yeah, i post twice a day. What of it?

I think i need to keep one of those mini mead notebooks on me at all times to write down clever facebook statuses (stati?) and the little tilde signatures i do at the end of these. It's not like i think the random thoughts i come up with are genius, or even noteworthy, but every once in a while i'll think of something that makes me chuckle, and want to spread the joy of chuckling to everyone, but my previous status still applies (for example, 6 hours ago i celebrated spain's victory with a chorus of ole's, and i've already had like 3 other statuses for today, so i don't want to put another one). By the time the moment arises i have forgotten, and, put on the spot, i panic and just say the first thing i think of. beef...stew.

In this instance, i'll explain the train of thought. I saw someone make the common mistake of leaving out 'is' on their facebook status when it's necessary, in this case describing a girl who's at the pool with her friend. So i decided it would be kinda cool to have my status be

Ammon Perkes in the conservatory with the lead pipe

The lead pipe has always been my favorite clue weapon, by the way. It's such a silly weapon. Where did they get it? Why is it bent like that? Did the murderer use the wrench in order to acquire the lead pipe? Why is it made of lead, when lead's use in plumbing had mostly stopped by the early 20th century. Had it been used for water or sewage?

I am of the opinion that the makers of Cluedo came up with the lead pipe last.

2 days ago I killed a pizza.

true story.

I actually did something yesterday. Realizing that 3 months is far too long to go without knowing anybody in biloxi I've started going to institute and singles activities. So yesterday there was this dinner thing that i went to, and afterwards we drove up to Hattiesburg for a singles dance. That was pretty fun, especially because i got to see all the jackson stake girls (all the guys i know from there are either on missions, married, or are not yet 18) and got to know some gulfport stake people to boot. So that was cool, hopefully i'll have legitimate friends sometime soon, not having any friends is boring.

It's amazing how quickly i've become used to the idea of going to portugal, and now i can't imagine going anywhere else. I am a little worried about learning a new language, but i'm way excited about being proficient in another language. There are two people i've met down here that speak portuguese, one from brasil, on a return missionary, so that's cool.

So i think it's ridiculous that we change the names that countries choose for themselves. In some cases, like when it's really hard to pronounce or i guess if the spelling doesn't sound look the pronunciation to english people, it makes a bit of sense, but there's no reason to call Italia italy, and spell Brasil brazil, so from now on, in the interest of Globalization, i'm going to follow Google Maps' lead and try to call countries by their actual name. We'll see how that turns out.

By the way, here's the address for sending me stuff in portugal. There'll be a different one when i actually get there, but that one will still work. Eventually i'm going to turn this blog over to a responsible adult who will be able to add my MTC address (which i don't know yet) and my real address, and keep this blog updated with letters and stuff so that you guys can keep updated at the speed of the interweb.

Elder Ammon David Perkes
Portugal Lisbon Mission
Apartado 40054
1500 Lisbon
Portugal











~Here, Dear, alone with all your letters

brevity is the soul of what?

I have lost my chapstick. This is no surprise, i lose it about once a day, it's probably in my shorts; the bigger surprise is that i find myself in mississippi actually needing chapstick. People who have spent all their time in the south or somewhere similarly humid and warm, (i'm looking at you carter) will never understand the vital necessity of chaptstick in the west.

Initially i was making a long post, but about half way in i just stopped caring, so, in summation: passport, cardhouses, dentist office, toasted ham, scripture mastery, institute, silly videos, beach.

~Not marked for individual sale

3 a.m. is no place for a mighty warrior

Cool story:
So last week i went with the missionaries to visit a couple people, since they don't have a car. Unfortunately both the appointments fell through, and so we just ended up driving about for half an hour (be patient, the story gets better). On our way to one of the appointments however, we noticed that this cop was following me. Now, i like to think that i'm a fairly safe driver, and i generally don't speed too much, but it's certain that a cop in a bad mood could pull me over for any number of things, mild speeding, rolling stops, etc. So I was a little concerned when i saw a cop behind me, but i figured, "no biggie, he's just headed the same direction". So then we turn off onto the smaller road, and the cop is still behind us. We drive for like 3 miles on this windy road and the cop is still right behind us. We turn into this neighborhood, and he turns off to. He continues to follow us at ever turn we make until we pull over at the house. It turns out that the cop lived a few doors down, but that was enough to make me thoroughly freaked out for the entirety of a fifteen minute drive. Cops are scary.

Less scary but much more disappointing are old ladies that tell you that your investigators are going to their daughters ballet. A likely story. but whatev's, i've done splits before, it wasn't the first time that several appointments fell through, and considering i have two years of that to enjoy, i figure it's just as well.

In other news, i'm super excited about portugal. Tomorrow i'm applying for my passport, i feel so international. I found this blog of a girl currently serving in my mission. It's cool to read about missionary life out there. So yeah, that's about all that's been going on. I just remembered that story and wanted to write it down. It's not everyday a cop follows you for 15 minutes.

Hereby Called to Serve:

I got my mission call! It seems sort of silly to write this as an announcement, since by now everyone who reads my blog probably already knows, but nonetheless, it's pretty exciting. I've been called to the Portugal Lisbon mission. I'll speak Portuguese and be generally awesome. I don't have to report until september 24th, so i think i'll try to find a job and maybe be productive for parts of this summer.

I'm pretty happy about going to Portugal, i'd be happy about anywhere, but last night, in lieu of the impending mission call, i spent a bit of time thinking about my ideal mission. I decided that i would prefer to learn one of the romance languages, minus romanian, and decided I'd rather go to europe than south or central america. Happily, Portugal fulfills these criteria with ease. It also fulfills the desire to go somewhere they play soccer, and somewhere that i can gain loyalty to a soccer team. (an aside: I already feel silly and ignorantly american calling it soccer, i figure a solid couple of years saying futebol will be enough to work it out of my lexicon. It's a shame throwball somehow ganked that word over here.) I imagine it also covers the 'challenging mission' requirement suggested by my stake president, as i imagine, given that Europeans and catholics are both notoriously difficult to convert, a nation of catholic europeans speaking a foreign language will probably be tricky. But i like challenges, they make life engaging.

eeny-way, fun stuff. Other News:
I can never remember the last time i make these, and by extension, how much i've already talked about. Wow, it would appear it's been a while.

So, wrapping up the trip in jackson was good, i managed to see everyone i wanted to, and then some. I even managed to see hunter and melissa, who i completely missed last time i was in town. Both of these were at restaurants (Bravo and Cups, respectively), and it made me feel so posh. Oh, by the way, i've been watching rather absurd amounts of doctor who and a bit of topgear lately, so i may tend to british wordage from time to time, things like daft, farce, brilliant, some unnecessary u's, that sort of thing. I should really just annotate these blogs, it would make them much easier to read with all the asides and digressions. Back on track: I managed to say goodbye to caitlin this time around (something i apparently didn't do last time. I don't remember, but it does sound like the sort of thing I would neglect), and even gave spencer rabies, along with a clever assassination attempt in the form of pop rocks and coke. Given the fact that he hasn't updated his blog since i gave him them, i'm assuming they worked.

Driving home from jackson was an adventure, or rather, it was so far from an adventure that i had to pull off to clean the car for 40 minutes to keep myself from passing out from boredom. It was a pretty uneventful drive, but that's ok. I got to the airport with time to spare, and managed to get Cami back to biloxi in spite of traffic and shoddy windshield wipers. The Wangsgard gang (i wish i had a group name that started with W, i'll work on that) was all asleep, but eventually we talked to them, and the Wade's and grandparents came a bit later. I was surprised by how well our house held that many people. So lets see, we went to dauphin island, which was nice. At the time it seemed the drive was longer than necessary but when we went to the closer beeches later we were attacked by a fleet of jellyfish, which made the hour drive seem more reasonably. We went to the naturito...naturitum...arboretum, yeah, and saw lots of trees and turtles and many things not starting with t. It's safe to assume we played some games, video and otherwise, and had generally fun times.

Sunday (the 15th) I gave a talk in church which was nice. I felt like i sort of lacked focus in the talk. In my defense, i wasn't given a topic, and, although it was father's day, my father asked me not to give a talk entirely on fathers, so i didn't. In addition i was somewhat unprepared, but i think it went over ok, except that part where i made it seem like i had to postpone my mission because of serious transgressions, instead of serious lack of coordination. Monday was Isaac's baptism, which i was able to do, which was cool. After that we went and got food at this little pizza place, which was good.

Tuesday i went through the temple, which was awesome, (perhaps even brimming with awe, any more awe and it would have been aweful) and it was cool to have my whole family there (unfortunately minus those stuck with baby-sitting, although katie and cami still drove all the way to baton rouge just to watch kids in a hotel) We got burger king on the way home. I got a chicken sandwich, which i will say, without qualification, was the worst chicken sandwich i've had in my life. The drive back was pretty chill and Logan and I talked about mission type things and such, which is especially pertinent now that I'm serving in the same place he did...hm, i hadn't mentioned that yet. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Now we'll will be able to have secret Portuguese conversations, it will be glorious.

The next day people started leaving, so where were lots of goodbye's. Amy and Dylan stayed longer, so we went to a water park and that was fairly fun. I think Water Parks would be about the funnest thing ever if there were no people and no rules. rules and people ruin everything, but it was still a good time. It was no Rapids on the Reservoir, but what can you do?

So that pretty much brings me to to now. Yesterday I had to talk a bit in Stake Conference, but that was nothing major. Today i went to see the Incredible Hulk, which was really good, and then came home to find my mission call and my security deposit waiting for me. I was planning to watch Iron Monkey (my netflix) before going to bed, but i've spent about an hour on this post due to various distractions and such.

Fyi, Pork and Beans by Weezer is one of my favorite songs and without a doubt the most magnificent music video i've ever seen. It just makes me feel good.

~Short on Money but Long on Time

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

So, i'm in jackson. I've actually been here since friday, but being without a house or a large amount of spare time, blogging hasn't been my main priority, but i figure i could update while i'm waiting for spencer to drag himself out of bed.

This jackson trip has been quite a bit more fun. The drive up was nice, although i got a gnarly sun burn on my left arm, including a nice t-shirt line and a stripe where my wristband was. Friday i came in and, after running some errands, swung by Sal and Mookie's and got to see a whole bunch of people who I'd worked with, and a lot of new people that i haven't. After that i went over to spencer's and hung out for a few hours, and then went over to Emmett's for a party where i saw lots of other people i hadn't seen for a long time, so that was fun.

Saturday i got up pretty late, on account of the party, and then...did...something. It was awesome. Oh right, we went bowling eventually, and that was way fun. I ended up bowling six games, one of which i did pretty good, but that was the one i was really trying, so that's all that counts. That night i slept at caitlin's, and had planned to watch Doctor Who that night, but i realized at 2 a.m. if i wanted to wake up for church i should probably get some sleep.

Sunday i went to church in jackson, and that was cool, lots more people i hadn't seen in a while. After that i went back to spencer's and ate lunch/breakfast, and then we watched Doctor Who, which was cool, although not one of my favorites. It was a little more dramatic and less witty than some of them, but i'm ok with plot development. That night we played risk which, despite some unpleasantnesses, was pretty fun.

Monday we went to the lake, and that was cool. We swam/floated across to the lake house again, and hung out there for a while. At some point this old lady wanted to kick us out. After that, and some confusion, we got papa john's and watched TV at caitlin's until it was bed time.

So now it's today. I'm thinking i need to talk to Melissa and Hunter before i go back to the coast, so i think i might go to Broad St, because that stuff's delicious.

Challah back.

Question: Which Bear is Best?

Fact: China's liberal policy on copyright infringement allows for a near limitless supply of television episodes, just a button press away.
Fact: Over 1/5 of the population of the earth, around 1.3 billion people, live in China.
Fact: Because of a time difference, China's peak internet usage occurs from about 10pm to 11 am central time.

As i'm sitting here, reflecting on these and other facts and waiting for an episode of mythbusters to load from a website being slowed to a crawl by the traffic of a billion asians, it occurs to me that i could make a blog to kill some time.

Today was a good day. I read The Phantom Tollbooth, the book by which my blog is named. I cleaned my dad's car, and although the carpet shampoo-er thing seemed to do very little, the car is dramatically cleaner; immaculate even. I also fixed up my dad's bike, although this is for me. I've been sort of lethargic of late, and i've been wanting to exercise but i don't really like the gym and the pool is too busy and i'm good at finding excuses for not being productive. But no longer. Four hours, 3 discarded inner tubes, a trip to the bike store, and inordinate amounts of WD-40 later, i have what will very soon be a working bike. In all actuality, i could have done just patched a couple inner tubes and been done with it, but the innertubes were mismatched, the wrong sized, and some had some pretty considerable holes so i washed my hands of the whole business (metaphorically, literally my hands got extremely dirty) and bought some new tubes. I also generally cleaned the bike up, and removed a truly shocking amount of caked on grease. In one case, what i thought was the axle of the sprocket was actually a solid, 2 inch deep mass of old grease. Some people would probably have found this somewhat disgusting, but having worked at Backyard burger, i am fully aware of the extents to which old grease can be disgusting. 3 rags (one of which turned out to be one of my mom's best washcloths.) took care of that fairly well. Now the bike is by all accounts spic, some might even go so far as to call it span. Somehow my parents don't have a tire gauge anywhere in their house or in either of the cars. This seems like a pretty serious oversight, and not wanting to test my powers of detecting psi through sense of smell, i decided it would be worth waiting one night to get a tire gauge. It also needs some adjustment to the gear shift, which seems pretty insistent on staying in first gear, and that's just not going to ride. But yeah, all in all it looks much less like something that is completely past it's prime and suffering from a history of traumatic injury and more like a ridable bike. I found a small medal spike embedded in the tire, which seems like the kind of thing that would pop an inner tube, so i'm glad i stumbled upon it.

So that took up the majority of my day, it's always fun to work on things, get my hands dirty and such. I think it'd be fun to take a mechanics class when i get back from the mission. I'm thinking i might audit some engineering classes when i get back to get a sense of what type of engineering interests me. Telling someone you're thinking about getting into engineering doesn't mean a whole lot, since engineering encompasses about a kabillion careers. That should be fun.

So i guess that's about all that's going on down here. I'm going to be heading up to jackson soon, so that'll be fun and a half. My mom has stuff to do up there anyway, and then she's decided that she can survive without the car for a bit and is going to take the bus back, so i will have the car up there and i won't have to spend 80 dollars on a bus ticket, which is something i'm pretty happy about. I guess it makes sense that high gas prices mean that bus tickets are a lot more expensive, but it's still shocking.

I wonder how long i can go in my life without owning a car, i don't expect gas will go down in the next two years, having roughly doubled in the last two years, so i'm pretty sure i won't be able to afford a car for quite some time. Maybe i'll get a bike, bikes are pretty much the best form of transportation as long as you don't need to take a lot of stuff with you, and i've never been one to carry a lot of baggage.

That's all for now,i have a full episode of mythbusters waiting for me, so i'm going to find out what putting sugar in someones gas tank does.

Adieu.