Sunday with church at 12:30! Time to journal some random thoughts and stories.
#1 First, journaling on journaling. I miss back when I first started my blog and I’d just write down any interesting thoughts I had, even one liners, and post them almost daily. I think it’s fairly common knowledge that acknowledging things you’re grateful for makes you notice even more things you’re grateful for, and all around makes one happier. In the same vein though, I found writing down things I found interesting made me notice more things I found interesting, and thus made life more vivacious! Really it seems like it’s all plusses and no negatives.
Thinking about it, I feel like there are two main reasons I haven’t continued.
A) the hard part is finding time to write. I’m not a short winded person, and often I like to tell the stories in a bit of detail like the rest of this post. Back when I blogged regularly I had my computer, always. But now I have my smart phone instead, it’s way easier to lug around, but it’s harder to write a long articulate thought on. And once I get to my computer at work, even if someone doesn’t need something first thing (which is common) it feels a little weird doing personal journaling on my work computer.
B) The leisure time I do have in the morning is mostly taken up by scripture study. Currently my goal is a half hour a day. I’m really enjoying this goal by the way. Goals like “a chapter a day” were too easy for me to zone out and hurry through so I could move on to whatever was next in life, and I wouldn’t really feast or ponder. 10 minutes is too short for me to get in depth. 20 minutes I often zone out thinking about work or whatever is next. But with 30 I manage to force myself to hone back in, or stay focused knowing it’s a meaningful chunk of time, and as result I get a lot more out of it. Plus, it’s ok to stop and look up other articles or see how the modern translation of the bible compares or write an email to ask my institute teachers of the past a question or whatever, because these things don’t increase the time chunk allocated. It’s great! And as a side note to this side note, I prefer reading on my phone to my computer, the bookmark system on gospel library doesn’t work right on the website, so I can’t track where I’m at with the computer alone anyway. But I digress, the point is the 30 minutes is a long time chunk, and usually makes me late getting to work at 8 like I prefer (I don’t really have to be there until 9, so showing up at 8:15 isn’t bad from a job perspective, just a personal one. I love having a great job that allows this flexibility though :) )
So, there you have it. I’d love to blog more, I’m going to try, but I fully recognize there’s a good chance it’ll fall flat haha. My one conciliatory prize for you is that writing about writing isn’t the only aspect of this entry. Onwards and forwards!
#2 We* went and saw Josh Groban last night with the tickets my parents got us for Christmas! It was a fun adventure because mom realized day of that we didn’t have handicap tickets, so we had to rush over midday to swap our seats, we even had to show my handi-placard despite the fact I was there in person! But it worked out, pretty good seats at the Usana amphitheater, although I’ll bring binoculars next time… it was mostly great! His voice was as rich and clear as you’d expect, despite the fact he kept commenting on how thin the air is here haha. He’s a fun guy! speaks in total rapid fire. Almost half his show was Italian or french songs, I wish he’d sing stuff I knew, or at least put the English translation on the giant projector behind him. But the MOST interesting part was he swore a few times, and you can just feel the Utah audience tense up haha. He didn’t even swear a lot, but I think just based on his music it was unexpected from him. On the way home, both mom AND Tess swore once too, it was contagious!! Sadly I can’t repeat the swear joke my mom made because I’m a firm no-swearer even for comedy (the most tempting of reasons for me), but it was hilarious.
#3 So I have a new set of people getting me in and out of bed now. Mostly guys from the singles ward (Jeff Garner, Talin Schick, Brandon and Tyler Idunnotheirlastnames. Thanks guys!) plus Delynn Summers as the angel who does my bowel care at 5 AM. It’s always interesting to see what things they pick up naturally, and how fast they learn the stuff that doesn’t come natural. Altogether this set has been one of the fastest learning sets ever, I basically showed them once and they’re set for the next time already. So that’s cool. But I find it super interesting how one guy instinctively gets how to swap out my pee bag while another takes a few minutes to get it off. Or how one guy easily gets the basic instruction of “get my hair wet and comb front to back until it’s organized” and others don’t. And it’s not like one guy doesn’t get all the things and another is good at all of them, each has a different blind spot, it’s just interesting. Oh, except apparently I use ⅓ as much toothpaste as literally everyone else in the world. You don’t need a ton you guys! I went to the dentist just week and had no cavities again for like my 11th time in a row!
#4 Now on to a serious topic. Ducks.
I didn’t learn this until a few weeks before my wedding, but Tess loves feeding ducks. When she is doing so she shows some of the most childlike glee I’ve ever seen her exhibit.
The first time we went the ducks were all spread out down the river, and when we’d approach they’d swim to the other side and ignore the stuff we threw at them. Finally we got to the very last duck and he knew what was up and came close so we could throw bread down to him. Slowly the other ducks noticed what was going on and joined the party, and we had somewhere around a dozen ducks before we ran out of bread, Tess was giddy, it was adorable, it’s likely you as a reader have never even seen her like this.
Anyway we finally went a second time this past weekend, and this time the whole pack of ducks recognized us or something, because they were all on board right from the start. We had 11 ducks and we fed them all about half our bread. Tess loves throwing it equidistant from a few ducks and watching them race for it. One duck gets it and the other few just accept it and turn back to watch for the next throw.
To me the interesting part was halfway through when another duck flew in from nowhere. As soon as this girl landed 8 of our 11 previously enthralled ducks immediately started swimming the opposite direction. We even ran ahead and threw bread in front of them but they could not be deterred! You know in high school movies when the awkward teenage girl protagonist comes to lunch for the first time, and the whole crowd of popular cheerleaders immediately stands up, puts their noses in the air, and haughtily walks away? That totally happened with the ducks!! So anyway we fed the 3 remaining and the newcomer, eventually the others came back, but! Whenever the newcomer got the bread first in a close race, the others would follow him around and peck at him! I felt bad for our awkward picked on duck! But it was super interesting to see the duck social… structure? Hierarchy? Thing. The duck social thing. Apparently it’s serious business.
*Author’s note, I’m “totes murried” now (as the kids should never say it) and I don’t want to be typing “Tess and I” or “I ‘n Tess” or “me and my spicy wife” all the time, it sounds like a lot of work. So if I ever just say “we” and don’t specify who we are, you can safely assume it’s me and my wonderful wife who beats me. (at board games)
Life Update July 2016
Time for another life recap! Looks like I only went nearly 3 years without posting this time so I’m making forward progress! *awkward cough*
Well, things went downhill for my job at SRS/MPI/Autopoint and I got hired to work at Vivint in April 2014. I knew I’d fit in there when I made wheelchair jokes in the interview and they laughed rather than getting awkward. Seeing as I’ve worked there over two years now I could write whole entries on my experiences there so far, but to sum up a recap I’ve love my entire time there, and I’ve been on the front lines of building two new products ground up for the company and it’s been super fun. I love it there and lately I haven’t even bothered to maintain cordial terms with recruiters because there’s just no way I’m leaving anytime soon.
I got called as an Elders Quorum president at the Ventana ward and was very humbled by the experience. Then I moved in with Bryan and Kayla for nearly a year and had a great time. I bought a condo in Bluffdale mid 2015 and rented it out for a year. And I went skydiving somewhere in there. All big things maybe I’ll write more about someday.
As for the focus of this post though, in Feb 2014 I met Tessa Sommer. And now I’m writing this post at the tail end of our honeymoon at the Shakespearian Festival (all the shows we saw here were AMAZING by the way! Much Ado About Nothing, The Coconauts, and Murder For Two). Anyway at our reception we had some posters detailing our story, and I wanted to post them here. So here!
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