When in Doubt... iTune Shuffle!

I am not sure what I want to blog about but I know that I want to blog about something. So when in doubt, I now turn to my iPod for some shuffle action.

I always worry that the songs that come on are ones that I rarely listen too and so I have nothing to say about it. And then there is always the chance that my iPod will pick something that I may not want everyone to know that I own. But I will take the chance.

A few years ago on some of the message boards that I frequent a group of us made a CD club. Once a month we would burn a CD of some of our favorite songs and then send them out in the mail and then we would all review them and we would do this once a month. In that way everyone would have time to receive and review a CD. I loved this and participated in about 4 clubs and I got a TON of music. Some of the music I already had but most of it was completely new. It exposed me to a lot of different groups and genres and music. In some cases I would get all rap, in some cases I got all British music from one of my friends in England. But in almost every case, I found at least one song that I absolutely loved.

In sending these CDs out, you really have to put yourself on the line. The first time I did this I sent out an all Queen mix which met to some interesting reviews. I'll have to share one for a later blog. The last CD group I was in was with a small set of really good friends. I have known these guys on the net for about 10 years and some of them I have had the pleasure of meeting in person. Hopefully I will meet more in the next year or so. What was fun with sharing with friends is that I got to know them better because of the music they shared. I found that the songs I shared meant a lot to me and therefore my friends could see why and appreciate me for who I am. I wish we still did these.

One of my friends (nicknamed Spindle) sent out a CD and put a note in it saying that we should not be ashamed of our music. Because if we are ashamed of our music, we are somewhat ashamed of ourselves. I totally agree even though a few songs on my iPod might make others cringe. :)

I will have to share the CDs that I made and the songs that were on it here on the blog. That little club was a lot of fun and would be very eager to do something like that again.

Now onto some tunes!

Parlay- Hans Zimmer

My dad and I are huge fans of original soundtracks. All we listen to at work is classical music/soundtracks. When we get board we listen to online radio stations and we found a station that plays just music from movies. Every time this song came on we thought it was something from the Man With No Name trilogy but it wasn't. This song comes from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. We looked it up and found that Hans Zimmer used music from the Man with No Name trilogy as a homage for this song. We quickly scooped up the song through iTunes.

Time Out For Fun - Devo

Funny that this song would come up. This was my opening song on one of my CDs that I sent out. This song totally takes me back to the 80's and listening to records with my sister. For some unknown reason she bought this album and we used to listen to it endlessly. I remember how excited I was when I found this album on CD many many years ago. This is still one of my favorite tracks on the album and this was the first time I have seen the video. I just love this song and its great message. Make sure you take some Time Out For Fun!

Cinnamon Girl - Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet

Oh man how I love this song! Of course it does help that my favorite Bangle, Susanna Hoffs, is singing this fantastic remake of an old Neil Young song. I just love the driving drums and beautiful harmony of the two. They have put out two albums with a bunch of remakes and they are awesome. If you like older music you definitely should check these out. I couldn't find the original on iTunes but this live version is pretty kick butt.

Scare Easy - Mudcrutch

Mudcrutch was the name of the band that Tom Petty used to be in before he formed the Heartbreakers. A few years ago he reunited them all and they put out an album. Unfortunately youtube will not let me embed the video so you will have to trust me and click on the link and listen to a fantastic song. If you like Tom Petty and his type of music, you will LOVE this.

The next time I do a blog about music, I will blog about my CDs.

Sam's Farewell

I forgot to note yesterday that my family and I took a small road trip up to my old hometown of Richmond to attend my cousin's Missionary Farewell.

I have been in and out of sickness that last couple of weeks and unfortunately I woke up Sunday morning feeling really clogged up and sick. I barely went to my Church meetings before coming home to medicate and rest up before we all headed out to go up to Richmond. Luckily, I felt a little better on the drive up and was feeling the effects of the medication by the time I went and picked my mom up.

It was strange walking into that old church building. This is the same church building that I gave my own Missionary Farewell and Homecoming talks in. What was sad is that I hardly recognized anyone from the old neighborhood. But I still felt a little like I was home again. We sat with mom at the back of the church and waited for the meeting to start.

I will say this, and it has nothing to do with church, Sam or anything like that, but I love watching kids and their parents. Back in the day, before I had kids, I might have been annoyed a couple of times with kids and how they act. Now that I have a kid myself, I am a lot more sympathetic to those that have kids. And now I am not nearly as annoyed by kids. I could tell that the mom that was sitting in front of me was having a devil of a time trying to keep her kids quiet and behaved. I appreciate that she was trying to control her kids but they were not bugging me at all. Actually, I was a bit entertained by them.

Sorry for the brief detour. Sam gave an excellent talk and shared some great scriptures. It made me reflect on my own mission farewell and how inadequate and how unprepared I was. The only similarity with Sam and I was how enthused we were about going on a mission. He was already above and beyond me. Kids these days are certainly more prepared, there is no fence sitting here. They are either for it or they are against it. It was great to hear his testimony. The people of Germany are going to be very lucky to have Elder Anhder serve them.

Deep down I am a bit jealous of Sam. He is going to the place I wanted to go and he gets to live a different life. One away from the worries of the world. Now don't get me wrong, I loved my mission and I have no regrets. I am proud that I was sent to New York and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I had a great time seeing my extended family at the little get-together after. My uncle Kurt and his family have been a great support to me. I remember that Aunt Lisa would send me Christmas packages while I was serving in New York. Kurt would pay me and my friends very well for odd jobs, he would also escort me to the Temple and was a special witness when I got married. I feel a little bad that I am not closer to my cousins since they are so much younger than I am but I am glad that they are my cousins. And I will support them in all that they do. It was good to see my uncle Mark and his family and I look forward to seeing them at the end of next week for Kelli's wedding. I am blessed with a great extended family on all sides.

I look forward to hearing Sam's experiences and I am happy that my family and I can share in it. I appreciate the Anhder family for inviting us to spend some special time with them.

Random Ramblings

Today I came home a winner! For the last few weeks I have been playing racquetball with a guy from my ward. Last week he beat my brains in to put it nicely. I was determined this morning that I would win back the title* from him.

And I did.

I wish I won it convincingly but I didn't. I barely beat him in our second game, in fact we were so evenly matched, I barely won 28-27.

*The Logan 13th Ward Championship

On April 1st I start my first writing competition of the year. It is my second year of doing ScriptFrenzy and I am not sure what to do. I am completely unprepared for this. I don't know if I am going to do another comic book this year. That is how unprepared I am for this. UGH! Anyone else want to do this with me? The more the merrier! I know the perfect online software you can use. Seriously, any writers want to take a stab at this? I would love the company motivation.

I am getting lazy with the blogging. It seems like I am blogging less and less. It is not that I don't have something to blog about, because I do. I am just getting lazy. I really need to get on the ball and keep a decent schedule for blogging. Not only am I getting lazy at blogging, I am also getting lazy at reading other blogs and commenting on them. You can probably tell this when suddenly a fellow blogger will get scores of comments all at once. I need to change this.

Maybe tomorrow...

Friday Flashback: Goring Cousins

This new scanner is so awesome. Spending all that time scanning in those old slides and cleaning them has been totally worth it.

I look really uncomfortable here, I guess I didn't know what to do with my arms.

Can anyone clue me into who the guy behind me is?

I remember this visit I had with my cousins while my family was down from Canada on vacation. I had a lot of fun with my cousins. It was during this visit that my cousin Wyatt gave me PitFall 2 on the Atari (which I still have today).

The Drama Queen

A couple of days ago Logan and I were playing around in the front room tossing this hard, plastic football around. I told him that I would throw at his feet and he should dive down to make the spectacular catch. He did what he was told but unfortunately his old man didn't hold up his end of the bargain. I accidentally threw it high and it cracked him in the side of the head.

It left a nice mark and everything. Kristy offered to get some ice for his head and he readily accepted. Personally, I didn't think he needed it but I was not going to argue. So Kristy got out an ice pack and since it was dinner she wrapped it around his head so he could eat. He must have been a little self conscience of it since he got mad at us even if we cracked a smile.

It looks like he might be trying not to laugh in this picture but trust me, it was all drama!

He finally let Kristy take a real picture. And of course he has to be funny too.

Kristy and I both got the grand idea to take a picture of his "mummy" head. Logan did not agree with it and tried to keep mom in the kitchen. He didn't see me sneak out to grab the camera and when he saw me emerge from the back room he screamed and ran up to his room. He slammed the door right when I got to his room but I managed to get in. I feel a little bad that I tricked him into opening his bedroom door by saying the camera was turned off but I more than likely he would forget this situation when he got older and I wanted to have a picture so I wouldn't forget. So I snuck a picture of him quickly and he was not happy.

But we did manage to cheer him up a bit during dinner. I won't even mention the part when he spit out his beans when I made him laugh.

Professor Platis

A few weeks ago students from Utah State University came and visited Logan's school one evening and put on a science fair. They taught them how a science fair works and they performed experiments. Unfortunately we were unable to attend but Kristy wanted Logan to participate in their school's science fair a few weeks later. For Christmas Logan got a cool science kit that showed how water filtering works and cleans the water and he wanted to use that kit for his experiment.

The science kit showed how proper water filtering works and what order the filters (carbon, paper filter, sand and gravel) should be in to get the cleanest water. Logan's experiment was to change the order of the filters and see if it cleans the water as well. So he put it altogether with the help of his mom and found out the answer. Then he took pictures and put them on some poster boards and went to the competition last Wednesday night.

There were a lot of very cool experiments and all the kids did a great job. Then the same students from Utah State University came and judged each one. They interviewed each kid and see what they learned and then they awarded the best of each grade.

Kristy told me that one of the judges asked for his last name so we thought maybe he had a good chance of winning. They announced the 1st grade who won and then they said that the 2nd grade was the toughest one. It was down to two of them and it was hard for them to choose. And then they announced the winner.

Logan Platis!  (although they did pronounce our last name wrong)

He looked at us surprised and we shoved him to the front. He was quite the proud kid and he looked so cute up there with all the winners.  Good job Logan!

Random Ramblings: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day from both my favorite X-Man and I!

Yeah, I like Banshee.

So who is this strange and colorful clad superhero? His name is Banshee and stars as one of the first class of X-Men in the upcoming summer movie X-Men: First Class.

Yup. I am a geek.

But I love every single centon!*

So I went on my first run of the year today. The weather was nice and mild and the sun was out so I wanted to get out and take advantage. My run was both expected and unexpected. I was more tired than I thought I would be but that was to be expected. What I didn't expect is that I was not huffing and puffing and tasting blood during the run. I did as much as I normally did last summer so I think with some training I should be all set to run the 5K at the end of the summer. Hopefully I didn't just curse myself.

I think playing racquetball a couple of times a week the last three weeks has really helped with my conditioning. I do look forward to playing racquetball, much more than I do going out and running. I am not all that competitive when I play. Don't get me wrong, I want to win but I want to have a good time above all. So I will laugh at myself and my partner when they (I) do really stupid things.

I remember when I played a couple of years ago I got hit in the back with the ball. Jonny was returning my serve and I was in front of him with my back turned and KAPOW!  It hit me so hard that my gum flew out of my mouth! Not only did it make my gum fly out of my mouth, it also sent my head springing forward violently too. In fact, I was able to catch my gum in midair. We couldn't play after that we were laughing so hard. It reminded me of when Michael Bluth kept losing his gum in Arrested Development.

Speaking of things that make me laugh. I love these guys...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

*told you I was a geek. Anyone know what a centon is?

I Love Key Lime!

Awhile ago I blogged about how the flavor of Lime is slowly disappearing in products and being replaced by Apple flavoring but I have discovered a new Lime gum that is out of this world.

This sugar-free gum tastes just like Stewart's Key Lime soda and the flavor lasts quite a long time. If you like Key Lime pie you definitely need to track this gum down.

I have been spoiled lately with Key Lime. To celebrate Monday being Pie Day Kristy made a Key Lime pie from scratch. This was her first attempt at doing one and it came out tasty!

The meringue shrunk overnight in the fridge for some reason. The pie was sweet and tart at the same time. Mmmm... now I think I am going to polish it off. 

The Pine Wood Derby

I have never participated in a Pine Wood Derby. In fact when I first heard of them I thought everyone was only kidding around. That was something from the movies and not real right?

Nope.

I never made it as a varsity scout in Canada and when I moved to the States I pretty much lost interest in scouting. It is just not my thing. I will support it and I will support Logan in scouting but that will be my extent. I am not sure what turned me off from scouting, I didn't mind doing some of the camp outs and things. Looking back it might have been some of my leaders who were a little too gung-ho for my liking.

So I have never participated in a Pine Wood Derby. I have never been to one, I have never even seen what one looks like. So when Logan brought his kit home I was both excited and intimidated. I don't know much about working with wood, I don't think I have carved or done anything with wood. And here I was supposed to help Logan make a car out of a block of wood!

Grandpa even made a little pilot for the car.

Thank goodness for Grandpa Breinholt. He came up to help Lynn with her house and he volunteered to help out. Even when he smashed his thumb and went back to West Jordan, he still came up and helped Logan with his car. Grandpa built the car and weighted it carefully and put on all the wheels and Logan painted it. I do have to admit that I was relieved that Grandpa was helping out.

Last Thursday night was the big competition. There were about 30-40 other kids and their cars there excited to race. We first had a nice quick dinner that was provided and then the real competition started.

Logan looks so serious here with his arms crossed (on the left). He was all business.

That was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I was a little surprised at how anal precise the people that ran the show was.

This was one of Logan's 1st place races

Logan did pretty well. At least I think he did well, remember this is our first one. He had four heats and placed 1st in two of them. He took 2nd and 3rd in his other races. He was certainly proud of himself.

Geez...

I have been trying to write every other day (and still skip Sundays) and I was going to blog about Logan's Pine Wood Derby race that went on last night but after the tragic events of this morning I have just lost the desire to write about something so inconsequential and small.

Things like this certainly make me stop in my tracks and think. The problems I have in my life, the things that annoy me (like dog poop) are just completely petty and stupid in comparison to what others are going through.

It makes me want to shut up and quit blogging altogether.

From the Soapbox: The First Sign of Spring

One of my favorite parts of Winter going into Spring is the huge amounts of wet snow that comes and then how quickly the nice warm sun melts it away.

But it also leads to the worst part of Spring. And it has to be the absolute worst sign of Spring.

Dog poop.

I usually will go and walk Logan home from school and it seems that when this time of the year comes around, I have to be extra careful walking. It is either a wet patch of ice or a pile of thawing dog crap. Somehow this dog crap just magically appears when the snow melts. And it is everywhere!

I cannot stand it! 

This should say enough but I am not done. If you own a dog, you also own the dog's poop. Just because it is cold outside and just because it can be hidden in the snow doesn't give you an excuse to pick it up. I don't want to find it later. Just pick it up (like you do in the summer) and dispose of it. It is that simple!

Until your dog learns to do this, you are just going to have to do it. Even if it is cold outside. Part of owning a dog is being responsible for it and its crap. If you don't like picking up dog poop then don't get a dog.

Random Ramblings: The End and a Beginning

This morning I did something that I have not done in years. And it is something that I want to do more of but I just have not found the right person.

That did not come out right. This morning I rediscovered one of my favorite things, playing racquetball. I started playing with some of the guys at my last job but when I quit I didn't play again. The hardest thing is to find someone to play with. I could play with Kristy but then we would have to find someone to watch Logan and we usually forget and we end up not playing. Then I discovered a guy in my ward that used to play. The last time that he played he dislocated his knee cap and that was years ago too.

We both were a little nervous playing. But we had a lot of fun and we matched up very well together. He took a huge lead in the first game and it was at that point where I am just playing for exercise and not for fun. But then I mounted a comeback and took the first set. Joseph easily took the second and the tiebreaker was the most tense and fun. I took a big lead but just couldn't seal the deal and he made a good comeback and tied it all up. But I ended up winning the last set and am now Champion!

So a new beginning...  ...and now an ending.

Today was also Logan's last basketball game and he went on a high note. For some reason he was really into the game and took over. He scored 18 points and must have had the same amount of rebounds. He didn't play on the floor this time either! But he did very well and is very excited to get into the advanced league next year. We stayed to watch my nephew Dax play his last game and he played very well too. I like watching Dax because he is a good defender, he is one of those defenders that can get under the skin of whoever he is covering.

After the game Logan got his certificate and it was funny to see that former Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan has signed it. End of an era there.

Hello Spring!

I do like the winter season but I think that I only like the beginning of the season and the very last of it. I am not a big fan of the deep freeze in between.

And this is one of the best signs of Easter.

Yesterday after Logan and Kristy went to bed I got out and savored my first Cadbury Cream Egg of the season. Let this be the first of many...