∞

I've decided rapid changes in humidity are the cause of my stuffedness. It dropped down to about 30% humidity the day before i got sickish, then i got better, and it just went back 80ish and now i'm stuffed up again. Luckily, in 3 days i'm going somewhere with no humidity, so i can expect my sinuses to defenestrate themselves.

So, other than being sick (again), life moves on. I went bowling yesterday, so now my hand is all sore from how i spin it, i imagine with poor form. I went to Baton Rouge with my dad today and helped clean out some people's yard. It wasn't as rewarding as the katrina removal, because it didn't seem to need it nearly as much, but it was still nice.

I'm going to kill this blog on monday, or at least close it, cus i don't want portuguese people who i'm trying to teach the gospel read about how i hate catholics. I really don't hate catholics at all, but i'm sure somewhere in my blog there's something that someone would take offense to. Plus, it has nice symbolism of me putting my life on hold and stepping back from my normal stuff.

So, i figure now's as good a time as any to point out my other blog. Just stick 'elderammon' where 'ammonsblog' usually goes, and you'll be there in no time. It's your one stop source for mission updates. I don't really know what it'll be like, but i'm sure it will be interesting.

Well, i guess that's about all. The air conditioner is dead so it's absurdly hot and humid in our house. I'm looking forward to utah, where it is never absurdly hot, or humid. This might be the last post on this blog for two years. So soak it all in.

blech

I feel like crap. I hate being sick, and i'm not even really that sick, but i still hate it. I don't quite have my dad's ability to suck it up and not talk about it (obviously). I can mostly suck it up, but talking about it is the best part. It feels like the front half of my face is going to pop any second. It really came out of nowhere, i was fine all day tuesday, and then before soccer i started feeling a bit nauseous, and then after i got back i started feeling dead and went to sleep and woke up with a sore throat. Hopefully i'm getting all the sick out of the way in the next few days so that i'll be healthy all throughout the Mission.

I got to play soccer yesterday in my spiffy new indoor soccer shoes. They're nice, but i still played really poorly. I'm going to blame it on being sick, i was just kinda off. Plus, now i have a gnarly blister where my foot would usually have a nice callous but for the fact that i've only played soccer a few times over the past year.

Other news: Crime and punishment has gotten a lot better over the past few hundred pages. Now i'm blazing through it. I also have a bunch of other books to read before i go, i'm definitely not going to be able to finish them all, but that's ok.

Well, that's about all. I think i actually might go to sleep before 11, having already slept 7 hours and then had a 3 hours nap (or however long it took for my cell phone to charge). If i go to sleep at 11, I'll officially be going to sleep earlier than i will have to at the MTC (if you count the time change) so if i manage to wake up at 7:30 (hah) i'll be all set. So that's about all that's happening here. One week from now I'll be getting ready for my first night in the MTC. How trippy is that?

Oh p.s. - the reality of the fact that i'm about to leave is starting to sink in. On monday we talked about how i'm going to keep in touch, and it was the first time i really grasped that i'm only going to talk to my family four times in the next two years. (We get two phone calls, on Christmas and Mother's day, otherwise it's letters). I'm also realizing that i really don't know what the logistics will be for keeping my blog going, so i'm glad i've sub-contracted by sister and that she's up to the task. It might be a lot easier for her to just transcribe some of my letters.

boa noite

An Epic Loss for Words

Update update update update update update

Now that word has no meaning, hooray.

Anyway, life continues, my departure is getting to be absurdly close. A week from tomorrow is my last day. i feel like i should have so much to write about right now, what with the impending leaving my family for two years, but i don't have much to say. I've realized that i generally don't have much to say about life changing events, it's the little things i can ramble on about for forever. But yeah, with the epic things, i always end up at a loss for words.

In other news, i'm getting pretty close to being ready to go, logistically at least. I got my contacts, and my motor history report (they charged me $11 dollars to print off an un-certified online document, plus a $2 'service' fee. That's highway robbery), i got a new driver's license (with my current address and the obligatory terrible picture of me.), registered to vote...it's been a comparably busy week. I need a hair cut sometime this week, and i need to buy some cheap clothes that will last a while (jeans, sneakers, that sort of thing). Also, posting is going to fall off quite a bit after next sunday, but i'm starting up another blog to chronicle my mission life. Sometime this week i'll finish up this blog for a couple years, maybe with some final, reminiscent post to wrap things up, and post a link to my other blog, which is currently under construction.

hm, anything else? I have to give a talk in church next week, it'll be pretty short though, so that'll be cool. Every time i do something now i'm like, "this will be the last time i do this." I'm reading Crime and Punishment still, i'm going to have to start reading faster if i want to finish before i leave. I'm only slightly motivated to do that.

Well that's about all that's going down here. I'll post once or twice more and then i guess i'll be signing off. Madness.

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

The stars are blazing like rebel diamonds

Things i'm going to miss more than Biloxi:

Swimming - One of my first and most prolonged loves, and something i've just recently rediscovered. Swimming is so incredibly relaxing and feels so good. Every time i swim after i haven't for a long time i can't imagine why i would ever have stopped. It's not hard to imagine two years without swimming, i've nearly done it before, but i will definitely miss the ability to just dive into the ocean for kicks, and there are only a few forms of exercise i enjoy more.

Music - So much. I was listening to The Killers today, and it's just so perfect. I can't believe that the Killers have been around for so long without me listening to them. I really only discovered them this last year, and that was mostly due to Guitar Hero. I almost bought their original CD, but decided it wasn't quite worth having it for only three weeks. But it really almost was. There's good Mission appropriate music out there, but nothing like the bands I've discovered over the past year or so. (Sufjan Stevens is also amazing)

Google - I'm not going to miss the internet. Having something to constantly waste my time on is not actually something i enjoy. The instant communication is handy, but it somehow cheapens conversation. And Facebook saps productivity like nothing else. I am, however, going to miss Google. I am so used to being able to instantly find whatever i want to know. Soon i'm going to have a question and have no immediate way to have it be answered, i suppose i could ask people, but that's never very reliable.

My Family - It would be insulting if i didn't mention them. This is going to be the first time that I'll be in a place that really doesn't have any family. In Utah i could always fall back on Cami when there were no friends to be had. Even after i had made friends, hanging out with her was generally more fun, but it seems important to make friends. For all the crap i give Isaac, i'm sure i'll miss him. It's also a shame that i'll be missing the 2010 family reunion, i bet this one will be absurdly awesome to reverse the trend. What if it's the last family reunion? Our family is getting too big for these massive weekend getaways to remain feasible.

I've already been missing my friends, but i'm going to miss them in Portugal too. Two years is a long time to go without seeing people. In the last two years though i've already gone at least one year without seeing any given friend, so i think i'll deal.

I don't think other things will be a problem, movies and tv are cool, but i can survive pretty well without them. Sleeping late isn't really something i enjoy, and staying up late doesn't work when there's no computers or tv. So yeah, i think that covers most things. I'm not too worried about going two years without girls, although it will be weird to go two years without close friends that are girls. I've historically become close friends with girls before i've made friends with guys (other than in elementary school). I'm sure that has something to do with having three older sisters but i'm not going to worry about it to much. Normal clothes will be a bit of a bummer to lose, but i'll get to look forward to getting an entire new wardrobe when i come back, so that's exciting.

Speaking of new wardrobe, I got a new face! At least it feels sort of like that. I picked up my two pairs of glasses today.

Retro!

From This way to infinity

And, more normal glasses. I call this one Engineer Ammon (at 1 a.m.)

From This way to infinity

So, it's taken me a little while to get used to them, but i've decided they'll pass. Hopefully my loyal readers will approve, since i care a lot more about what you think about them than what i think (i spend a lot less time looking at myself, contrary to popular belief.) so yeah, feedback away.

Oh, there's also this picture from our stint in the church house, i think it's awesome.

From This way to infinity

One last glasses picture. It was unavoidable:

From This way to infinity

"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

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

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

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

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

Hereby Called to Serve:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~Short on Money but Long on Time

these pretzels are making me thirsty

The neighbors down here have a weird affinity for crappy music with crappy baselines. Usually i don't care about the musical tastes of people i don't know, but when i have to listen to the same baseline for 20 minutes, it gets a little old (f#bf#bebeb, etc). Oh wait, it modulated down a half step. Those are the neighbors to the right, on the left they like to sit on the porch and be loud when i'm trying to sleep at 10am. I really don't like this house. There are just so many things about it that don't work the way they're supposed to, and for some reason flies like to hang out in here. It just gets to be a little much.

In other news, i'm having a hard time staying productive. I've started going to the gym, and that's a plus, and i'm making dinner and doing dishes from time to time, but i'm spending half my day sleeping and half the time i'm awake i'm watching tv online. I'm sure this is about to change since i may have caught up with all the tv shows i watch. Scrubs, Chuck, and Smallville are all done for the season. I've run out of Psych dvd's (which is probably my favorite show on the air, by the way). Monday Bones and House will be done, i've watched all the firefly episodes (the best show of all time and one more reason to hate fox) so yeah.

We went to see Prince Caspian last night. I've never seen a movie less faithful to the book, but that's ok. Had they stuck to the book, it would have been a pretty boring movie. They added a whole new battle sequence and found ways to stretch conflicts that were resolved in about a page into long-term story arcs. They also added random unnecessary romance for some reason. Anyway, it was a good movie with pretty decent battle scenes and good acting, although Prince Caspian's acting left something to be desired, such as a good actor to play prince caspian. He had a really weird accent that i couldn't quite pin down. It was vaguely spanish. It was like someone with an already heavy accent trying to put on a spanish accent and not doing it very well. I also find it odd that battles in this movie only took like fifteen minutes. That just seems weird. And the giant water Jesus at the end was sort of odd, i dunno where that came from. It was a silly movie, but definitely worth seeing.

We (me johnny and caitlin) Kayaked the okatoma on monday, and that was fun. They stuck us on the crappy part of the okatoma, something i realize was happening at the time. So i'm thinking i need to go back and do it again, this time on the fun part. After that we got some food, and hung out outside a movie theater since there wasn't anything we wanted to see. Driving hope at 1am in mississippi is really creapy. It feels sort of claustrophobic, with the trees and the lack of people. Also because there are deer all over the place, it's not so safe to zone out and just drive, which is what i usually like to do. I also saw a bunch of cops, and so i couldn't really speed. One of them pulled out after i passed him, but i didn't after i crossed the next hill i didn't see him, so that was sort of scary. I was only going about 10 over (in a 75), and it would have taken him around 10 minutes of serious speeding to catch up to me. Ultimately i got home without losing any kayaks so all went well.

If i ever find myself in some ethnic minority somewhere, i have decided i will not eat only ethnic food and listen to ethnic music at 100 decibels. This isn't really a problem for me since as Americans we have very few things that are uniquely american. Most things that we call american are just cheap knock-offs of other people's culture. I guess i could crank up the Mo-Tab and break out the jell-o casserole, but i don't think people would quite get it.

So that's what's going on right now. I'm getting a bit concerned that i'm going to have to wait longer for my mission than i want to, both because my papers still haven't gone in (i need to call the bishop about that today) and i'm going to have to get a hepatitis A booster in november, and i don't quite know how that works. Oh well, with no scholarship being put on hold, it doesn't matter much, i really just don't want to stay here until novermber. I think i'd be really very bored. Anyway, that's all for now. Probably one of my less interesting posts to read, and i apologize, i'll try to make my life more exciting from here on out.

Already i'm so lonesome i can die...

Well, school is almost done. Tomorrow i have to do a project, and then i'm more or less done. Typical of my life, the days before i leave are the best of my stay here. Everything i have wanted this year has come about very recently. I have great friends, i have enough money, i can walk again, it's warm and happy, i even have a relationship of sorts (btw, i'm not sure whether or not it's worth dating in the weeks before you leave somewhere for 2 years. It does make that last little bit a lot of fun, but it makes leaving so very hard.) But i guess that's why it's called a sacrifice, and i'm sure when i come back, everything will still be here, though perhaps not through the same people. My friend offered to chip for a bus ticket, and it was really very tempting. But tuesday remains my departure. That john denver song is great, but it takes on so much more meaning when you're leaving someplace. Actually lots of songs do. We sang Improve Each Shining Moment and God Be With You Till We Meet Again in church today, which was nice, since this is the last sunday for a large portion of the ward.

I actually have lost my voice almost entirely over the past couple of days and have a pretty gnarly cough, but other than that, this last weekend has been awesome. Friday i had a linear algebra and a physics final, with a physical in between. The physics final didn't go great but it's awesome to be done. And in talking to other people i get the feeling that it didn't go great for too many people, so hooray for curves. Other than that friday was pretty chill, i watched doctor who, did something productive i think, and went to sleep.

Saturday was amazing. I don't think a day could be very much better than saturday was, except if you threw in like a temple trip in the morning, but otherwise it was a very complete day. We went to play baseball at the place where the sandlot was filmed, and also saw vincent's drug store (which looks exactly the same) and tore the skin off a baseball, and i bought glass bottles of pop and rootbeer, so all in all it was a very sandlotish day. After that i went to a modern dance performance, which was cool, if a little abstract. Then we hung out for a while, got hot chocolate, and watched august rush, which is a really sweet movie, and has a very cool soundtrack. That little kid is such a great actor. Also saturday night i submitted my misson papers, so that's almost done with

Today was nice too, i got to church on time so i got to play piano one last time. Sunday school was good, we did Q&A with return missionaries on stuff. And then the bishopric spoke and said farewell and that sort of thing. After church i got an interview with the bishop so now all that stands between me and my call is setting up an interview with the stake president. This actually may turn out to be difficult, but i'm sure everything will work out. After church i ate and took a nap and then went to dinner, ward prayer, and then we watched a couple movies to round the night up very late. Now i'm tired, and i have to get up tomorrow to do that project and hopefully have a bit of time for fun, so it's time for bed. The next one of these will most likely be from mississippi, so, until then, fare well.

~Roger the Shrubber

Oh, by the way, we can now rest easy knowing that i don't have Tuburculosis, or as some have loved to call it, "The Consumption!!" So yeah, physicals, while always extremely awkward, and great when they basically tell you that you are entirely healthy. Fun 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!

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