Random Ramblings

Day 289

I am happy that the weather has cooled down the last week or so. I went running today and it was not as hot as it looked. There was a gentle breeze which cooled me down and the wind was at my back. Luckily the wind was not kicking up so it didn't affect my asthma.

Speaking of running, I want to give a shout out to fellow blogger and cousin Jaimee for running and conquering her first 5K! I am very impressed, she used the Couch to 5K program and stuck with it and accomplished her goal in style. You can read about her Run for Glory by clicking on the linky.

Speaking of 5K races, I have decided that I will take the plunge and run a 5K.

What was that? Didja hear that?

That was the sound of Kristy hitting the floor.

So yeah, I am going to do it. Probably not this year (unless I can find one in October) but I will the next. This will keep me motivated through the winter to keep myself in shape. Hey Jaimee, we should run one together! We'll do one in Utah and then one in Colorado.

I go out running with my iPod (I don't care what people say, I would die from boredom if I didn't have it while running!) and I was listening to some Offspring and I found another track that I forgot to blog about. It really captures the essence of them. Take a listen, I think you will enjoy it.



One of the reasons I need to keep running is because Kristy keeps making these delicious desserts. Look at this bad boy!

Packed with tasty calories.

While we were at the reunion we were chatting about...  ...I don't know how we got onto the topic but I told the story of the time I really embarrassed myself in one of my Political Science classes at Utah State University. It was about halfway through the semester and my professor pulled me aside and said that I really need to participate in class. She told me that I should add to our daily news conversations. We would take the first 15 minutes of class and pick a news item and talk about it and it usually ended in laughter. So I thought maybe I could make a funny since everyone else was doing it. Cloning at the time was a hot topic and one student brought up how clones would be beneficial to society.

My class had a few conservative students that were really against cloning of any kind and things were getting a bit heated so I thought I would say something which I thought would relieve the tension. I raised my hand and my professor proudly called on me. I said something like this:

"I believe that producing clones would be extremely beneficial to our society. Aside from the medical and science breakthroughs, it would be a boon to the entertainment industry, especially the movie industry."

Good use of Clones in entertainment.

I got every one's attention since I was using my announcer voice so it sounded like I was serious.

Bad use of Clones in entertainment. See below for more info.

"Clones could be used as stunt people without having to worry about securing and protecting them. Hollywood could really let things fly, imagine how real movies would look if we used clones instead of trick photography using stunt men and special CGI effects. It would definitely make war and horror movies feel and look real."

*sounds of crickets*

Yeah, no one laughed. No one said a word. I was humiliated. And I am sure I disgusted a few of my fellow students who thought I was being real. I never participated again, that is until I made an off-color remark about how ratings in the WNBA could improve. 

Shirts and skins.

Again I was treated to complete silence, I could hear crickets in the distance. But everyone knew deep down inside that I was right. They just didn't want to admit it.

Speaking of clones, I am reading Spider-Man: The Complete Clone Sage Epic. I just finished volume 2 and I have already preordered Volume 3. I think there will be six or seven volumes in total. And let me tell you, I am a bit surprised.

For those that are not geeks, don't know, the infamous Clone Saga will go down in history as one of the WORST Spider-Man stories and with good reason. Basically, the Spider-Man that most of us grew up reading was revealed to be a clone and "our" Spider-Man was shipped off and replaced. What made this story even more outrageous is that sales were so good of this controversial storyline that Marvel's Marketing Department demanded that this storyline be stretched out as much as possible. The original Clone Saga was only supposed to take six months (about six issues total of each Spider-Man comic) but the creators made it last YEARS. Fans reacted and quickly stopped reading the book since it was going nowhere and for what they did to Spider-Man. It was an interesting concept but the story escaped and spun out of control. Spider-Man's sales plummeted and have barely recovered almost fifteen years later. And Marvel has never spoken about it again. They didn't reference it anyway.

Until now.

I have to admit that the first two gigantic books have been entertaining. Some good art along with some really underrated writing. But I heard it just gets worse from here. It is like a train wreck, I just have to look and be a witness. Call me a sicko if you want but I just have to read this whole horrible story.

Mission Memoirs

Day 260

Again I have been debating about including mission stories on the blog here. I included one about my mugging a few months ago but I have not shared much of my LDS mission here. I just don't want to flood this blog with a ton of mission stories.

But I am stuck. I have no clue what to blog about today and I am a little pressed for time. I have choir practice shortly and I won't have much time after church since I just want to hang back and relax. I am excellent at justification and since it is Sunday, maybe sharing a mission story would be alright. I promise I will do these in moderation!

I couldn't decide which mission story to share. This one was the only one that immediately came to mind.

MARCH 21st 1994

Something pretty funny happened today while Hardy and I were on one of our marathon tracting days. We were clear up to the northeast part of our area where there are a ton of apartment buildings. We were knocking on doors to some success and we got to this one door and it was my turn to knock.

This attractive young girl answers and I give my spill introducing us as missionaries and she says "Would you like something to eat?"

Now under normal situations this would be a strange thing to ask but after working for three months in this area I have found that most people are willing to share food or drink with missionaries. Most of the time we get orange juice or water and butter cookies and so this request was not strange at all. My companion Elder Hardy must have felt that this was strange because I could immediately tell he was not a fan of going inside. We had already been asked to come in and have something to drink a couple of floors above us so I was not sure why Hardy acted the way he did. I said sure and we entered her apartment.

I wanted to have a picture of us tracting (knocking door to door) so I quickly snagged this. I look horrible in this picture. Another missionary cut butchered my hair and I must have gained 15 pounds.

We chatted for a little while and I told her more of who we were and what we wanted to share with her. She finally said that she will be back with something and to wait just a sec. I had no problem with this but Elder Hardy was freaking out. He was saying stuff like "I cannot believe we are doing this" and "why are you doing this" and similar remarks much to my surprise. I guess Elder Hardy worked differently than I did. If the lady wants to feed us, I say we accept. It is a kind gesture and we should honor them for trying to honor us. I told him to relax and that I did this all the time. Hardy was incessant that we leave.
"We gotta get out of here!" He told me forcibly. But I was not having it; I thought it would be disrespectful to just leave.
"What is your problem?" I asked impatiently.
"I cannot be part of this." he said right back to me. I was getting a little hot under the collar. What was Hardy's big problem?
"This is how I do things. If you don't like it, that's too bad! If she wants to give us something to eat, we should respect that!" I whispered back.
"Eat?" Hardy replied.
"Yeah, she wants to feed us something and it is real nice of her to do so!" I about yelled back, I was soooo mad. Hardy looked at me with his eyes wide open.
"She didn't ask if we wanted something to eat!" He said with a tinge of panic in his voice.
"What did she say then?" I asked.
"She asked us if we wanted to smoke some weed!" He whispered angrily back. What? There is no way she said that.
"What?" I asked back.
"She asked us to smoke some weed with her and you said yes!" She came back in and sure enough, she had these two joints all rolled up nicely. I laughed, not just because it was funny but because I was a little nervous. She said 'smoke some weed' and I heard 'something to eat', how ridiculous. She looked at me because I was laughing and I explained to her what I thought she said and she quickly kicked us out. I swore she said 'something to eat'. No wonder Hardy was ticked. What did he think of me when I was saying that I did this all the time? He didn't think it was as funny as I did.

Looking back I feel a bit bad for Elder Hardy. What must have been going through his mind when I told him I did this all the time? Poor fella about had a heart attack.