I'm confused...

My sister confuses me. This is a small tidbit of our conversation today about her breaking up with the boy she's dating as he's soon leaving on a mission.

Me: "But all you do is talk. You may not even see him again until he's about to leave."
"Emily": "I know that, and then I will be single again."
Me: "And? Is that a problem? It never seemed to bother you before."
"Emily": "It does not bother me at all."
Me: "Then why bring it up?"
"Emily": "You brought it up, not me."
Me: "No, you're the one who brought up being single again."
"Emily":"I know. And now that I think about it, I will be really excited about being single again."

Yeah, my sister is confusing.

Mom Says No Spooning

The following is an actual conversation of of how a silly conversation turns awkward fast, all done through text messages.

Me: There is no spoon.
Brother: To what?
Me: To life?
Brother: Mom says no spooning.
Me: ...
Me: Why?
Brother: Mom says morals.
Me: Yes... But what does that have to do with there being no spoon?
Brother: Um, I don't know.
Brother: We asked her opinion about what you said about there being no spoon, and she came up with spooning.
Me: Odd.
Brother: Did you find your spoon?
Me: There is no spoon. You cannot find that which is not there. It is like saying that the cake, which is a lie, is actually not a lie.
Brother: That makes no sense.
Me: It makes perfect sense! Cause there is no spoon and the cake is a lie!
Brother: What cake?
Me: The cake.
Brother: Is this cake real?
Me: No. That is why it is a lie.

It fortunately got silly again, but it got awkward fast.

Mother's Day

This weekend I took the opportunity to return to my parent's house in the vast outreaches of Tooele this weekend to visit for Mother's Day, and also to talk to my brother on the mission who got to call home today cause it was Mother's Day.

So his call went well, we talked with him, shared our testimonies, had fun with that. Earlier we went to my Grandmother's place in West Valley; visiting her for about an hour before heading to my family's sacrament meeting and awaiting my brother's call afterward.

Anywhat I discovered that my Grandma has some old bibles, like really old bibles. There is one that my dad used in his childhood that is 159 years old or so, leather-bound and nice looking. the other is definitely older, 200 years old at least. It's not in good condition or anything, but it's a tie to ancestors. That's awesome.

So that's all that I have to report except that I do indeed love my mother.

Have a great day y'all.

Espionage

Growing up I should have picked up on it sooner, I mean it was staring me right in the face but I didn't connect the dots until last week and then it all made sense. I mean when a guy in a heavy accent who refers to himself as Boris asking for my sister Natasha (Whose name isn't Natasha by the way) You think that maybe there is some ongoing school project, or it's an inside joke with a friend, never mind the long distance calls, the strange packages for her, letters written in a language that looked Russian and oddly timed departures with friends to do who knows what.

Of course I just thought she was weird; heck I'm the oldest brother, don't most brothers think their sisters are weird at that age?

But then it all connected last week when she was telling me about a dream she had. She dreampt that all five of us kids were together and that for some reason or another I accused her, in the dream, that she would be the most likely to betray us and be a traitor and she asked me what I thought about it; clearly thinking it was an innocent enough question. But with that question all the pieces fell into place and I knew what it all meant. My sister is a Soviet-Russian spy.

There was no other explanation, and when asking her about it I clearly saw the brief look of panic as she realized the impossible; that I knew her secret. She of course denied any activity of engaging in espionage with foreign countries, but I knew better.

Immediately upon learning the truth, I thought I would best warn my parents of my sister's traitorous behavior. I sent a quick text to my father saying that his beloved daughter was actually a spy. Though I expected some exclamation, some grief, some incredulousness, I was not prepared for his response.

When his response returned my heart sunk with horror upon reading the words, "That's cool, I want to be one too."

Clearly she had gotten to him long ago, softening him up with soviet propaganda, filling his head with lies. I knew not what to believe. Upon sharing my revelation with my younger brother I soon realized how deep the treachery went, cause he constantly defended her, saying that it wasn't possible that our sister was spy. But the most odd was that at bits and pieces his accent changed slightly, and his arguments seemed highly practiced to be some on the spot defense. I knew that he must be a spy too.

Of course the government doesn't believe me; I have no evidence, nothing to justify what I already know.

So it is my shame to report that my family are Soviet Russian spies. If I don't make it past the next two days, I hope one of you can do me this one favor. If I die I will transmit my last moments with them before they kill me to a wireless device hidden inside a locker in the airport. The key and instructions to get to the locker are hidden in the tower of my desktop above the dvd drive.

I wish you all the best, for it may already be too late.

Awkwardness Squared

You know how you have days where you just feel awkward, that anything and everything you do is awkwardly intensified by all normal expectations? Well without giving any awkward details to really implicate myself or cause others to pity or fear me by the sheer amount of awkward that was exhibited (I'm pretty sure if awkward could be tapped into as a fuel source, there would be no energy problems for the next twenty years); I'll just say that last night was one of those nights.

To those who may have seen my awkward fumbling; I apologize. There was no good reason for it.

And in other news, I don't like Dell at the moment. Not at all.

My sister is currently attending Snow college and got a lot of grants and school loans, insomuch that she (through our Father) bought a Dell laptop. Now about two or three weeks ago it started intermittently giving the blue screen of death and shutting down. Well the first logical thing to do was to scan for viruses and do a system rollback. After that happened, it still occurred, always randomly, and it hasn't stayed on the screen long enough to really see what it says.
Anywhat, after that we tried re-imaging the laptop back to factory conditions, thinking that would work. It didn't. As it didn't seem to be the operating system, and inexplicably lacking the operating system cd, we connected with Dell online. The online tech looked at some files, some debugger files and concluded that we should re-image the laptop. Again.
So we do it, and the problem happens again. This time we call, through a series of calls and annoying procedures just to get to an agent, to see what else they would recommend and to get them to send us the Operating System CD; which after tremendous hassle they did.

So with the Operating System CD that we got last Tuesday we tried reformatting the hard drive (well, there were two partitions, one for the OS and one for everything else), doing this over the phone with my sister. That didn't work, she still got the blue screen errors. Not to mention problems my sister had with installing the drivers, but that isn't exactly Dell's fault...

Now my family drove down to Ephraim, picking me up along the way to celebrate my sister's birthday (she's now 19. *Sigh* They grow up so quickly) and so while down there I reformatted the hard drive, deleted the small partition so everything is together (and hoping that doesn't invalidate her warranty) reinstalled windows and ran 'chkdsk /r' to check to see if the hard drive is the problem. Nothing popped up. So I installed the drivers. And it gave me the error again.

So now I am downloading some debugger utility to see what the dump file says and if nothing else, calling Dell and doing some major complaining.

So yeah, I am not pleased with Dell. Not pleased at all.

Operation Christmas: Day 7

Today has been a good day for the 12 days of Christmas. One of the dudes is still trying to catch me it seems, so far no luck.
Also the girls apartment, with that girl who made those comments, well another answered the door today and started laughing when she saw what I left. She apparently thinks that a group of people is doing this and that "we" are quick.

By quick meaning that they were preparing to go to a relief society meeting and had left ther door open a crack, and that I managed to put everything down silently and get down the stairs after ringing the doorbell without them seeing me.
Oh, here is the paper I left:

Yes, I left Penguin figures, I saw a bunch at a dollar store for 60 cents each, all fragile, and I delivered them about. Here are some pictures of them




In other news, my mom fractured her wrist last night; she was putting up decorations and fell off the ladder. She apparently needs surgery and will go in tomorrow or Tuesday for it, as my sister tells me it was broken in a few places. Hopefully everything turns out alright. Apart from that, I believe she is ok.

My math final is also tomorrow. Whoopee.

My Best Picture

You know how a few months back I posted a picture of me in a top hat? Well the picture that I am about to post is probably my sexiest, most handsome picture ever. I won't be surprised if all my female readers fall instantly in love with me just because of how cute and irresistible I am in the picture below.

You see, I was at home this weekend and my parents had dug out some old photos, and I decided I was going to scan it, only I forgot and I called my brother to do it. So sometime later I'll replace the photo with a color picture when my family figures out how to scan color photos. But I have decided to show you that at one point in time, I was indeed cuter than Brad Pitt himself.


So yes, this is me at my prime when I was ten years old or so, leaning on the basketball. Now... well, now I am old, blind and complain about going to school and home uphill both ways. Elder Fields is the one on his knees, and that little four or five year who looks absolutely thrilled is Dan. And yes ladies, he is available! He turned 16 in April and has yet to go on a date, so if any of you have any interested younger sisters, we'll see if we can't set up some double/group date sort of thing.

Does he know I am plugging him shamelessly? Nope. Not at all. Does it matter? Not so much. But I can tell you he is an intelligent, funny, witty young man, so if you have young sisters who would like to go on a date with a sixteen year old Adonis, just let me know.

If not, well you young ladies all know at least what our male children would look like. If that's not incentive, I don't know what is.


I am of course entirely kidding; I don't expect to be married until my early nineties. You remember that Episode of Boy Meets World where Shawn turns Feeny's home into a temporary Bed and Breakfast and the honeymoon couple turns out be be a couple in their nineties? That's me. Of course, our children will still be devilishly handsome.

Missionary Update

My brother has now been in the MTC for a week now, hence forth to be referred to as Elder Fields. He is doing well, he feels a little inadequate about how much he is progressing, but I sent him a letter telling him that he is being ridiculous. Anyways, here is snippet of what he wrote, edited for spelling;

My entire district likes me so much. They always get a good laugh when I'm around. I made the mistake of showing/sharing with them my voice talents and now they won't leave me alone about it. They all claim they will miss me so much and life in the mission field just won't be the same without me.

So, something I hadn't mentioned before is that Elder Fields does a lot of voices, he's great at it, his favorite may be Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.

also

The reality of the situation hit me Thursday morning and I felt a little homesick. A quick prayer cheered me up and I felt better. Satan has been working hard on me not stop since I got here to make me feel miserable. The dark weather Thursday and Friday, plus Satan's grip just made me feel worse but I discovered that by praying hard daily, Satan's power would leave and I could be in peace.

They (the MTC) have thrown the first discussion down our throats over and over again since we got here. We were all sure we knew them but we were nervous anyway when we went to teach and be taught on Saturday. We all thought we did horribly and have had plenty of time to improve since then. Everyone else seems to have improved so much more than I have. They've gone miles and I've gone inches.

So that is what he has written, Updates will follow weekly, or more often depending on how often he decides to write.

You think I would have gone home on another weekend...

As I may have mentioned, I went home for the weekend. Friday night my mom, brother and me went to the Jordan River Temple, if I can get those pictures soon, I will post them. My brother is excited to go to the MTC in a month or so, so that's good and he is seriously doing some preparing. 50 minute a day scripture reading and what not, so yeah, beware Chicago.

On the flip side, I picked an unfortunate weekend to come home because Breaking Dawn came out and my sister is one of those fanatics who insist that Bells and Eddie (I see no need to call them by their full names) are in love because, well they are, goshdangit!
So we frequently have discussions about it, about them all being Mary Sues and all.
As for my part, I don't care that the books are out there, or that my sister likes to read them. I have read books just for fun that didn't have any message, but just read to read, like the Boxcar Children or Animorphs (years and years ago). But what I get is level of fanaticism that the series is receiving, both from the foaming at the mouth fans (sorry if you are one) and all the reviews it receives from New York Times and what not. I mean, it's not very well written, the characters don't develop nor is there much of a plot. I am not going to rant about it, there are other blogs that do so and are funny.
Lets just leave it at that I don't think that the Twilight Series is as good a series that everyone claims it is. From what I have heard about Breaking Dawn is that Eddie nor Jacob fight each other or dies (except more strange stuff that I won't go into) nor do they get into a tussle with the Voltari. I have heard that it comes pretty close, but not close enough. Sadness.

Of course the book only confirms that Bells wants Eddie for his body and nothing else. Ending Twilight Rant.

So, Also some Hobby Game store opened up Saturday and had a mini competition that my friend Brian told me about. It's about 5600 west, 2739 south or so, it is a little difficult to find, but it is near Bajio or some Mexican Restaurant. Anyways, they had a small Settlers of Katan game, to six points, which I won, and later a Ticket to Ride game which I didn't do so well in. But those participating were entered into a drawing to win a gift certificate for their store, which I found out Saturday night that I won, and will probably pick it up Friday or so.

Also a radio station person, KBull I think, was there and were giving out tickets to an Emerson Drive/Charlie Jenkins concert thing in South Jordan Wednesday night.

So I believe that is all for now. Tune in next time I suppose.

The calling

My brother has received his mission call to the Chicago Illinois South Mission. He enters the MTC on September 10th. That is all.

Today

I decided to split things up so you all wouldn't have so much to read in one post.

So, I have decided to post todays schedule, just because.

I am currently at work, supposed to be studying about CSS/PHP, whichh it appears that obviously I am not doing. Later on at four I have an appointment with a personal counselor. Why you ask? Because for some reason or another I have low self esteem issues. Yes Giovanni, you may have just guessed correctly, it is Swiket's fault. I have become so tormented by the truth spoken by Swiket that the very perception of myself has been shattered. And yes Swiket, I will be sending you the bill! Well, technically there is no bill as I am a student and BYU students get free counseling, but if there were a bill, you would get it!
On the serious side, it is just some things that I am getting resolved. Then I'll be driving for an hour in the blasted sun with no AC. Officially I will be home for a couple of hours to grab some camping supplies for this weekend so my family doesn't have to stuff themselves into the family van like sardines with everything that needs to be taken. Did I mention I'll be attending a family reunion in Fishlake National forest this weekend? If I didn't. I did now.
As for the other reason I have reason to visit, well lets just say that there is a very cool and awesome girl in the neighborhood who I shall call... Daniela. Why Daniela? Because she's just too cool to give a nym or nickname really. Anyways Daniela would be my partner in texting, we constantly text each other, and I have been hanging out with her the times I have gone home I have hung out with her. She speaks Spanish as well, has visited Mexico (for a school trip I think) and is just generally awesome.
To which bring to point the inherent boredom that is Tooele. It is hard to think of good things to do, but finally after sorting through the options and discovering that the local observatory is closed on certain days, she agreed to visit the Black Rock, which is a big boulder in the shores of the Great Salt Lake that I have seen people on. Neither of has has gone and it only a few miles from the Tooele exit that I figure it would be cool to visit.
Well not just cool, its more than that. Assuming we can climb the rock, we'll be on a huge boulder with mountains to our back (and a freeway, but that doesn't count, nor does Kennecott) and the Salt Lake in front of us, Antelope Island in the distance and the sun setting, well two hours from officially setting but you get the idea. So it is so much more than awesome. Is it a date? Dunno. It could definitely be a date, but I told my dad it was probably more of a hang out activity, but I told him that more so my siblings don't make a big deal of me going out or hanging out with her, because as younger siblings, they tend to do that sort of thing. If you have any other ideas just to make the Black Boulder cooler, let me know. Other than that, I will be driving home later on in the evening.
So yes, that is my day today.

Mission Call

Well, it finally happened. My brother got his papers submitted to go on a mission. He is extremely happy, and has been restless because his orthodontist wouldn't sign the medical part of the mission papers until his braces neared coming off.
So in a few weeks, he will have his mission call.

But of course Mr. Green Giant, you know this only puts more pressure on you to get your papers submitted right? After all, if not for your "supposed" laziness, you would have a two year head start. Now how would it look if the Marshmellow Shrieker got his papers in before you eh?

Oh, and Green Giant, don't tell my brother I nicknamed him the Marshmellow Shrieker, I would not hear the end of it, and you know it. He'd probably break some noise ordinance, or get charged for disturbing the peace or something knowing how quiet the town is.