A few great days

Check out the matching bowls.  We're so classy.

So, fun times here in Provo Town.  Saturday I went rafting on the provo river with Carly and Rich and Paula.  Me and rich bought some little rafts which turned out to be just flimsy enough to make rafting really really fun.  That night, I also went to the hot springs in Spanish Fork with a big group of people.  That was a lot more fun than I expected, and the hot springs were really nice.

Sunday we made Mango Curry, as seen here, which was delicious. I took a stab at making naan.  It wasn't the best naan ever made, but it was surprisingly good.

Today, I went with my bishop and rode alpine loop, which, all told, was 54 miles.  That's more miles than i've ever done in my life, and it by far the hardest ride I've ever gone on, a lot of up hill, and then some amazing down hill.  The view was beautiful.  I wish I'd had my camera, but i didn't really have a good place to put it anyway.  The watrer on the road past apen grove was flooding over the road, so in case anyway had their doubts, now we know that vasco can handle water.  Well I'm falling asleep a lot.  I'm going to take a quick nap.  I'll update this with pictures and such later.

It's like a tree of exhaustion

That summer seemed to last forever

Before

After

About a month and a half ago, I decided to make my apartment comfortable.  It's interesting how that decision, was really part of a larger goal of making new friends and being able to invite people over to my house for games and things.  It's taken a lot longer than I expected, and cost just a little bit more.


So far I think the total cost is up around $50 dollars, it's interesting though how having a comfortable apartment has changed who I am.  Somehow, in the process of redoing my apartment, I've become "artistic" and "creative" and while i suppose that was sort of the idea, I don't really think about myself that way, and don't feel that anything required any particular artistic ability or talent, just a little bit of spare
time, something I have plenty of.

Before  

 Weirder still is hearing that I am "the guy" or "the life of the party" things i've never really been or even really wanted to be.  Along with the weekly dinners that have just gotten more and more ambitous.  (this week we're planning on making mango curry), we're now doing game night every sunday with dessert, and bringing in ten to twenty people from two wards.

After

We rearranged the furniture to make it more comfortable and convenient for having lots of people.  We bought a lamp (something that was way over due anyway) so that we would be able to do things after it was dark without it feeling so depressing.  I wonder if the apartment has been changing as a result of being more out going, or if being more out going is a result of having a more welcoming apartment.  

So in other news, life is great.  I paid off my bike, so I'm done with landscaping, which is exciting and just a little bit sad.  I went mountain biking the other day, which was super fun.  We went to sundance, you can carry the bikes up the ski lift and then ride them down.  It was without question the most fun i've ever had on a bike.

The fourth of July was fun too.  We hiked up to the side of a mountain and watched the fireworks from there, it was awesome.

The bombs bursting in air

"You're a Perkes, and Perkes can do hard things"

Following my recent resolution to do hard things, I spent two weeks tirelessly not practicing the piano.  I spent hours and hours putting it off, rationalizing, and generally forgetting.  Everyday I woke up and went right to not practicing the piano.  I could not possibly have spent more time not practicing piano, and so after two weeks, I can definitively say that I have not learned a piece of music.

The problem, you see, is there are just too many things I want to do, and not enough time to do all of them.  And sure, I suppose I could spend less time working, or bike riding (either to and from working, or otherwise), or napping to recover from said working and bike riding, or playing games and watching movies with friends to make my days more than just working, bike riding, and napping; but the fact is, I enjoy all those things much more than the prospect of sitting by myself in my room knocking out some piano piece just so that I can post about it on my blog.

Instead, here's the last seven days, by the numbers:

Hours spent working outside: 14

Hours spent working inside: 19.1

Hours spent biking: 5

Avg. Hours of sleep per day: 7

Missionaries taught: 12

Other people taught: 10

Avg. sports played per day (including bike riding): 1.57
Unique Games (of the indoor board/card variety) played: 7
Most people in my house playing werewolf at one time: 18
Highest Bowling Score: 169
Lowest Bowling Score 79
Smors Eaten: 3
Average number of Yogurt cups eaten per day: 1.67
Sandwiches consumed: ≥20
Episodes of Power Rangers watched: 3
Temperature inside house last night at midnight: 86 degrees F
Dollars spent today on box fan: 5.35

I would still like to do hard things, but I have to choose things that I can do that don't require so much dedicated time that can happen incidental to my normal fun life.

It needs a name...Carla? La Tigra? I'll work on it.

msrp: $1069.
Actual Cost: 80 Hours of surprisingly therapeutic landscaping

First and foremost, behold!  The Cannondale Caad 8 6 Tiagra, a very decent road bike and now the most valuable thing that I own, having beaten out my MacBook.

Today I was listening to Sufjan Stevens and pondering about weeding as a sort of existential allegory for life.  By any measure, weeding is an utterly futile exercise.  Nearly before you're done weeding, new weeds have already begun to grow.  This can become a bit daunting, but if everybody weeds just a bit every day, then there would be no weeds in the world.  Then of course you have to consider the moral relativity of weeding, since a weed is just a plant you don't happen to want where it's growing.  Some weeds are the offspring of plants from just a dozen yards away, where they were planted and where they are wanted and where other plants were being removed as weeds.  Even if you hate them, you do have to appreciate the resilience and determination.  I found a little plant that was growing through a stick and rather successfully splitting it in two.

Banana Muffins,  a delicious last resort

One of the most interesting things I found as I was sitting out in the parking lot waiting for Dave, the bikeshop owner who i've been doing all this for, that after several hours of weeding today, when I saw a couple weeds growing up through the cement I had this very innate compulsion to pull them out.

So i'm pretty stoked about the new bike and I can't wait to take it out.  I just realized, to my chagrin, that I only have one bike lock, so it looks like my other bike will be living on the balcony for a while.

So life is great.  I finally went grocery shopping.  You know it's been too long when your only option for breakfast food is banana muffins with an egg borrowed from your roommate.

But, luckily, he kept his wits and his purple crayon.

Last night's dream was trippy.  So first of all, for whatever reason, I've transformed into this very tall, super athletic guy.  And there are two of me.   So we're in Japan with this girl I dated a little bit.  And I'm on some sort of secret mission and I have to infiltrate this dock, which I've just gotten to by airplane.  I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I distinctly remember there was Saki involved.  Somehow I pulled that off, because I and this girl went back to her parents house.  Her parents are japanese, which is odd because she is not.  So we are sleeping (each in our own beds), or I guess we're not sleeping, because we're both awake, because then she comes over and starts straight up attacking me.  As we talked it out, I learn she's actually a werewolf.  So that's a bit of a set back in this already somewhat rocky relationship.  But I'm willing to work through this, and I was just trying to understand the mechanics of this and wrap my mind around this idea, since I know that werewolf's don't actually exist, but there she is.

I think sunday game night may have had a lot to do with this, as The Werewolves of Miller Hollow was the game of choice, although I don't think said girl was actually ever the werewolf.

I've decided to do something new.  Every week I'm going to pick something that is inherently difficult for me and then work at it until I get it, and then pick something new.  I'm going to get a list of things going, including this like don't use facebook, hold a pen without spinning it around my fingers, ride my bike to park city, etc.  This week i'm going to learn a real piece of music.  I haven't decided yet what it's going to be.  If nothing else, it'll give me something to write about.

As you might have guessed, Harold and the Purple Crayon arrived in the mail today.  My apartment is almost complete, I just need a trip to target and some help with Harold, and we'll be in business.

When I grow up I want to have a cool blog.

Sometimes I make new friends and read their blogs and wish I were more creative and witty so that my blog would be as cool as theirs.  Maybe I just need to do more interesting things so that I can write interesting things about them.  Or maybe I could make something up that's interesting and write interesting things about that.  Or maybe I could just figure out how to write about normal things in interesting ways.

Today I took a nap, and that was not terribly interesting, although it was one of the most enjoyable things i've done all week.

Let's try that again.

So I was taking a nap today.  Historically I haven't been a big fan of naps.  I mostly just never saw a reason to sleep during the day when there were fun things to be done.  I think it was in the MTC when I started to see that naps are one of the miracles of modern life.

So I'm taking this nap, and I had this dream.  I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt (in real life, not in the dream) which seemed to have a positive effect, because often I dream that I'm wearing whatever I'm wearing in real life, which, more often than not, causes me to be embarrassingly underdressed for my dreams.  In this dream I was at my friends' condo waiting for a choral concert.  I was talking to people, your normal provo activity.  Then the concert finished and there was that awkward post-concert time when you want to hang out with people but they're busy talking to other people who you don't know and don't really have anything to say.  I assume somewhere in between there was, in fact, a concert, but I don't remember it, so I guess it wasn't anything special.  Having left that, I was talking to these two girls I had just met (in the dream, not in real life) who were shamelessly flirty, and I woke up realizing that that sort of thing is a bit of a turn off.

The moral of this story is, of course, that taking 3 hour naps at 2p.m. will make it somewhat difficult to sleep at 2a.m.

What lavender smells like:

This afternoon was kneeling in the sun at my landscaping job spreading out rocks and listening to Radio Lab.  Next to me there was this little shrub.  As I caught a whiff of it I suddenly remembered very clearly my first kiss, and really everything about that relationship.  I remembered that this little bush was lavender (I had seen the tag on it another day).  Turns out that perfume was lavender too, who knew?

I think it's fascinating how smells can bring back such vivid and emotional memories.

I also find it interesting how rewarding and completely exhausting landscaping work is.  After i got home (which admittedly required a slightly up-hill 8 mile bike ride, which probably contributed to the exhaust) I passed out on the couch and stayed there for two hours until i had to get up to play soccer.  So now I'm tired, in the best way.  Now I'm going to go play cities and knights.