Birthday Surprise

Starting from where I left off last week, I had a wonderful birthday trip in which everything worked out perfectly. Probably the only thing that wasn't perfect was the fact that I got Kevin home later than I promised, but I think he has forgiven me by now. When I finally got to my room after the long drive, I noticed a large birthday card laying on my bed. I was immediately perplexed and thought maybe my roommates or my ward had made me a birthday card. Once I opened the card, I got concerned because I thought it was saying that someone had stolen my stuff and I had to go to a random person's house in order to get it back. When I read the card more carefully, though, I realized it was from Erin and that she was merely wanting me to come over to her house the following day and to bring rock band, so I could have the Lost DVDs I let her borrow back. The card was brilliantly done, by the way, with a beautiful drawing on the front and the inside in a ransom note format with every letter taken from a different magazine. I was very happy that night and texted Erin the next day thanking her for the card and asking what time I should come over with Rock Band.

So, I went over to Erin's house with Rock Band in my car and we brought it upstairs in her house and set it all up. She gave me my DVDs back (and this was when I realized that not only did she have the Lost DVDs I let her borrow, but she had taken another season while she was delivering my card!) and we proceeded to have tons of fun playing rock band. Rock Band is my favorite game of all time, and unfortunately most of the people I know either don't like to play it or are too busy to play it. Erin and I traded off between drums and guitar and we had a blast. After we played rock band, we decided to watch an episode of House and Erin made a pizza. Unfortunately, the pizza was left in the oven too long and ended up being burnt, but she made chicken nuggets instead and those were really good. I stayed at her house pretty late and she suggested that I should leave Rock Band at her house since it was late and I was tired. I agreed to this, and went back home and almost immediately went to bed.

The next day was my actual birthday! Yay! In all honesty, I was a little depressed at work because nobody acknowledged it being my birthday (to their defense, nobody probably even knew it was my birthday) and I had to work, which can be boring. Kevin promised me a "surprise" though once I got off work, so I anxiously waited for 5, which is when I got off work, and I drove home really fast and waited for Kevin to come pick me up. Kevin picked me up and we went to his mystery place for dinner, which ended up being...Brick Oven! I was really excited, that is one of my favorite restaurants! And, for another surprise, Erin met us there and we had dinner with her as well! It was awesome having dinner with my two best friends and we had a great time. We all ordered the market buffet and filled up on salad and pasta. Our waiter was pretty funny and he kept mentioning to me "the embarrassment" that would come at the end of our meal, which of course was the waiters gathering around to sing their version of Happy Birthday. He even made me stand up as they all sang to me so that the whole restaurant could see me. I was a little embarrassed, but it was all fun...I think Kevin is the one to blame for the waiter finding out that it was my birthday.

At dinner I got an incredible present from Erin- the first 3 books in the Percy Jackson series. I have already read the first and am almost done with the second and they are great! After dinner, we went to the next surprise, which ended up being going to Erin's house to play Rock Band! Kevin told me about how he was behind the whole plan of Erin making that birthday card for me and taking my Lost DVDs so that I would bring Rock Band to her house. He was also responsible for having Erin keep me at her house late so that I would leave my Rock Band at her house so we could play it the next day! Kevin and Erin had planned out the whole thing and I had fallen for it! I am so gullible sometimes. So, we all played Rock Band and had a great time. I was impressed to see Kevin actually pick up a guitar instead of drums. He did really well. The final surprise of the night was that we were all going to watch the last performance episode of So You Think You Can Dance together, which I thought I would have to miss. It was a great show and tons of fun to watch it with two great friends. Afterwards we played more Rock Band, and then Kevin and I left. It was a great birthday, one of the more memorable ones I've ever had.

The day after my birthday, I started not feeling so well. I got an incredibly severe headache and I was really tired all day (probably because of staying up late on my birthday). Work was torture that day, but once I got home I took some aspirin and immediately started feeling better. I was able to go to Erin's house that night and watch the So You Think You Can Dance finale. I was very happy with the finale, they danced all my favorite routines over again, and the winner truly deserved it. It was another great evening, and I was impressed that Kevin stayed for the whole show since he had to get up early the next day for work. The next day was an average day at work- luckily I didn't have the tiredness and headache I had the previous day. On Saturday, Kevin and I got together to watch one of my favorite movies, Knowing.

Besides that, I have been watching episodes of House like crazy to try to be caught up by the time the sixth season starts. I also have been reading a lot of Percy Jackson and remembering how much I love Greek mythology. I am very happy with life right now, and I'm grateful to have great friends to hang out with and to help lift my spirits when I need it. I am so happy with the whole surprise that Kevin and Erin planned for me for my birthday, and that, combined with spending the previous weekend with my family and attending an incredible concert, has made this one of the most incredible birthdays I've ever had. Now I have to play the waiting game until the next fun event, which will be attending prog nation with my dad at the end of August. This has been a truly great summer!

My Birthday Trip

Ok, now for the more fun and less serious part of my blog post today! I am going to outline my crazy birthday trip from this past weekend, both the good and bad moments. It was an extremely memorable trip for me and I think it will be one of the top highlights of 2009 for me. But, it did have what could only be called a shaky start...

On Thursday morning, I got up at 9 to get ready so that Kevin and I could leave at 10 to go to California. After a quick shower and some last minute packing, I brought all my things out to the car and started checking the car to make sure I have enough oil and other fluids in the car so that no accidents would occur on the trip (since I have had that happen to disastrous results in the past). Well, I think I obsessed over it a little too much on Thursday morning. I checked the oil and it seemed a little low to me. Then, I saw that the coolant was pretty low, so I decided I should fill it with more coolant. Well, I made the mistake of having my car turned on as I was checking all of these things, so when I poured the coolant into the correct container, I spilled some and it spilled onto the power steering belt and the belt stopped and seemed to be broken. I have had this problem happen before, and I knew that the belt being broken meant that my steering wheel wouldn't turn correctly and would almost be locked up. So, I drove the car through the parking lot and my worst fear was realized. After a frantic call to my mom as Kevin came walking up, I decided that I had to take my car into the shop to get the belt fixed. After much deliberation, I decided that I would just try to "brave it out" and just drive the car to the shop even though it would be extremely difficult to turn due to the broken belt since I didn't want to have to wait for a tow truck.

Well, I got to the shop just fine, and I left it there for the mechanic to fix. He said he would get to it in about 45 minutes, so Kevin and I left in his car to go get some breakfast/lunch. We came back about an hour later and they hadn't looked at my car yet. So, we waited in the waiting room for some time until the mechanic finally called my name and told me the bad news. He said that this is a common problem for these types of cars, so the car company has developed a special $300 kit in order to fix the problem. With $150 of labor on top of that, the whole thing ended up costing quite a bit, and I felt really bad because my dad ended up having to pay for it. The other bad news was that it would take until 4:00 for it to be fixed, meaning that we would be leaving 6 hours behind schedule.

I was pretty depressed, but luckily I have a great friend who was there to help me through it all. Kevin suggested we go see a movie, so we went to the dollar theater and decided on seeing Night at the Museum 2. It was far from being a masterpiece, but there were some funny moments that helped keep my mind off of the bad things that had happened that morning. After the movie, we had lunch at Del Taco, and talked for quite a bit before returning to the car shop to pick my car back up. We decided since we were leaving so late that we couldn't make it all the way to my house, so we decided to stay at a hotel in Mesquite.

On the way to the hotel, as further manifestation of my bad luck that day, I got pulled over by a cop. I was shocked when it happened because I was going exactly the speed limit, but, lo and behold, the red and blue flashing lights were going off behind me, so I pulled over. Apparently, a cop had been behind me with its lights on for quite some time and I didn't see him, which had delayed him in getting to an accident where a motorcycle had hit a deer. So, I was getting pulled over for not pulling over for a cop. I am shocked that I didn't notice a cop behind me because just the glimpse of a cop without its lights on strikes fear in my heart, but apparently thats what happened. Luckily the police officer was nice and only gave me a warning instead of a ticket. From now on, I will be glancing in the rear view mirror a lot more often when I drive so I can get out of the way of emergency vehicles.

We finally arrived at our hotel, which ended up being pretty nice. That night I reflected on the bad events of the day and decided that they were actually blessings in disguise. Perhaps, if we hadn't had that car problem in the morning, I would have had a problem in the middle of the trip in the middle of Nevada where it would have been a lot more difficult to get help. Also, I got off with only a warning from the cop and learned a lesson about being more attentive as I drive that helped me later on in the drive to my house. Friday morning we left relatively early and the most notable thing that happened was that when we were minutes away from my house, a cop car got on the freeway right in front of me and started swerving through all the freeway lanes! I was very confused and didn't know what to do, so, because of the cop that pulled me over, I decided to just pull over on the side of the road. I guess the cop was clearing traffic for something up ahead, but as we drove past later there didn't seem to be any accident, so I'm not quite sure what it was all about. All I know is that it was scary in that moment.

Well, I finally arrived at my house and the fun officially started. We had a celebration of sorts for my birthday which involved watching that weeks episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, eating my favorite dinner (fried chicken and mashed potatoes), blowing out the candles on the birthday cake, and opening up presents. I was touched by the kindness of my family, and it was a great night and a highlight of my trip. On Saturday night, Kevin and I went to the big concert which was Nick D'Virgilio and 12 other musicians performing one of my favorite albums of all time: Genesis' "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". The concert was spectacular and the band did the album justice. Nick was especially entertaining as the front man and sang flawlessly. I really enjoyed the drumming of Jimmy Keegan, who is also the touring drummer for Spock's Beard. It was all a blast to watch and reminded me all over again why that album is so special to me.

After they performed the Lamb, Alan Morse and Dave Meros from Spock's Beard joined Nick on stage for a special set of Spock's Beard songs. They performed four of my favorite Spock's Beard songs: On a Perfect Day, The Bottom Line, Gibberish and June. For "On a Perfect Day" the horns joined the band and it sounded great! On "Gibberish" Nick D'Virgilio got on the drums and gave an outstanding performance as the band nailed the multi-part vocal counterpoint. It was a special night, and Kevin and I couldn't stop talking about it. It is one of the more memorable concerts I've been to and it gave me new respect for Nick D'Virgilio who was the main man in the spotlight.

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day. After church, I watched some TV with my family and that night we watched the movie "Pee-Wee's Great Adventure" and all had some laughs over it. The next day we had lunch with my family before we took off to come back to Provo. I was sad to leave my family, but luckily I'll be seeing them again at the end of the month, which should be a lot of fun. I felt bad because I got Kevin home later than I promised, but I'm hoping that he has forgiven me by now. And that was about it for the trip! It was a great time and I believe it is one of my greatest birthdays ever. Of course, my birthday isn't over yet, but even if nothing happened at all today, it would still be one of my most memorable. There have been other experiences this week, such as Erin taking my Lost DVDs for ransom, but I will leave that story for next week so there is something interesting in next weeks blog entry and that this one isn't any longer than it already is. So, in summary, my trip was awesome and I thank my family and Kevin for making it so awesome.

24 Years of Life: A Reflection

First and foremost I want to express gratitude on this, the 24th Anniversary of my birth, for the wonderful 24 years of life that I've had. There have been many memorable moments, both good and bad, but overall these experiences have been beneficial and have shaped me into who I am today. I wanted to identify what I consider to be the five most crucial moments in my development. I'll try to keep it relatively brief because I don't want to seem pretentious or self-involved, but I thought my birthday would be an appropriate time for some honest self-reflection. These moments are in chronological order and calling them moments is misleading because many of them cover many years.

1. The beginning of my most meaningful friendship

When I was ten, during the summer of 1995, I took swimming lessons at the Troncales, a family that was really close friends with my family. Taking swimming lessons in the same group as me was a boy my same age named Kevin. Through a series of events that honestly isn't completely clear to me now (bad long-term memory) we became close friends and would often play together with legos and my collection of action figures. This friendship has stayed very strong even up until now, surviving a devastating moment where Kevin moved to Utah only after about a year of being friends. We kept in contact through various methods, saw each other practically every summer, and ended up both going to BYU and even being roommates at a point. Kevin has been a huge influence on me through practically every important part of my life. Which leads to moment #2...

2. My baptism

Kevin was really my first introduction to the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, even though my mom had been a member since she was little. His enthusiasm along with other events occurring in my family, led to my family getting more involved in the church, and this culminated in me getting baptized at the age of ten. I honestly don't remember much about the events leading up to the baptism, such as the missionary discussions I had, but I know that the decision to be baptized has led me down a certain path, and I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't made that decision. I'm so grateful for the support of my family and in Kevin's encouragement as I made that big decision. Also notable to me, is that my dad was baptized shortly after I was, and I feel in some way that my baptism was a step in bringing my whole family together and closer to our Heavenly Father. This was especially made clear when I had the privelege of being sealed to my family in the San Diego Temple.

3. My Dad introducing me to music

This moment may not seem to fit with the rest, but it is significant to me because music is a huge part of my life that has helped to inspire and comfort me during crucial moments in my life. My love of music began when my dad first really showed me the music of The Beatles. He went out and bought the red and blue albums containing the Beatles biggest hits and I listened to them nonstop. Later on, my dad bravely showed me a more experimental type of music called Progressive Rock beginning with his favorite band, Gentle Giant. I was blown away at first listen, and this began my addiction to progressive rock, and my constant search to find new music that touches me as deeply as Gentle Giant did that first day my dad showed it to me. I listen to music almost constantly and it helps me through some of the darker times and has helped me to find inspiration when I've needed it. One particular artist that has been significant to me is Neal Morse, whose music has touched me in a more profound way than any other artist.

4. Getting Accepted to BYU

During my development through childhood and adolescence, I always placed a high importance on school. This was especially true in High School, where I took as many honors and AP classes as I could and graduated with over a 4.0 GPA and a lot of college credit. The decision of which college to go to was a big one, and I had several in mind when I first was deciding where to apply to. But, I ended up feeling prompted to just apply to BYU, so I dropped all other applications and applied to the three BYUs, hoping that I would get accepted. Fortunately, I was accepted at BYU Provo, and I truly feel in retrospect that the spirit prompted me to go to BYU. I have learned many valuable things here, both spiritual and secular. I have had wards that have lifted me up and made me stronger spiritually, and I have had classes that have changed the way I previously thought about the world. I have changed majors in the middle of my BYU experience, but I feel that every single class I have taken has been useful to me and I feel it has truly prepared me for my future.

5. The Mission

There is a lot I can say about my mission, but I will attempt to be brief (which hasn't really been working so far). A mission was about the scariest thing I could imagine as I was growing up. As a chronically shy person, spending two years constantly talking to strangers about something they were most likely going to reject sounded terrifying. But, I decided to go anyways. I had a lot of opportunity to bail out, I had health issues that would have been an easy excuse to not serve a mission, but I persisted and the mission ended up being a huge growth experience. There are two people that were very instrumental in me choosing to go on a mission. My best friend, Kevin, because he had such an excitement about serving a mission that was contagious, and my freshman bishop at BYU, Bishop Greenhalgh, who was a prime example of what a spiritual man of God should be and who gave me responsibilities that helped prepare me for the mission. The mission taught me to be more self-less and to truly care for others, regardless of their circumstance. I love so many people that I met from my mission: my mission companions, my investigators and converts, and church members of the areas I served in. It taught me to be more independent and responsible. And, it helped me to face a big fear and to teach me that I'm capable of great things.

Those are the five experiences that stick out to me that have shaped me into who I am today. I hope to have many more of these defining moments throughout my life and hope that I can keep these ones in mind so that I can learn from them and grow from them. I am thankful for all those who have made my life what it is today, and I hope on this, my birthday, that I can truly realize how much I have to be grateful for from my 24 years of life so far.

Fairly Average

This past week was a fairly average one. It mainly consisted of my normal routine of work and sleep, which is not something particularly fun to write about (or read for that matter). But, I am committed to writing once a week in this blog, no matter how mundane, so here goes! I think part of what has made this past week seem so uneventful is that it has been a hard adjustment after the fun I had with my family the previous week. I found that I was just getting through the day so that I could get one step closer to the weekend, and more importantly one step closer to the next time I get to see my family, which is this upcoming weekend.

At work I have been struggling with a Japanese course. At my job, I go through independent study courses to make sure they are working correctly, they make sense, that there aren’t typos or errors- mainly I’m making sure that a student wouldn’t have a difficult time getting through the course. Well, the latest course that I’m reviewing is a second year Japanese course, which can be difficult since I don’t know any Japanese. I spent about a day at work reviewing first year Japanese in preparation for this course, but I’m still a little lost in what to comment on in my review. It has made work a little frustrating the past several days. But, I make it more fun by putting the Japanese through a free online translator and seeing what funny translations come out. I think it is important to try to squeeze some fun out of a difficult situation.

I did something I never thought I would last Monday: I saw the Hannah Montana Movie at the dollar theater! Erin invited me, and I thought it might be a fun way to clear my head of all the Japanese, so I went. Erin and her brother joked during the whole movie which made it a lot more fun, and the movie itself wasn’t half bad! I was expecting more of a Hannah Montana concert, but I was happy that it was an actual movie with a plot that had a few funny moments. On Friday I had work off because of Pioneer Day, and I spent part of it watching So You Think You Can Dance at Erin’s house and then talking to her about our Disneyworld trip next summer. I am really getting excited for this trip and I think it’ll be tons of fun and a great way to celebrate graduation from BYU with two great friends of mine.

On Thursday I went to Kevin’s house to help him with some of his latest Disneyland videos. Unfortunately most of what we did won’t work out and he is going to re-film it all, but it was still fun seeing the process of how he makes his Lego Disneyland movies. The best part of the night was making the movie of the Disneyland fireworks show. Kevin made a lego Sleeping Beauty Castle that looked excellent, and looked almost identical to the real thing when it was lit up with glowsticks. My job ended up being holding a light and shining it on the castle at the right moment. Kevin’s dad took care of the fireworks, which he would light behind the castle when Kevin directed him to. It all worked really well, especially the second half of the movie. I was able to shine the light on the castle at just the right moment and several of the fireworks went off at just the right moments to the soundtrack. So, it was a fun night and I’m glad I played a part (even though it was a very small part) in Kevin’s Disneyland movies.

And, really, that is about all I have to say! I spent the weekend catching up on my reading and watching Season 1 of House (which Erin let me borrow). It was nice to just have a calm and relaxing weekend without having to worry about anything. Next week, I’ll try to make up for this relatively boring entry. My plan is to write my next entry on my birthday (Aug. 5th) and to talk about my big weekend trip. I’m going home for the weekend with Kevin and we are going to have a little celebration for my birthday and then go see a concert that I am SUPER excited for! The concert will be 12 musicians playing the entire “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” album, with Nick D’Virgilio of Spock’s Beard. After they play The Lamb, the other members of Spock’s Beard are going to come on stage and they are going to play some Spock’s Beard songs! It should be a lot of fun, and I can’t even express how excited I am for it! I just have to get through three days of work, and then the fun begins! I can’t wait! This is a lot of exclamation points!

Family Fun

This was actually a fairly interesting week! Hooray! What made it interesting was that my family was here for a few days and boy was it nice to see them. It was way too short and I miss them now that they are gone, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. They came late afternoon on Sunday. It felt like such a long time waiting for them on Sunday. I went to church and came home hoping that my family was close, but they were still over 3 hours away, so I watched the finale of Harper’s Island while I waited. When they finally arrived in Provo, I immediately drove to their hotel and we talked a bit before going to the Lemleys for dinner.

I was a great, fun time at the Lemleys since the Troncales were there as well. We ate chicken salad sandwiches and talked for quite some time. I talked to Kevin for a good portion of the time and I was very impressed with his latest lego Disneyland video he did on The Haunted Mansion. He showed several of the videos he has done to my family and everyone was very impressed. Afterwards we went back home and just talked some more in the hotel room and I got home pretty late. The unfortunate side effect of my family being in town was that I got home late every night and still had to get up early for work, which really got hard, especially after the third day in a row. I was excited on Monday because my Dad and sister came to my work during my lunch break to have lunch with me. I was able to show them my workplace and to show them a little bit of BYU campus, mainly the Wilk where we ate lunch. After I got off work that day, I raced to the hotel and went with my family to a great hamburger place called 5 Guys and then to see Star Trek. Star Trek is one of my favorite movies of the summer, so I was very excited to see it with my family, and they all seemed to love it (except maybe my sister Lauren who said she didn’t really get what was going on most of the time). After we got out of our theater, we ran into Erin who was there seeing Transformers with her family. After a quick hello and goodbye to her, we went back to the hotel room to just hang out and talk some more and once again I got home late and had to wake up for work early.

On Tuesday, I got off work an hour early so that we would be able to get to our concert at a decent time. The American Idol concert was the main event of my family being in Provo. On the way to the E-Center, I showed my dad some of the new Dream Theater album, and unfortunately he didn’t seem too excited by it. Hopefully he’ll still find some enjoyment out of the Dream Theater concert we are attending at the end of the Summer. We parked at the e-center and then left to go have dinner at Costa Vida. The concert itself was tons of fun! I was pleasantly surprised by many of the American Idol contestants, many who didn’t impress me all too much while they were on the show. I especially liked Scott MacIntyre, who had a very pure, strong voice and did a great version of Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles, Anoop Desai, who sang really well on a couple of ballads and then had more fun during the upbeat My Perrogative, and Matt Giraud who played some mean piano and did a great version of Hard To Handle.

But, the highlight of the show was the second half which featured the top four contestants of the season. Of course, as I expected, the standout set was Adam Lambert, who proved that he is already a superstar. He did several songs that were popular during the show (Whole Lotta Love, Mad World, and the duet with Allison- Slow Ride). But, what impressed me the most were the songs I hadn’t seen him perform before, Starlight by Muse and the David Bowie medley. Adam looks like he has been performing all his life, and his voice is perfect, there were no flaws whatsoever with his voice. Kris Allen had the difficult task of following Adam, but he did great as well and proved why he deserved to win, I especially liked his rendition of Bright Lights. The concert was a lot of fun and it was fun to talk to my family about the performances and see what everybody liked the best. What I loved was that before the concert even started, there was a monitor that would show certain idol themed things, and whenever Adam’s face appeared on screen the crowd would go crazy. It is nice to know that my favorite contestant of the season is widely appreciated, even in Utah.

That night, I had to say my sad goodbye to my family. I stayed as long as I could, and impressed my family with my “name that tune” skills. But, the time came and I left. What made it not quite as sad is that I know I’ll be seeing them again in a couple of weeks when I go home around my birthday for the Rewiring Genesis concert. The next morning was very difficult since I had stayed up so late, so I struggled to stay awake while I worked. Needless to say, that night I went to bed early to attempt to catch up on the sleep I had lost during the first part of the week. The other interesting part of my week was on Friday when Kevin and I went to go see Harry Potter. He had already seen it at the midnight showing, but it was a new experience for me. The show we wanted to see at 7:45 was sold out as well as the next showing at 8:40, so we ended up having to see the movie at 9:45. I was happy with this because it gave us time to go to FYE and shop for CDs, a favorite pastime of mine.

The movie was great! One of my favorite of the Harry Potter movies for sure. I loved all the humor they included in the movie and I really thought the actors did a great job, especially the actors who play Draco and Snape. I found the movie very entertaining and was mostly very faithful to the book. It is one of my favorite books in the series and I feel it sets the stage perfectly for the thrilling conclusion that will be split up into two movies.

And that is really about it for the week. I really enjoyed having my family here for the week, it definitely will be a highlight of the summer for me, and the only negative consequence of it is that I’m going through a little bit of the blues after having to say goodbye and going through my relatively lonely usual routine throughout the week this week. But, I should have hope because I’ll get to see them again in about a week from when I am writing this (ok, a week and a day…don’t want to get ahead of myself). So, that is all! I will write again next week :D

Friendship

Well, I think I’m going to keep this week’s entry nice and short and leave all the exciting, juicy details of my family’s visit to Utah for next week. So, what could I pull out that is of interest from the past week? This could be tough…oh wait, I just remembered what I was going to write about this week! On Thursday and Saturday, Kevin and I watched the entire Lord of the Rings Extended Edition. Neither of us had seen the extended version of Return of the King, and I hadn’t seen any of the movies since before my mission about 5 years ago (which is a crime because they are my favorite movies). Although, to be fair, I’m not big on re-watching movies, even when they are my favorites. However, I think every five years is spread out enough that they are still fresh when I see them each time.

Anyways, I was reminded all over again about how brilliant these movies are. I find them to be truly perfect movies that have everything you could possibly want: humor, romance, action, a moral lesson, and spiritual imagery. I think I am going to outline my four favorite scenes of the entire trilogy. Most of them deal with my favorite character of the whole series, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The first favorite scene is towards the end of Fellowship of the Ring when…oh I should also mention that these are big spoilers, so if for some crazy reason you’ve never seen or read Lord of the Rings, skip to the end of my entry. Ok, so, it is at the end of Fellowship of the Ring when the orcs are attacking and Boromir is fighting them off. After much fighting, he gets struck in the chest with an arrow, which stops him for a moment. But, he doesn’t let that stop him, he keeps going and continues attacking orcs. Then he gets hit a second time with an arrow! But, he doesn’t let that stop him either and he continues fighting bravely as he is dying. He gets hit with a third arrow and the orc who is shooting the arrows comes close to Boromir and points his bow and arrow inches away from Boromir for the final blow. Luckily, Aragorn comes to the rescue, cuts off the orcs head, and Boromir gets the heroic death he deserves. I love this scene because it showcases extreme bravery and being able to stand up against adversity. Boromir could have easily given up after getting hit by the first arrow, but he knew he needed to continue fighting as much as he could to allow Frodo a chance to escape.
Ok, I need to keep this short, I’m saying too much. My next favorite scene happens shortly after this scene when Frodo is about to row away in a boat to go to Mordor alone to destroy the ring. Sam comes running up as Frodo is leaving, and runs out into the water, even though he can’t swim, and says that he won’t let Frodo go without him. It is an emotional display of true friendship and, as we’ll come to find out, Sam coming along is essential to the success of the protagonists.

The third scene also involves Sam, and it is at the end of The Two Towers where he gives his speech. I cannot do it justice, so I’ll just quote it:

Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

The fourth and final scene is when Frodo and Sam are climbing up Mount Doom to throw the ring in the fire. They are both exhausted and are collapsed on the ground with no strength to go on. However, Sam gathers up some final strength within himself and picks up Frodo and carries him up the remainder of the mountain. Sam is one of my favorite characters of all time because he is pure in heart and truly just wants to do what’s best. He is a loyal and true friend no matter what happens and will do anything for Frodo. It is truly touching to me and is a model of how I want to be. Without him, Middle-Earth would not have been saved.

Alright, I think I’ve written enough about Lord of the Rings. Besides that, I can’t think of much else to say. On Wednesday, I was excited to sit down and watch So You Think You Can Dance, but was disappointed that my roommate was already occupying the living room and that I wouldn’t be able to watch the TV. Luckily, Erin texted me and invited me over to her house to watch it, and it was a lot of fun watching it with her. Usually I am bored watching it alone without anyone to talk about it with. So, that was definitely a highlight of my week. I also got to meet my roommate’s fiancée and she is really nice, she asked me my advice on which picture to use for their wedding invitation. All the pictures looked about the same to me, so I’m afraid I wasn’t so helpful. My other engaged roommate left the apartment for good on Saturday night, so I am down to just two roommates. My other engaged roommate will probably leave in a couple weeks when he is about to get married, so it’ll just be me and one other roommate.

So, I’ll end it there with a promise that next week’s entry will be more interesting (and probably less geeky). Life is good, I’m really enjoying this summer and I think it’ll be one to remember. Good times.

Laughing It Off

This past week has been pretty interesting—it started with some frustrating experiences with my roommates. Now, don’t get me wrong, my roommates are really nice, I just got a little frustrated with them this week. I believe I mentioned last week that I had a meeting with my roommate and Elder’s Quorum President, Alec. During that meeting, Alec asked me if I would meet with the Bishop, and I said I would when I felt ready to, but he kept pressing me harder and harder and by the end of the meeting got me to commit to calling the Bishop that night for an appointment on Tuesday. Well, after Alec left, I didn’t feel comfortable with how he pressured me into calling the Bishop and I thought that it is more of a personal thing to decide if and when to see the bishop and it didn’t seem right to be forced into it, so I decided not to call the Bishop and to set up an appointment later when I felt more comfortable about it.

Well, the next night, I’m going to bed when all of a sudden Alec comes in my room and asks me if I have called the Bishop yet. I tell him I haven’t, and he continues to pressure me and says I should call him right now. I tell him that I am going to bed, and then he makes me promise him that I’ll call the Bishop in the morning before work. Because I’m tired and need sleep, and my roommate isn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer, I say ‘yes’ so he’ll get out of my room. I was upset that he entered my room without knocking while I had all the lights off and was trying to go to sleep, it seems like an invasion of privacy to me. Also, I really felt uncomfortable with him pressuring me to call the Bishop, so the next morning, out of my disapproval of the whole situation with my roommate, decided not to call the Bishop and that I would set up an appointment with him myself on my own terms. So, I know that my roommate’s desire was good, but the way he went about executing it really seemed wrong to me.

The other thing that makes me uncomfortable about my roommates is that they are good friends, and joke around by calling each other “queer” which seems in bad taste to me. Their frequent gay jokes make me uncomfortable. One example is when my roommate Mitch was leaving and saw that I was watching “So You Think You Can Dance”. He said, “Well, I’m going to see my GIRLFRIEND, have fun watching your gay guys on TV.” It seemed like a pretty insulting thing to say. And then, yesterday, my roommates invited me to ward prayer and said, “Who knows, you might even make out with a girl while you are there” and then they started laughing to each other, which made me think they were making fun of me. So, I just stayed home. So, there are some examples of how my roommates make me uncomfortable. This probably isn’t the right place to be venting about these things, but I felt I needed to get it out, and it was also a big part of my week.

I got the new Phideaux album, called Number Seven, on Tuesday and it is incredible! It is a beautiful album that moves seamlessly from songs that rock hard to beautiful melodies sung by their great female singer. I have really enjoyed falling in love with this album. It is a concept album about the journey of a Dormouse, which makes for a very interesting story. Besides that the rest of the week has just involved working. I went and saw the new Transformers movie and thought it was pretty good. It is far from being a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it.

My fourth of July ended up being more eventful than I initially thought it would be. My friend Erin texted me and invited me to the Stadium of Fire. I hesitated accepting the invitation because I knew that the Jonas Brothers were performing, but I decided to go anyways because it would be a better way to celebrate fourth of July than sitting at home thinking about how my roommates annoy me. I left to meet up with Kevin at the Wyview multi-purpose building, but he got stuck in traffic so I walked to the stadium alone. Erin was waiting outside the gate with my ticket when I got there and we both walked in and found our seats. It was an exciting program! I really enjoyed the fireworks show and the touching words about our country spoken by Glenn Beck. I’ll admit that I’m not the most patriotic American, but I was still touched by his comments about how special a nation America is and how we need to fight for liberty and make this generation a notable one in American history. It made me realize that I need to become more patriotic and learn more about the history of the nation that I’m so privileged to belong to.

The Jonas Brothers were about what I expected. The screams that erupted from the stadium as they took the stage were deafening! One of the loudest screamers was Erin who apparently is a big fan. I just sat there watching quietly while Erin and many of the other people around got up on their feet and danced around while singing all the words to every song. I hadn’t heard any of the songs before (besides a cover they did of Sweet Caroline) so I unfortunately couldn’t sing along (LoL, like I would sing along to the Jonas Brothers!). Erin encouraged me to stand up part way through their set so I reluctantly did. It wasn’t so bad…(but it wasn’t so good either). It made me sad when I realized that this band is beating Dream Theater in the Billboard charts. I’m sorry Jonas Brothers fans, but Dream Theater is a lot more talented than the Jonas Brothers and yet they struggle to even make it on the charts while the Jonas Brothers have massive amounts of screaming fans that fill stadiums wherever they go. It baffles me…oh well! I should end my rant about the Jonas Brothers before I get in trouble.

Sunday was a good day. I was a little late to church, but I was still able to hear all the wonderful testimonies. During the whole testimony meeting I did some self-reflection which really taught me some things that I need to work in the upcoming weeks. I’ve only been in this ward about three weeks, but I don’t really feel like I’m connecting to the ward. A good example is what happened in Sunday School. I was one of the first people to enter the room for Sunday School. I sat in the back row and waited while everybody else came in. Well, people kept taking chairs from my row so that they could sit with their friends in different rows. This continued until my seat was the only chair left in the row, so I ended up sitting alone in my row. I laughed to myself when I thought about how people would rather move the chairs than have to sit next to me. Oh well, at least it’s something I can laugh about later.

My roommate ended up coming up to me at the beginning of Sunday School and told me the Bishop wanted to meet with me at 12:15 (right during Sunday School), so I had to leave halfway through Sunday School for my appointment with the Bishop. Well, I ended up waiting about an hour for the Bishop to be ready for me. Then we talked about my social life and I told him I didn’t have one. He encouraged me to go on more dates. It was all pretty awkward. The best part about it, though, is that I was able to get a temple recommend interview, which I have needed for quite some time. After the interview was done, there was only 15 minutes of church left, so I decided to go home early and reflect on some of the things that I had been thinking about during testimony meeting.

And, that is pretty much it for my week! Sorry for ranting a bit and complaining about certain things. I think the important lesson I learned this week is that I just need to laugh about these situations I end up in rather than taking offense. I haven’t been depressed at all this week because I have been able to laugh about my roommates and my experiences at church and about the Jonas Brothers. It makes every aspect of life that much more enjoyable. So, that is my take home message of the week: learn to laugh off the negative things that happen.