Just random thoughts

So it’s December 28th, and the year is coming to an end. You all know what that means? Dave Barry writes his annual "Year in Review" article! Woohoo! Thankfully for me and for you who feel an obligation to read this due to family ties, friendship ties, or possible blackmail I will not be review my life in the past year, but I will at least try to catch you up on something that seems interesting.

Christmas time is always exciting. Except for the fact that it wasn’t really all that exciting… I was still in a final exam induced coma by the time Christmas rolled around and missed out on all the anticipation for it this year. Luckily the Christmas break has served as an effective remedy to my coma. As it is I have taken a very anticipated break from school and read a couple of books, an online comic, caught up on some sleep, visited with family (haven’t quite gotten to the friends part yet, that’s on this week’s to do list), sang in a Christmas cantata, watched half of season 1 of 24, and slept some more.
Emily and I have discovered Google video chat. I remember trying to get into the video chat world years ago but it was too slow and the voice chat was even worse. Now it is much faster. I am anticipating the end of the week when my girlfriend ends up down here in Henderson. As well as the middle of the week when Melanie, Mathis and Aubrey stop by on their way down to San Diego. Who knows what other exciting events lay in wait for me this week!

At the beginning of December I bought a pair of scissors. I found it mildly amusing that I needed a pair of scissors in order to order and use these pair of scissors. I have discovered that this effect only increases. My mom got a pack of 5 kitchen style scissors for Christmas. It took some pretty heavy duty scissors to make that extraction.

We went to Arizona for a few days before Christmas. I stayed pretty busy up there too. The first Grandpa, Dad, and I played golf and then we headed over to the rec center and played racquetball. My dad and I found ourselves locked in an epic duel of something epic. Last year Dad smoked Chris and me. I have since taken a class and Dad and I are at pretty much the same level. So I took an early lead in the game and was looking good but I have a knack for being a choke artist (In pool as well, ask Uncle Ken or Alex). That and my dad figured out his backhand swing. So He made a run and took the lead at which point I started to score again and it was head to head until my dad finally squeaked away with a 16-14 win. We didn’t play another game to say the least. Apparently we are both getting out of shape.

Freakonomics at work

I have been taking a class called Econometrics this semester. We learn how to do statistical analysis on any data that has numbers or can have numbers put to it. Most of the book “Freakonomics” uses econometrics, at least in part, to arrive at the conclusions they have. I’m working on a project that is somewhat akin to that. Basically what I’m doing using data on the price of baseball cards and testing to see if there is racial bias in the price for a baseball card. The price of a baseball card is the result of the demand for that certain card. The demand for a card is usually based on how successful that player was. So using the career statistics for every baseball player in a card set I’m testing to see if there are black baseball players that have high career stats but a low priced baseball card. It should be interesting to see what the final results are. Perhaps I won’t find anything. Perhaps I will. Who knows.

On a related note, I had a professor last year who was involved in a project with Justin Wolfers to test for racial bias in foul calls by referees in the NBA. They used box score data from the 1993-94 season all the way to the 2003-04 season to test for any racial bias in foul calls. The media went up in arms, the NBA criticized it and individual basketball players took their own shots. When you look through the comments from the media and then actually read the study you realize how oblivious some people really are. The comments from NBA players were amusing. But none of them read the study, just heard about it. Charles Barkley was my favorite. He said that of course black players receive more fouls than white players; there are more of them in the NBA. Then he said "The thing that bothered me most is these guys didn't even go to the game. They looked at box scores." I don’t think that in order to crunch numbers, you have to go to every single game for 10 years just to get the “feel” for it.

I think I found something that people who report on studies get wrong often. When you read statistical studies you will find the words “significant” and “not significant” attached to the numbers reported. Real world significance and statistical significance are to different things. Significance in statistics means that the data is consistent enough to confidently say that there is an effect. Let’s say we find that the average price of a specific bag at a normal store is $30. Now the average price of the same bag at stores by the beach is $50. So we can say that beach stores sell bags for $20 more. Now what if the price from each store looked like this: Store 1: $10, Store 2: $70, Store 3:$20, Store 4: $30, Store 5: $90, Store 6: $80. The average is still $50, but the prices vary so much that it isn’t very significant. In the case of the NBA study a player receives 0.18 fewer fouls from referees of his own race than another race. This is during 48 minutes played. The results are “significant” meaning that the variation is small enough to not just pass it off as random variation. However, to a basketball player that means that assuming he plays 48 minutes in every game and that all 3 referees were a different race for all those games, he would get about 1 foul call race every 5 games. Who is going to notice that? No wonder the basketball players haven’t noticed any bias. For all practical purposes, there isn’t much. The study shines more of a light on the fact that on split second decisions, the subconscious part of our brain can have an effect.

Well this is getting long and it’s probably extremely boring to everyone except me. And maybe my Uncle Ken… and Craig… and perhaps Danielle… Sorry to everyone else!

Priorities and more!

Well August passed away with one lonely blog post and September looks like it is trying to get away scotch free. But I shall not be conquered by the likes of laziness. (That statement is going to come back and bite me I know it!) So it’s been a good month or so. School has started up and I’m doing my best to prioritize my life with good priority orders. Of course once I started doing that everything shot up to the first 2 or three priority categories. There’s only so much room up there. :) I wish I had like 10 first priority spots! So here’s how things are going. School is definitely a high priority. Even higher this semester than it was in past semesters. I would like to show school who is boss! Of course there is Frisbee. That is so big I even have to split that up into different priorities: the BYU Team, then Orem Ultimate, then BYU Intramural Frisbee, and lastly casual pick-up games. As it stands right now the last two don’t make it onto my list and consequently are non-existent in my life. So then you can add most musical activities into a priority which, while important is not too high up there this semester. Church is of course quite a high priority. I’m the Family Home Evening Coordinator for my group here. I just got called to it today. Again. Even though I already had that calling and never got released from it. I hope that doesn’t mean that I’m the dad and the mom. That would be silly.

BYU football is quite the excitement of the semester. We are four games into the season, and it’s been a doozy! We have won all four of them so far and our winning streak keeps getting larger. Shutting out UCLA and Wyoming was a treat. Even though some people don’t like shutouts because they get boring, I’m a die-hard. So that’s all peachy for the moment.

And one last slightly unexpected but highly welcomed incident. I have a wonderful girlfriend now. We started dating two weeks ago. We have known each other for about two years now and pretty much accidentally started dating each other. Since most of you who read this have probably already heard the story I’ll not put it on here. But you can always ask me if you want to know. I’ll tell you the real story of how it went. She won’t tell the whole truth, but I knew what was really going on! :)

Frisbay! Trio! Olympics!

Frisbay!

So if you haven’t seen this already then you need to now.

http://vimeo.com/358109

That said, I had a Frisbee tournament in Park City last Saturday. It went well. We actually only went 2-4. We lost 2 games by 1 point and another one by 2 points. They were all really close. What we didn’t expect when we first arrived was to play 6 games in a row. After the first game our team captain came over and said that we had 6 games in a row and no bye times. So what does that translate to? Well, it’s about 9 hours in all. So 9 hours, 10 miles, 100+ jumps, and 30+ dives later we all hobbled off the playing fields feeling…. great! Some would say that we have some mental problem. I don’t think any of us would disagree with you.

I visited home this weekend which meant a couple of things. I got to follow the Olympics more closely. I went to a couple of wedding receptions. And I hung out with the Trio! The Trio is slightly altered since I last left it back in January. Both of them have girlfriends now. So that meant that while we were in all our awesomeness Dallin and Brock had girls in their arms. Luckily these girls don’t put a hamper on anything. And luckily Eliza was there to relieve me of my status as a 5th wheel.

To the Olympics. I saw two historic things happen this weekend. Both were impressive, but one was tainted. We’ll start with the perfect one and then I’ll step on to my soap box. Michael Phelps as we all know won 8 gold medals. That is a feat. Pure and simple. The crazy thing is that in 7 of those races he set a world record, and in all 8 he got a personal best. That means that every race he raced in the finals was the best race of his life. Talk about pushing yourself. I spent my whole senior year trying to best my personal record in the mile and only managed to break it once. By one second. And that was it. This guy did it 8 times in one week! Wow. I need to get some of whatever he ate in the morning.

The other amazing thing that happened was that the world record in the 100 meter sprint was broken. Usain Bolt broke his own world record bringing it from 9.72 to 9.69. This was a stacked race as well. 6 of the 8 runners ran under 10 seconds. Now, here is my problem with the race. Bolt started out a bit slow. He was the 7th man out of the blocks. Then his long legs kicked in and he blew past everyone and with 20 meter to go he had a good 10 foot lead on everyone. So what does he do? He spreads his arms out, looks around, pounds his chest and starts gloating as he cruises in to a 9.69 finish ahead of everyone else. That’s just bad sportsmanship. And think, what if he had run all the way through. He may have been able to run in the 9.5’s. He could have eclipsed the world record. But it was more important to him to gloat and receive praise and glory. So as he danced around the track, millions of kids watched and started idolizing and taking mental notes about how one should act towards other people. So here are the rules that have been taught: Rule one: Make sure everyone knows that you are better than them. Rule 2: When you have established that you are better than everyone else, make sure that your conduct afterwards brings all the focus to you and at the same time rubs it in the face of everyone else.

So much for sportsmanship. Track and Field just barely got out of the cross fire from doping scandals and now when people start looking at it again as a respectable sport we have this. Well congrats to Usain Bolt, it was an amazing race regardless. So much for class though.

New Car

So I finally did it and got a car. It’s a classic college car. You know… 10 years old, fairly high mileage. But the sucker is a trusty one. It’s an Acura Integra. So it’s made well and reliable for another 100,000 miles or so. Anyways when I tell people that I got a new car they always ask what color it is first, then what kind of a car it is and then say something like “Welp, you’ll be married in no time now.” Funny sort of. One of my good friends is engaged to be married next month and he had the same reaction. I told him that everyone says that and he said, “Well I struggled with girls for a long time and then I got a cell phone and a car and now I’m married.” Are all girls materialistic like that? No I don’t think so. But there is a slight looked down upon-ness there. Whether it’s an unconscious thing in the back of you mind or something else, it’s definitely there. It seems like you can just tell. Which is kind of lame. But I guess all of Bugs Bunny’s foes had a way of dealing with that. It’s the old classic saying “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Is that what I’m doing? Well I guess I am. Yet part of me still wants to be stubborn. Really stubborn. And I would be it if I had any idea how to be stubborn in this situation. But alas, I haven’t the faintest idea of what to do or refrain from doing to be stubborn. I guess I could refuse to use my car on dates. Maybe that would do it. That seems, bitter… and not very flattering to anyone though. Or at best silly. No sense in doing any of that. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some pictures up of the car. I’m not a very good picture taker so I usually don’t have pictures on hand to just throw on a blog.

Last Comic Standing

The other day I was flipping through the channels on the good ol’ tube and I came across the Last Comic Standing program. I thought, well hey this could be good. I was also watching about three other things at the same time, so I would only flip back to it periodically. But I was able to watch a couple of comics. What I found interesting was the reaction of the judges. I don’t really know who the judges were, but they seemed like they were important and that they knew something about comedy. I’m going to start with the second comedian I saw. He was a high energy guy and his routine was basically a re-enactment of a plane fight during world war two. He wasn’t the funniest guy ever, but I think it was more the fact that his material was poor than him being a bad comedian. Even though his material was somewhat lame he still pulled some funny stuff out of it by being a good comedian. During the routine he impersonated a Japanese fighter pilot and he would put on these outrageous looking glasses that played up the Japanese stereo-type. They did look pretty funny. When he did this it showed the judges reaction. They looked at each other with a look of “Oh, this is lame.” At the end of his routine they told him that Japanese jokes are a thing of the 50’s, people did that thing already, it was time to get some new stuff. The crowed booed what they said, apparently they liked the routine.

Now, back to the first routine I saw. This guy was pretty funny, but it didn’t look like the judges were taking to him much either. They had that look on their faces of, “yeah yeah I’ve seen this all before.” So I think he pulled out his trump card. He started to crack jokes making fun of President Bush. At that the judges started rolling, like it was the funniest thing you’ve ever heard. Yeah, the jokes were funny, but it wasn’t as funny as his earlier routine. But these guys loved it. I don’t really know why, they railed on the other guy for using “old material.” Well I have only seen one modern comedian that hasn’t made fun of President Bush in his routine. That’s Brian Regan. Every other comedian that I’ve seen in the past 8 years has always railed on Bush. It’s like comedians don’t know any other way to be funny. I don’t really care what your political stance is or how much you love or hate Bush, but come on, you would think that you could think of something else to make people laugh. But apparently the “Elite” have ordered that only making fun of Bush is funny. If you don’t make fun of him you don’t get to jump into the elite club and you won’t be recognized as an “acclaimed comedian.” So I guess these judges are really pushing their own agenda. It’s OK to make fun of the President, but don’t make fun of the Japanese because then you are a racist and a menace to our Brave New World Society.

Moving

So I just moved from West Cambridge #8 on Condo Row to the infamous Monticello White brick apartments by the duck pond. So I was actually feeling quite down about moving. And then I checked the apartment out and realized I had forgotten how small it was and things started to fall down on me. I started to really want to go back to my old place where I knew everyone and life was predictable. Then I walked into the bathroom and saw that we have a spiderman shower curtain. So there I thought, “I think it’s going to be alright.” I met my new roommate as well. (Really tall guy!) I saw his shoes before I ever saw him and it was obvious that he is a big guy. He’s pretty chill. Slightly introverted, but quite nice. We get along quite nicely, which was a good thing for a worried mind. In any case, the move went nicely and I’m settled in. The place is smaller, but there are more drawers and closet space than the old apartment. It makes me live a bit more compactly and organized. I just barely got my piano in. It took me a few days to figure out a good spot to put the piano. It is now in my room sitting majestically to my left. Her name is McKenzy. I like that name.

Thank you

So yesterday at work I was talking with the lovely Nick Erickson. We have heart to heart talks whenever we get a desk hour together. On this occasion we were having a wonderful discussion and she asked me what the ideal response from a girl would be if I told her that she looked pretty. What sparked the question was an experience she had the previous Sunday. She was walking with a guy in her ward who told her, “You’ve been looking good these last few days.” She replied with a smile, “Thanks, it’s a curse.” She asked me if that was a good response. I honestly didn’t see anything wrong with it. Yes, it could be seen as conceited or something to someone who’s really critical. But who wants to be critical. She accepted the complement, but she added to it as well. Anyways, that got us to thinking. What would be some good responses of the same manner to a compliment? We came up with a few.

1. Thanks, it’s a curse. (Already mentioned)
2. I know, I planned it that way. (More useful if someone says they like the way your clothes match)
3. Thanks, I wore it just for you.
4. Thanks, I try

Well that’s all I can think of right now. But the funny part is that just after we thought up those responses, another coworker came out of the back room, and Nicki said, “I like your shirt, it’s very yellow!” His response was, “Thanks, I wore it just for you.” He hadn’t heard any of our conversation. It was just a first class coincidence.

Lesson

So I had the FHE lesson as I mentioned in the last post and I also mentioned that I would write about it. So I gave myself about 2 ½ hours to prepare it before hand. I figured that would be enough time. I don’t know what kind of effort other people put into things like that, but that’s how much I put in. So the first 30 minutes consisted of me wondering what the heck I should talk about for the lesson. Classic and probably happens with everyone. So finally I looked up and saw a notepad and thought. Well maybe if I start writing something down I’ll have some more inspiration. So I pulled it out and it had writing on the first page. It turns out it was notes I had jotted down to give a talk for a seminary orientation. I talked about what I had learned in seminary. So then I thought! Ah! Inspiration from above! And I pulled the notepad down and received the inspiration. So I decided to talk about remembering back to things that we actually had learned, and thinking of ways that we can actually keep those things with us instead of forgetting them. It was a nice chance to look back and think of the things in my past that I actually have learned from and benefited from. It’s interesting. Almost like going back and reading in your journal. So anyways, those were my thoughts in a nutshell.

Tact?

It’s Monday night and I just prepared the lesson for FHE in 30 mins. My roommate asked me to do it yesterday and said he would have done it but he wasn’t sure if he’d be back in time to prepare it. I didn’t really ask him where he would be, I had no problem preparing a lesson which has turned out to be an interesting experience that I may blog about at a later time. Well I don’t know what he had planned yesterday, but right now he is watching a movie with a cute girl in the living room. I assume that’s what he had planned. For a split second when I realized that that was his “excuse” I felt a tiny bit of annoyance that he put the lesson on me for that. Then I thought… ha ha I’m silly. But then I thought, well if he had just asked me to give the lesson with no excuse as to why he couldn’t do it I wouldn’t have cared. He’s the FHE coordinator, that’s what he’s supposed to do. Delegate. And then I thought, well if he had said, “I would do it but I have this date with this girl that I really like right now” I would have been more than happy to play cupid and allow my roommate a wonderful chance to court a girl. However, it’s the “I may not have time” excuse that was almost annoying when I found out that it was a date. How strange is that? I imagine that a freshman who has never roomed with anyone before may very well have been annoyed by that. What’s the difference? They all have the same outcomes for me. Why were two completely fine and the other one only fine because I’m easy going? I guess this is why some people have tact when dealing with others and some don’t. It’s like having a roommate ask you to do the dishes. If he does it one way you’ll have no problem with it, but another way you will. You still do the dishes the same way but somehow it’s different. The brain is strange.

"Goodbye" and FHE

So there have been 2 instances in the past two days where I haven’t said goodbye to someone. One was quite comical. The other one I just got a text saying, “Hey you didn’t even say goodbye.” Except I didn’t know who that was from. I had just come from our ward Dessert Night and so I figured it was someone there. It’s happened before that I’ve gotten a text from someone after dessert night saying hey you didn’t even talk to me or something. So I figure it was that. After browsing the ward directory for this number I came back with no luck. I tried to have my friend call and act like she had stolen my phone and ask who it was out of fear that if I called I wouldn’t recognize the voice, but no one answered and the answering machine was of no help. It was a generic one that just said the number, no names. Finally this morning I realized that the text had been sent before I even got to dessert night. I realized that it was someone from work with whom I had been chatting with online. When we were closing up I didn’t bother to say anything I just shut the computer down. I guess she was really hoping for a goodbye. My mistake.

The other instance was even better. This was on Monday after FHE, which I will take a little segue and talk about the FHE for a moment. It was a combined ward FHE and we played a game called Bigger and Better. Basically we divided up into groups and each group got a water bottle. Then we had to trade that for something bigger and better and who ever came back with the biggest and best item won. Well our first trade was for a can of vegetables. Then we headed up the hill and looked for the biggest house we could find and knocked on their door. They said that they didn’t want the vegetables, but they would still give us something. The dad there said to meet us downstairs and he’d give us something that would win the cake. So we walked down and what did he have? A foosball table! Yes he gave us a foosball table to keep. Apparently he and his wife had been praying for an opportunity to get rid of it. Well I’m glad we were able to be an answer to their prayers. Other people didn’t get the whole trading concept and ended up “borrowing” items. So they had cars and bikes and all that stuff. I still think ours was the coolest. Who gets a foosball table for a can of vegetables?

Ok I’ll start a new paragraph to get back on track. So after this FHE I was standing in the parking lot talking to a few girls in the ward. I don’t really remember what we were talking about, but in the middle of that conversation a guy from the ward came walking down the street with a big group of people and he yelled over “Hey Bryan, wanna play ultimate?” So my natural reaction was to yell back “Yeah!” and then I just walked away, I didn’t even turn back to say bye, or acknowledge the girls I was talking to. I had just completely forgotten about them. I didn’t even realize what I had done till halfway through the Frisbee game when Jim told me that it was hilarious and everyone was laughing about it. I guess I have a one track mind when it comes to Ultimate Frisbee. Oh well.

So long Elder Stiles

Today my family came into town. It is the first day of Chris’s mission. So we dropped him off at the MTC today. It was interesting. It was the first time I have been beyond the front room of the MTC since my mission. We went to the whole orientation meeting and watched ‘Called to Serve’ and then Chris…or now, Elder Stiles went out the back door and we went out the front door. That was it. Now he’s probably exhausted and sleeping in his bed as I write this. He better be because it’s past the bed time that he will soon have for the next 2 years. When I walked through I had a lot of flashback moments. It was interesting. I guess it was the start of one of the most significant parts of my life to this point. I thought back to all the things I learned the troubles I had, the spiritual experiences, so many things. Now Chris is going to go experience all that. But at the same time his experiences will be unique to himself, while at the same time being extremely similar to those of every other missionary. We it’s a strange thing. But he is going to have the best time of his life.
After we left Elder Stiles we saw Uncle Ken outside. He was a bit late, but we talked to him for a while. Actually everyone else talked with him and I got to play with Aubrey and keep her occupied the whole time. That girl started running around and must have covered a full mile! So much energy! She’s just an adorable little girl though. I love it when Melanie and Mathis come down, or I get to go up to Bountiful. I can just play with my little niece and it’s sooo fun. And now to make it better, my nephew lives up here too! Who happens to love his uncles! I certainly don’t have a problem with that.

Festival of Colors

For the final installment of this weekend’s activities I’ll talk about the Festival of colors. And this time there will be pictures! Joy. So there is a Hindu temple in Springfield or American Fork or some town down South of Provo. Every year at the beginning of spring they throw a party at the temple to celebrate the first day of spring. They let people look around the temple and then they sell colored flour. Yes flour that is not white. It comes in the assorted colors of blue, pink, orange, yellow, and red. So when the place is packed and the flour is all sold, they take a witch that they made and light it on fire. I guess that’s supposed to scare away the witches that come by in the spring. Well the minute that they light the witch on fire, everyone grabs those bags of flour and starts throwing the flour everywhere. Up, down, sideways, diagonally, and at your friends. It’s a blast. So within seconds you are covered from head to toe in all these beautiful colors. It’s quite the site. I had the lucky opportunity to be in the line of fire of some random guy running by who landed a big puff of blue in my mouth. That stuff tasted really gross. I was spitting blue spit for 5 minutes, really dark blue as well. It was interesting. It was perhaps the dirtiest show that I’ve ever taken when I got home. All the colors mixed together to make a gross brown color in the shower. It was quite gratifying to become clean though.

 
 

Ward Talent Show

This last weekend was a busy weekend. I already mentioned the Frisbee scrimmage that we had. There were some other amazing events as well. Friday night was the talent show. It turned out to be a hit. We had about 20 numbers and they all were pretty cool, everything from people balancing books on their heads to a dude singing Brittany Spears ‘It’s Gonna Be Me’. I got to be the “tech guy” for the night too. I just took care of all the sound bytes that people needed and everything else of that manner. It didn’t go completely without problem but it all worked out. I also had two numbers that I was involved in. One was planned well in advanced. I played a song that I wrote called ‘No More Salsa’. It’s got a story behind it actually and I shared the story before I played the song. So I’ll share the story here.
It was a warm summer night in late August. Conditions were perfect and excitement was in the air. This night was to be a night of a legendary first date. The activities were superb and both parties got along with each other great. (Switch to 1st person). We made homemade salsa to start the date of. Straight from fresh tomatoes, onions, green onion, cilantro, and other secret ingredients that are only secret due to my lack of memory. So we made this salsa and it was a bowl of celestial goodness. Let me tell you. We were both in heaven and the best part was that there was leftover salsa. So we had some other plans that night, like horseshoes, and some Brian Reagan greatness. And my plan was to send the remaining salsa to her at the end of the date. Well we both forgot about it at the end of the date and I took her home. The next morning I realize my error and figured, well at least it’s a great chance to see this cool girl again and drop the salsa off. So morning made its appearance on Sunday and I popped out of my bed and went to the refrigerator to retrieve that Tupperware of sweet delight and bring it on over to that girl’s house. Well much to my dismay, upon opening the refrigerator, I discovered that there was no more salsa left. How could this have happened?! Did some little brother discover the addicting substance and devour it in a frantic frenzy? I hadn’t a clue, and my family was all gone to stake conference, so the mystery would remained unsolved for at least another 3 hours! What could I do?! So I went over to the piano to vent my frustrations about the loss of the tasty food and a perfectly good excuse to visit a cute girl. I started to pound minor chords and the result was this song, which has been appropriately named, ‘No More Salsa’.
Nice story eh? So I played the song and people seemed to like it. Or at least that’s what they told me. They probably felt bad for me after hearing about such a tragic event in my life.
Now I said I was in two numbers. The second number was even more fun. Here’s how it went down. On Wednesday morning I got a text from my friend Caitlin asking me if I had the music for ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’. Well I didn’t but I logged onto music-notes.com and bought it right then and told her that I did. The wonders of the internet are wonderful! So she said that she wanted to do it for the talent show. Later on that day I ran into her roommate who it turns out was the mastermind behind this plan. She also had plans to get other people to act it out. So Thursday night came and Caitlin came over so that we could run the song through a few times. It turns out that this song is a whole lot of fun to play. We had Tricia and Emily singing harmony and John playing the devil with Neal as Johnny. So we got to have quite the shin-dig for the last number in the talent show. Caitlin and I decided that we had the coolest parts of everyone. We just got to rock out the whole time. It was basically awesome.

Frisbee Shenanigans

So I’m a little behind and I’ve decided that in playing catch up I’m going to try to do many smaller posts instead of one larger post. Maybe that will work out. I’ll start with Frisbee golf. Basically that is one fun game. Well at least the way we play it. It turns out that the guys on my Frisbee team have a course that they have set up on campus. They have 18 land marks on campus that everyone has memorized and we go all around campus to hit these land marks with a Frisbee from a starting point. Every hole has a par and everything. We use some old junky discs because we wouldn’t want to ruin our nice ones by sliding them across the street. Well it turns out that I am not all that great at Frisbee golf. I’ve never been much of a long distance thrower when it comes to Frisbee. In fact I’m not all that great of a handler at any distance. But I’ve improved my short game a lot over the last few months. And my long game has gotten better too. However; I still have a lot of room for improvement. I was about 20 strokes worse than everyone else on the team. But that’s ok. I’m getting better, and I have other strengths in the game as well. Well… the Ultimate Frisbee game that is. Not really Frisbee golf. I’m all around bad there.
A little news from the Ultimate Frisbee team: BYU-Idaho came down last weekend and we we’re able to have a scrimmage game with them on Saturday morning. It turned out to be a lot of fun. And yes, we did win. A lot of the guys who came down were the guys who I played with a few months ago in the Vegas tournament. This time I was playing against them. It was fun to see the guys again. Even if we didn’t remember each other’s names right away.

I slept in and Frisbee

Last Friday I had good intentions to come home from work and find someone or some people and go to the volleyball game and have a fun night. Well I got home from work and ate and then somehow I fell asleep and woke up well into Friday night, too late to get anyone to do anything, so I just decided to get ready for the Frisbee tournament the next day and go to bed early. I can hear all the priesthood figures around Utah cringing. It was a Friday night and I wasn’t on a date?! What was I thinking?!?! Well… er… sorry, I slept in…
So on Friday morning the team met at the DT field. Actually only five of us showed up at the field and the others made it up to SLC on their own, and just happened to forget to tell the captain till the last moment. But we all made it there safely none the less. When we got there we were informed that the tournament would be starting 30 minutes late because the U overbooked the field and there was a soccer game going on one of the fields. It was all good. After watching the soccer game for a bit we decided that they needed all the practice that they could get and so they needed the field for another 30 minutes. So at 10:30 the Young Guns took to the field, adorned in our snazzy Adidas Young Guns Jerseys and an assortment of wild shorts. Our shorts ranged from bright yellow flowery shorts to cow patterned shorts. We definitely won the coolest shorts award of the tournament. (For the record, my shorts were the bright yellow flowery ones. They’re awesome!)
The first victim of the day was Wyoming. I played this team when I went down to Vegas and played with the BYU-Idaho team. We beat them then and I figured that we would be able stomp them with the Young Guns team. Well I guess right because it was an old fashioned shut out. The poor guys never got a point. We waltzed straight up to 15 points with out a single problem. (The first team to 15 points wins.) It was good to start out with Wyoming because we were able to solidify how we were going to run our offense in the next two games. We run what we call an H-Stack Flow. I’m not going to go into the details of how it works because it’s somewhat confusing at first, which is good because it works really well against the other team because they don’t really know what is going on. So that was a good start for the day.
USU was our next opponent. We made quick work of them too. I enjoyed that because I got to play the last man on defense for a few points. Basically that is the equivalent of a safety in football. For those of you who don’t know what a safety is, it’s the person who stands far back to protect from any deep throws. What is means is that I don’t let anyone get behind me because I’m the last chance the defense has at preventing a point. It also means that when someone comes tearing down the field I have to be fast enough to stay with them and keep them from catching a long Frisbee bomb. So we wrapped this game up at 15-2 I believe. Or somewhere around there…
And finally we played Colorado. It was basically the same story. The wind picked up a bit during this game so we were able to practice a zone defense against them when they were throwing upwind. (Ask me about that later if you want to know why we only use it when they are going upwind.) I think the final score of this game was 15-4 or 5. So basically we demolished everyone. It was a good tournament all in all.
It looks like I have a decent sized entry here already so I’ll wait a little bit and make a new entry to cover the rest of the weekend.

Cross-country skiing, Tin-man and Ultimate Frisbee

I had the joyful opportunity to go Cross-Country skiing the other weekend. I took my good friend Kinsey, who was a darling to go even though it was short notice (Extremely short notice for the record). It was my first time ever and it was at night time. That makes for an interesting formula. There are some things that I seem to catch on to very quickly and can perform fairly decently. There are something that I don’t catch on to period and I while I can’t perform very well at that task, at least I can entertain others while I’m at it. I would say that cross-country skiing is in the latter. Even though the name shares two words with something that I am quite good at, (Cross-country running) this does not mean that they are anything alike. None the less I made it out with out any bruises cut or broken things. For a while I thought that I had broken my phone due to water damage, but I turned it off and once it dried, the trooper was back to normal functioning. Way to go Sanyo. Well afterwards we went over to a friend’s house and Kinsey and I both discovered that we were swamped. I guess it was more physically taxing than I initially thought.
Recently it seems like I’m turning into either a tin man or an old man. In other words I’ve been ridden with minor injuries. It all started when I got lost while running a couple of weeks ago. The lost-ness resulted in an extended run far longer than I had intended. About 5 miles longer than I had intended, which all adds up to 9 miles total. But I did pass some very pretty houses on the way. So it was normal that I feel quite sore, but it worsened a slight injury I had gotten at Frisbee practice just before the run. We were practicing dives for the Frisbee and at some point my left quad collided with someone’s knee. That put me on a limp for a day. Well I got over the limp on Saturday for the next practice. At which I somehow managed to cleat myself in the knee while going up for a catch. I didn’t think much of it until I stopped playing at the end of practice; I mean really, how hard can one really kick themselves at that angle? None the less I felt that for a few days and then just as it was going away I went on a run and wasn’t anticipating the cold as much so that inflamed the knee up again. Of course once I get my knee feeling better I slightly strained my hamstring while playing Frisbee on a field with a slight uphill slope. So what is the result? Well I feel like I’m getting old or something. I’m sure it will pass though and I’ll be right back to normal.
Speaking of Frisbee, this Saturday I will be heading north to Salt Lake City to play in the Zion Curtain Classic Ultimate Frisbee Tournament. Other teams that will be there will include the U, USU, SUU, Reno, two Colorado teams, New Mexico, and Wyoming. It should be a good tournament.

Frisbee, Basketball and Snow Shoes

President’s day weekend turned out to be a very active one. I will be feeling this one for a couple days I’m sure. On Saturday morning I was back on the DT fields with the Ultimate Frisbee team. They were in Vegas at a tournament that I was not able to attend last weekend so I hadn’t played any good Frisbee for a couple of weeks. Well the field was quite interesting. Earlier in the week the weather was beautiful. I was out in short sleeve shirts. It was great. The sun was out, the snow was melting and life was good. All up until about Wednesday or Thursday. Then Mother Nature decided to have her way with things and plop another foot of snow on us. The result was that the halfway melted snow from before turned to ice, and then there was a nice layer of snow on top of that. It made the Frisbee game very interesting. A layer of uneven ice covered by a layer of snow. Yet somehow we managed to make it through 3 hours of practice without any rolled ankles. This morning we also played Frisbee on the same field in honor of Presidents Day. The snow had firmed up quite a bit. In some places you could step on the snow and not even sink. So today there was a little more traction.

Another highlight was the basketball game. We had a rematch with UNLV, the only team in the conference who has beaten us. So this was a rematch with a vengeance. On the road BYU is a somewhat streaky team. You never know how they are going to come out and play. But at home they are a hard team to beat. And the last 44 teams to play in the Marriot Center can attest to that. So we had a fun time there, the crowd was pumped, the basketball team was pumped and UNLV wasn’t feeling it. Of course the UNLV fans that have a vendetta out for BYU still take solace in saying that when BYU played at UNLV they beat them 70-41 which is a 29 point difference, whereas BYU only won by 26 points. It was still a very sweet game.

So after running around in the snow playing Frisbee on Monday morning I put on some snow gear and headed up into the mountains with a couple friends to attack the Stewart Falls trail. We had snow shoes and everything. Let me just say, snow shoes are really really really really cool. It was a ton of fun! The trail was pretty blazed for most of the way, but when we got close to the falls the trail disappeared and we had to blaze our way there. Don’t worry Mom and Dad; we weren’t wandering aimlessly in the Utah Mountains. By the time the trail ended we could see the falls at the bottom of the mountain we were on. So we headed straight for it and tromped our way through the snow. Basically it was a blast. If anyone wants to go do something in the snow I highly recommend that. Skiing sounds like a lot of fun, but it’s expensive. The snow shoes cost me 8 bucks to rent for the day.

French music and word from the wise

I just bought a few albums. I’ve been going through a French phase recently and so I have been getting some soundtracks to French movies and a few other things. I got the soundtrack to a film called Amelie. I highly recommend this soundtrack to anyone. It’s just quality good music. Most of it is either piano or accordion. It is very simple music, but extremely beautiful. Once I find the sheet music to this soundtrack it will be my primary lady-wooing tool. I also found the soundtrack to a movie called Banlieu 13. It's a cool movie where they use a lot of what is called Parkour in France. You can see a clip from the movie showing parkour here. Incidentally they also do parkour in the lastest James Bond movie Casino Royale. The soundtrack to Banlieu 13 is mostly rap. But it’s all in French and therefore makes me laugh, because the idea of French and rap together is funny in my head for some reason. Maybe it’s just me.
Word from the wise: Find out if someone is dating somebody before asking them out. Luckily I took this advice and waited till I had a chance to find out if she was dating someone or not. Turns out she was, and I found out because she got engaged the other weekend. That was a close call with an awkward moment.