Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

I'm on a train!

So I'm on my way back from salt lake, enjoying the plush seats, free wireless, and opportunities for people watching that the Frontrunner train provides.  I figured it was as good a time as any to finally update my blog.

2012 has been busy, this last semester especially.  But life is, for the most part, good.  I find that rap up of my life are sort of boring, so here's some recent stories:

Sometimes, when you are a man, you get hit by waves.  It's for fun. 

I just got back from california for christmas with the family.  It was great, and california is beautiful, and warm.  Every day I smiled as I was on the beach in shorts and saw that Provo was in the teens and snowing.  California was everything I could hope for, and I had time to finish the original pokemon, and Ocarina of Time, and Farenheit 451.  It's been a while since I've been able to just hang out without any real responsibility.  Some of that was because I've been putting off a paper I need to co-write, but you can't do work in california, it's just too pretty.

 I have all these photos, so I feel like I should try to get enough text to fill up the post.

How could anyone not walk out to that?

It certainly wouldn't be california if I didn't find a big patch of poison oak to roll around in, and it didn't disappoint.  On the water fall hike (the one that could have been the site for the hobbit) I spent a lot of time climbing on rocks and crawling around, and to my surprise, I found that my legs were covered in poison oak.  It pretty much all on the back of my legs, so it seems like I must have sat on some, which may  have happened when I was dropping through this cool tunnel in the rock, and pushing bushes out of the way.  Anyway, it's pretty itchy.

Elephant Seals!  They had new babies, which weren't actually that adorable.

Shadows are cool.  

Hanging out with nephews was fun, but I have mixed feelings about spending lots of time with lots of little kids.  I'm a big fan of kids, in small quantities.  I did have some good QT with Tanner, and I'm fairly certain I've won the coveted spot of Tanner's favorite uncle (although I don't know what the Wade side has in the way of competition).  I don't think I can compete with Isaac though for Ethan and Carter. It's hard to beat almost constant lego play.

I guess I should mention what I got for christmas.  This christmas felt less like christmas than most, probably because I wasn't at home (not quite sure where I call home these days) and the days leading up the christmas felt pretty standard.  We did do all the christmas stuff: Davey's first christmas, the Nativity, the Night Before Christmas, etc.  It was good.  I think another contributing factor in the lack of christmas was the fact that presents just aren't as exciting for me anymore.  For quite a while I've had enough cash on hand to buy the things I really wanted, and so I don't have a big list, and then I think there just aren't as many things that I feel like I really need anymore, but I'm not at the point where I'm buying lots of presents for other people, so I'm sort of stuck between the two meanings of Christmas.

That said, I am getting a pretty sweet Craftsman tool set.  I'm excited to break it open and go to town on my scooter this week, which has been on the fritz ever since it got cold.  I also got a game, and bought myself some clothes from old navy's after xmas sale.

Best made gift so far?  The Family Historians will have to decide

On the giving end, I did make one of the cooler made gifts I've done so far.  We ended up making a bunch of canvasses for a ward activity that I organized, so I learned how to do that, and so I figured I could make some cool stencils for Cami, or some of her favorite things.  After I got to her house, I realized she has more decoration than she actually has room for, but they turned out pretty cool, I want to make a couple for me, but I don't quite have the energy at the moment.

Oh, good.  It's snowing in Provo.


Anyway, I'm almost to my station, this train thing is lovely.  It seems like this would be a good time to make some sort of new years resolution and wrap up 2012, but I don't really like year long resolutions, and I feel like no one wants to here about me reflecting on last year.  I am going to do something new this next year and try to do monthly challenges.  Last year I tried for a month to wake up every day at a reasonable hour and do something meaningful.  It went ok.  This year I'm going to do something like that every month, and post about it.  The first month isn't very exciting, I'm going to try to exercise every day, I'm not getting fat, but I would like to actually be in good condition, so I can win sports and run races.  So that's this month, later months might be more interesting, we'll see. If you have any suggestions for month long challenges that would make me a beter person, I'm open for that too.  Happy January!

We took a quick stop to middle earth

Marine life, it's alive! 

Wait, what's this? An update? Oh yeah, I remember those

Sometimes life is hard, and after I have a couple weeks (or a whole semester) of intense college, things slow down, but I'm just so burned out from all the college that I have a hard time motivating myself to do the little bit of homework I have.  It feels a bit like this:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
(there are one or two examples of scantily censored profanity, if reading that sort of thing would offend you)

The point of all this is that I've had a busy Autumn, but I'm coming to the tail end of it, and I'll try to post in this again, since it's how I keep in touch with my family, and that's important.  Otherwise we'll have way too much to talk about when Christmas rolls around.  The other point is that I have a little bit of chemistry homework, and I'm just not in the mood, but then I am a Perkes after all.  Back to work.

~Some sort of Wizard
P.S. - this weekend it got snowy

Not sure why this was sideways before

and the living is easy

Once again it's been too long.  Nothing too momentous has happened, but there have been lots of adventures.  Here's a short list (in reverse chronological order) :

Today I made Teriyaki chicken and rice, banana muffins, and taffee, and played some games, like Jenga.  Turns out that if you play jenga to the inception music, it becomes the most dramatic thing you've ever done.  But in all fairness, that's probably true for anything.  Today was also my last week of church here at centennial.  Next week is stake conference, and then I get kicked out when my contract ends, and roughly a week later I'll be moving in to my new ward.  So hopefully more adventures will ensue.

This past week my parents and Isaac came out from mississippi and we had all sorts of adventures.  Not all of them are pictured here, but we backpacked in the Uintas and went up to this resevoir where we swam.  I was hoping for cool rocks to dive off of, but didn't find any at the reservoir.  Cami and I did swim across the resevoir and back, which was wonderful, and inspired me to start swimming again, once school starts I can swim in the pool again, so hopefully I'll keep my motivation and make that happen.  We did find a great place up in the mountains to swim, but as I was swimming, there aren't really any pictures of it, though I did get a cool shot of the rock we jumped off.  Check out my google+ for all the pictures.

 A couple weeks ago, some friends and I hiked Timpanogos peak.  We left early enough to see the sun rise as we were starting the hike, which was beautiful, and definitely worth waking up a little early (I'm not convinced that making it to the peak to see the sunrise is worth it.  That hike was tough). On the way down we hung out at that little lake that you can see, and there someone swam.  I probably would have swam, but it was cold (the air, the water obviously was too), and I was wearing jeans.  So no swimming there.

 I watched the Dark Knight Rises (after watching the Dark Knight on a projector in our apartment) it was great, I think it ended the trilogy perfectly, and while it wasn't as much fun as the other two, it was a great movie.  My summer has been pretty evenly split between movies and outdoor adventures, which is great.

 My scooter turned 4000, which is cool.  I'm still working on fixing it up since i crashed a while back, now I just need to switch out a wire so that the blinker will work again, then I can get my license (since right now I don't think it's technically street legal, and so they probably wouldn't give it to me) Also pictured here is my smart phone, which has been great.  Actually all of these pictures were taken on my phone, which made it easy to post on my blog.  The future is totally happening these days.

 More cooking, I made stuffed french toast, with cream cheese, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  It was fantastic, although not quite as good as when my roommate makes it.  We've done a lot of brunches.  I'm getting fairly decent at making pancakes and waffles that put iHop to shame.

And it's now been over a month, but I visited Mississippi and got to check out the new Perkes house, of which I approve.  It was my first summer back in mississippi since 2008, and it sure was hot.  I'm not quite sure how I survived all those years down there, but i definitely appreciate the weather here in Utah.  I managed to make it up to Jackson for the first time in a long time and spend some time in the old stomping grounds and see some people.  That was fun.

So that's about the gist of my life.  Summer is winding down, and I still have a few adventures to fit in before the end.  This next weekend I'm headed down to Zions, which will be great.  I also read on occasion, I've read quite a few books this summer, which has been nice.  Next on the list is the Catcher in the Rye and Fahrenheit 451.

Summertime really is one of my favorite times.

"Grateful for the Moisture"

 I just got back from my trip to Mississippi.  It was pretty fun.  The new house is great, but Mississippi weather is still a bit unpleasant. Here's some pictures:

We went rug shopping.  It was fairly unsuccessful

Incidentally, I got a smart phone.  It's my new favorite thing, and the camera isn't too shabby

There are squirrels in Mississipi.  This one was chilling on our fence.

It's raining here in Utah today, which is good, we've had lots of fires, and some were still burning, so hopefully things have calmed down a little.  I know I've been in Utah for a while when I'm grateful and a bit relieved when is starts raining, even though it means getting all soggy while biking around.  So that's the news.  I need to get a new 30 day goal for this month, waking up early was a good call last month.

11 Future Experiments

As the result of a TED talk, I decided to take on a 30 day challenge this month, and maybe every month.  I've been waking up at 8am every day, and trying to do something meaningful.  Admittedly, sometimes the meaningful something is going back to sleep, but for the most part it's been a month of productive mornings.  Today I went on a 25ish mile bike ride.  Yesterday I got ready for Church.  Saturday I was camping, and I woke up and read in my hammock and gathered a bit of firewood.  I've also been reading Walden by Thoreau, which is a good catalyst for life changes.  Here are some possible future 30 day experiences:

• 30 days w/o facebook 
• 30 days of vegetarianism (Turns out Thoreau talks a bit about not eating meat)
• A Picture a day for 30 days
• No text messaging for 30 days
• Writing in my journal every day for 30 days (or my blog, but my journal would be more meaningful)
• Draw/Paint something every day for 30 days (there was a time when I wanted to be an artist, now I just doodle)
• Learn a new magic trick each day and perform it for someone
• Practice Piano every day
• Spend one month learning a new skill, practicing it each day: Archery? Guitar? Basketball?  Dance?  Sewing?  Fishing?  There are a lot of options for this one
• Learn, and use, a new word a day
• Learn a new language (I think I could make a lot of headway in any of the romance languages in 30 days)

So those are some cool things I could try in the future.  If you have any suggestions, let me know, I might not do them, but then I also might. If nothing else, it would make for some good blog material.   

a list:

A short list of adventures yet to be achieved this summer (some may be combined):

Sleep under the stars
Go mountain biking at sundance
Backpacking
Southern Utah
Do a triathlon
Create a triathlon
Make donuts
Go tubing
Play pool spoons
Hike Timp
Play baseball in the sandlot

I'll keep adding to this list, and crossing things off as I go, feel free to make suggestions.

No rest for the wiki'd

It's June!  Summer is finally here and flying by, it's been a while, and I've had some exciting times.  There's all sorts of stuff on facebook, showing my adventures, but here's what's been going on:

That house rents out their hose for $20.  It's a racket,
but absolutely worth it.  

 I got called as the ward fhe co-chair, so I get to occasionally organize even more expensive expansive activities than before.  For our opening ward fhe we set up a slip-and-slide at Rock Canyon Park, which, as you can see, has a pretty decent hill.  It turns out our tarp wasn't as long as we had hoped. (Happily it's longer than it looks.) The grass at the end really just made it more fun.  I'm back in my ward from last summer, so I've also been going on crazy bike rides with my Bishop, having game nights with the people, and we even took a stab at another pool movie night.  It's wasn't perfect, but it went a lot better than last time.

Thanks to Dan for the action shots

 A few weeks ago I went out to california to do a mud race with Amy, it wasn't quite as muddy as I had expected, which was absolutely fine with me.  It was extremely fun, and I managed to get 18th or so overall, which is not too shabby, considering I only ran about three times in preparation for this.  But it was a blast, definitely not the last time I'm going to do that.  California was great, it was cool to see my Wade nephews, who are pretty awesome.  Katie's right, Tanners 'Aye' really grows on you, especially when he's dressed in pirate garb.  Now I just need an excuse and an inexpensive way to visit the east coast.  I sort of fell in love with california, to be honest.  It's really rather beautiful, and windy winding roads in the dark are exciting.  My friend Dan came out, which made it an adventure.   The summer of one thousand adventures is going well.

Muir Woods, basically Middle Earth. 

 In addition to vacations and adventures, I organized an intramural team, which was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  It turns out captaining a team and getting people together and stuff is actually really rewarding.  We didn't quite win, we had some bad luck and two of our best girls were unable to make it to one of our playoff games.  But I realized that having organized, official matches in soccer is entirely too much fun to avoid, and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this for the rest of college and after.

There are some other things going on; work, research, my ongoing attempts to figure out the balance between being impossible to please and settling, but there's really nothing of note in that regard, so once something exciting happens in work, research, or dating, I'll try to get around to writing it down.  In the mean time, I'll be living the dream here in Provo.  For all my doubts, this place turned out alright.