Eye Contact

So I was talking with one of my friends about the difference between guys and girls and how they interact. It had something to do with eye contact and how we position ourselves and random things like that. I don’t really remember the specifics about it, but it serves as a good intro to my blog about eye contact.

Eye contact is a funny thing. If you happen to find yourself in a pack of gorillas, (or is it a herd? a posse?) then you would want to avoid making eye contact with any gorillas, especially the alpha male. You’ll get yourself a good pummeling if you do. So we as fellow members of the primate group seem to have a natural aversion to eye contact as well. This kind of a subject came up in a conversation with a girl I met last week. Ironically, at first I found it difficult to keep decent eye contact with this girl at first. She was attractive and had very striking eyes. So for some reason there was something that made me not want to keep eye contact for very long. I got over it after a little while though.

So in our conversation we were talking about how we had been making efforts to be friendlier on campus. I personally have been making efforts to talk to people when I’m walking on campus. She had been making efforts to try to smile at more people. I found that it’s hard to actually find people that are available to talk to. They are either on cell phones, listening to their ipod, or in groups. She found that it’s hard to simply make eye contact with people to smile at them.

So this brings me to stake conference over the weekend. I’m sure many of you have found yourself on the stage at church or in some position in front of a group of people. Well there are two situations that you can run into. Sometimes you’ll find someone out there that just catches your eye. And your gaze on the crowd will end up reverting to that person. Other times someone will be right in the default range of your gaze. So you will end up looking at them often with out realizing it. It is quite funny when you are on the receiving end of the person on the stand. Well over the weekend in the two sessions of conference I found my self on the receiving end of one of those situations. It was the first counselor in of the stake relief society presidency. On both Saturday and Sunday we kept making those awkward glances at each other. So on Sunday I started making a game out of it. I decided to see how long I could hold eye contact and see who would break eye contact first. I think the record was about 8-10 seconds before she broke eye contact. That is actually an eternity when you are staring a stranger in the eyes. It’s amazing how many times in 8 seconds you will have the urge to look away. Needless to say, it was a funny game, and who ever that was probably thinks I’m really creepy. But it’s all in fun! And in my defense I would only keep the eye contact when she was looking at me first. I didn’t initiate it, she did. I just held it.

Rock Climbing, North, Accordion, and Frisbee Scrimmage

I went rock climbing on Friday night. It was a lot of fun. I came to an interesting discovery though. Normally people use their arms to much and after a while their arms get so weak that they can’t climb anymore. Well I made a very conscious effort to make sure that most of the climbing was done with my legs. Rock climbing really isn’t that much different from climbing Grandma and Grandpa’s trees, so I didn’t have too much trouble. The thing is that after about an hour my grip was totally gone. The rest of my body was fine, but I just could not old onto the hand holds anymore. So now I can feel soreness in my forearms when I clench my fists. My arms and legs are fine though. Maybe if I do it enough I’ll have ripped forearms! Woohoo!

I drove up north yesterday to visit with Melanie, Mathis and Aubrey and then headed up to Syracuse to see the Moodys. I haven’t seen them for four years since I got my visa and left Syracuse to head out to New Caledonia. The Moodys were just great to us during out mission so it was really nice to see them again and catch up with them. I had to take a round about way to get to their house because the only way I could remember how to get there was to start at the place I stayed as a missionary and then track the path as if I were walking there. But even after four years I still remembered the way and found it even though it was dark. It was fun to drive past places and take a trip down memory lane. The Moodys are still as wonderful as ever and it was a very pleasant trip.

In the past few weeks I have become an accordion player! I borrowed an accordion from my boss so that I could play a solo in the French Choir concert that I’m in at the end of the semester. It’s been a lot of fun. It still makes me smile every time I bring it out of it’s case. I decided to name it even though it’s my boss’s accordion. I think “Tito” is an appropriate name. It’s a Titano brand accordion, so it was just a short jump to get “Tito”. We are going to have some good times together!

Our Frisbee team drove up to the U of U on Wednesday and played a friendly scrimmage with their team. They have improved a lot since last year. It was fun to play against some new people and not just teammates. We were also able to see what we could work on and have been trying to improve in those areas. The best part of the night was when my team was lining up on offense and the U team was setting up their defense at the same time. One of their players was assigning who would guard who. So call a player on his team and the point to player on our team. Well when he assigned someone to cover me he called out a player on his team and said, “You take wheels,” as he pointed to me. That is pretty much the ultimate compliment, which is appropriate since we were playing Ultimate Frisbee. (He he, Get it? Yeah? Ok sorry, it was a bad pun)

Well that should do it for a random update in my life.