Final Required Blog Post

Well, here we are at the end of the semester.  Time has flown by, like always.  I feel that it's appropriate to take a moment and express my sincere feelings towards my blog and the experience that I've had being a blogger.  I admit, when we were first given the assignment to create and maintain an active blog, I felt a little anxious and nervous.  I had only heard about blogs in the movies and thought you had to be really cool to have a blog.  I wasn't even sure how to spell "blog," but I hesitantly signed up anyway.  My first few posts came only after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.  Gradually, though, as the semester passed, I felt more and more confidence in my writing.  I even began sharing very personal feelings, hopes, and dreams, including a heartfelt poem that I had written in the silence of a dark, cold night.  Now, as I ponder on all the many things that I have learned over the last few months, I realize that blogging, to me, has become something far greater than a weekly assignment.  It truly has become a delightful dive into my distant dreams (note the alliteration, a sure sign of an ace writer).

Serving the Stressed

This is a formal report of the assignment given from Shayne to find someone even more stressed than myself and do something nice for them.  I really took this seriously and was looking all week for just the right individual who was pushed to the limit and who could really use a helping hand.  I think I must have been inspired, because of all people, I thought of my very own sister and concluded that she would be a great candidate (I've been sarcastic, it was actually a Sunday night, last minute cop out).  I called her up and asked if I could do her dishes.  She liked the idea of course, but said that she and five or six other girls were still eating dinner and that I should come over a little later.  When I heard that, I knew that I had been inspired to call her.  Now I was going to get the chance to be "caught in the act" of serving by a whole group of girls.  I went over at the time my sister designated and pretended to be shocked that a whole dinner group was gathered, even though I already knew they were there.  I collected the dishes from each of the girls while they were still seated and got to meet each of them.  What a deal!  True service should come from the heart and isn't rendered to attract the praise of the world, but it is really nice to show up at the right place at the right time and attract the praise of six girls just by fulfilling a mandatory service assignment!

Mountain Man Update

As promised, here's a little update on my aspirations and plans to become a mountain man/cowboy/rancher.  Becoming a mountain man or cowboy can be kind of general, it encompasses a variety of checkmarks or degrees.  I'm still beginning and have a long way to go, but recently, my mind has been obsessed with going fishing.  Now fishing is something i've done a fair amount of in my life.  I've always enjoyed it, but i've never been the one to push my dad to take me fishing, or had the drive to go out fishing by myself.  This last week or so, though, i've wanted nothing more than to drop a line in the Provo river and land myself a good-sized brown trout.  I'm serious about making this dream a reality too.  When I was home this week, I talked my dad into letting me take a rod and reel back down with me to Provo.  I also talked to my "Mr. Outdoors" uncle about what bait or lure to use on the Provo.  I even have an idea of when i'll actually make the trip.  My Saturdays usually have a 3-4 hour block scheduled out for me to watch the BYU football game.  Since our regular season is now over, i'll just go fishing for that time instead.  Anyway, that was a lot of details that I just threw out, but the main point is that I am still serious about becoming a woodsman and the next step or checkmark is to go fishin.

Thoughts

I'm not sure if I know all the rules or requirements for our weekly blog entries, but today I feel like just writing as if it was my journal.  This is just what's on my mind right now, and I hope it's legal to do this.  I randomly have had the desire to go fishing for over a week now.  I would love to just head up the Provo River a little bit and drop a line in the water.  I haven't been since I've been home from my mission.  Also, I want to get back into rock climbing and camping.  School has kind of separated me from many of my hobbies.  I spend hours on end indoors studying and my desire to be free and in the woods has been building up inside of me for a long time.  I feel like going to Cabela's just to feed the flame.  Unfortunately, I'm going to have to plan very carefully if I want to be able to fit those things in in the near future, because after a short Thanksgiving break, it'll be the home stretch for school and I imagine that things will be pretty busy.  I do have to admit, though, this semester has flown by!  It is almost over already.  Yikes! Yes!

BYU Basketball

I really do try to talk about a variety of subjects on my blog, but it seems like I always fall back on sports.  On Friday, I took one for the team and got in the line outside the Marriott Center at 2:00 pm to get good seats for the 7:00 pm game for my buddies and me.  The three-hour wait in the cold and then the two-hour wait inside the arena was long and boring, but it was a small price to pay to get good seats to the home opening b-ball game.  By the time the lights in the arena went out and the giant sheets fell from the rafters as part of the pre-game celebration, I had completely lost my mind and my voice.  BYU started off a little sluggish, but thanks to Jimmer Fredette, they finished the first half on a roll and opened up a big lead.  The second half was just an extension of a practice as BYU blew out Fresno State and kicked off what should be a very successful season.    

Cowboy Up

This is unusual: I have two specific topics to write about and I want to write about both of them.  Usually I have to rack my brain to think of anything to write about.  The two themes are, first, that I have always wanted to be a cowboy/rancher someday and, second, that my roommate just cooked some awesome Thai food that rocked my world.  I think I'll write about becoming a cowboy.
I can't remember when I first starting having this desire, but its been building up inside of me for a long time.  When I was little, I often wore a worn-out cowboy hat around the house.  When I was a teenager, I had a job of feeding two of my neighbors' horses.  This last summer, I became fascinated by western movies.  John Wayne and the Sackett's are some of my new heroes.
Even though I am preparing to apply to the accounting program at BYU this spring, I am also making plans to turn my dream of being a cowboy into a reality.  The following is a list of the next steps to be taken:

• Purchase boots and a hat
• Continue to develop a healthy taste for country music
• Plan trips to rodeos, fairs, and demolition derbies
• Stalk, catch, and train a wild stallion

Please follow this blog to get updates on the progress of this worthy endeavor.

Customer Service

I think this will be kind of a random blog post.  Over the weekend I went out to eat at a restaurant for the first time.  While I was there, though, I noticed something that has made me think.  When I go to restaurants I like to talk to the restaurant servers or other workers for their suggestions on what to order.  Many workers automatically recommend the most expensive thing on the menu, and it is clear that they are only trying to increase my bill and their tip.  Other can't even give a good recommendation because they really aren't even familiar with the menu.  I'm kind of weird and I like to observe the different responses that I get and then compare them with my own opinion of the food after I finish eating it.  I usually find my opinion of the meal to be quite different than the description from the original suggestion.  The other night, though, the worker at the restaurant we went to, gave us honest, blunt descriptions of the menu items and even talked us out of what we were going to order in favor of a less-expensive item that was his personal favorite.  My post-meal analysis found that he had been extremely accurate in his description and we tipped him heftily.  I learned how much of an effect a worker can have on the satisfaction of their customers.

Venting

I really am a positive person, and happy too.  Once in a while, though, I think it's ok to get some feelings out in the open, or, as I like to call it, vent.  Last week was pretty rough, as far as school goes.  Last Sunday  night, I sat down and made a list of assignments and tests that I needed to complete last week.  I only had a few in mind originally, but as I thought about it, more and more "to-do's" came to mind.  I knew right then, that I was in for a crazy week.  My assignments and tests included (remember I'm venting, so just listen and go along with it all) PAR stories, resumes, and a cover letter for MCOMM, four accounting quizes, a test in D&C class, an assignment for Econ that took about 10 hours to complete, a Spanish test, an Excel final exam, a PowerPoint final exam, and a grammar test.  Wow!  I can't believe I survived last week.  This heavy load of homework had a few negative side-affects.  I didn't get adequate sleep (there was a night where I got only two hours of sleep) and walked around like a zombie.  I didn't do much exercise.  I need a haircut.  And, I am currently a week and a half late on getting my brother a birthday gift.  So, that's my venting session, thanks for listening.  I can now forget about last week and move on.

Waffle Party

Tonight changed my life.  Following our ward prayer meeting, I attended my first ward waffle party.  It is true, our ward has a called and set-apart waffle committee, whose sole purpose and responsibility is to periodically prepare waffles for the ward.  When the callings were announced in sacrament meeting, we were sure that the bishop said "welfare committee," but we've come to see that he actually said "waffle committee."  We showed up tonight to find a plethora of waffles and waffle toppings just waiting to be devoured.  This is going to be a revolution that will catch on throughout the world-wide church.  I built myself a cinnamon-flavored waffle, topped it with chocolate ice cream and powdered sugar, and sat there wondering how I had ever been able to survive life without a ward waffle committee.

Thanks Shayne

The topic for today's blog is an interesting one.  In MCOMM class this week, the teacher gave us a random assignment to buy a stranger a coke and then write about the experience in our blogs.  The first thing I did was consult Rob, because I know he has a reputation of being a smooth criminal.  He gave me a few pointers, built up my confidence, and then sent me off to fulfill the assignment.  
My pre-developed plan was to find a girl in the "Twilight Zone" of the Bookstore and buy her a drink that she probably would have bought for herself anyway.  I figured that this would be easy and low-risk, because I'd know that the girl already wanted the drink and wouldn't mock my offer.  As I made my way to the "Twilight Zone" on Saturday afternoon, though, no one was there.  The store was empty, except for one, lone, female worker at the cash register.  My brilliant plan wouldn't work because the worker wasn't about to buy herself a drink and besides, she was the only person in the store and that made me nervous and jittery.  Nevertheless, I manned up (i don't know if that phrase works in the past tense) and did it.  I asked her if I could buy her a drink, she smiled and agreed, and I bought her a "Simply Raspberry Lemonade" at her request.  After that, I left.

Ready to Roll

This has become a Sunday night tradition; every week, the last task left on my weekly "To-do" list is to pull up my blog and jot down my feelings.  Tonight my feelings include excitement, peace, contentment, and happiness.  I just got back down to Provo after a great conference-weekend with my family at our home in Sandy.  Every time that I visit my home and family I feel grateful for the all the things that they do to support and provide for me.  I find it interesting that as a poor college student, a delicious, home-cooked meal is seems almost foreign and is such a big deal!  I was humbled and inspired by the messages that were given by the Prophet and Apostles of the church.  I feel motivated to be better and to do more to serve the Lord.  I am excited to take on another week of college and look forward to what life will offer this new week.  Tomorrow, Monday morning, I'm going to wake up early to birds chirping and everything will be perfect.  Then, I'll cheerfully go take the big grammar test for my MCOMM class.

Yanks Win It!!

If you remember, last week I had a very tough time deciding on a topic for my blog post.  Tonight, though, I have no problem choosing a subject.  My beloved New York Yankees were on an unheard-of four-game loosing streak and my hopes of a second straight world series championship were dwindling tonight as we (I say "we" because I feel like in a way I'm part of the team) were in position to lose yet another game.  To make matters much worse, we were losing in front of a home crowd to our bitter, long-time rivals, the Boston RedSox.  But, just when things were looking bad, my Yanks came through for me.  First, A-Rod hit a HUGE two-run homer in the seventh inning.  And then, in the bottom of the tenth inning, the RedSox pitcher walked in the winning run.  Whew!!!  We dodged a bullet, snapped our four-game winning streak, and gained a full game on the division-leading Rays.  With October on the way, I am once again looking forward to following the Yanks all the way to the world series.  My day is complete and I can now go to bed in a good mood as soon as I finish this blog post.

Writer's Block

As the title suggests, I am experiencing a severe case of writer's block.  This is extremely serious because I have to submit this post before midnight and it's already 11:26p.m.  I started writing about staying up late, but after a sentence or two, I just wasn't feeling it, so I deleted the text and started over.  My next idea was to write about the various animals that I saw on campus this week, which was pretty impressive (I saw a raccoon and five turtles), but I remembered that my previous blog post talked about animals also.  I didn't think animals should dominate my blog, because they really don't play a huge role in my life.  Other ideas included BYU football, my roommates, what I did on the weekend, and others, but none of those topics really seemed to click.  So, I'll just be honest; I am suffering from writer's block.  I have a pretty bad case of it.  Hopefully tomorrow's class will enlighten my mind and cure me, because I really need help!

Serious Poetry

So I really do think this class has been helpful, because in the first two weeks of class i've already learned something of substantial importance - I'm really not as good at writing as I previously thought.  My uncle and teacher Shayne (with a "y") thrives at clever or funny writing, but I just don't make the cut.  For that reason, I've decided to completely shift gears and focus on poetry.  Not the humorous or clever stuff, the serious stuff that only the intellectuals understand. Here it goes:

              WOLVES

A shiver-inducing howl and a rush of excitement,
Near extinction, now they're back!
A flash of fur and paw-prints in the fields of snow,
Here they come!
The light of the blue corn moon momentarily reveals them,
They are the wolves!

Accounting Quizzes

I am very frustrated right now.  I just finished taking my second accounting quiz online and for the second straight time, I got a four out of five score, missing the final question.  I realize that these are small, five-point quizzes and that missing one point on each of them isn't a huge deal, but I am disappointed because I honestly feel like I know the material.  I understand all the principles and can explain it well.  For some reason, though, I just haven't been performing well on the quizzes.  My last one - today's quiz - was the kind of thing where I originally put the correct answer and then second guessed myself.  Before I changed it, I made myself or put in words why the answer should be changed.  I changed it and then got it wrong.  Man, I know I can learn accounting and I feel like I really already am and so I really hope the quiz and test scores start reflecting that.