The Next Exciting Installment of Safe Objects Injuring Ammon

So, today we look at playground equipment. A relic of past times, good playground equipment was great simply because of how absurdly dangerous it was. Rusty Metal Hinges, crumbling wood primed for splintering, and the See-Saws.

Oh See-saws. Perhaps only Merry-go-Rounds could rival the See-Saw in inherent danger. There was the chance of crushing your legs beneath the seat, you could slam your head into the bar, and there was no way to escape flying into the ground at multiple G's, making sitting an ordeal for the foreseeable future.

You don't see see-saws, or their northern counterpart the Teeter-Totter, much anymore. Like so many good things, Mr. Potato Head, Easy bake Ovens, Lawn Darts, repeated injuries and worried parents have been the end them. However, imagine my joy when we wound up a playground that still had classic See-saws. Not those pointless, spring loaded bouncy nonsense. Legitimate simple mechanics playground fun.

So last night we were playing on the See-Saws, and i was lighter than my friend (always an issue on See-Saws) so i was able to sit back without actually kicking off at all. So we were winding down, and i was essentially reclining, with my legs across the bars (there were two parallel bars) and my feet in between to keep me from falling.

When suddenly, one unfortunate bounce from the other side of the see-saw and a momentary loss of balance, and i found myself hanging from the see-saw, my calf wedged between the two bars and my weight crushing my shin. My friend on the other side tried to get me down, but panicking leaned back, holding me away just above the ground. I finally made it to the ground and checked myself out, and finding myself intact, was quite satisfied. That said, it feels like someone hit me in the shin with a 2x4, and then bashed the other side with a bar for good measure. So yeah, it's sort of hard to walk today.

In other news, today i learned how to change a car battery. Learned is maybe an exaggeration, it's pretty intuitive, so it's a bit like learning to change the batteries in anything, positive to positive and lefty-loosey. This did, however, have the added bonus of being filled with sulfuric acid, and the old battery had leaked acid all over the place where the battery goes. So after we had put it in to get the car back from the stake center i had to take the battery out, and clean out the case with liberal amounts of baking soda and water. It reminded me of Mr. Teske's science project back in the day, where we had to figure out how to deal with an acid spill in the reservoir. I also learned that when your wrench is the same length as the distance between the two terminals there are going to be problems if you're not careful.

So yeah, a pretty productive morning so far, i just found out that there's a mandatory evacuation order for us. We don't necessarily have to go all the way to jackson, we could just go to the other side of the interstate, but we'll see how it turns out. Anyway, i need breakfast. Ate Logo

2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a dollap

I think shopping for glasses is one of the most unpleasant experiences possible. I know that's a weighty statement, given the possibility of torture, slow painful deaths, etc, however, shopping for glasses combine my two least favorite activities:

Shopping when i don't already know exactly what i want, and Making decisions that are going affect me for a long time.

This is what sisters and girl friends are for (either girlfriends or friends who are girls, it doesn't matter. Some one really needs to come up for a solid term for female friends who aren't romantically involved. maybe just Girls would cover it. I digress.) The was a cool girl my age to give me feedback on glasses at one of the places we went, but their glasses were unreasonably expensive. The lady at sears was really bad at helping making choices. It didn't help that she kept handing me glasses that were meant for 6 year olds either. Devoid of any helpful feedback, i did manage to get two pairs of glasses, one that are pretty standard and basically the glasses i had before they got all bent and lost, and another that are hip and retro and doctor who-esc. We'll see how they fair.

We had a coupon that basically got us free lenses, but it was only supposed to apply to glasses that cost less than 50 dollars, but the lady gave us free lenses for the nice glasses, so we ended up saving around two hundred dollars, which is pretty radtastic. So yeah, if the sears doesn't get destroyed by the übercane, maybe i'll post some pictures of me wearing a collared shirt with some skinny jeans when i pick up my glasses. I could also post pictures of my new contacts, but those probably won't be as interesting.

I want to go as the tenth Doctor for halloween. I think i'll have to wait two years, since i dunno what the policy is on Trick-or-Treating as elders.

"Trick Or Treat?!! Have you ever wondered why you're here?"

Stay cool soda pop

I should really be sleeping, and therefore i think i'll update my blog. I don't know what it is about 2 in the morning that makes me feel like not going to sleep. Maybe it's the recurring, guy smiley nightmares.

So, the last couple of days have been fairly eventful. I went swimming tuedsday, and played soccer with the spanish speaking members and missionaries. That was way fun, it's been too long since i've played legitimate soccer, and it was nice to see that i can still hold my own. I scored two goals, blocked a bunch, and even managed not to injure myself. So that was an accomplishment and a half. I still can't dribble worth anything, but dribbling is for babies and international soccer phenom. Real men pass the ball.

Today i helped some ward members move several hundred pounds of food storage across biloxi, lifting mostly with my back. My philosophy is that if i lift enough with my back, it'll be so strong that it won't get injured. Most people just don't lift enough with their back. There's their problem.

So apparently hurricane Gustav might come our way, brining with it impending, katrina-esc DOOM. Incidentally, Katrina hit almost exactly 3 years ago. We should have had a party. Anyway, so there's talk of evacuation, all our stuff getting destroyed, scary things like that. On the plus side, i might end up going to jackson again. Starkville looks more likely, but we'll see. If i'm going to be spending 2 weeks someplace while waters recede, i'd like to be somewhere i've been in the last 10 years. Either way, this is probably one of the more threatening things anything named Gustav has done. I really hope it won't be on the scale of katrina, it'll ruin the funniness of Gustav forever.

Tomorrow i'm getting my eyes checked and backing up the hard drives (maybe) and going on exchanges with the elders, and going to institute, and then probably doing fun stuff afterwards. It's just a packed day. So i'm going to go to sleep, and hopefully the next time i update this thing, i will have shifted my sleep 5 hours back, or at least a few, so that waking up at 6:30 doesn't kill me.

Until then, i'll be defeating evil, one idiot bike thief at a time
(oh yeah, my little brother's bike got stolen. That's messed up. What's even more messed up is that it'll cost around 3x the price of the bike to fix the car window. Who breaks into a car to steal a 8 year olds bike and then leaves everything else in the car of value? Maybe some guy really needed to teach his son to ride a bike.)

You know, i've noticed something. In the midst of tv's witty repartee (ala psych, veronica mars, firefly, all the other shows i watch, etc) nobody ever laughs at their really quite clever jokes. I mean, not laughing at your own jokes is pretty key, but it seems like people around would catch the cleverness and laugh. But then i guess it wouldn't be witty repartee. It just seems weird. I still prefer it to laugh-tracks. I'm glad no one really uses those anymore.

~So 90's

28 Days

It's a sad state of affairs when my greatest accomplishment recently has been not throwing up.

other than that, i've been watching a lot of Veronica Mars lately. That is a good show. I never got into it when it was on, i think it was on at the same time as Smallville, but it's just so well done.

Except duncan, i can't stand Duncan.

That is all.

Because it looked just like a dream.

Last night i had a dream that i was on a soccer team with George Takei, among other people. I got a great assist to him, and he put it in the net, but when i went to celebrate, he asked me not to touch him. It was really awkward.

I also had a dream that logan came to town, in our jackson house, and gave me this stuff that looked like pocki, but it was super minty. He gave me something else that was a lot less awesome, but i can't remember what it was. It was really pretty lame... like a pine cone or something.

I wish i could always remember my dreams, then i could write a big book of them that would be awesome.

Guatemala plays really dirty, too bad they got beat.

Today i learned how the world cup qualification works, and i decided that i want to go to the 2014 World Cup in Brasil. I figure with 4 non-missionary years to think about it, it shouldn't be too hard to scrounge up the necessary funds and convince as many people as possible to join me (i'm looking at you Logan, imagine how much a six year old Søren would love a world cup.). At South Africa, early games are only 20 bucks for the nosebleeds, so that's pretty reasonable (a nice seat at the final is $900, I can just save a few Euro from my mission and the way the dollar is headed, they'll cover it). But i'm thinking that would be extremely awesome, plus i hear Brasil is a pretty nice place, and it'd be fun to break out my not yet new found bilingualism. So yeah, i think i should do that. I generally don't make plans more than a couple days in advance, so making plans for something that'll happen when i'm 25 is a bit ambitious. I don't have a lot of plans carrying over from when i was 13, but i've been planning on a mission for at least that long, so i think this is plausible.

In present news, today was ok, i went swimming which felt great until i threw up all over the bathroom. I don't think swimming has ever made me throw up before. It was the 200IM that did it. Still, I managed to swim a solid kilometer,and i'll be going back tomorrow, maybe going a little easier.

Anyway, i'm supposed to be sleeping, so sweet dreams everybody.

"One part ice cream, two parts awesome! "

Wow, it has been nearly two weeks since i wrote anything. Now there's only five weeks between me and the next two years of my life.

I went to jackson over the weekend, and it was pretty great. I actually managed to see everyone, if only for a few minutes. Friday night i drove up to jackson. It was a pretty nice drive, nothing crazy, not like the drive home, but i'm getting ahead of myself. I had this genius plan to call in a take-out order with a fake voice (under the name Dr. Payne) and give johnny all sorts of hard times, but then my phone died on the way up. That also meant i couldn't call ahead and figure out what was what, but luckily everyone in the known universe works at Sal and Mookie's now, so I headed there first. I talked to caitlin and johnny for a bit and found out that everybody was over at Jerusalem Cafe, so i went over there and got to hang out with a bunch of people for a while. After that we went over to the McCrazies house, for a weird party with a bunch of high schoolers. It ended up with all the people over 18 hanging out on the steps where it was cool and mature or something, so that was fun. After that we hung out at emmett's for a while while johnny and emmett decided what their tattoos were going to look like.

The next day I had planned to set up ultimate, and it looked promising, the McIntyre's were in, as were kyle, mcnally, spencer, michael, me, maybe ian, and whoever else happened to show up. Unfortunately, i was the only one who showed up, but i ran into Mrs. Van Uden at the park, and talked to her for a while, so that was way cool. After that i bought a tooth brush (i had left mine in biloxi and was feeling pretty gross) and some breakfast and found McNally and tried to figure out what to do. We ended up going to Sal and Mookie's for a while and then met up with Johnny, Caitlin, and Emmett and headed downtown to where Emmett was getting his tattoo. From the outside, the place looked like a good place to get shot, but inside it was pretty urban and awesome. Hopefully jackson's downtown can keep getting hip businesses where old rundown buildings are so that downtown isn't just a place to go to work and/or get mugged.

Somehow, i ended up responsible for giving emmett a ride home, and apparently when a tattoo artist says 45 minutes, what he really means is two and a half hours. So that was sort of frustrating. After that though we did...something. I think maybe we went to spencer's house and played video games. We also watched Michael Phelps be incredibly awesome, so that was pretty impressive. After that we played some more video games and went to sleep.

Sunday, i went to church in madison, that was way cool. I got to see a whole bunch of people i haven't seen in a long long time. After that i went to caitlin's and ate lunch and eventually johnny came over and watched psych. Then we went and had birthday festivities at Johnny's house, they got presents and we got cake and dinner courtesy of the Breauxs. (i've never pluralized breaux before, it looks wrong) Then we went back to caitlin's and hung out for a while and i learned how to open a butterfly knife awesomely, but then the awesome was too much for it and screws started coming loose, so i had to stop. I watched mythbusters and actually managed to get an indecent amount of sleep, having gotten around 5 hours the last two nights. Monday was my last day in town, so after sleeping in until noon, i got some breakfast and i then went to Murrah to visit teachers. I ran into melissa on her way out of murrah, so that was cool. I saw Ms' Williams, D, Lamb, and Van Uden. Ms. Brierly was out on maternity leave, so i didn't get to talk to her, but i think it was still a pretty good run. Michael and Spencer met up with me at murrah, and then we went to his house for a while and then met up with a bunch of people at Kiefer's. That was pretty delicious. Then we went to Emmett's and partied the night away. It being my last night, i had to say goodbye to people every time they left, it was sad. We took a bunch of pictures though, and had generally good times. I slept at emmett's that night, and headed out the next morning, today, saying Adeus to Spencer on my way out.

All in all it was a pretty great Jackson Trip. The drive home was probably one of the more exciting drives of my life. The first half was pretty smooth, i made great time (which is always tricky on 49). At some point i got stuck behind a truck carrying these giant bridge looking things. It was taking up both lanes completely, and the escort guys were going a terrible job. The truck was just small enough that it would probably be possible to get around it if you went on the shoulder just a little, and it was driving sort of to the right so this little suv kept trying to get around it but the little escort car kept cutting him off. Had the truck just driven in the middle of the road it wouldn't have been a problem. So i had been stuck behind this truck for about five minutes, but we were cruising along in the upper sixties, so i wasn't too upset, when suddenly the truck just plowed through a sign on the side of the road. It wasn't like a mile marker sign either, this was a substantial, six foot wide sign with two bars behind it, but it was completely destroyed. So at that point i lost a lot of respect for this guy who before was just doing his job, but now was doing his job really badly and if things had gone a little differently could have caused a pretty serious collision. Anyway, eventually the lanes widened a little and we got a better shoulder and i managed to squeeze by him (which seemed a little dangerous and is the sort of the escort guy is there to prevent from happening, but after he blew up a sign, i decided i was getting far away from him.)

Things smoothened out for a while, but then it got really rainy, and i experienced my first high-speed hydroplaning. That was exciting. I started drifting off the road as the road was turning a little and completely covered in water. But like a good driver a eased off the gas and steered very gently. Happily i didn't run off the road, and i got back to biloxi without any further incident, so that was cool.

So yeah, all in all, a good trip to jackson. I think this entry is long enough without any further comments.

~Something clever

This pretty much sums up my summer.

"We wait. We are bored."

August. I go into the MTC in September. I am just a little incredulous that this is actually my life, clearly, I am in the future.

Anyhow, the past week has been considerably entertaining, despite titular evidence to the contrary. On thursday i totally forgot about institute, but got a call on friday that there would be an okatoma trip on saturday, so that had promise. At about 6a.m. saturday i got a call saying that the trip was cancelled, but then my dad and I went kayaking on the Wolf River (which was longer and less exciting than promised, but still cool).

Friday I made the first real progress in teaching Isaac to ride his bike. Rather than keep trying to power through it on the road, which forced us to stop every time a car drove by or isaac cried from chronic falling into the ground, we went down to isaac's school, which has a big, soft, grassy hill with a slight decline. There i could just balance him and push. It was pretty effective, and hilarious to boot. We managed to get to the point where Isaac could get about 50 yards, so that was cool. Monday we went back and managed to get him riding on the concrete without falling too much. he still can't purposely turn, or stop without falling, but if there's a straight line without any obstacles or distractions he can go for days. I spent an hour or so adjusting his seat, fixing up his brakes (they're still essentially useless, but I blame Walmart for that), and taking off the completely pointless pegs (lucky). Now that he can actually reach the ground, i think we'll start making some headway with stopping, and hopefully he won't have to turn often. As proof of this accomplishment, documentation:

there was a lot of this

and a fair amount of this

but eventually he got the hang of it.


So yeah, that's cool. What else?

I go through waves of disbelief that i'm actually going to be on a mission soon, and then the occasional surge of overwhelming shock at how soon it is and how completely unprepared i feel, but generally i'm excited and ready leave. It's weird to think that people are revving up to go back to the U soon, and i'm not. I feel sort of left out, luckily i'm going to Portugal, which, in my book, trumps Salt Lake almost every time. Isaac goes back to school tomorrow, that's a bit of a surprise (the best sort of prize), i'm glad my summer isn't 2.5 months long, although nearly 5 months is a while.

So i think that's about all that's going on down here, at least all the comes to mind.

Random Thought of the Day: I wonder what ever happened to Peter Johnson. He's probably off somewhere on a mission. Weird.



Tchau