Missions, Newsies, Finals, Basketball, and Ambushes.

As requested, I have finally written another blog, feel free to go to youtube or something and ignore this.

Yes the papers are in and I am nervous as can be.  Two years is a long time to not go swimming.  But it will be good, i know that.  But I am more excited than anything else.  It's a weird excitement.  It's like winning a lifetime supply of ice cream.  It's obviously a good thing, but there are things you worry about.  Like where you are gonna store all this ice cream, and what if you get sick or become lactose intolerant, or what if it all melts and breaks through the containers and floods everything?  All reasonable concerns.  But I am excited, very much!

Newsies is something that now plays in my head all the time.  As I sit in physical geography talking about tornados and hurricanes I think about Santa Fe.  Or in my journalism class, I just want to rip up any newspapers I see and let the World know, cause Hearst and Pullitzer have I got news for you.  Yes I can't explain this phenomenon, no one can in fact.  I think channel eight is gonna do a special on my case.  I named it newsie.....itis.  Very original.

Finals are coming up and that should be fun, especially since I have a disease that makes me think I am Christian Bale in a newsboys cap.  Also physical geography is not exciting.  Fortunately my sociology final was cancelled because my teacher is afraid of fixing a technical error so he just gives up.  

Basketball is the worst distraction ever.  I play at least twice a week, plus the NBA playoffs are on and I love it!  It is where amazing happens.  Just listen to the Kanye West song where he sings about how amazing he is.  I think he might be the most humble person ever.  But yes, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce have cut seriously into my study time.  I think basketball though is the best sport ever, I love it.

Finally, on a more serious note.  Ambushes weren't fun in Vietnam and they aren't fun now.  Especially when its friends ambushing their friends.  It hurts to think that some of my friends had to be ambushed with words of hurt.  I hope that never happens again, cause its not fair and painful.  It still hurts me to think about, and I wasn't even involved.  But I am proud of my friends who stood up for themselves and each other, they are all very strong individuals who I admire.  

Anyways, those are my thoughts on life.  I'm on a boat!  Ma'a Salamma!

"Late" Rent and Traffic School

Hello all, finally I have something worth posting that isn't lame or confusing like my previous post, which I formally apologize for.  Moving on...

This month I paid my rent as usual, or so I thought.  On the sixth day of the month however, I was told by one of my roommates, his girlfriend actually, that a CA person had come to the door looking for me.  She had a letter for me in her hand but couldn't give it to anyone but me.  I went to the front desk to inquire of the letter.  Honestly I was excited, maybe it was finally my acceptance letter to Hogwarts or the Jedi school which I know is out there somewhere.  I was deeply disappointed when an angry woman who was trumping toward me with much rage handed me a letter saying i was being fined for not paying my rent.  I said, "Holy moses!  This can't be right, i payed my rent."  The woman, who was older and was offended when I asked if she was the CA that came to my door, (she was the woman at my door, just not a CA, I think she is just mad at herself for being old) told me that I needed to show her a receipt or else she wouldn't believe me that i payed my rent.  Usually I just drop my check off at the front desk and that's that, no receipts involved.  When I told her this, she scolded me like a dirty puppy.  Her scolding of how everyone gets receipts every time, which is not true, continued as I walked with her into her office.  I told her that none of my roommates has ever received a receipt for rent, let alone everyone else I have ever talked to that lives in my complex.  She continued her hate words toward me.  Finally, the truth caught her eyes.  She pulled a check off her tack board suddenly and handed it to me.  

Kindly and very lovingly she said, "Oops!  Here is your check, you forgot to sign it and I put it here to remind me to ask you to come get it signed, I guess I forgot to call you."  I explained that i had gotten a message from her earlier in the week but I myself had completely forgotten about that as well.  We reconciled our differences over some awkward laughs as I signed my infamous check.  As I was handing it to her, I stopped myself and took the check back.  I had to take this opportunity.

I asked, "Can I get a receipt?"  She had been so mean and rude to me, and I guess I wanted to make a point that things can get solved if you are nice.  I also wanted to give her a hard time.  She had to fumble through some stuff in her desk to find a receipt book, she wasn't thrilled about my request.  Finally she wrote a receipt and I handed her the check and left.  All in all it was successful meeting, I negated an incorrect billing and got a free receipt, what more could a boy ask for?  How about Bruce Sparks?

Traffic School...

A while ago I went up to Utah for a thing called General Conference (look it up) and on the drive back I got a speeding ticket.  It's not that I have a need for speed, I just have a wandering mind and I forget to check the speedometer.  Irregardless, (I love this non-word) I decided to do traffic school instead of paying the ticket.  Well traffic school taught me a lot about nothing.  First off, Katie Sparks is the name of the girl I am dating, she was born in Yuma.  Second, my traffic school teacher was named Bruce Sparks.  If that wasn't enough, he was also born in Yuma.  I thought maybe there would be more neat similarities and maybe even some kind of relation.  However the more Bruce talked, the more I realized how wrong I was wrong about Bruce.  Bruce was there to teach us about the "laws of the land" (these "" will signify direct quotes from Bruce in this section).  Bruce did some of this with diagrams he drew even though he describes himself as "I'm no artist" and he fortunately reminded us of this every time he drew a street or intersection.  However Bruce taught more about his life than anything else.  From being in the navy during Vietnam to joining the Tempe police force where he "would write up [his] own mother."  He also spent some years at UPS before electing to teach Traffic School in rooms in creepy hallways at the Chandler Fashion Center Mall.  It's a five hour course and most of it is Bruce talking down to a room of sixty or so people.  I think he is payed to make people feel stupid and helpless without the government and its institutions.  If you have ever heard that phrase that 75% of all statistics are made up, it probably come from someone who listened to Bruce talk.  Some of his stuff just didn't make sense, but it certainly could scare a person to no longer speed, or even drive.  I think Bruce was so used to treating everyone like morons that he honestly believes we all are.  He explained what everything was, like traffic lights, brakes, Vietnamese people, and two-by-four pieces of wood.  I personally found his two-by-four plank story the most upsetting.  Apparently when Bruce was a cop in Tempe, he was called to a bar fight.  When he arrived two drunks were hitting each other with two-by-fours.  That's when Bruce explained what wood is to us.  When he returned to the story, one of the men was on the ground while the other man was beating him like he stole something.  Bruce pulled out his gun and told the man to drop the plank.  The man turned to look at Bruce.  Bruce said he felt the man was getting ready to hit with his piece of wood.  So Bruce shot him in the leg.  Bruce then asked the man while he was screaming in pain, "I bet that hurts, huh?"  Bruce faced a lot of legal problems for shooting a drunk man solely armed with a piece of wood within the first few seconds of talking with the man.  This seemed to bother him more than when he reminisced to us about his first divorce, which I found to be strange.  Anyways, Bruce related his hasty choice to shoot that man to people who hastily try to beat the light and end up running red lights.  I guess both are bad things to do, he didn't really tell us that part.  He just said they were similar.  Bruce also doesn't understand politics, which I wanted to call him out on, but I remembered the shooting people story and I kept my mouth shut.  

Anyways, after five hours of Bruce and his eloquence I was released.  It was neat to be able to go see Dallin Harris afterwards who lives in Chandler with his wife of a few months.  That was a good time to reminisce and talk and joke while we ate our five dollar foot longs at subway.  I guess it's always good to see old friends, even if they are married and responsible now.  Happy day, all is well.

Love,

Matt

Weird Dream

Last night I had some weird dreams that I don't believe mean anything except that my mind is stupid.  But I would like to share them with my readers, since I have nothing else to do right now.  

So my first dream starts out with me sneaking into a slave camp kind of thing.  Its a camp like on holes, where its in the desert and kids are being forced into manual labor, not because of race, ethnicity or parental income, but because of age.  I have no clue why I am sneaking in, but I am.  And it is extremely easy I might add, all I have to do is climb over a dirt mound and I am in.  Which doesn't really explain why kids don't just leave.  This is one of many holes in my dream.  Anyways, I am in the slave camp and I am watching kids literally dig apart a mountain.  It's very strange that this is the goal of the slave camp lady, who is this old woman who is very mean and shows obvious hate toward me.  As the day continues and I am helping to dig this mountain until it is nothing we aren't getting very far.  Night begins to fall and everyone just drops there shovels and starts heading to the barracks.  

I decide to stay outside and hang out with the mountain or something.  I'm honestly not sure why I am outside, but I see the old woman, except now she is this young beautiful woman, very similar to Selma Hayek.  She approaches me, not in hate, but in love (not that kind of love, its more of a friendship love).  She comes up to me and says, "How did you enjoy camp?"  My response was somewhere along the line of "Well i'm not a fan of slave camps."  She then went and disassembled the mountain and it ended up being two tables one set up on the other.  The tables where then covered by a plethora of dirt and that made the mountain.  I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean.  

Irregardless (some may argue the existence of this word but I will still use it (because I like it)) the camp director (Selma Hayek) showed me the other parts of the camp which turned into a 1400's castle.  She then took me into a room which looked like my apartment inside.  Upon arriving to my apartment I see my friend from Flagstaff Joe Larson holding my other friend Bailee's hand.  They act like they are dating and whatnot.  This is weird because Joe has never met Bailee and she is currently engaged to another boy whom I have never met.  Moving on...

Selma then gives me some kind of control over a squadron or murder, if you will, of bees.  There are four bees that I have to lead to the ultimate source of pollen.  So I begin to steer them, I know not how, and I can see what they see.  The castle has changed into some weird underground world of kitchens and auto shops.  This is a dark and grungy world and everywhere I go there lurks shadows and creepy people.

So after directing my bees through kitchens and auto shops that look like they could be from a Resident Evil game or one of the Saw movies, I finally lead them into a dead end auto shop.  There is an old beat up car in there, it looks like an old mustang or something like that.  Suddenly my bees feel threatened and terror overtakes me.  I don't exactly know why I am scared but I am.  I frantically lead my bees all over the place trying to hide them from danger.

Eventually the garage door opens and sunlight breaks through the darkness.  My old metals teacher Mr. Hess is the one who opened the garage and he is staring at my bees like he is hungry for them or something.  He never makes a move to eat them however.  I then see a magical flower patch and land my bees on it, they were very happy to say the least.  Great success was had.

I then woke up to the noise of Abby texting me about High School Musical 3.  Hence end of dream.  If anyone has any idea what any of this crap means I am all ears.  Also if you are reading this for comical relief I might understand that.  I'm not sure though, it was a really strange dream.  Well maybe it just means i'm stupid or my imagination is on crack.  Or both.

Love,

Matt

Dinner at grandma's

Do you ever get the feeling that your grandma wants you to date your cousin?  I do.  Its not really my cousin because its not really my grandma, but in a way she really is my grandma because I call her grandma and I have in a non-legal way been adopted into the family per se, so in a way it is my cousin.  Confused?  Me too.  My adopted not really but kind of really real grandma wants me to date her grandchildren in an effort to legally have me be a part of the family.  Her intentions are good, but i don't want to date girls I have met and called my cousins.  But dinner at my grandma's was amazing, she makes the best dinner rolls ever!  I ate so many, it was delicious!

Anyways, I am feeling much better from my mono, and this makes me very happy.  Hopefully I don't relapse into certain death.  I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I won't hold my breath.

Just Sick

Well lets just say the past few days I have been pretty much bedridden.  Mono is kicking my butt.  I am not only tired but my throat has been so sore that even swallowing water brings intense pain.  Katie should be nominated for the friend medal of honor because she has gone above and beyond the call of duty to bring me lemon tea for my sore throat.  It was really nice to have company since I spend most of the day in my room sleeping or forcing water and oatmeal or pop tarts down my throat.  So that is how I have spent the past three days.  Exciting right?

First off let me say that I never watch TV, its just something I find I don't have time for.  But with my new sickness I have had copious amounts of time with nothing to do but lay there and watch TV.  I still don't watch much TV even with my immobility since i sleep alot, but I leave the TV on ESPN and I have caught several interesting things.  Mostly it is just NFL shows.  I did catch PTI which is one of the few shows on TV I actually like.  The funniest thing I saw though was the scrabble championship.  Young children who have pretty much memorized the dictionary compete against each other in scrabble.  Of course the scrabble legends (fourty year old men who have won previous scrabble tournies) are there too signing the kids' dictionaries.  It was humorous to me since I had no idea scrabble could become a career let alone a competitive...not sport but game I guess.  Its been hard enough for me trying to wrap my head around ASU's competitive quidditch team, which plays U of A pretty soon by the way.  In this day and age people can turn anything into a competitive event.  At first this troubled me, who knows why, maybe its the mulitvitamins I have been taking.  But as I look at it, it doesn't detract from the sports which I love so much: basketball, football, baseball, etc.  These new competitive events give kids who never liked sports a way to get them out there doing something they enjoy.  I may not understand it, I don't need to.  There are many people who don't understand sports and why some people like them so much.  So all I have to say is, you go quidditch team, hand it to those cats!  Well thats it, no funny stories, I haven't really been out much.  I'm off to sleep.

My recent livings, learnings, and laughings

Well what can I say that hasn't already been said?  I can probably find something in my brain that no one has ever said before...or not.  So life has been full of odd experiences lately.  My most recent funny was when I was in Utah at a thing called General Conference and I saw a man dressed as Satan writhing and screaming on the sidewalk in protest to Conference.  This was funny in itself, but the true funny was the fact that he had brought his kids, dressed in common clothes, looking like very normal and sweet little kids.  They were standing under an umbrella watching their father express himself to the pedestrians.  I can just see the kids thinking to themselves, "This is why I don't invite friends over."

Also, there was a young man dressed in nice sunday clothes and obviously a member, since he didn't have signs on his body, nor was he wearing the mask of lucifer.  This young man was standing right next to the protestors, like right there with them in the little group, holding a cardboard sign that read "spiritually starved, need tickets."  He was the only one in the group smiling and calm tempered.  I thought this man was hilarious and because I tried to take his picture, some crazy chick tried to jump down my throat for oppressing the protestors.  I think she is confused.  

Conference was AMAZING!!!!!!!  Go read the talks now!  There is nothing I can say here that hasn't been said better by higher authority.

Another funny thing I want to include so I don't forget is "The Guy and the Skateboard."  I was walking with the missionaries, as I commonly do, back to my place to feed them.  We were crossing the street when we heard a loud thud, we looked to our left to see that across the intersection a young man had fallen from his perch atop his skateboard.  I am guessing the guy's wheel had gotten caught in a large crack and he had flown to the pavement.  As he laid on his side, obviously in pain, he began to pick up his belongings: ipod, sunglasses, etc.  The missionaries and I felt bad for the poor child but we saw him get back up and prepare to ride that skateboard again.  So we figured he was fine.  However something was wrong in his brain.  For some reason, he thought he could ride over the same crack, in the same way, and somehow get a different result.  So he fell again, in pretty much the exact same way he did ten seconds ago.  A loud thud, ipod goes flying, he rolls in pain, etc.  By this time,  Elder Irving and I were trying really hard to hold back laughs and Elder Hillyard was working very hard to force back a smile.  The man got up, collected his things, and decided to carry his skateboard and walk, a wise choice.  The Elders and I then retreated to my kitchen and ate some Mac and Cheese.  MMMMmmMmMmMm delicious!

I think laughter really is the best medicine, as I have been writing this I have been suffering from Mono.  And yes, it does suck.  But I feel that looking back on these little memories has given me a little boost.  An even stronger boost can be felt by thinking of those words spoken to us this past weekend at Conference.  Lately I have been stressing out alot.  Which is rare for me, I am not a stresser at all.  But I have a heavy load this year with school, family, friends, lack of monetary funding, lack of occupation, Mono, and just my own stupidity and need to grow.  We all make mistakes and I think I have been so caught up in the fact that yet again I screwed up, I forgot I need to pick myself up.  I have been thinking so much about those that I have upset, I forgot to think about the solution.   I keep worrying about the future.  "You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you've collected alot of empty yesterdays."  I need to not stress, have faith, and do what I need to do for today, and not worry about the future.  It will come when it is time for it to come.  Its too hard worrying about the future when there's an eternity ahead of you.

~Matt

The first post!!!!!

So i hear the first post is always the best so here it goes......and there it went.  i hope you enjoyed that.