and just relax. But when the extent of your day is sitting on the couch idling away your time and occasionally getting up to maybe go to class, i'm done with you. Get up, go live life, experience the joys all around you but please get up off your lazy butt and do something!
A sense of entitlement. I was taught by my father the value of hard work, if you want something you work for it. So i am so done with people who expect to be given everything in life. Now don't get me wrong every once in awhile you need help, and i know my parents have done so much for me, i know i will continually be indebted to my parents for the rest of my life. But they did not just hand everything over to me, i was expected to behave and pull my weight. So you people out there that just expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter...get over yourselves and work for something for a change. I am seriously done with you people!
Disorganization/Dirtiness. I walked into my apartment today, and as a bit of a preface, this week is the week my professors decided to have papers due and give tests. So i'm already a bit irritated, and done with this week. Friday cannot come soon enough! So as i said i walked into my apartment during my break in classes to make up a little lunch. And our apartment was just a solid mess! Now i've lived with this for a semester and a half, and normally i just grin and bare it. I just figure whatever i'll clean it up. But today i was just done with it! Summer cannot come soon enough...at least for this aspect.
So those are some of the main things that are chapping my hide at the moment. And to end on a somewhat happy note here a few of the things that have made me smile lately.
Free Aggie ice cream at the TSC for filling out a survey!
Kid booking it down the hill while i was on my way to class, i'm not sure where he was headed but i am sure he got there super fast!
My polysci professor moving our test back to Friday instead of Wednesday.
So yesterday up here at good old Utah State as a part of geek week, we set a new world record! What we did was drop 20,000 bouncy balls 100 feet out of a flying helicopter. That is pretty cool in and of itself, but for some reason i think my favorite part is i got out of my German class early to go and see it. I have to admit i was expecting something a lot cooler, but for anyone that has seen this Sony Bravia ad, who wouldn't when it comes to bouncy balls.
So this commercial is super legit, and probably one of the best ads I've seen, mostly cause they have a legit song by Jose Gonzalez playing. ("Heartbeats" i highly recommend checking Jose out) And they actually did this in San Francisco, this is not CGI. Also if you have the sudden urge to purchase a Sony Bravia TV that is totally understandable, my family owns one, and it may or may not be because of this add...okay it probably isn't but who really knows.
But here are some pictures and a video of the world recording breaking experience.
The helicopter that dropped the bouncy balls.
So i realize now that i should have taken a picture of the crowd, because there were quite a few people, and tons of kids, but with the prospect of a bunch of free bouncy balls, what parent wouldn't take there kids to see this?!
And here is a video that i took. I hope you can see, i apologize in advance for the quality of the video and the fact that you have to turn your heads, sorry! But you can kind of see when the balls are first dropped.
Ya i was hoping for a bucket drop. Like the forest fire fighting helicopters, when they dump the fire retardent out of the buckets. That is what i was hoping for, alas it was not so, but now they know for next time. And yes world if you were wondering i did score some swag from this event, mainly a piece of a world record and here it is!
So I am an avid fan of the 4 seasons. I like the change that it brings. Its like we get a new begining with every new season. If winter wasn't your friend then you get to start over again when spring comes and the same goes with each passing change. But for some reason the change from winter to spring always seems to take the longest. Now don't get me wrong I love winter, there are few things in this life that can compare to the look of fresh fallen snow, or gliding down the slopes with that crisp mountian air blowing past you. Also i have so many great memories tied with the winter months, but man i love spring. And here are a few reasons why:
Watching everything come to life!
Its like 7:30 right now and still light outside!
Frisbee (for those of you who know me, know that the weather doesn't dictate when i play frisbee, but there is just something about those spring games. Probably the fact that when i stop playing i don't freeze to death or feel like dieing due to the heat.)
Flying Kites!
Rain, and the smell of Rain!
It just so happens my birthday falls during the spring months
Here are some pictures to prove it!
After some sweet Frisbee!
Park City May 2007
Spring in Germany, ok its 10x cooler there.
FACT
After seeing this how can you not be stoked for spring! I only wish I was in Germany!
You know when something happens in your life, an event or just something that has been on your mind a lot, and your never quite sure if it is the right thing. You spend a lot of time thinking about it trying to figure out if it's a good thing or not. It always happens where you finally think you have it figured out, and then something happens that makes you second guess yourself. As I like to say, life throws you a curveball. Just that kink in things that makes it that much more difficult. But... you can still hit a curveball, it may take a bit more patience and it may be scary to stay in there and swing, but I promise you, you can still hit a curveball. So after you keep thinking about it you decide that you'll act on that thought and you swing. Be it any situation in your life, but you have made the move from theory to pratice, and it works. How great is that feeling?
Sure life is full of a lot of doubt and difficulty, but as a great friend once told me "one of the biggest problems we face in this life is indecision". There is no standing still people, you are either progressing or degressing. If we stand there not acting then it just gets harder and harder to act, that is when the second guessing really comes into play and we are stuck. Sure sometimes we act and it was the wrong decision. But did we learn somthing? I sure hope we have. And next time you know from your own experience. Sometimes it may not pay off, but that one time when it does, the pay off is usually big.
I love the scene in "The Little Giants" where they are sitting in the locker room at half time. And they all go through stories of that "one time" where it did pay off, and that is what it is all about. Believe me all that doubt and second guessing is worth it in the end. As long as you can say "I had a good time!" or "I learned a great lesson!" So don't waste away your life not acting on those things, make sure it is in line with what you feel, know, and believe. And then go out and do, don't let life pass you by!
