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.

The C that cost 5 grand.

Weak. I got a C+ in physics, which pulled my cumulative GPA down to a 3.4, meaning, barring some unexpected circumstances, i lost my full tuition super special awesome scholarship. So that's no fun. Stupid physics. I should call and see if i can get something worked out, since otherwise i might have to take some time off so that i can get residency so that i can afford in state tuition. I wonder if i can call cami's house my residence for the second year of my mission and get instate...

Thus i join the long line of perkes siblings who have gotten good scholarships and then lost them. Yay me.

I suppose technically saying that physics is what did it isn't entirely true, since if i had gotten a letter grade better in any of my classes at any point in the year, i would have kept it, meaning my A- in Calculus three technically hurt me, but i think it's safe to say physics gets the most credit. So if i don't manage to finagle my way into keeping the scholarship (and i've never been very good at finagling) I guess i'm looking at taking a year off to work, earn enough extra money to be able to afford college, and live in utah so that it's half as expensive.

Other than that though, life down here is improving a bit. Isaac's no longer sick, so i'm not stuck at home all day. I got some immunizations, so i'm all ready to not get hepatitis, so yeah, reasonably ok times.

A Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

It has come to my attention that some of you take issue with me calling my hair, which is a faux-hawk at best, a mohawk. While i did, in fact, call it a mohawk, i do understand the difference between the two. I also, however, understand that many people aren't as invested in the specifics of mohawks and faux-hawks, and many others don't even know what faux-hawks are. As such, i figured it would be acceptable to call it a mohawk for simplicity sake. I was wrong. I apologize to any of you and your respective hairs whom I may have offended. I'll try to be more accurate in the description of my hair styles in the future.

Sincerely,
Ammon Perkes

Seriously though, today has been interesting. I woke up early this morning to the dulcet tones of a jack hammer tearing up the sidewalk outside my window. That went on for about 2 hours, when i actually needed to get up. My clock deceived me, telling me i had already missed the bus, but when i actually left i realized i could have caught it but had now missed it by a few minutes. Not wanting to wait for the next shuttle i jogged to the trax and, realizing that it was already coming, had to race it, running about 200 yards which is probably the best possible thing for my knee right now.

I had my last day of institute today, and then some Linear Algebra review. After that i tried to print out my mission physical papers, but i realized that i couldn't remember my login name, so i had to head back up to the dorms. Luckily my ink didn't run out (it's practically printing on fumes at this point), and i headed over to the student services center for a pre-physical and to schedule a physical. I got on the wrong shuttle and by the time i got back to the stop the right shuttle had gone, so i had to run to catch the trax, again.

The physical itself was easy enough, although it did run late so i didn't get to go to my last physics discussion. Oh well. Here are a few things i learned at the physical:

Chronic itchiness can be a sign of cancer (i actually learned that reading discover while in the waiting room); the Student Center has the best magazines i've ever seen in a waiting room; for some reason a place that caters almost exclusively to college students expects them to not know their letters, and so has the awkward direction E charts for vision checks; you're supposed to wash blood out of pants with cold water and, just prior to learning that, I apparently bleed fairly freely when blood is drawn, all over everything; peeing in a cup is really much more difficult when you really need to go to the bathroom.

After that i caught a shuttle over to the end of my physics discussion to pick up my physics test. I got a 91, it would have been a 98 but i apparently lost all common sense midway through the exam, but a 91 is still great. I have to go back tomorrow morning to have them put in a little TB test thing, and then I go in friday to have my full physical. I actually forgot when my exam is, so the physical will require me to miss the first half hour of my exam, unless someone cancels, but last time i had nearly an hour left of testing, so i'm not overly worried. I accidentally stole a pen from the doctors office. I actually realized this before i left the doctors, but after i had played with it for a while and chewed on it a little bit. I figure after that it would be irresponsible to give it back, especially with all the signs everywhere about not spreading infection. I will admit, i'm sort of grossed out that i put a doctor's office pen in my mouth, but it is a nice pen, and my other one just died, so whatever.

Tomorrow night i have my crazy 25 page paper and presentation due, so i need to finish working on that tonight. I only have to write half of it, and last night i got about 6 pages, so i should be able to finish it up tonight. I think 25 page papers are stupid, especially this one. There are very few things in the world that take 25 pages to state adequately, and this most definitely isn't one of them. What is going to happen is i'll type everything i want to say, and then say it in more complicated ways, and then add quotes from other people to justify the things i've said. I could probably tell you everything you needed to know from this paper in a page and a picture.

Otherwise life goes as normal. I'm pretty happy that it's going to work out to have my papers finished before i leave, since there was some question before. It's unfortunate that it's cutting into my exam time, but with a bit of fortune it will all turn out ok. Tomorrow i'm going to make sure it's ok to miss the beginning of the exam and ask if it's remotely possible for me to stay later to finish it up. I doubt it, and i doubt i'll need to, but it won't hurt to ask.

Update:
The people called and there was a cancellation so now i'm going at 2:30, a solid hour before the exam, which will give me enough time for the physical and just enough time to make it to the exam ontime. Hurrah!

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

And we're not little children, and we know what we want

April is a busy month. My normal calender has like three things on it, but april is jam packed. I dunno how i feel about that.

Today i had a dentist appointment at 9 in the morning, the shuttle was late, (or early, one way or another there wasn't a shuttle when there was supposed to be), and so i missed the bus, and so i had to wait half an hour for the next one, so i was almost an hour late for my appointment, but that was ok, they squeezed me in. All they had to do was take some x-rays and they found a couple tiny cavities in progressed, so i'm going to get that fixed up. All this is part of the ongoing process of doing all my mission stuff. Once my knee is working to my satisfaction, i'll go grab a physical and then i just have to find out a few things and i'm done. If everything goes as it should, i'll be done with it all my the last week i'm here so my Bishop here can send it off and we'll get the letter in Biloxi.

I've decided i like the college scene a lot more than high school, i've said this before, but this is in relation to relationships and dating and stuff. High school is so stupid. That whole casual dating thing just didn't happen there. What a strange place where you can be 'going out' without ever going on a date, and going on a date is practically an engagement. Is it embarrising that i listen to Popular by Nada Surf when i was figuring out how to keep this girl from getting the wrong ideas about how i felt? Probably, but that doesn't change the fact that that song is awesome.

That said, some people in college are way too dramatic. None of it has much to do with me, but yeah, i thought all the petty drama would surely end with graduation, but apparently not, oh well.

What else is going on, I went to a lecture by Stephen Dubner, the guy that wrote The Economist, and that was way cool. i pretty much forgot that today was thursday, so i got all excited for the weekend yesterday and then i had today. Thursday's are way chill, institute and a discussion, but it's no friday.

Friday looks to be awesome, another cheap concert and then watching the Sandlot. And physical therapy, which i've heard nothing but good things about. Well, i need to go to class or i'll be later then i want to be.

Here i lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun.

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

You're the best around, nothing's ever gonna keep you down...

So i just bowled a 170, best game of my life so far, i think the next best was 162 or something, and after that i've mostly cruised in the 140's, but yeah, i was amazed. Best of all, i did the whole thing while curving the ball, although i still snipe off little pins by bowling straight, which i can do surprisingly consistently now. The best part of all this is that Jake, Murph and I decided that whoever won would get treated to a free movie by the losers, so chya, free dollar movie for me.

Otherwise, life is pretty basic these days. Super smash brothers Brawl comes out saturday night, so i've been playing some melee to remember how that game was. The need to release the original on virtual console, and i need to make my wireless internet work again so i can use virtual console. What else...i'm going to a church formal saturday night, which reminds me, i need to find a bow tie, and figure out how to make my increasingly long hair formal.

I was watching napoleon dynamite the other day and it made me remember how much i disliked high school. High school is so dumb, with the drama and the teachers and the ridiculous rules. I can have cell phones and food in class and it doesn't seem to detract from the learning environment. So glad that's over with, college is way more fun. I highly recommend it.

Oh, i also might go snowboarding on saturday if i manage to go donate plasma so that i can fund it. So that could be some more fun times. Well that's about all that's going down here. Clinton has slowed obama's momentum by playing dirty, but with two states Obama is pretty strong in coming up he can probably get that back and become president. Hurrah.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Almost there...

Tomorrow i have my second physics midterm, and i'm a little worried. I know pretty much everything he's taught us, but that's never stopped me from failing a test before. In happier news i got a 92 on my math midterm, one i was pretty worried about. Over the past couple of weeks i've very dramatically discovered a new group of friends, and i have to say, it's pretty rockin. Dollar bowling, mafia, midnight eating, it's good stuff, this is the end of something that's been going on for quite sometime, but i'm surprised how suddenly i found myself in this group, so yeah, fun stuff.

In other news, this week has been rough. It seems like i'm just staying just ahead of this wave of work and tests and stuff, trying to make it to the weekend without crashing. But i'm doing ok for the most part.

In political news, it looks like Obama is pulling ahead of Hillary, which is awesome. I think i might donate some money to the campaign, since his facebook group asked me so nicely. I figure since i'm not voting in the primaries i'll feel like i'm having some influence. It's been a pretty crazy week in the world, Kosovo declaring independence, Castro quitting (i'm still convinced he's been dead for years), Allegations of a McCain affair (which if it pans out, could mean a Huckabee Colbert ticket), this afternoon while walking around campus and looking at some construction i thought about how different everything is going to be in two years when i get back from my mission. madness.

I think that's all that's been going on with me. I can honestly say i'm getting a little antzy for spring, grass and warmth and all that jazz. Just as long as i get to go snowboarding a few times before then i'll be great. Well, i'm off to bed. Until the next time i don't feel like going to sleep, adieu.

Matrices and Magnets

I have never in my life been so happy to know how matrices work as i was about 5 minutes ago when it cut literally hours of time off my physics homework that would have been spent mucking about in algebraic mess.

Math teachers should tell their students, in response to why you should learn matrices, that they will allow you to get a decent night sleep someday in college. I lucked out by pairing my math perfectly with my physics classes, calculus with kinematics, and linear algebra with electricity and magnetism. If it weren't 2am i'd make a more legitimate update, but life is pretty good right now. I don't think i'm going to get that job, but that's ok, donating plasma and other things should get me through this semester with a good bit of spending money while allowing me to retain a reasonable social life.

anyway, peace out my sleeping peeps.

In that category of things instead of which i should be sleeping:

I'm not quite sure if the grammar works out the way i want it to in the title, but you get the gist.

My roommate is still trudging along through his homework, having slept the majority of the evening. I figured i would take the opportunity to update everyone one the events of my life, because it is oh so fascinating.

I hit a snag a couple days ago in Operation Crowded Bear, formerly called Operation something about my roommate. As it turns out, there isn't a single open room anywhere on campus. I find this somewhat impossible to believe, so i'm hoping the system is just wigging out since they just put it back on, but we'll see. I've taken some flack for trying to get rid of my roommate, and i've put quite a bit of thought into it. I don't want to live alone, and having a roommate i was friends with and could talk to would be awesome, but yeah, i dunno, between the smoking and the language barrier and the impressive propensity for getting very drunk despite not have much tolerance and suffering from impressive hangovers, i'm not sure this roommate is entirely for me. Technically his drinking is legal, but having a roommate sleeping and moaning all day is just awkward, but whatevs, we'll see how it unfolds. I could always look around for some room to switch to, but i like my room, and my suitemates for the most part, and it feels all homely now...maybe Chung will happen to find some friend he wants to move in with. I'm 3/3 so far with that happening.


Other than that life has been fairly regular. James and/or Tim popped my inner tube-sled. It was only a matter of time before that happened, so it's good that they did it, cus now they're responsible for the next sled. Tuesday i went a drew the plan for a house. That was a lot more work than i thought it was. And then my partner bailed on me for our presentation today, so i didn't really have anything, but happily i had taken a picture of it before hand, so i could at least show that i'd done it, and my professor was pretty understanding about the whole thing, at least for me, i don't think it'll go well for my partner but whatever...

I've been making good use of my camera, it's continued to be wicked snowy up here, so the picture taking possibilities have abounded. There've also been some deer that have taken up residence in Chapel Glenn and the surrounding area, and earlier today there were five of them just chilling down there but my camera chose that moment to run out of batteries. I love my camera lots and lots, but it sure could do with a battery meter, that was kinda bad planning there Canon. Due to the lack of deer, i'll provide this picture as the constellation prize. I realize that the word is conciliation, but it's one of those things that has become so deeply ingrained* in my thinking that it's very difficult not to say it or in this case type it. Like Zooology and pronounciation.



I like that picture, it makes me think of Big Fish.

well that's all from here. One of these days something of consequence will happen, but i'll be so wrapped up in my exciting life that i'll put off writing about it for weeks. Until that day comes, expect meaningless updates fairly regularly.

Oh, and mad thanks to caitlin for the wicked awesome presents i got. Now i am well equipped to start or stop small fires. Hoorah.

~Ammon

"What kind of a culture would value a twinkie."

People always think they're so clever when they pose the question, "If God foresees our actions, how can we have free will?" That question is well over 2000 years old, and, as it turns out, Boethius proposed a pretty good answer to it some 1500 years ago, which, even then, was not all that new. It's interesting how he forms his argument, since he writes it as though he is an absolute skeptic bordering blasphemy, and has 'Philosophy' rebut his argument, but he was obviously writing both. Shame he was executed for treason, he was a righteous dude, silly early Christian Empires*...

Anyway, other than reading early medieval philosophy, my day has been pretty usual. I bought all my books today, that was good, and didn't end up costing as much as i had feared. Also some of these books i can see myself giving back, since i don't think i'll have that much use for "Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy - Fifth Edition" once i'm done with this, who knows though, i like books, and the money i'd get back for them is barely worth it. I've gotten a pretty consistent gym schedule now, which is good. Working out makes me feel like i've accomplished something, even if i spend the rest of the day doing nothing of consequence. I'm pretty set in the routine of college now, and it feels good. It's been wicked cold lately, and that also feels good. I think a decade and a half in mississippi has made winter my favorite season. Go figure.

I had my first real material culture class yesterday, and that was really cool, i think i'm going to enjoy that class a lot. Just another drop in the bucket of deciding to get out of being a math major. I like math a lot, but shy of teaching, i can't see myself enjoying a math profession. People and Animals are much more interesting. So hooray for 60 credit hours and a 4 year scholarship, giving me pretty remarkable freedom. Speaking of remarkable freedom, i looked over my finances yesterday and it looks like there's a good chance that my entire second semester is payed for and i'll have money to spare. That would be glorious. I still need to find a job, but not having to worry about giving The U any more money would be pretty great.

My dad has now met Oprah. He met the president some time ago, and these aren't like how you might meet some celebrity in California, these were meetings, so huzzhah for my dad. Apparently he's in the audience for tomorrows Oprah, so i guess i'm going to watch a full episode for the first, and possibly the last, time ever.

Also, Operation New/No Roommate officially begins tomorrow. Chung's a nice enough guy, but there are a few little things that culminate in big things, amoung them smoking. I worked very hard to find three roommates that didn't smoke. They may do a lot of things of questionable legality, but none of them make my room smell bad, so yeah. Starting tomorrow we're allowed to make room changes so i'm going to go a looking for an open room. I'd prefer not to move out of my room, so we'll see. I could always just talk to Chung i suppose. Like that'll happen. If i can chase off 3 roommates without even meaning to, just think of what i could achieve when i actually put some effort into it.

Mmm, the sweet scent of my room smelling like cigarettes...yeah, something's definitely going to have to change here. At least i have the excuse of my mom not wanting me rooming with someone who smokes. She was surprisingly adamant about that.

Well that's about all that's been going on out here. Stay tuned for important announcements.

~Zak without a C

Oh, it's become almost traditional for me to have a picture somewhere in each entry, so here's one i took when it was snowing really hard between classes.



*I originally said it was the catholic church that executed him when, as it turns out, it was actually theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths who was, at the time, ruling Italy. He was an Arian (not an Aryan) Christian, which was a branch which had some conflict with the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches due to their rejection of the Trinity.

Anyway, all this is to say it was perhaps a bit foolish of me to assume that anyone executed for religious reasons was executed by the Catholic Church. I apologize to all my Catholic readers...

The weather outside is frightful...frightfully awesome!

I have an hour or so between classes and it's snowing too hard to trek back up to the dorms, so i'm holed out at the union waiting until it calms down a bit. I looked out the window after Linear Algebra and it was just completely white outside, and i'm not really dressed for blizzards today, but it seems to be slowing down a bit, so that's good. I really loved walking through heavy snow though, I was listening to Muse, which made the whole experience very intense. I think i'm going to like this semester a lot more than the last. I'm 3 more hours, but my classes are all either easier or a lot more enjoyable (not both though) so it should be a fun year. Also all my classes are together so i just hang out down on campus and then go to the gym and then i'm done, it's much nicer than three classes, each with an hour in between during which i couldn't really do anything.

As it turns out Brian Cory is also in my ward, the coincidences just keep piling up.

I bought all my books yesterday, which set me back 200 dollars. That was sad, but it had to be done, and i think i have some scholarship money that took care of it. Luckily i still have 2 classes that i don't need books for, otherwise it would have probably been 300 at least. I think college textbooks are one of the biggest scams ever, the idea that every year you need a new edition for physics is completely ridiculous, physics just doesn't change that fast. But i'm set because my teacher puts all the questions online and Cami has an older version.

I'm sort of just writing to pass the time, dang it's snowing hard again, or maybe it's just windy. It's really the wind i don't like, i can handle snow and cold, but the wind is just too much. Anyway, i think i'll go eat lunch and maybe swing over to the library to borrow Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, books i've been wanting to read lately for some reason. Oh yeah, also this semester i only have one class that assigns real homework, other than that it's just reading, research, and practice work, so there's significantly more free time, which is sweet.

Utah is a small world

Today i ran into Brian Cory, who was a missionary in jackson. It was a pretty hugecoincidence, although it still is dwarfed by running into our next door neighbor in utah, that was unexpected in the extreme.

Anyway, I'm back in utah, and it feels good. I like my little world that is my room, it'll be fun to have a slightly larger world someday, but it's good.

Like so.


Anyway, so the flight back was rough. I had to wake up at 4am, and then my mom drove me to new orleans. We got to the air port probably around 5:30. For it being unreasonably early, the airport was packed. The lined to security doubled back and fourth about 5 times, and about 5 minutes after i got there there was a line that stretched all the to inside the door, which was probably like 50 yards. My plane was an hour late because the crew had to sleep, which was probably good since i didn't get through security until a few minutes before my plane was supposed to leave. After about an hour the pilot and crew got there and we took off just as the sun was coming up. The flight itself was fine, we made good time and got into utah more or less as scheduled. I took the public transportation, which was actually pretty great. The bus takes you to within about 3 blocks of the trax, which is actually a lot worse than it sounds. Blocks in salt lake are an eighth of a mile, and so half a mile of dragging my 100 pounds of baggage through the mostly plowed sidewalks turned out to be fairly tiring. Once i got to the trax though it was great, the train goes about as close to the dorms as you could ask. this is where it got hard though, even though it's only a five or so minute walk, it's all up hill, and the university of utah is not as diligent in plowing the sidewalks, so the wheels weren't doing so much. This on top of 1 hour of sleep, no food in 8 hours, and a half mile of dragging my luggage about. So yeah, by the time i got up to my room i pretty much felt like dieing, but oh no. I had a class just 20 minutes away. I had to get some food first though so i was late for my first class, or rather my second class since i completely missed my first class cus i was on a plane. And then i had my third class, and then i went back to my room and unpacked and tried to catch my breath.

The rest of my day was pretty good. I met my new roommate, who is very much korean. He barely speaks english which can get a little awkward at time, but he's a really nice guy, and he has only been in the states for 2 weeks, so if his english improves linearly, he'll be proficient in no time. And if it's exponential, he'll be writing classic literature by february.

Monday night we had fhe, which was fun, and then i watched Doctor who, which freaked me out hard. Small children wearing gas masks and saying mommy...terrifying stuff.

today was nice because i feel like i'm back into the routine again. I set up my printer and the wii, put away all my clothes (yesterday they slept on the hammock) and that's pretty much where i am now, watching the new and unimproved Daily Show and Colbert Report. So chya, good stuff. I need to spend around 30 dollars at the little store at the heritage center to get rid of all my meal plan money before it disappears with my new meal plan, so yeah. Hopefully something will happen tonight other than watching tv, but i haven't watched tv in 3 weeks, so i'd live.

~The Writers Guild of Room 53107

Post Script: I changed my blog to make it a little more cheery. That dark thing was far too emo.

Thursday, I don't care about you; it's Friday, I'm in love.

Friday can't come soon enough, i am so ready to be done with this semester, i only have 2 essays and another final. My math final went fairly well this morning, i felt like i was failing it but when i went back through it there was only one problem that i was struggling with, and he drops our worst problem, and gives pretty decent partial credit, and then there's the curve. Oh the glorious curve. I wonder if honors classes are graded on the curve, because that would be crippling, especially since a 3.5 is required for an honors degree, and quite a few honors students are on some sort of scholarship with a minimum gpa requirement. Hopefully it's more of a parabola.

Christmas is only 2 weeks away. This semester has been absurdly fast, i still don't really feel like i've found my groove in this whole college life thing, but it's getting there. Next semester the groove changes completely with classes different and such, and a new roommate, madness.

I decide that i'd rather not have guitar hero for christmas. It's a really fun game, but 90 dollars could be spend much more effectively, like on a digital camera. I also want to become really good at rock climbing, but i don't see that happening for christmas or next semester, since rock climbing and winter don't mix well, except for indoor, which remains wicked fun.

I really need to stop procrastinating, those essays aren't going to write themselves. I have such a hard time motivating myself at the very end of school, it's a pretty bad time to lose motivation, especially is college. I proved in high school that i could survive not trying for the last term, but in college the last couple weeks is responsible for a pretty sizable portion of the final grade.

I had a dream last night that was a good reflection of my subconscious. First of all, i stayed up all night doing nothing in particular, i think i hung out with some people, at 8am i was going to head to sleep, but then i didn't have any place to sleep, i think i ended up sleeping in some sort of hammock thing in that field where we play frisbee. I was somehow simultaneously at the dorms and in jackson because i was suprised when i couldn't sleep in the Howard st. house, and then i realized that i had a dorm to sleep in. It was a weird dream. Dreams always seem to last longer than it takes to describe them, and they always lose a lot of their meaning. It's weird.

But yeah, wasting all my time and feeling like i'm short one home is pretty common as of late. I'm excited to get back to mississippi, but i can't really call biloxi home, mostly because i've only been there for two days, and i don't know anyone there other than my family. I'm also looking forward to making it up to jackson. I think i have a tendency to complain about my friends sometimes, and i somehow expected to find these perfect people to hang out with in Utah. As it turned out, my friends in mississippi were, and are, pretty crazy awesome, and it's hard to imagine actual people who were much better. I had a workout buddy, a second string work-out buddy (who was hampered by his lack of Y membership), video game buddies, risk buddies, tv buddies, movie buddies, Ultimate frisbee buddies, talking about stuff buddies, work buddies, do nothing buddies...the list of buddies goes on and on, most of which i haven't been able to dublicate here.

So i'm hoping for some all inclusive roommate buddy to move in next semester, because i'm sure that'll happen. I do have a climbing buddy, a doing really stupid but fun stuff buddy, and snow buddies up here, and i would have ultimate frisbee buddies if it wasn't so snowy and cold, and i have church buddies for the first time in a while, so it's not all lost. I am short a best buddy, and those are pretty vital.

So aside from being agonizingly close to leaving, life has been pretty bland during this finals week. I just want to be done, but it'll come soon enough, until then I have essays to put off.

~The Down of a Thistle

Let me tell y'all what it's like being male, middle class, and white.

Man, today was entirely too awesome. So lets see...morning was so-so, i had class, but then i got my phone back. Woo! I'd lost it on the shuttle, and someone just found it a couple days ago, and conveniently had the charger necessary for charging it up to call my mom. I'm glad there are people that are that dedicated in making up for my absent mindedness/unsatisfactory pocket quality.

Then i had physics, more mehsh, but it was my last class of this semester, from here on it's 2 papers and 2 exams and i'm out. Lets see, after physics i worked out, and ran into the Honors Floor Gang. Wow, when you write it out it looks wicked official. Anyway, so that was good, then i walked back up with them, and hung around for a bit. I got some food, and on my way out they (the honors gang) were playing pool, so i went and hung out there for a bit and when steven left i took over for him and totally owned in pool until i scratched on the 8-ball. That's kinda how i play pool, i don't think it's the best strategy.

After that i hung out with Tim, watched scrubs, played guitar hero for a while....a long while, and at some point molly james came by and they played, and my roomate played some and his friend played...anyway, we ended up playing for a solid few hours. It started snowing at around 5 and by midnight there was 4-6 inches, so after a bit of convincing i tim and molly james to go. Me and Tim and James had a pretty intense snowball fight while we waited for Molly to finish getting snow stuff, and then we went down to the glenn for a bit, but that got old fast, and so i took us over to the giant hill that runs right into the street, but the snow at the bottem was powdery that we stopped...except for tim.

And that's how tim got his limp for christmas.

not really, but he did hit that road pretty hard, there were no cars around though, so it was relatively safe, relative to doing something completely stupid...say jumping off a bridge.

Anyway, sledding was way fun, i got hot so i took my jacket and underarmor off and when i was so close it was a pretty natural next step to go sledding with no shirt on. That was way too intense, tim tumbled and got very cold, and it didn't help that molly james were throwing snowballs at us while we tried to put our stuff back on.

So after that we started to head back, which took around an hour, there were originally plans to build a giant wall of snow infront of the door, by rolling a ball of snow all the way back, but by about 1/4 the way there it was too heavy for us to roll, so we broke it up and threw boulder sized pieces of snow at molly james.

A side note, in order to clear any confusion, Molly and James are two seperate people, who are also a couple, and are almost never seen apart, thus Molly James.

then a bit of snow football (where the football was made from the remains of the snow boulder) and some more stupid snow fun, and then me and Tim walked back and here i am.

Lets see, the rest of this past week has been pretty ok, nothing too great. I lost my phone the thursday before last, and had pretty much given up on it by monday, i had my last midterm, watched the heroes season finale (lame, darn writers strike), lots of guitar hero (we tallied it up with the Wii and it worked out to around 25 hours over the past week and a bit), aaand that's the gist.

I'm so full of andreneline and awesome that i'm not at all tired, which isn't great, because i have 2 papers to write for next week, one of which is actually pretty significant, and an essay on tuesdasy and thursday, then friday i fly back. wow, 7 days from now i'll be in Biloxi. I really don't know where to call home these days...I think jackson qualifies, i've lived there longer than anywhere else, but now i don't have a house or a family there...

Anyway, i'm going to read some and try to get some sleep, it's supposed to snow most of tomorrow, although i'm not sure where we can go from how awesome tonight was, i'd hate to hit the peak with 2/3's of winter left over.

I need to go snowboarding.

~Linus, not Lucy

My Name is Jonas

That's not entirely true, but Guitar Hero III is entirely awesome, and My Name is Jonas happens to be a really fun song to play. Rock climbing is also entirely awesome, today i was bested by the rock wall, but it was still fun.

Guitar Hero and rock climbing, all my life is missing is a physics midterm...
Oh happy day! I have one tomorrow at 2, and as such, i think i should be hitting the proverbial sack.

Also, Happy Birthday to Amy, who is probably the nicest person in the world, maybe tied with my mom.

No joke people, i wish i were as nice as Amy, but as it turns out i am a bit sarcastic and critical. I need to get that in check before i do the whole mission thing, i don't think that'll fly so much out there.

So yeah, that's all. I hear there's supposed to be some mad snow storm coming in in the next couple days, i dunno if that'll actually happen, i've become a bit suspicious of the weather peopel of late because they're bad at telling me when to hope for snow. I'm going to sleep now.

~Iron Man

weak, BYU won by 7.

that game should have been ours, when we had them 4th down and 18 deep on their side with one minute left that should have been the end. Oh well, i'll survive.

Loads off my back:

So far the past 24 hours has just been full of happy discoveries. First, talking to my mom, i found out that the house is sold and we're completely out of debt. Woo!

Then i found out that, contrary to what i had discovered earlier that day, the wisdom tooth study that pays hundreds of dollars is not a myth, it just isn't going through the university. It's actually an anesthesia test where they're using something other than codeine to see how it works, in search of a pain killer that doesn't run the risk of doubling as a patient killer. I'm a little wary of drug tests, but i think i'm going to call and see what the deal is, because it seems legit; it's a real oral surgeon and getting paid to have my wisdom teeth removed would be pretty stellar.

This morning, after rolling out of bed into calculus, i found out that i got a 100 on my midterm, which made me tres happy. Ever since the beginning of the year i've been worried about failing that class, not cutting it as a math major, and losing my scholarship, especially since technically i wasn't supposed to take that class, having only a 3 on the BC Calc test. I do need to really learn Maclauren series, which i've always struggled with, it being the last thing we learned, during a time when i was quickly losing my motivation in school. So yeah, that made me pretty happy.

Then, i came back and showered (i really don't know how i'd live without showers, i think without them, hygiene problems aside, i'd quickly devolve into a stressed out mess), ate, and decided to tackle the financial issues between me and the university. Basically over the past couple months i've been baffled by how much money i'm owing the university, and it just hasn't been adding up. Before college i had figured that i'd make it through the entire first semester with a few hundred to spare, not accounting for book costs and random spending, but book costs and random spending aside, i found myself owing the university 1600 dollars. This wasn't helped by the fact that MTA has yet to give me the 750 dollars they owe me, but even without that, it shouldn't have been that much.

Well, today i discovered that instead of giving the money to me to give to housing like i had been expecting, they credited the extra money back to my mom's credit card, in the amount of 1500 or so dollars. So now everything makes sense, my housing bill is paid for, and i just have to wait for the card to be processed before i can register for classes.

Huge sigh o' relief.

In other news, life has been pretty average. We drove down to provo on a whim on friday night and hung out with some people that my friends knew. At one point we ended hanging out in the apartment complex that amy had lived in once upon a time, which was thoroughly surreal. I thought about calling jessie or buckley, but i don't know how i would feel about my cousin calling me at 11 o'clock on a friday night to see if i wanted to hang out, so yeah. Also, BYU honor code is surprisingly constraining when you're not expecting to get kicked out of the dorms at midnight, and then the apartments at 1:30. So we went to denny's and got some food and then drove home.

Saturday was way fun, we had the funnest football game ever involving a really very clever fake punt that we ran about 40 yards for a touchdown (although the refs didn't give us the touchdown and we had to run it for half a yard) we beat wyoming 50-0 in what the opposing coach had called a guaranteed win for wyoming. It's really a shame Utah had such a rough early season, or else we would be in 2nd with BYU in first, our last game deciding the winner, but alas.
So that's been my last few days, i'm pretty happy right now, it's a shame i have physics in an hour. Oh, and i bought more contacts over the weekend, it's great to have them again, although my eyes had gotten mostly used to glasses, and it's weird, but my glasses aren't quite the right prescription, and they're crooked, so it's nice to be able to see better again. So yeah, good stuff all in all.

~An Unladen Swallow

times like these

So i'm in somewhat of a melancholy mood at the moment, and i decided that listening to Coldplay wasn't helping, so now we're seeing what Jack Johnson can do. Jack Johnson is generally a good way to feel happy.

So yeah, life these days is fairly decent, i have friends, so that's cool. I took care of all things unsaid in my real journal earlier tonight while i was emo, so i'll just chronalog the past week, which was pretty good.

On friday i went to Calculus which was about the same as always, then i worked very hard to not go to sleep and motivate myself to go to Colorado. For a few days there i was feeling craptacular, pretty much exhausted always, which i think was partially mental, probably stemming from the fact that i'm partially mental, but i got over it because Colorado is way too cool a state to skip out on.

The drive down was pretty uneventful, I half slept through most of james driving, and then enjoyed Wyoming in all it's beauty for Madeline's shift. We got to Molly's at around 9, it would have been sooner but we got caught in some very slow traffic for the last 2 miles. We ate dinner, courtesy of the molly parents, and then played password, which me and james beat molly and blaire in, although just barely. hm, that should be "in which" but sometimes i like to not be so pedantic a.k.a. grammatically correct. Anyway, at some point we slept, with the unrealistic idea of going hiking at 9am the next morning.

Madeline got there around 11 or 12, and suprisingly we ended up hiking. James, Madeline, and I left Molly (since molly had to go watch the Rockies lose up close and personal), and met up with Madeline's friend...jake...i think. Anyway, he seemed like a cool guy, reminded me a little bit of Kimball, but of course no one reading this knows who he is, so that doesn't do much good. Anyway, we went on a nice hike in Estes Park, which took us up to the Meadow (prompting various bambi references). Me and jake were feeling somewhat adventurous, or rather i was and jake was cool enough to follow, so we hiked up to the top of the little mountain we were on, which was pretty amazing. The hike back down was fun, and involved a bit of bouldering and trying not to die. The hike back went pretty fast, since it was all down hill, so that was cool.

We went from there to Porter's (another friend of madeline) house to watch that game and/or The Invisible. Porter's lady friend...ellie?...ella?...i'll go with ellie, said that we were jinxing the game by watching it, so we didn't really see them lose at the end. After the game me, porter, and james took on madeline and ellie in an intense game of Disney Scene-It. It was way intense, we lost because we said flubber instead of the Absent Minded Professor, but it was fun. That was saturday.

Sunday i went to church in some random ward, which made me appreciate the lack of babies in my ward, but Church is Church no matter where you go, which is always nice. Sunday was pretty chill, i took a nap, and then packed when molly and james got back (they'd gone up to Fort Morgan, where Molly used to live). We left at 2ish, and i drove the first stretch, which was fun. James and Molly were mostly asleep so Madeline drove the final leg. We started getting pretty tired with an hour or two still to go, so we played freeze-out (roll down all the windows when it's cold and go for as long as you can). That turned out to be way too intense for Molly and not nearly intense enough for me and madeline, and it looked like the windows would just be open for the rest of the drive, so we invented Freeze-out Extreme, which requires you to hold your hand out the window (holding onto the top of the car). We lasted about 12 miles and i decided i cared less about winning then i did about the inevitable nerve damage i was doing to my hand, so madeline took the prize for most hardcore/stubborn person.

We got back into Salt Lake at 9ish, and i think we did something, although i don't quite remember what. This is getting long, but the next few days weren't nearly as intense.

Monday was mondayish, and that night we watched heroes and met James new roomate Nick who seems like a nice addition to the group. Then we hung out and me and Madeline played with James awesome laptop (complete with tablet screen thing) and drew a picture of what molly and james would look like, were they unhappy pilgrims. Molly and James didn't seem to appreciate it nearly as much as we did, but it was fun either way. Oh, all day monday i was weirdly energetic, i'm not quite sure what happened there, since i definitely didn't get enough sleep.

To contrast, tuesday i was weirdly unenergetic, but i found out i made a 99 on my IT midterm (which was dippin awesome). That night we went and saw the Simpsons Movie, which is funnier than i remembered it, and then watched zoolander, which was exactly as funny as i remembered it.

Wednesday was halloween, and another dissapointing year. I came pretty close to having a costume, but as it turned out nothing happened, so it never happened. Me and Madeline and then Kelsey and Cathy and Vanessa and Flora and James and Molly (in order of arrival) watched Spiderman 3, which is funny and awesome and tacky. I'd forgotten the ending, and remembered it all of a sudden a few minutes before the end. After that we went looking for something to do, the creepy Chapel of Chapel Glenn seemed like a good choice, but it was locked, so we wandered around and me and Nick climbed on things than i climbed the hardest tree i've ever climbed (the first thing to hang on was about 15 feet up, so it involved some hardcore climbing.) And then i sat there for a while because i was having flashbacks of Arm-break 2006: The tree house of horror. I think after that we went to some mexican restaurant and then hung out in james room until i was too tired.

Thursday james got a couch, that was pretty awesome. Me James and Nick got front row seats to the Utah - Montana basketball game, which was lots and lots of fun, on our way out we saw a dippin dots, and that's when i realized that dippin is a good word to say in place of frickin, so i'm going to try to work that into my vernacular. We also watched The Emperor's New Groove with some girls, since 3 guys alone watching disney movies is somewhat suspect.

Today, friday, i lost my soccer game. It sucked a lot, we should have won, and i played like crap, so it's pretty hard not to blame myself, but happily no one else did verbally. We lost in a shoot-out, so i'm sure the shooters that missed and the goalie feel at least as bad as i do, but still, it sucked, i hate losing, but i really hate losing when i know i should have done better.

So yeah, that's my week. I did do some college work too, read some plato and aristotle, re-wrote an essay on oedipus rex, took a midterm and other collegiate things. Tomorrow i'm going to finally do laundry, since i'm down to dress shirts and soccer socks. This entry got way long, and took up nearly an hour of my time, which is good, my time right now is going way too slow.

~More than humid

Random Note 5/17/08: James' roommate's name was Tim, not Nick. I dunno where Nick came from.