My cup, half full, runneth over.

Seven good things about having church at 1:30, in orem:
1. No worries about getting a shower in before church, there's plenty of time!
2. Sunday Brunch.  oh yeah.
3. Time to study scriptures so I can stop being a hypocrite at work.
4. It's not 7:30 church.
5. We get to feel like the pioneers, or rather, anyone outside of Utah who doesn't live within 5 minutes of a church.
6. My chapel isn't a biology lecture hall.
7. Apartment bonding on the way to and from church.

A true optimist would say: "oh good, that cup's half empty!  If it was completely full it would be more than I really want, and much too hard to drink without a straw."

P.S. - I forgot how i was going to post good news in my blog.  I have went back and fixed that.

Two Adventures:

Some time ago I made my first attempts at grilled chicken.  They looked something like road kill.  They still tasted pretty good, but it was probably the ugliest food I have ever had the pleasure of making.  Last week, I had some chicken left over from the peanut butter chicken pasta (which i didn't take a picture of, sadly) and it hadn't been frozen (which i think is what ruined the first batch)  After brining it for half an hour and grilling it with garlic salt and lemon pepper, and it was delicious and looked nothing like road kill.  The macaroni was good too.

This morning, we were tired of not having clean dishes due to lack of dishwasher fluid.  I told tyler dish soap works, but you have to be careful because it can makes a lot of bubbles, I guessed a quarter would be about right (i had done this before on my mission).  Turns out a quarter was not quite right.  The upside is that we now have a very clean floor.  

As you can see, I'm not quite living on the street, I've been bunking at Tyler's house for the last few days, and then on wednesday I can finally move into my new apartment, which is lovely and i love it, even though it's sort of out in the boonies.  Otherwise life is great, more to follow.  

No news...

So I was realizing today that there's not a lot of good news out there right now.  I scrolled all the way through my google news front page and just when I thought I had struck space gold with New Meteor Shower Discovered; May Uncover New Comet, (because that's way cool, right?)  I read the subtitle:

February Eta Draconids could be sign of hazardous comet, scientists say.

So on top of riots, murders, plunging stocks, and a general political farce, we have hazardous comets coming at us.  I think my favorite headline was this: "Surprise! Underwater volcano has erupted"

I 've decided, then, that I'm going to include a link to some good news in every blog I post.  Hopefully it can brighten everyone's day

I am not Prince Hamlet; nor was meant to be

I recently realized that I have changed in the past few years.  But first, a bit of prologue:

I spent a good amount of time trying to think of a new title for my blog.  I made Ammon Perkes: Human back when I got home from my mission, and had a very small identity crisis.  Crisis seems like such a strong word, I didn't freak out, I just noticed that most of the ways I had defined myself for the past two years were no longer applicable.  Anyway, that's no longer a problem, but it was tricky to think of a good title.  At first I looked for quotes from some of my favorite high school lit: Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, etc.  And I realized that these great existential investigations of vacillation and "idle discourse" were not so applicable to me as they once were.  What drew me to these works in high school was my own hesitation and inability to act for fear of failure or embarrassment.   I loved characters who for all their analysis and reason, were prisoners of their own doubts.

I'm still no Fortinbras.  The idea of making a decision that is permanent and will have a huge affect on the rest of my life does give me pause, and "thus the native hue of resolution is sickled ore with the pale cast of thought".  And I'm finding that there are more and more of these far reaching decisions.  "Do I dare?"  and "Do I Dare?"

Dreaming as the summers die

Nevertheless, the fact is, I just don't feel like I can quote the most emo of all of shakespeare's characters to epigraph my blog.  I really love my life, and am far too happy to feel sorry for myself. So, for now, Lewis will do nicely.  

new layout

Somehow 2 a.m. seemed like a good time to mess around with my blog, I'm done for tonight, i'll probably mess around with it more tomorrow, but I like it for the most part.

My last three weeks, in pictures: