I don't feel like you could say I have a one-track mind.

I have just received what might possibly be my new favorite article of clothing. It’s not for sure yet (only time will tell) but it has almost definitely beaten my previous second favorite (see shirt below)

And I really think that, given time, it might even overtake my current #1: my “Poke you!”, orange cape:

Though I will say that this new article will have to come through in a MAJOR way if it’s going to beat the cape. I mean the cape enables me to fly…so that could be pretty hard to beat.

I was thinking that I might wait a little bit and talk around what my new item is before I reveal it to you but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in my logic flow. So here’s what I got. It is a “1 of thousands”, "chic as hell", Taco Bueno Scarf!

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Dang boy. That picture is mooooody.” (I only know that this is what you’re thinking because one of you already told me so. I can’t read minds or anything.)

More importantly though, here is what I am thinking:

A of all, this is such splendid timing because I really needed to get a scarf before the weather starts really getting cold…

B of all, this thing is elegant. I mean when I put this thing on, I feel sophisticated and debonair in a way that I didn’t know was possible sans a cigar, a nice glass of Scotch, and a copy of the Economist under my arm. I have a couple weddings that I am going to this summer and I was really asking myself how I could accessorize. I was even thinking about going for a vintage monocle or something. Then boom, question 100% answered. Scarf it is.

C of all, I received this scarf as a gift from someone who simply put, thought it was hideous. I’m currently auditing a company that franchises a bunch of Taco Bueno restaurants and thus, they receive stuff like this every once in a while. The CFO at the client received this a while back and decided to pass it on to me. She’s a sweetheart like that. And to think that the alternative way that I could have possibly gotten one of these scarves would be to work my way up to Manager at one of the Bueno stores, work my tail off during the holiday season to try to sell gift cards, and then hope that I landed in the top ten stores so that my store would all get scarves! I prefer my way because it doesn’t involve working my way up at a fast food restaurant. I’ve put in my time in the fast food industry and it’s just not for me.

Now here’s the game for you. Out of A, B and C, two of them are sarcastic and one is not. You get to figure out which are the sardonic ones.

Here’s another question for you. What happened between 10 years ago and now that changed people’s perception of Blink 182 from “wow, this is some gay, punk shiz” to “dude, this is THE shiz”? You know what I mean? 10 years ago, when I heard some dude listening to Blink 182 I thought one of two things:

1. I either thought, “Ok, so this guy is a skateboarder and he is willing to put up with this ghastly music because he has to in order to fit into his group. That’s just what skateboarders do. They listen to whiny music.”

2. Or I thought, “ok, this guy can’t actually hear anything but he wants to wear headphones with music playing so that people think he can hear. Unfortunately, someone has played a mean prank on him by turning this particular music on so that people will judge him.”

I almost feel like a bad person for thought number 2…but I mean it was just a thought. I couldn’t help it.

But you know what I mean right? If you were someone who actually enjoyed high-quality music (and I’m using my own personal definition of high-quality here obviously), then this is the way you thought of Blink back in the day right? Or am I wrong?

But then zoom forward to today. Alt Nation is probably the number one indie rock radio station in the world and they will FREQUENTLY play throwback Blink 182 songs. AND I LIKE THEM! I think everybody does. It’s cool to like Blink 182. And I just don’t get what happened between back then and now. 8 years ago I would have rather stabbed myself in the ears than listened to Blink 182 because the result was the same but the process of getting to the bleeding ears seemed better. And yet now, I think they’re pretty awesome.

I don’t know. As I write this, I get the distinct feeling that it’s just me who feels this way and that most people who like Blink now liked them back in the day and if they didn’t like them back in the day, they probably still don’t. Meaning that this whole rant has been based on incorrect assumptions and now I’ve made an ass out of both of us. Dang it, I’ll move on.

Now, I know that you’re wishing to God that I would just shut this post down at this point because it’s already dreadfully long. However, I wouldn’t feel right shutting it down before I write at least 400 words about something I noticed yesterday.

So picture yourself just getting off work at 5 (we’ll pretend like I think it’s normal to get off work at 5). You pack up your things, hop into your car, and zoom away from work. As you drive off, you literally forget everything that you did at work that day because it just feels good to let it go.

Then you feel it. That twinge of longing. That itch of desire. That pang of HUNGER. It’s dinner time and the feeling in your stomach is a screaming reminder of this fact. So you make a bad decision and stop at the closest fast food joint which happens to be a Taco Bueno (go figure). You think about going through the drive through but instead, you decide to just go inside and get it to go. That always seems to be faster anyways.

Right when you walk in the door, you question your decision because the line isn’t exactly petite if you know what I mean. However, you stick with your guns because that’s just what you do. You hop in line behind a nice looking young lady (you’re an average looking young man in this situation). So at least you’re going to be stuck in line behind a girl who you can pretend like you might someday get the courage to talk to. That always makes things more fun.

5 minutes later, you’re second in line. The girl in front of you orders too much food for one person but not enough for you to think she might be ordering for multiple people. Kinda grosses you out. Then she moves on. You step forward to place your order and out of nowhere, this fellow pops up beside you and gives you the “hold on just a second” look. He then proceeds to explain that he just received his order but unfortunately miscounted before and he meant to order an additional 2 tacos. He wants to go ahead and purchase those. For some reason, everyone (including yourself) lets him cut in line and place his additional order.

This is what perplexes me. There’s like some kind of crazy rule that says that if you have previously placed your order and you need ANYTHING additional post-receiving your order, you have right of way in the line and it is totally acceptable for you to cut in front of everyone else who has been waiting.

Doesn’t it seem weird that this is allowed? There can be 1 person or 8 people in line and it doesn’t matter. The guy who forgot to order his two tacos get’s to jump everyone. And I’m not hating on this guy or anything. God knows I’ve been there too. But I’m just questioning the system. I don’t understand why it’s never OK to jump ahead in line ANYWHERE but then all of a sudden, in this situation, it’s ok.

It’s like saying that when you’re at a water park, you should get to cut in front of the rest of the line for the super-slide just because you’ve already ridden it.

Or it’s like saying that just because you bought tickets to the last Cardinals game, you should get to cut in front of all the people who are first-time buyers when you go to the box office to buy tickets for the next game.

You know? It’s just odd that people seem perfectly fine with this instance of cutting when, in any other cutting situation, people would blow their shiz about it.

Odd it is.

Ok, not only are your eyes and minds tired if you’ve made it this far, but my fingers are also tired of typing as well. I will leave you now. Until next time that I feel the need to type nonsense for an hour!

Peace.

Things people say that I don’t really like:

One of all – Picture a situation where you’re talking to your friend (a pretty good-looking guy) about a date that he went on last night. You gave him a bunch of grief yesterday afternoon before the date but it was mostly just because you were jealous. (I like it how the wording that I’ve used so far is such that the person picturing this situation could be either a guy or a girl.)

So that’s last night. He went on the date and you have no idea how it went at this point. He comes waltzing into the office where you both work and he appears to have a pretty big smile on his face (he probably held her hand or something exciting like that). You then proceed to ask him, “so? How was it?’ He then responds with the first thing which people say that I don’t really like. He says simply “It went good.” ….what a disgustingly horrible sentence.

I often find myself getting annoyed with an improper use of the word “good” (as opposed to “well”). However, I realize that it is simply the way that people speak in this part of the country. This simple sentence though is just an offense that I cannot ignore. It drives me nuts.

Think about it. If you would just say “It went WELL”, then you would be using an adverb. To iterate how correct this part of speech is in this situation, I will exchange “well” out for other adverbs and the sentence will still make sense. How about “It went wonderfully”? Or how about “It went swimmingly”? Both of those make sense.

On the other hand, it we think about the “sentence” that was used in this situation (It went GOOD), then we are talking about using an adjective when we should have used an adverb. To clarify how incorrect this is, I will replace it with a couple other adjectives to illustrate how poor the grammar is: How about “It went happy”? Or, “It went fun”?

I feel like I’ve just done two things. The first is that I have been THAT GUY who get’s annoyingly picky about grammar. The second is that I’ve opened myself up in a major way for grammar critiques of this blog post. However, I do not welcome these critiques. I am pointing out what I believe is a GROSS offense to the rules of grammar. However, I am currently writing simple prose and, as such, am not trying to hold myself to the standards of perfect grammar here. So just don’t do it. Fight that urge.

Two of all – Picture another situation. Pretend that you and all of your same-city friends decide to throw an awesome party for Halloween. Everybody dresses up in pretty sick costumes. At some point, the people on the dance floor (middle of the living room cleared out) include the following (names are fictional): John dressed up as a plastic yellow bat, Lizzy dressed up as a penguin, Joe dressed up as a very busty woman, Libby dressed up as a lobster, and Warren dressed up as a bag of jelly beans. While these four are dancing, someone decides to whip out a camera and take a picture of them all. In the snapshot, the busty woman (Joe) is beating the penguin (lizzy) with the yellow bat (john) and the bag of jelly beans (warren) is eating itself. In the background, you can see the lobster (libby) laying on a plate in the middle of the kitchen table.

Honestly, the picture turns out to be pretty hilarious. Obviously, it ends up getting posted on facebook. Immediately, the commenting ensues. The first to the scene is John who basically comments, “Oh my gosh Libby, I thought you said you were never going to do that!” Next comes Rachel who simply says “Oh Christian. LOL” (nobody really knows why) Then comes the one who I hate.

The next person to comment is the annoying one. “Melody” gets on and posts the following statement: “I just literally LOL’ed when I saw this!” **SHUDDER** ugh and bleh! I hate the implications of that statement.

The first reason I hate it is that it basically calls everyone who has previously commented with an “LOL” or a “haha” a liar. It’s like this person is saying that, while everyone else said that they laughed out loud, this person actually did it (literally).

The second reason that I hate it is just simply because the person added an “E-D” to an acronym. I am not even going to explain why I hate that. I feel like it should be clear that this is annoying.

OK, I’m going to go to bed. I feel like I could keep going with talking about more things people say that I hate but I think I just realized that this is a semi-worthless blog post. Thus, I’m going to just drop it here and head to sleep. I have to work tomorrow anyways and it’s late.

Gosh, next time I’m going to write about music. I don’t even care if you read it but I’m ready to over-analyze some songs. Just trying to prepare you.

Peace.

Pah - rum - pah - pum - pum!

Few interesting noticings from my time in the Reagan Airport (kinda presumptuous of me to say that they’re interesting eh? Yeah, I like it.)

I think it’s common knowledge that food/beverages in international airports is just absurdly overpriced. Everybody knows it and hates it but there’s just nothing you can do about it.

So here I am, hungry and fully aware that some restaurant in the airport is about to just punch me in the gut at the register. I picked my poison and chose Panda Express because I’m some kind of a freak for cheap, shizzy Chinese food. (shizzy…you like that word? Me too.) I informed the PE employee that I would like a large order of fried rice with orange peel chicken. “Also, could I get a drink…yeah…the large one.” I knew that I was finished. Going large and large was going to set me back in a major way. But then I see my total pop up on the screen! 6 dollars total!! WHAT?!

As it turns out, Panda Express is dirt cheap regularly because dirt cheap is literally the most that people are willing to pay for that food. Apparently that value ceiling doesn’t disintegrate when you go through airport security. Even though you’re in an airport where everything is supposed to be overpriced, people are still only willing to pay 4 bucks for some shizzy Chinese food. From now on, I’m running for the shiz every time I see it in an airport.

The beer in the picture below cost me 11 bucks. That is almost double what my entire meal cost at Panda. That is insane, awesome, sad, and mind-blowing. All at the same time.

I noticed another thing on my way into the airport terminal. As I was going through security, I was paying close attention to the people around me just trying to have some fun in my brain with noticing the little oddities. One thing I’ve noticed in the St. Louis airport these past 4-5 weeks is that the security conveyer belt seems to generate some static electricity. Thus, every time that people go to grab their bags, laptops, shoes, etc after they have gone through the scanners, they receive a nice little static electric shock! Once you know it’s going to happen, it’s pretty fun to watch people’s reactions. Thus, I was focusing most of my attention on the people on the other side of the scanners who were retrieving the items they had removed prior to going through security. The trend that I noticed was this:

When people are going to go through a scanner, two of the things that they are required to remove are their belt and their shoes. TSA should have thought this through before making it a rule. It seems that the general consensus is that people want to get their shoes back on first thing after going through the machine. Nobody wants to be out in public, standing on a dirty floor without his/her shoes on. I’d say 9 out of 10 people put their shoes on first before then donning their belt, jacket, hat, bags, watch, etc. This is all well and good except for one thing. Unfortunately, the TSA has required people to remove their belts.

Now, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the purpose of a belt so I’m going to iterate it for you. Generally, the purpose of a belt is to keep your pants from falling down. There are loops all around the waist of most pants that you run the belt through to ensure that the pants are kept up all the way around. You don’t want them falling down in the front, the back, or definitely not the sides (gross, exposed hips in public). PLEASE NOTE: some people do not wear belts to keep their pants up. There is a growing number of women wearing belts for strictly ornamental reasons. Please do not send me an angry email about how I limited the purpose of belts. I hate those kinds of emails.

So what happens when you make someone remove his/her belt prior to bending down far enough to put on his/her shoes and tie them back up? Well, you end up with a lot of unwanted butt-cleavage showing. I swear, I saw more butt-cleavage today watching the people going through airport security than I saw during the whole 4 hour Discovery Channel special I watched on “Plumbers and Their Cracks” (please note that I watched no such special as I do not believe it exists). The point though is that I got a nice laugh out of the situation and plan on spreading the word so that many others can enjoy the absurdity of the situation the next time they are going through airport security.

Lastly, I will just share a bit about the funniest man I saw today. I saw him coming from a ways away. He was a shorter little middle-eastern man. He had a wonderful sailor’s hat on and a semi-disgusting spread of facial hear. He had a big flowery carry-on bag which he was dragging behind him on 1 wheel (the other appeared to have been broken off) and he had a look of utter stress on his face. Oh yeah, did I mention that he was absolutely flying through the airport (pun)? This dude was BOOKING IT. You could tell he was obviously late for his flight and was kind of on the far side of freaking out about it. The best thing about him was that, it wasn’t is appearance that first led me to notice him. It was this sound he was making as he flew through the terminal. It was kind of like a “thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack!” I heard it from long off and kind of wondered about it. It was only once he was right upon me that I realized he was wearing some SWEET Abercrombie & Fitch flip-flops! (side-note: it’s winter.) He was making so much noise as he ran by. I think it’s safe to say though that he made up my mind when it comes to running through an airport in flip-flops. If I was considering it before, I am definitely not anymore.

The best part of the whole thing was that, right as I had forgotten about him, I saw him again. He walked back past me! Hahah he had obviously missed his flight but he didn’t look pissed or stressed or anything. His countenance had completely changed. He was some kind of a mixture between dejected and completely amused. As he walked by, his body language and posture suggested a tragedy on the level of losing a loved one (shoulders slumped in a powerful way, head hanging, and arms flopping at his side), however, he was smiling and laughing pretty hard under his breath. I would have gone to ask him what was up but he seemed to be pretty into the hilarious conversation he was having with himself. Just laughing his little head off while muttering stuff to himself.

I’ll leave it here and just say that it was a very entertaining hour and a half that I spent in the airport today. So many other fun observations but such an inability to write about them in a way that doesn’t use over a thousand words. Thus, I’m going to call it good for now and re-engage in conversation with the woman to my left on the plane who seems to be blown away that I’m already out of school. Apparently I “just look so young!”

Wonderful. Perfect. I miss YOU.

I like blogging about music so much more...expect music from my next blog.

This post is being posted over a week late...

*Yawn*

I’m worn out guys. Remind me to go to bed right when I get to my hotel tonight cause I seriously need to get some sleep. However energy-consuming though, this was a wonderful weekend.

Christian took a little trip up to the DC (that means District of Columbia everybody, not Drip Coffee) this weekend to visit one of his best friends ever. Second Lieutenant Nicholas Joseph Halsmer. Legitimacy incarnate.

We did lots of tight stuff like going camping on the Quantico Marine Base during the sub-freezing temperatures (it snowed…) with Nic’s friend Allan, his wife, and a 50 year old Belarusian who teaches Russian at the marine base. I feel like I could probably spend some serious time talking about this whole experience with a large amount of the time being consumed by stories about Igor (the Belarusian), but sadly, I’m not feeling like going there right now.

Skip to the next night. Lots of stuff happened between camping and the next night but that’s why I used the word “skip”…we’re going to skip it.

Saturday night, Nic and I had planned to go to a concert near DuPont Circle in DC (again, the District of Columbia), and we decided to go down to the city early enough to get a nice dinner. I was ready to have a legit meal that would give me a taste of the culinary prowess that DC (…) seems to possess. So, as I will probably always do from here on out when I’m looking for a new, legit restaurant in an area that I’m not familiar with, we consulted the iPhone app “Urban Spoon”.

It took us a good 30 minutes while we were on the metro to figure out what kind of food we wanted. We finally decided on a Mediterranean place though that was fairly close to the concert venue. It came highly rated. When we got there, you could immediately tell that it was a pretty swanky place. Most people there were full-on adults (35-50 yrs old) and seemed to be dressed a little better than we were. The hostess informed us that, unfortunately, tables were available by reservation only. However, due to the powerful presence of a Marine Second Lieutenant, they consented to give us a table that wasn’t reserved for another hour and a half and I guess just hope that we got out of there in time.

So we sat down at our table. First thing I did was open the wine list (it was immense). I flipped through it looking for a wine that wasn’t the cheapest they had but that wasn’t 100 bucks. I finally found a nice little Pino Noir that was “in our price range”. I’ll go ahead and say that it was one of the best wines I’ve ever had. Apparently Moldova knows how to grow some good Pino Noir grapes. Good on em.

We then opened the menu. We were informed that the way to do it at this restaurant was to just order like 5-6 different items. They were all made to be eaten with the never-ending (and delicious) flatbread.

The things we ordered are as follows (I don’t remember the actual names of these items, they were all in some other language):

1. An incredibly rich and creamy yogurt with walnuts and tart apples on top. Then it was surrounded by some sort of large, edible flower petals (yeah, we ate them), and then covered in a very virgin olive oil. This is the one you can see in the picture.

2. Pan seared Gouda with a tomato/basil glaze and a thick fig jam. It was an amazing mix of salty and sweet.

3. Goat Milk cheese with honeycomb. This cheese was insanely rich. You couldn’t eat more than a little bit of it at a time or it would freak your taste buds out (olas found this out). But then, if you got some of it and put it with the honey (maybe the best honey I’ve ever tasted) in the honeycomb, it was…aaaah I don’t even know how to describe how good it was. Luscious. It was luscious.

4. Ground lamb with tomato, onion, basil, and olive oil dressing. Pretty awesome lamb.

5. Last, but not least for sure, we had Kalamar (squid) stuffed with shrimp, mozzerella, and a bunch of green spices. Then it was sprinkled with lemon and olive oil. I’ve never had anything like this.

In the end, I feel pretty confident saying that it is easily in the top 5 meals I’ve ever eaten in my life. It might even take first place; I’m just not going to say that because I might be forgetting some other awesome meal that actually deserves the blue ribbon. I’ll give myself a little time to remember the other great meals I’ve had before I hang the gold medal around this meal’s neck.

So, after dinner we went over to this place called The Black Cat or, as the stamp on the back of our hands said, El Gato Negro. It was a pretty sweet venue: the type of place that you just don’t find anywhere in OK. We rocked the show with The Luyas first:

And then with the band we came to see, The Antlers:

All, in all, it was a wonderful night. On the metro ride back home, we made some “life-long friends” (their words, definitely not ours) who were kind of annoying, but at the same time were very entertaining. They were very very confused as to why Nic would be going to flight school if he’s not in the air force and also seemed to have some strong opinions about how lame Oklahoma is. Don’t worry though, we stood up for our state.

They also made lots of fun of my tweed blazer that I was wearing. They have no idea what they were talking about though. That jacket is the shiz (or at least I like it a lot).

Ok. Well…now I’m at a crossroads. I have a decision to make. I have about twice as much to say as I have said so far…meaning I’m about halfway through my material. I’m trying to decide if it’s a better idea for me to cut this post off here and start a second one or whether I should just make it one long motherload of a post…

I think, for your sake, I’ll split it into two posts. If you read both of them in one sitting though, then I’m impressed with you. Heck, if you read one of them in one sitting, I’m impressed.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I wasn’t going to mention this just because of all the people who it would make jealous, but then I realized that none of them will probably read my blog anyways. So I’ll go ahead and brag that I got to go to lunch and get coffee with THE Katie Deaninator on Friday. It was AwEsOmE. That girl is legit. Somebody swoop in and sweep that girl off her feet. You will be lucky you did.

I don't really know how to feel about the blog post I just typed up...

I feel like I've had the pleasure of meeting some truly amazing people lately and it is starting to feel selfish that I haven't shared them with you.

As such, I will now introduce you to some of my new friends and tell you just a little bit about them so that whenever you get to meet them, you'll at least know a little about them and be able to start up awkward conversations based on what you know.

This is Dr. Slim Doggman:

I'm trying to think when it was that I even first met Dr. Doggman...I think it was when I went in for a vasectomy. Yeah that's right I believe. I went in to get a little snip snip and there I was, sitting on the table when Slim walked in. I know when you look at that picture, you immediately assume he's doing his "cute face" (or his "say cheese! face" if you will) but nope, that's as straight-faced as Dr. Doggman ever gets. But anyways, there we were having just met for the first time but both of us knowing that we were about to get to know each other intimately very quickly.

Wait...I think I'm remembering this wrong. I just remembered that I've never had a vasectomy. That wouldn't even make any sense. I think we actually met in the frozen food aisle at the Walmart Neighborhood Market over on Peoria at like 46th. You know? The one right by the big salvation army thrift store. Yeah that's right. I was opening up the freezer and was about to begin the process that is PICKING MY ICE CREAM FLAVOR. Then all of a sudden Dr. Doggman comes walking towards me looking like he's just been waiting for me to show up. It was weird. He was about 30 feet away so I definitely knew he was walking straight towards ME (not my direction, but to ME) way before we were within the distance that it becomes ok to begin conversation. He walks very slowly you see so it probably took him a good 18-23 seconds to cross that 30 feet. But once he got within 15 feet I couldn't stand the silence between us anymore so I piped up and said something to the effect of "wow, that's quite a face you have!" To which he replied with something to the effect of "yeah, I made it a long time ago and I've been making it ever since." At that moment, I knew we had some kind of awesome chemistry (ironic because his undergrad degree was in chemistry before he went to med school so he knows all about this stuff). As he got a little closer, he informed me that he is so nearsighted that he is essentially almost blind. He said he had been waiting for someone to show up in this aisle so that he/she could help him pick out a tub of Breyer's Natural Vanilla Ice Cream. He was very specific about the ice cream that he wanted.

So of course I was down to help this old old old man. So I started looking for the ice cream he had requested (and honestly, in my head I was very excited because whenever he'd said that ice cream, it pretty much sealed the deal in my head that I wanted the same thing. Cha-ching!). The unfortunate thing was that there was just no Breyer's Natural Vanilla left in the freezer. Anywhere. However, Slim seemed like he'd been waiting a very long time for someone to come help him and I couldn't stand to let him down. So I figured, "he's blind right?" So I just grabbed him a half gallon of the Breyer's Homemade Vanilla and gave him that instead. He thanked me very very much and then he was on his way.

I thought I might never see him again and that was a heartbreaking thought considering the chemistry that I'd felt right off the bat. So I followed him home.

I didn't feel completely comfortable following him into his house so once we got there, I decided to just set up camp on his front porch and wait for him to come out again so I could inform him that I wanted to be his new best friend ever. It took 4 days for me to get just completely sick of the old dude's front porch. After 4 days, I had to leave. I was starting to go crazy.

So I headed home with full intention to just take a huge nap and catch up on some much-needed sleep. I walked back to my car and fumbered (misspelled on purpose) with my keys for a moment before putting them in the lock. I guess I was just kind of hoping he might pop out of his house right at the last second. But he didn't.

I opened my car door, sat down in my seat, and reached over to the passenger seat to grab my helmet (I always drive with a helmet) and guess what my hand landed on!? Dr. Doggman's leg!!! Turns out he'd felt the chemistry too and had been waiting for me in my car for the last 4 days! He's a crazy man but since that day we've become very good friends and I really hope you guys get to meet him someday. He's a hoot for sure!

The next friend I would like to introduce to you guys is Miss Marsha Mellow:

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering is Marsha is part bird. The answer is YES!! She is actually 12% Parrot on her mother's side I guess. Which is actually really crazy because I can't really figure out how that happens and she said she really didn't want to talk about it. To which I replied "fair enough." (cause what else can you really say in that situation?)

So anyways, the next question I asked her is the same question anyone in this position might ask. I inquired as to what breed of Parrot she was descended from. Again, she was hesitant to talk about it for some reason and I could never really get a true answer from her. She only sent me this picture:

It really wasn't what I was expecting. I was thinking something more like a baby bird or maybe a "Big Bird" or something like that. So for the first few weeks that I knew her, I feel like I was just constantly trying to find things about her that were parrot-esque (i.e. repeating things I said, molting, biting the FIRE out of my armpits [that's another story]), but she never did any of it. Other than the fact that her face looks kind of like a bird, she really didn't have any other indicators that she might have been descended from poultry (I use that term loosely).

Then, one night it just clicked for me. I could finally believe her. I took a picture:

From that moment on, it all made sense.

Anyways though, I actually met Miss Mellow on a flight (ironic) from Stillwater, OK to London, UK. I had noticed her in the airport before we left because I kind of have a thing for girls who look like birds and she obviously fit that bill. So secretly, I was kind of hoping that I'd be sitting next to her on the plane.

As we filed onto the plane, I realized that this was a huge plane and the chances that we were going to be sitting next to each other were just not very good at all. BUT, as fate would have it, she ended up sitting just 5 seats down from me!! WHAT LUCK!!! So obviously I struck up a conversation and we talked the WHOLE way to London. It was great and I really don't think the 4 people between us minded at all.

Anyways, now we're back stateside and we've become quite good friends. I like to comment on how bird-like her face is and she likes to tell me all about how absolutely perfect my face is. So it really works out well. (that last sentence was actually just a joke)

But yeah I'll try to bring her around sometime! I know a couple of you that also kind of have a bird thing going so I know you guys will like her.

The last friend I would like to tell you a bit about is Mr. Spanky Lemmond:

Let me explain. Spanky is a beekeeper. He has two big passions in life and these are honey and getting stung on the face by bees. That's actually how we met...

Spanky is such a blast though! He's the most fun guy to hang out with ever. We're always just hangin out and talking about doing really fun stuff. Sometimes we look at pictures of people doing awesome stuff and it is sooo fun! We're already planning a trip sometime soon where we're actually going to go watch some people do fun stuff LIVE!! I think we're going to drive by a theme park or something and see if we can catch a quick glimpse of people riding some roller coasters or something!! Oh man, we have so much fun.

Sometimes I struggle with feeling really self-conscious about my looks when we hang out though. Because sometimes we will make a milk run or something just up to the gas station on the corner and there will be like 20 girls just hanging out outside. I guess I just had generally assumed that Spanky and I were both 6's on the looks scale and so I figured we'd each get the same amount of attention from the girls. But for some reason, ALL of them just stare at him the whole time we are there. It's like they don't even notice me. They just stare into his face/eyes and whisper things to each other...probably just about how cute he is and stuff. Anyways, sometimes it messes with my confidence and makes me wonder whether I'm maybe more like a 3 or something. But after some thought, I think I've just underestimated Spanky. I think he's maybe more like a 9 or so and I just didn't realize it. I mean I guess he does have really sexy lips. Must be the bee stings...

Anyways, Spanky is a really solid guy and he and I have gotten pretty close. He even let me stick my face in his beehive for like 2 seconds the other day so I know we're becoming pretty good friends. I only got stung 4 times but I'm hoping he'll let me put my face in for longer next time so I can get a few more stings. Sometimes I wonder if he and I might actually look fairly similar if I had a bunch of bee stings on my face...hmmmm. But yeah, you guys obviously need to meet him! Doesn't he sound like soo much fun!?!

Ok I guess that's about all I've got for now. I really want to have a party sometime where I can invite all of my old friends as well as all my new friends. I'll look into that.

Peace.

I think I might have been born in mashed potatoes...I'm going to ask my mom about it.

Looky what I made the other day! And it's not creepy finally because this time it's not a painting of some random person that I don't "really" know. Sorry the picture is a little blurry...

I’m currently reading three books. This is a very rare occurrence for me. I just don’t read that many “books” any more. I’m not going to go into exactly why that is right now. But the point is, it is pretty crazy that I am reading 3 books at once.

The first book that I’m currently reading is a book called Eleven Minutes by a guy named Paulo Coelho. He wrote The Alchemist if you’ve ever heard of that one. Anyways, it’s a really intense book just cause of the subject matter. It’s about a prostitute and the tagline would probably be something along the lines of “A gripping exploration of the potentially sacred nature of sex within the context of love.” (I stole that line from the back cover of the book) Anyways, this guy is one of my favorite authors because he’s very universalistic in all of his writing. I kind of like having to sift through and decide which parts of his philosophical and religious arguments I believe and which parts that I do not believe. And he makes all of his arguments through the use of brilliant stories that really get into what is going on inside of people’s heads. In a nutshell, he loves to explore the nature of man. The thing I find most interesting in his books is that, in the end, when he has made his discovery about a particular piece of human nature, I am always left with this feeling that he has gotten so close but has just completely missed the real point. He reaches these conclusions about what man really desires in his life but then misses the point that Jesus is the fulfillment of those desires. It is just really interesting.

The next book that I am currently reading is Catcher in the Rye. As for this one, I’m not really going to go into how I feel about the actual book other than to just say that I’m really liking it and that I love the way that JD Salinger writes. Good style. The interesting thing about my reading this book is that I’m actually co-reading it with THE Warren Shamburger. By that I mean that we sit around in my room and switch off chapters reading it out loud while the other person listens. Warren uses these great voices for each character and then I try to mimic them whenever I read but I generally fail miserably. The point though is that it is a BLAST to read the classics out loud with a buddy. You should look into it. I think we’re going for Treasure Island or Pride & Prejudice after Catcher in the Rye. One of those is a joke.

The third book that I am reading is a book called The Gift of Prophecy by a dude named Rick Joyner. I’m still assembling my thoughts on all the things he’s saying though at this point. Plus, they’re kind of more serious things that he’s been stirring up inside me and they deal a lot more with what I’ve really been searching God about lately. And though I would probably be down to share my thoughts about it with you in person, that isn’t really the kind of thing that I like to write about on here. This blog is for me to therapeutically release all my ridiculous thoughts. Not my unridiculous ones. Anyways, I guess I should be perfectly honest on this one and say that I’m not actually “reading” it in the traditional sense. I purchased my first audiobook!! No but I got this on audiobook so that I could listen through it while I work out. Whatever, I’m still reading it..just not really…

If you put your car in reverse twice, you really end up putting it in neutral. However, if you put your car in reverse thrice, you end up in drive. Then you can go wherever you want. Think about that.

The other night I went to dinner with a few wonderful people. We were definitely looking for some food, but even more than that, I feel like we were all looking for a good margarita as well. Our first choice (due to prior good experiences) was El Jalisco’s. Unfortunately, once we arrived, we very quickly learned that El Jalisco’s had lost their liquor license. We can only assume that this is because they were serving alcohol to minors considering that they were well known around town as the place that doesn’t ID. Anyways, we all sat there for a minute, not being the one to first admit that we really wanted to go somewhere else just because there were no margs…Eventually though, somebody stepped up and we quickly all agreed to move on over to El Tapatia down the street.

We went in there, got our table and all and began looking at the menus. They had 4 sizes of margaritas. There was the “Regular”, the “Jumbo”, the “Regular Pitcher” and the “Jumbo Pitcher”. The waiter finally came over to take our orders and as we went around the table, two things became apparent very quickly. A of all, this nice little Mexican dude definitely did not speak much English at this point. B of all, the margarita sizes were not actually anything like what the menu stated. Most people asked for a regular marg, medium marg, or large marg. However, in the end, they all received the exact same size. I however asked for a jumbo margarita (what I believed to be the correct term from the menu for the bigger sized margarita glass). Unfortunately, when my drink came out, it was as you see here:

So anyways, it was going to be much too much trouble to send it back. Thus, I just drank as much of it as I could and gave a bit here and there to the other people with me. It WAS a good margarita at least so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I mean my check ended up being a little steep but whatever.

That actually reminds me of something else. I never used to be a huge “Sonic Happy Hour” kind of guy but then my roommate Adam started making me go with him in the afternoons to grab a Sonic drink and I quickly realized that it’s just insane to NOT go get Sonic drinks every day! This brings about it’s own whole new set of issues though. A of all, you start formulating opinions about which Sonic makes the best drinks. Inevitably, the best Sonic will be the one that is the furthest away from you. That’s just how it always is. Then B of all, you will find yourself complaining about having to tip Sonic people almost every time you go. Either that or you will be the person going with the person who complains. You’ll be the one who is always talking about how you “feel bad” for not tipping the person and you’ll talk about how much their tips must have decreased since the credit card machines came in. I am not that guy though. I’m the guy that almost never tips the Sonic people. And I even like tipping too. I love tipping people at a restaurant. But for some reason it bugs me that they think they deserve a dollar for walking my food out to my car for me. I’d rather do it myself and keep my dollar. Or I’d rather them do it for me and still keep my dollar. The point though is that if you are going to Sonic every day and getting a drink that is only 1 dollar, you just don’t feel like you should have to tip the delivery person above that dollar. Thus, you’ll inevitably talk about it in your car…usually immediately after the person leaves. And you’ll probably start off the conversation with “I feel so bad for not tipping them BUT…” That’s bulsh. The only reason you say that is so you don’t look like a jerk.

OK, paragraph break to lead us into the C of all. C of all, you’ll begin to be a Sonic drink connoisseur. Whereas you used to be happy with whatever drink they brought out to you as long as it at least slightly resembled what you ordered, now you’re not truly happy with the drink you receive unless it is the “perfect consistency” or unless they put “just the right amount of Vanilla” in it or the “perfect amount of fruit” and such. That’s just the nature of the beast though. The more we love something, the more we expect perfection out of it.

And lastly, which I guess would be D of all, you will find yourself discussing all of these things with other Sonic lovers. You’ll be sitting around at night with some people and all of a sudden, you’ll realize that you guys are all talking about which Sonic is the best and about how much of whatever you love that they put in your Sonic drink and whether it was perfect. This is when you know you’re a real, true Hedgehog. (Hedgehog is a lame term that I just decided on for Sonic lovers. It is indubitably a reference to Sonic the Hedgehog from the Sega Genesis game.)

If I had to be stuck in a coffin forever (but still alive) I would hate it a lot. But I feel like I would hate it waaaaaay more if I was stuck in a coffin alive forever and I was a Dolphin. That would make it WAAAY worse. And how awesome is this picture?

Why is it so awesome to do weird stuff to food? I mean almost everybody loves to take a fork and smash food sitting on their plate so that it squeezes up through the prongs. And if you gave almost any person the chance, he or she would LOVE to take a watermelon in his or her hands and just smash it down on the ground. It’s just straight-up fun. I had my very own experience with it today. I was cleaning out my refrigerator. I had some chocolate milk that I had purchased a couple weeks ago on a “wow chocolate milk sounds so good right now! I bet I could drink the whole half-gallon” whim. Long story short, I didn’t drink it all. (actually, that story would have been hard to make long. It was just a short story kept short.) Anyways, I could totally have just taken it in the kitchen and dumped it out in the sink. But instead, I wanted to see it splatter all over the ground. So I took it out front and dumped it all over the dirt in front of my house. I don’t know why I did it other than just that it was fun.

Another thing that I found in my refrigerator was a carton of eggs that still had like 4 in it. This time they weren’t even expired. The desire that came up in me though to take them outside and break them was so unbearable and undeniable that I just had to do it. I smashed some perfectly good eggs. Worth it again. It was fun.

Ok I feel like this is getting to the point where it is so long that you aren’t even going to do that thing where you start reading it but then skim most parts of it just so I doesn’t take forever. Instead, you’re just going to take one look at it and be like “yeah, uh no.” So I’m going to stop.

Peace.

And the word of the day is...

I've been having an issue lately. It is focused around my jeans. Throughout the years of my life that I have actually purchased my own clothing (maybe age 15 to now) I have always gone through phases with my jeans. I don't think I'm really that out there on this one. I feel like this is something a lot of people do. What I mean by "phases" is that, I search for a pair of jeans that I like, and then I basically replace all of my old jeans with variations (different washes) of that same pair of Jeans. The first jeans that I began to do this with back in my Junior year of highschool was the Low Rise Boot Cut from American Eagle. I love those. I pretty much had almost every wash of those jeans that didn't come with complimentary gaping holes at the time of purchase. I stuck with those for a long time. You can see them in this incredibly Gay picture of my from Freshman year at OSU.

After those came a dark phase of my life. I moved on to the Levi's. This was at the bequest and recommendation of Joseph Harvey Hanson. Let me preface my following comments about these jeans by saying that Joe pulls them off. It's not that they're horrible, it's just that they were horrible on me. The problem with my Levi's phase was that I went with the 514 cut (Slim Straight). I wish I could say that the 514's were the extent of the problem, but the real problem came when I switched to the 511 cut (Skinny Jean). Let's just say that I was rockin a pretty emo, chicken-leggy look for a while. This is a picture of myself apparently getting my limbo on in the 514's. These aren't even as skinny as they got.

So tight. Ugh. So, needless to say, I was happy to move on from those. The reason that I think I gave up on that look was that it just literally wasn't comfortable. No thank you for really tight jeans. However, at one point I did have about 8 different washes of those jeans. They were really cheap online...

Next came a short phase where I got into Gap's low rise straight leg jeans which were still not loose but definitely not as skinny as their predecessors. I'm not going to linger here though just cause the real point I wanted to make with all this jeans talk is completely unrelated to all this stuff so far.

So now we come up to last year. I finally found them. Fossil's Relaxed Boot Cut jeans were straight up heavenly. Just the greatest ever. I wore them straight for over a year and a half. Like I completely dumped all my old jeans and just wore my pairs of Fossil jeans all the time. I even purchased the exact same pair of jeans two times so that I'd have two pairs of them. Anyways, this past January or so, Fossil started making a new "Slim Boot Cut" which I love even more than the original boot cut. So of course I had to purchase a couple of pairs of those. So as of right now, as far as jeans that I actually wear, I have two pairs of the Slim Boot Cut and 3 pairs of the Relaxed Boot Cut. However, the Slim Boot Cut pairs get a lot more play time these days.

This brings us to the issue I have been having lately. The Relaxed jeans have one button and then a zipper like normal pants would have. But then the Slim jeans (which really aren't that skinny FYI) that I love, have 4 buttons on the front instead of the traditional button and zipper. Now, I'm totally cool with the buttons. They really don't bug me at all. Honestly, I think I might even like them more. The issue I have been having though is that, with the button button button button jeans, I can just undo my belt and then basically pull on both sides of the pants at the front and open up all the buttons in one smooth move. And I have kind of gotten used to that motion. It's easy, simple, it works for me.

The problem arises in that lately, when I have reverted back to the original Relaxed jeans with the button and zipper, I instinctively try to "rip open all four buttons" and I have caught myself basically trying to rip open my zipper (which does not work anywhere near as well as the buttons). This became a very clear and present problem last night when I actually ripped one half of my zipper off of my jeans about halfway down. Ugh. So today I had to sew half of my zipper back on to my jeans because they're one of my favs. The point of this story: Life is tough.

And for all of you out there (cause there are so many people that actually read this...NO) who think it is ridiculous that I'm so aware of my jeans and what style/cut they are, be honest with yourself. I don't feel metro at all for caring what jeans I'm wearing. If you can say to me that you've never had a pair of pants that you just really liked and that made you feel more confident when you wore them, then I think you might be a liar.

That said though, I really can't believe I just talked about my jeans for so long. That was supposed to just be a short quip about how I was annoyed that I had to sew my zipper on today.

Coupons!! Coupons are something that, if they are readily available, you're kind of stupid not to use. Like, if there are coupons basically laying all over my house and yet I refuse to grab the "free medium drink with purchase of regular sub" coupon for Quiznos but then proceed to go to Quiznos and purchase a regular sub and a medium drink, that is just stupid. (as a side note, I always get the Baha Chicken at Quiznos because it is delish. And who am I kidding, I'm a fattie and I almost ALWAYS get the Large sub.)

I'm getting off point though. Coupons. OK, so yeah, you're almost just stupid if you don't use a coupon that is readily available. However, it is not the end of the world if you forget to use a coupon or if you fail to realize you had a coupon available. Not that big of a deal right? Like if I had a coupon for 20 cents off of a package of sliced turkey at Walmart but I forgot to use it when I came in yesterday and bought my sliced turkey, I'm not going to freak out about it right? Right.

Now, I thought that that would be the general consensus across the board. BUT NO! I forgot about a very special demographic that is unable to be OK with themselves if a coupon goes wasted or if every coupon is not utilized. That would be the Old Woman demographic.

Here I am, standing in line at Walmart waiting to pay, and this woman walks up to me and asks if I mind her cutting in front of me to quote "fix a problem". I don't know how anyone has ever said no to a cute old woman ever. I said yes. I then heard her tell her story to the cashier which went something like this. "Ma'am, I was in here yesterday and I bought some sliced turkey breast (insert long and irrelevant description of the exact kind of turkey breast here) but I forgot to use my coupon. It expired today though and I don't want to waste it. Is there any way I could redeem it now and get the money back?" The cashier looked about as bewildered as I was feeling. This woman had literally come all the way back to Walmart solely to try to redeem this coupon that she'd forgotten to use the day before. IT WAS A COUPON FOR 20 CENTS OFF!!! It is a guarantee almost that she spent more than that just on gas to get back to Walmart.

Now, under normal circumstances, I'm guessing that the correct answer for the cashier would be "Ma'am I can't take care of that here but if you go over to the customer service desk, you can see if they could help you." And I'm guessing that the cashier would be saying that with full knowledge that the customer service desk is NOT going to give a refund. I mean it just doesn't make sense. However, this cashier seemed really nice. She kind of shot me a look as the old lady was explaining her situation (I think it was during the very detailed description of the turkey breast) that was kind of like "is this really happening?" I shot her back my best "hahahahahahaha" face. After the woman was finished, instead of giving what was probably the correct response, she just opened up her cash register, pulled out two dimes, and gave them to the woman in exchange for the coupon. She said something like "ok ma'am I can just get that for you right here." The woman was very grateful and then walked away and out the front door with an air about her that communicated that her business was completed. The whole situation blew my mind. I loved every bit of it.

Gosh this post is so long. The last thing I want to mention is that I recently read a blog post by a legit ex-roommate of mine who is on a sweet year long missions trip called the world race. The blog post is here:

http://danielstinson.theworldrace.org/?filename=loving-like-the-father

I read this the other day and it overwhelmed me almost. Maybe it's just cause I know Danny so well but it really moved me. I just feel like I could really feel the love of the Father in it. As I was reading it, I found that tears were rolling down my cheeks before I even realized how much it was touching me. Anyways, I just wanted to spread it around because I feel like God really connected with me through it and showed me a piece of His heart that I have really been treasuring these last couple days since I read it. I figured you might get something awesome out of it as well. I really had wanted to talk about it a little more but I am getting all kinds of sick of typing right now and class is quickly approaching.

Thus, I think I'm just going to have to peace out.

BTW though, I just reread through this post and I feel like when I talk about jeans, it's even more boring for you than when I talk about music. Thus, that will never happen again.

Love life.

Peace out.