In this time of Introspection, on the eve of my election:

So first, my blog has become super popular over the last week. Not really, but four separate people commented, which is about even with the comments by people i actually know. I dunno what that means, but it's probably something big.

Anyway, i did manage to pull myself out of the wallow of inaction (evidenced by 3 blog posts in 3 days) and accomplish something. So that felt good, i went swimming, i read most of Ender's Shadow (not quite as good as Ender's Game, because i don't like Bean as much, he's too cold and calculating, but still a fun read) and started reading Crime and Punishment again. I only got to the Crime when i was reading it in highschool. It's still a punishingly slow book, and i can't read more than a chapter unless i've had more than adequate sleep the night before. I've started waking up at 9 in an effort to shift towards the 6:30 alarm i'm looking forward to in 2 weeks (holy crap, 2 weeks). As soon as i manage to work that out (not staying up to blog at 1am will be key) i'll push it back to 8. There's no reason to push any farther than that since with the time zone change i'll be getting up at 7:30 central.

My biggest difficulty with swimming for exercise is my attention span. I have neither the patience nor the personality to swim freestyle slowly for miles (except when it's a race and i'm pacing myself). The best part about swim teams (or any athletic teams really) is you have friends and coaches to motivate you and keep otherwise boring exercise interesting. So i've been swimming 100m I.M.'s to keep things short and interesting. I've been switching the Butterfly out for other strokes some of the time because i'm still really out of shape and don't want to throw up in the nice people's bathroom again. But i figure over the next couple of weeks i'll be able to build it up to 200m IMs, butterfly included, just in time to swear off swimming for two years. I guess in the MTC i'll have to go back to weights. Maybe do a bike machine or something. I have a feeling running would take it out of my legs really fast, my knee still gives me trouble sometime, and my shin feels like it did back when i got shin splints.

Mild pain aside, life continues hurtling forward at a crawl. 2 weeks from now i'll be packed. I don't know how to deal with that. I am sort of accepting the idea of myself going into the MTC. It feels a lot like me going to college. I still have no idea how to feel about it, can't believe i'm really old enough to be doing this, but am expecting it sort of. I don't quite know how to describe it. I never do.

Music is so amazing. Seriously. (I'm listening to The Killers again, Read My Mind to be specific.) Just the way music can not only convey emotions, but actually produce them. What is it that makes songs like this so beautifully perfect? (I originally phrased that as comparison to crap music, but even Brittney Spears, 'nsync, and Creed, the groups that came to mind for crappy music, aren't really that bad, they're just shallow. I can't think of any bands that are really pointless, just a lot of bands i don't like) Music is powerful stuff, more so maybe than any other art form, at least in it's directness. Art can make you think, and sometimes visualize the abstract, theater has a lot of potential for conveying ideas and even draw you in to the emotion of the characters, but music can, within about 5 seconds, create completely real feelings and emotions. (I didn't mention dance. Dance has never done much for me, yeah it's beautiful and impressive, but it always seems that when it comes to conveying things, which i think is what all Art is at it's core, conveying the inexpressible, it's a very convoluted method with definite limitations, and it almost always depends a lot on music. Music can make you want to do stuff, dance, cry, go to war, etc. I have yet to get anything like that from dance, but maybe i've just been going to all the wrong places. In a lot of ways it seems like dance is a combination of music, art, and theater, but without some of the best parts of each. I didn't mention poetry either, but that's good stuff.) Someone should make really really good music for missionaries. My problem with religious music, mainstream Christian music especially is that the thought is good, but the Music and the Lyrics suck. Maybe they don't fit, i dunno. My impression is that most Christian songs are created by picking a absurdly simple thought (God is Good), jazzing it up with a couple of adjectives (God is SO good) and repeat until the song is long enough. Then grab an acoustic guitar, pick three chords, and go nuts! Too much Christian music tries to survive on the fact that it's Christian music alone. It ought to be music first, that just happens to be about Religious themes. I think the real power of music is also drastically under utilized. Religion is full of deep and difficult to express things. Why waste a song on something that can be explained in a sentence? I'm sure there's decent religious music out there, there are a whole bunch of hymns i like a lot, so there's no reason people haven't managed to make decent music about God that isn't in SATB chord structure.

I totally forgot to mention that i played piano for a Funeral last week. Happily, that went a lot better than some of my wedding exploits. (Can a funeral really ever go 'well'? Do you go home saying, that was a great funeral!) It also made me give a lot of thought to being cremated. The thought of being embalmed, sitting in a box slowly rotting, being paraded before all my relatives, and then dropped in the ground where i'll gradually decombone*, not romantically back into the earth, but covered in my own compost, into a zombie like wraith due to the box and all the poison pumped into me. No, fire has a very nice romanticism and purity to it. I think if i could pull it off, floating into the ocean on a pyre that's lit by flaming arrows would be pretty rockin, but i imagine they frown on that these days. Also the whole scattering of the ashes thing is way cool. I would still want a tombstone though, but someplace cool. Cemeteries are nice, but it's a little scary how many dead bodies are below you, and they are very necessarily public places. I want a little tombstone at the top of a mountain or something. It would be nice for it to be somewhere accessible though, so maybe at the lip of a valley. Another problem with having a tombstone above your corpse is that it's hard not to go and imagine what their body must look like at that very moment, whereas if you're cremated you can only be remembered as you were. On top of that, ground space is bound to get harder and harder to come by as time passes. I dunno if the Church has any policy on Cremation, I know we have standard procedures for funerals, but i've never heard anyone say cremation was frowned upon, I can't imagine why it would be, the end result is the same, time is the only differential (and the amount of poison the dirt around your body will soak up). One thing i don't like is the thought of Cremation itself. Because that is almost necessarily unceremonious, which is a shame really, given how ceremonious it can be. My imagination is them tossing your possibly naked corpse into a furnace. I'll have to scope out some cremators sometime in my life. Someplace with a pyre.

Wow, this post has drifted towards the macabre, but now you know, just incase there's a freak vespa accident while i'm in portugal.

So, that's the news from Biloxi Bay, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.



*I obviously meant to say decompose, but i think decombone is a hilarious word that conveys what's happening quite well

I said please don't slow me down if i'm going too fast

It's midnight, and by tuesday i need to have written half of a 25 page paper (my partner is doing the other half), not to mention the two tests, 2 projects, and an essay that all ought to be done before i leave utah. It's sort of scary how fast time is going, but i've decided that it's always best to have something your excited about come right after something you're dreading, that way it doesn't take forever to come. My hair is a little less extreme than it was wednesday night, i got my friend to go in and trim the top so now it's a somewhat respectable faux-hawk, which is good, mohawks, while fun, are quite silly. Silly Logan...

Anyway, this weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night i had a date. I dunno why i always do this to myself. A week before you are leaving town for two years is no time to think about starting up a relationship, and i'm not really, but it just makes me a little sad for what could have been had time worked out differently. It might have something to do with the fact that when i realize i have absolutely nothing to lose i have an easier time getting over shyness and the like, but mostly it's just unfortunate circumstance, a complete lack of serendipity. But yeah, friday night was fun, and the saturday was filled with church activities. We had a temple trip in the morning, another reason i was glad that i had taken care of the mohawk friday, then a church party in the afternoon. We got there late so the food was gone and i tried to play soccer and discovered my knee isn't better enough for that yet. It also got really gross outside saturday from all the wind. Then i came back and watched the doctor who season finale, they're playing the new season of doctor who on scifi, i'm going to need to figure out how to watch those when i'm back in mississippi. While i'm talking about doctor who, there's a whole bunch of old doctor who (mostly from the Tom Baker era) on netflix's watch now. You should definitely check them out, i do.

Anyway, after that was stake conference, which was nice, even if i did sleep through most of the first half. We went and ate dinner, which Karl paid for cus he's cool like that. Karl also gave me an old oil thing for my key chain, so now i have one of those, which is good. After dinner headed to jake's where we watched Ace Ventura. I hadn't seen the first one in a long long time, so that was fun. Then today i went to grandma's and ate lunch and we hung out and talked for a few hours and then i went back to cami's and did some laundry, had dinner, and watched Lars and the Real Girl, which was good. So here i am. This next week promises to be pretty awful, and the worst part is i don't really have time in utah after it's done to just relax and hang out. Sad. Well i'm going to start working my way towards bed, maybe watch a little doctor who first and stretch my knee out, since i don't need to wake up for another 10 hours. Ahh college.

~Mostly Harmless

I don't need surgery!

The doctor called today and said i'm looking at a few weeks of physical therapy, if i start it soon i can be done by the time i go home. Win.

Of course having two partially torn ligaments in my knee means i'll have to be way careful about sports and snowboarding and extreme hide and go seek, but whatev, happy days

I'm good at this.

So i just got a call from my Doctor guy, and i screwed the crap out of my knee. Partially torn ACL, MCL, and a very minor bone fracture. I'm going to find out more about what that means monday, but it's possible that all of them might heal up on their own. The break was so minor that it didn't show up on an x-ray (or the radiologist is sort of shoddy) so that will heal as long as i don't do anything crazy. Ligaments don't really heal, so depending on how serious the tears are i might need some surgery, but we'll see monday. So...yeah. That's what's wrong.

Merry Foolmas Charlie Brown!

Well April Fools has come and gone without a whole lot of fuss, mostly because of a lack of spare time, duct tape, and/or saran wrap. Today was a pretty average day, although i'm glad i had google to fill my foolishness quota.

Lets see, what's new: I have a physical thursday for my mission and to find out if i'm going to be able to walk long term. I'm thinking now with the way my knee is healing and reading up on some google that i messed up my Meniscus, which from what i've read would be ok because it's a fairly easy fix (possibly by just moving around my knee a bit, worst case scenario a bit of simple surgery with a relatively quick recovery). It's fairly easy to tear the meniscus a bit to where it gets in the way of the knee's movement, which seems to be what's happening now, since my knee is almost entirely ok if you ignore the fact that i can't straighten it out. The symptoms line up a whole lot better than more serious things like torn ligaments and broken bones, and there's nothing much less serious you can do that results in your leg not straightening out. So i'm pretty hopeful. If it's really bad i'd be looking at a few months of rehab, which would suck, but would only push my mission back by a month or so, which would be ok, if it's as good as possible the doctor could just wiggle my knee around and i'd be up and walking. So yeah, fun stuff. If you want to read a lot more about Menisci, check out http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/meniscusinjuries1/a/meniscus.htm although it probably won't be as interesting if you're not spending half your time thinking about your knee.

Anyway, other than facing longterm knee issues even worse than my genetics would suggest, life is good. I might be going to general conference, there's a shortage of tickets in our ward, but as a soon to be missionary and a kid from out of state i get some priority. I also might have a date this weekend, if i can work out the time, which would be cool. 50 dollars recently appeared in my checking account, which i'm pegging either to parents, or Bank Faeries. This is good news, since the pain research people that owe me 50 dollars are having a suspiciously hard time mailing the check to me, so i have 50 dollars less than i was planning to right now.

4 weeks from now i will be in Biloxi, so crazy. I'm sort of sad about leaving, but i'm definitely happy to be living with people that don't smell like smoke all the time and refrain from most if not all illegal activities. I feel like i'm finally settling in to Utah, making real friends, finding stuff to do, all that jazz, so it sort of sucks to leave now. But 2 years and however long it takes for me to get back into normal life, i'm sure i'll be just as happy as i would be if i stayed (more so actually, since i'll be on the other side of my mission, which by default makes me a man.)

Now that i'm looking at having a working knee again, i think i should go snowboarding again before the season is done. In fact, I've been getting pretty good, so i've been putting some thought into just dropping this whole college/mission deal and going pro. I think that's probably the best thing for me to do right now.

anyway, i should go to sleep, i'm planning on waking up an hour early (9a.m.) so that i can make sure i'm ready for a quiz tomorrow. So i'd better go to bed now if i want 8hrs of sleep. Oh, btw, it's still snowing in Utah, I thought it was crazy when there was snow in the mountains in march when Katie and Logan got married, there's still snow on the ground and feet and feet of snow up in the canyon.

"We used to laugh a lot but only because we thought that everything good always would remain, nothing gonna change there's no need to complain"

Waiting for my invitation to arrive, walking with a deadman

It's been a while since i updated, crazy days. Lets see, last time i had just hurt my self snowboarding, since then i recovered and went again, and did nearly the same thing again, minus the concussion, although that just meant i was conscious for the actual leg injury, which was really quite painful, so i'm once again recovering, i have to say i'm getting sort of tired of limping, but such is the price i pay for awesome, i think i'm getting to the point where if i don't push my limits too far i'll be able to have a lot of fun snowboarding without hurting myself at all, which means i'll be able to go a lot more often. Unfortunately this comes both at the end of the season and as i'm getting too close to my mission to risk any debilitating injuries, so i think i'm done for a couple years, unless i go to the swiss alps on my mission, but even then i doubt they'll let me snowboard on p-days.

Speaking of missions, i've started filling out my papers, which is exciting. My Bishop told me that i need to cut my hair, which will be interesting. I haven't gotten a haircut all year, it's fun to have long hair, and i'm guessing i'm going to look about 18 years younger with short hair, but whatever, it has to happen sometime, it'll be nice to not have to keep pushing my hair out of my face.

I've grown fairly broke over the last few weeks, although Colin spotted me some cash and i'm supposed to be getting $50 dollars in the mail in a couple days. I need to remember to do my taxes since that'll get me a bunch more money so that hopefully i won't have to donate plasma for a while.

I went to Amy's for Easter Break/the end of spring break, and that was lots of fun. I hadn't seen Amy in quite a while, and i hadn't seen her kids since one of them was a baby and the other one didn't exist. I must say, those kids are pretty adorable, Carter is much cuter in person than in pictures. We couldn't do anything to crazy awesome since i wasn't really in peak physical condition, but we went to the beach, and the farmers market and played games and all those fun times. The flight back was pretty long, since we had a 2hour scheduled layover in San Fran and then our plane was an hour late coming from Boise...stupid Boise, so i got back last night at around midnight, and then of course stayed up for a couple hours to watch the end of lost and post some pictures on facebook, i think everyone who reads this has my facebook, so i won't post them here. But yeah, all in all the last couple weeks have been lots of fun, i go back to biloxi in 5 weeks. Madness. I realized that i'm Utah is quickly becoming home to me, since jackson is missing family and biloxi is missing friends, i have both here, so yeah.

That's all, i have physics homework and i have to design my own personal Hell and describe it and those in it in a four page paper, so i have a long night of figuring out ways to procrastinate ahead of me. Auf Wiedersehen

Busted Stuff

Well, i did end up going snowboarding today, which was great, i'm getting to the point where i can turn and stop and carve without falling and such, which makes the whole business a lot more fun. Despite this, i did fall and get a mild concussion, which wasn't fun, i don't remember falling at all, i just remember sitting for a while until i got to the point where i could go again. I was wearing a helmet, so that's good, and i'm pretty much better now. I also hurt my knee a bit, and i have a bit of a black eye, but all in all a good time, and will probably be the only time i can snowboard during the day out here because it's so expensive. I also got a pretty attractive sunburn on a very small part of my face, so it looks sort of like a rash.

The moral of this story is that i'm going to look way busted up for the formal tonight. I was going to try to make my hair somewhat formal, ala Christian Bale in batman (i totally don't have a man crush on christian bale, don't listen to such lies...), instead of the little mushroom thing i have going on, but instead i think i'm going to use it to hide my black eye. An additional moral is that it may not be the best idea to go snowboarding right before the church formal, but c'est la vie.

Those concerned about my health and decision making ability should know that i resisted the urge to go on that last run when i found out i had hurt my knee, which turned out to be a great idea since a little while later i realized that i was concussed, and just how much my knee hurt.

So now i'm hanging out until the formal wishing i could take a nap but would rather not go comatose, so here i am. I bought super smash brothers brawl yesterday, meaning that between snowboarding, the formal, and that i've spent over 100 dollars in a period of less than 24 hours, but i have tax returns coming up and i'm donating my life energy next saturday, which should cover the bills. I should clarify that while i paid for it yesterday, i'm picking it up tonight. I couldn't do the tournament they were doing because i decided that would be a little messed up to leave the dance about 45 minutes into it.

So yeah, good stuff all in all. i believe this is the first time i've had a concussion, at least that i can remember. On the other hand, i don't remember actually getting the concussion, just the after affects, so it's possible i've gotten concussions before but just mistaked them for being tired and having a headache.

I decided that from what i've heard, being concussed is fairly similar to getting drunk, and considering the way bashing my brain against the inside of my skull makes me feel, the appeal in alcohol alludes me.

Now i'm nursing my snowboarding hangover, i really wish i could take a nap, oh well.

Concussive Ramblings

It's official: sometimes i do some pretty stupid things. More on that later.

This week turned out pretty good all things considered. I'm somewhat surprised it's already thursday, and more surprised that thanksgiving is only two weeks away, madness. Also there are only five weeks left in fall semester, it's gone way too fast.

Tuesday we went to another basketball game. As it turns out, i don't like basketball games nearly as much as football games, i dunno, they're just not as much fun, maybe there's too much scoring for me, as a soccer player, to feel comfortable. Either way, we almost got a free pizza but Nick dropped it, and i decided that diving headfirst into the ground just for a personal pizza was not worth it.

Ironically, last night i decided diving headfirst into the ground would be an awesome thing to do. On our way back from smiths and squirrel brothers (strawberry cheesecake icecream is as good as ever) i noticed a massive pile of leaves, by far the biggest i've seen in my life. So me, Madeline, and Molly, being far more awesome than James and Vanessa, jumped in. (i guess it makes no sense to facetiously insult people when they don't even read this to appreciate it). At some point i thought it would be cool to dive headfirst into the pile o' leaves, not reasoning that leaves don't have anywhere near that much cushion, and that diving into a 4 foot high pile of leaves can't be that much different from diving into 4 feet of water. It ended up being rather painful, and is definitely not something i would recommend.

The moral of this story, however, is in no way "look before you leap". I've discovered that, barring some very serious consequences, i generally don't regret the things like this i do, because they really were pretty fun. I sometimes regret the consequences, but usually only when they involve other people. I've said many a time i'd break my arm if that's what it took to go snowboarding again, and that's somewhat true. I never regretted having gone snowboarding, except for how it affected the swim team and how much it cost. I didn't mind much falling out of the treehouse other than, again, the financial cost. A lot of times i don't mind dealing with a little bit of pain, because that goes away pretty quickly, but then you have these great stories to tell, and fun memories, and all that jazz.

So that's my philosophy on leaping. Probably not the wisest of philosophies, but i find it makes for a much better life than 'don't leap'. Incidentally, in relation to all things dealing with people and such, i use the opposite philosophy, something of a 'look and then over analyze for ever before you leap, and then afterwards when the opportunity is gone regret not leaping." but whatever, at least i am, as aristotle would say, 'consistently inconsistent'. I'm also waxing verbose, so i'd better stop before i make any more concussive ramblings.

I'm going to take some aspirin.

By the by, is there any way to dive other than head first? It seems to me that a dive generally implies diving headfirst, and diving headfirst is a little redundant, and if we're going to be more technical, your head isn't usually first, your hands are first. Had i actually dived headfirst into the ground i probably wouldn't be writing about, but luckily i'm not that stupid.