The Blog Report

I hate college! I have to write so many papers it seems silly for me to do this post, so I apologize if the posts looks a little like one of the reports I'm writing. Finals, though, are tough man. It's like professors feel like they have to live up to the infamous reputation of the word "finals" and make it unnecessarily hard.

I will however not use that as an excuse to shirk on my blog duties here. I discovered for the first time with my last post that I actually care... not so much with what you think of me, but I care about how well I think that I perform. My last post was the suckiest suck that ever sucked in my opinion and it's been driving me nuts. This one will be kind of long though, which is good because unless Calvin can talk me out of it, I am skipping blogging for all of next week in observance of finals. Like an idiot I thought 18 credit hours would be a breeze, not realizing that would translate into two

So, seriously all I have been doing is schoolwork for the last few days, so nothing exciting there. Which leaves me to talk about the events of last weekend that I left out of the aforementioned suck that was my previous post.

SUCK:
A small detour from that though... the word "suck" was forbidden in my family when I was a child. Then sometime after I got my drivers license it was just okay to say all of the sudden. We didn't have a family meeting or anything, it just became okay. The first time I heard my mom say "suck" is still with me to this day. My little brother, about 6 at the time, came in the house crying. When my mom asked what was wrong, he pointed out the window screaming, "Chase just peed on me." There was a kid that lived across the street, Chase, who was semi-retarded (actually I don't know if that's true because he just went on a mission a few weeks ago, but when I was 16 he seemed kind of Forrest Gump-ish).

Sure enough, my brothers left leg was wet from the knee down, and a little pee had puddled on the top of his blue Van's sneaker. I looked out the window and saw Chase standing outside in the street staring at our house. He was wearing a diaper or pull-up or something (I swear the kid was 5). My mom was trying not to laugh and she said, "I'm sorry, honey, that kind of sucks huh?" My brother said, in between deep inhaled sobs, "Yeah, it does suck... and Mommy." "What?" My brother sort of whispered, "I saw his wiener, too." My mom burst out laughing, and my brother cried a little harder.

BECCA:
Saturday morning around 3ish, I fell asleep on the old D.I. couch that we have in the basement. After dropping Sanders off, I popped in the last disk of Season 4 of LOST, and dozed off. Around 8, I wake up to find a female sitting on the edge of the couch next to me, rubbing my arm gently. I had slept in my contacts so it took me a sec to focus. I'm sure my wincing face and repeated blinks looked dashing. It was Becca. I was planning on sleeping till noon and wished like crazy she was Sanders.

"Did I wake you up?" Becca asked. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure you did." I grumbled. She said, "I was thinking we could get some breakfast?" I looked at her. She looked really cute. She was wearing sweats and a hoodie and her hair was pulled back. "I heard it was unhealthy to eat this early," I said as I rolled my face back into the arm of the sofa. "Funny." She said, "Come on, I'll buy." I didn't really care that she was going to buy, but I figured there was no getting rid of her in a way that wouldn't be more work and more uncomfortable than just getting up and going.

She sat back in the sofa as I got ready. I wandered in and out of the room looking for clothes and then my wallet, and then my keys. I'm pretty unorganized. After getting busted for mass texting the night before, I asked Becca, "Hey, when you get a mass text does it tell you all the recipients names and numbers?" She said, "No. Why?" "No reason." I replied. Then while I was putting on my belt I had my body turned a bit and Becca leaned forward, pointed at me and said, "What's that?" "What?" I asked. It looked like she was pointing at my shoulder. She stood up and stabbed her finger into my skin right above my collar bone on the left side of my neck and said, "That?"

We walked over to the mirror and she pointed it out again. It was a red mark that resemble somewhat the redness of a fresh hickey. "It looks like a hickey to me." she said, her voice was getting agitated, "It looks like the biggest hickey I have ever seen." "It's not a hickey." I said. "Where were you last night?", she asked. "I was out with a friend from my mission." I replied. "A girl?", she countered. I could see she wasn't going to let this go. "Yes, I was on a date with a girl, but she did not give me a hickey. Look at that thing. It's huge. She'd have to be a hippopotamus to give me a hickey that big." I kind of chuckled at my masterful use of humor in a stressful situation... which didn't work.

She stood there. Arms folded. "You are such a dick!" I opened my mouth to try and explain, she cut me off, "I don't even want to hear whatever bull crap you're gonna try..." I thought saying "dick" was important but chose to use the word "crap." Again, I tried to interject, but she was yelling and wouldn't let me get a word in. She grabbed her purse and started up the stairs still yelling. "I knew this would happen, I knew it. You're so selfish you can't kiss two girls at the same time. You can't do that to people! You're such a douche."

I wanted to point out that we hadn't kissed for a few weeks. That I wasn't kissing her because I had replaced her with the other girl - and instead of telling her, I was kind of hoping whatever we had would just fade out and go away. I wanted to point that out but instead I just said, "Becca, let me explain." She was too busy yelling on her way out. I stood at the base of the stairs and listened to her voice drift off and right after I heard her say, "You're not that cool anyway!" I heard the door slam behind her.

The hickey? Sanders did not give me a hickey... in fact I'm pretty sure I am hickey-proof seeing as I don't bruise too easily. There happens to be a perfectly good explanation for the cell phone size hickey-like mark at the base of my neck. I had a sore shoulder from a soccer injury earlier in the year. I got one of those microwavable heat pads, and I strapped it on last night before watching Lost. As the pad drapes over my shoulder there is a portion of the pad which sits directly on the skin of my neck without a shirt between the pad and my bare flesh. After sleeping with the pad on all night, it produced the hickey-like mark on that chuck of skin. That mark, coupled with Becca's serious over reaction abruptly ended what I wasn't man enough to end myself, our future together. I was glad and I was tired, but, since I was up, I sent Sanders a text, "Breakfast?" She responded almost immediately, "You read my mind :)."

PROPHET, SEER, REVELATOR. JUVENILE?:
Sanders and I went to Church together to her Grandmothers rest-home ward. Before going Sanders told me that President Monson comes to this ward all of the time. We sat down, and sure enough in walked the Prophet. It was my first time being in the same room with a Prophet or any General Authority for that matter.

After the opening song and prayer, mid-way through the Ward Business, there was this high pitched beeping song that started playing, not very loud, but enough to be heard throughout the chapel, like a really cheap cell phone ring or something. The conductor stopped in his tracks and turned to look at President Monson who had a huge grin on his face which he tried to mask by looking around to find the origin of the song. Sanders leaned over to me and said "That's the BYU fight song." I'm not familiar with the tune, but when it finished playing the guy conducting look right at President Monson, the sound obviously coming from him and said, "Are you- are you playing the BYU fight song?" President Monson, simply shook his head with a "who me?" look on his face accompanied by a telling smile and replied, "Uhh-unnn."

The guy conducting laughed a bit and said, "Oh, I see..." He turned to the congregation, "Sorry for the interruption Brothers and Sisters, but it seems someone up here on the stand has a bit of a forked--" the sound beep bu-bee-bee-beeeep, started up again. President Monson laughed little kid who just asked someone to pull his finger. The people in the congregation who weren't deaf all laughed. It was way better then the usual obligatory watered down jokes that usually start of sacrament meeting. The guy conducting laughed and shook his head, as if to say, "Good one Tommy, good one."

The meeting continued as normal and was actually pretty good. Each talk was really great. I guess if you're called to speak in the ward the prophet regularly attends you bring your A game. I really hoped that somehow I would be able to find out the story behind the antics early in the meeting. After sacrament, after Monson had left, the guy who had conducted told the story to a small group of us.

The conductors name was Brett and he was a huge-HUGE U of U fan. Brett and ol' Thomas S. Monson had become good friends recently. Before the big BYU/UTAH football game a couple weeks before. Brett asked Thomas S, "So, who you rooting for this weekend?" Monson replied, "Whichever team wins." Brett said, "Oh come on. You gotta pick a side." Monson diplomatically replied again, "I'll root for the team that wins." Brett said, "Just because you have a degree from both schools doesn't mean you can just not pick a side. You're the President of the Church. The Church runs BYU, so your BYU degree means a little bit less because you can just give yourself a degree from BYU whenever you want... so I think it obvious you should be rooting for UTAH." Monson didn't seem to like the joke too much, but laughed it off, and secretly started to concoct his little plan for payback.

Monson, knowing that Brett was a huge UTAH fan, and since BYU had won the big game decided to stand by his word, and root for the team that won. So he brought in a keychain that played the BYU fight song at the push of a button. His playful interruption was hilarious. It was nice too, to see this guy who has such an awesome responsibility just being a normal, regular guy. A guy that I wouldn't mind joking around with some time. The thought, "Ohhh-ho snap, you just got zinged by the Prophet, buddy!" keeps entering my mind as I replay the experience in my head.

SANDERS:
What can I say? Sanders is awesome. Spending the whole weekend together with her while she was up here in Salt Lake was pretty great. I find myself thinking about her... wondering what she's doing down in Cedar City. Wondering if she is thinking about me. Every night this week we have spoken on the phone. And, we text back and forth incessantly, to a point where Calvin and the guys are a little bugged by my preoccupation.

Today text:
S: How are finals? J: Silly, stupid, pointless. S: Like dating. J: Did you mean for that not to have a question mark? S: Yep, dating is silly, stupid, pointless. J: Poor jaded old lady. I hear it's all downhill after 26. S: Easy boy, you'll get your mouth washed out talking like that ;). J: Well, you should try dating you, it's much better than normal dating. S: That was cheesy. J: Yes it was, but that doesn't make it any less true. S: :)

Jake