Memories

My thoughts usually just flow onto paper, most often jumbled and confusing.  However, I have somehow managed to sit here, staring dazed at my blank screen as no words come spewing...

This reminds me of a time in high school.  I took Mythology class from Mr. Ormond in lieu of the required english class.  I can't remember the exact details of what was required in class, but I do remember a few things.

1.  He gave us a quiz once that was supposed to determine which social class we would end up in dependent on our ability to proofread different phrases.  Just like now, my grammar sucked.  I failed miserably.  They didn't even have a social class for how low I scored.  I made my own: Living in a cardboard box behind Walmart.  No.  Walmart is too ritzy.  I'd be living in a cardboard box behind DI.  Ever since then, I've put my mind to proving the man wrong.  

2.  We had to write several of our own myths: made up names, stories, adventures, etc.  My ability to procrastinate didn't begin in college, or even high school.  I was, and still am prey to the disease.  What does this have to do with writing myths? one might ask and I'll tell you:  the night before they were due.  I'd start thinking about them.  The morning they were due, I'd start writing, and they would be printed off moments before I had to go to class.  The irony of the whole situation is: every myth I turned in got full marks.  I remember also one of his remarks he wrote on my paper.  He suggested that I consider a career in writing.  Yes.  I think that might land me right behind DI.  

High school was quite an adventure.  I often find myself wishing I was back: living the dream.  Everyone knew me.  I had managed to reach my podia into just about every social group there was: the skater punks I was friends with in Jr. High (I never got high with them tho... on purpose); the Basketball team: I sat the bench for most of the season, but still I was known all over school; Student Government: I ran (against myself) and by some miracle, won; Drama: some of my best friends were in the drama clubs and I even managed, by some miracle, to hoodwink the directors of the musical to give me a solo in Titanic, the musical; I was a math nerd, choir geek, band twit, jock, etc. The sad thing is: I'm still trying to find my niche.  I'm in Oregon, playing basketball, coding in computer language, flirting, studying biology, trying to write, and be social.  

And that's what this post is gonna be about: fitting in.

All my life I have wanted to fit in.  However, growing up, with a family of 9 kids, I didn't have the wardrobe, the social skills, the nice things that were required to be in the "in" group.  I've been wearing hand-me-downs all my life. Until last year.  I totally revamped my wardrobe.  I threw out most of my hand-me-downs and went to the store.  Yes.  I still shopped for things on sale (cuz I still am running from the cardboard box outside DI), but I was a bit more picky with the clothes I bought.  However, what I didn't realize was: it comes with a price.  Gratefully enough, not monetary.  As I look back on who I've become, I'm not exactly sure I like it.  I've done a pretty good job of disguising and blending and bending to whichever group I seem to be around.  One of these days, all of the friends I've made in each group will come together and probably explode.  Or maybe I'll get the balls to just stand up and say who I am.

No matter how cliche this is, it's how I feel.  A couple semesters ago, I had an assignment to analyze a piece of art, and the description of a painting I saw is exactly how I feel now:

As humans we have different attitudes and expressions.  Many of these have been shaped into cliches by society, such as one must always have a good attitude or bad days are just a myth.  Therefore, people create a facade that other people come to expect, even if it is far from what they are actually feeling.  Sometimes these fronts are used to overcompensate for the lack of a certain quality, a temporary filler that many times is seen straight through.  Others are accompanied by events that create hurt, distrust, and fear.  Do such events cause us to change or do we just present a mask that becomes so real everyone is fooled including ourselves? Only the individual knows but many times these cover-ups are necessary to protect our own vulnerability.  --Melissa Coats

For now, I'll leave the readers with the curiosity and bewilderment of who I am, who I've been, and who I want to become.  Maybe someday even I'll figure it out.

Oregon: First half

Disclaimer:  This may take a while to read....

Alright.  So to be honest, this blog was started as a way for others to know about what is going on in my life.  The reason why is: friendship is an important part of my life, and I like to know what is going on in other peoples lives, so maybe here's a way for you, the reader to hear about some of the crazy things that go on in my life.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've come to realize my great talent to tell stories.  It's interesting how the most ordinary experiences can rivet an audience and make them laugh.  If only they get told in the right way.  The 15 of us BYU students up here at Coos Bay Oregon at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) have snippets of time where we just sit and talk... or not.  With 4 hours of class every day (Saturday included), exhaustion is a frequent emotion/feeling.  Even though there is nothing wrong with silence, oh! how it is a relief to get our minds off marine life and blastopores and gastrolation and everything else.  So I look for a story.  And they are riveted.

Well, as I mentioned in my previous blog: I don't claim to be a great writer, but let me try to tell the story of being up here in Oregon.
As cliche as it may sound, I'll start at the beginning.  I don't do the best in school, and usually my summers are used to save up as much money as I can to maybe try to survive during the school year.  However, looking for a job or internship this past spring didn't start too well. (It may end well with a tentative offer up in SLC at a human disease research facility).  I was informed about a research opportunity and school trip with other BYU students up in Oregon and was asked as to if I would want to go with the group.  I answered: yes.  But I have no money.  That seems to be a common theme in my life ever since I got out of high school.  A couple weeks later, I was asked again if I would be interested in going to Oregon on this trip.  All three memories rushed back from my childhood years in Corvallis Oregon: picking blueberries, riding my bike to school, and going to the flea market for the flavored honey sticks.  How nice it would be to come back.  But the answer was still: no money.  I hope it was divine intervention and a blessing from on high when I came across a private scholarship for such a trip.  Fully funded, I signed the form to go.  And I haven't been let down.

One of my biggest worries was: they're all biology nerds.  Friends are important, and I don't know if I could be friends with their sort.  But I came up anyways with a positive attitude.  These people, even how nerdy we may be, are some of the coolest and most sincere individuals I have met!  We have become a close knit conglomeration of marine biology gurus and have a blast together!  What an amazing experience.

The majority of our time, like I mentioned earlier, is in class.  We are taking 2 classes: Marine Ecology, and Developmental Biology.  So far, the most of the classes have been drawings of different developmental stages, tide levels, marine animal interactions, etc.  To be honest... I don't see me using any of this in the professional world, but it's a great experience.  The rest of the time that we're supposed to be in "school" is done doing research.  We divided into 4 groups and are all doing research on different marine interactions.  The group that I am in is looking at the interactions of Pycnopodia helianthoides, or the sunflower sea star, and its prey, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, or the purple sea urchin.  We are testing weather the digestive enzymes excreted from the sea star is what causes the urchin to run, or if it is something else.  So far, no defining results.

Other school related activities include field trips.  We garb ourselves with our grubbies, hip boots (boots up to our hips), cameras, and specimen buckets.  This past week we woke up at 5, 5:30, 6:30, and 7 am. to go out to the rocky shores and beaches to look at different species interactions.  Of the many visits, the most intriguing has been when, while at Lighthouse beach, a seal pup came into the cove and was swimming around calling for a friend... or so it seemed.  As we were leaving, another seal showed up and we realized, as the second seal fed the pup, that it was the mother.  That's science!  We've been able to see some pretty crazy cool specimens and have had a real great time!

In our free time, there's a glut of other activities that we participate in.  At the beginning of the trip we played a lot of speed/knockout/lightening with the OSU students who are here.  To this day I haven't won.  But they say I'm the first and probably only student to dunk on that hoop.  So I guess that's an accomplishment.  We have a nice sand volleyball court outside that we frequent, and not for only volleyball.  Henry introduced us to the glorious lazy use of the volleyball court in jailbreak: a game of wit and well, mostly luck.  We've been to the beach several times to play soccer and toss the pigskin and frisbee around.  We go to different venues like Bandon and the falls... which was an adventure I'll explain.  Getting there was an adventure because the road that we were supposed to take didn't exist... or so we thought.  It just took a while to find. Golden and Silver falls they were called.  All of these pictures are found on facebook if you're in to stalking me, cuz let's be honest: you do it already.  Anyhow, on the way back, we hear a funny noise coming from the back of the car.  To our surprise, the rear wheel was flat as a flat tire.  Unfortunately I didn't get to show off my manlyness very much as the girls did most of the swap.  They're champs.




And the food... Is amazing!!! When we were in Bandon, we stopped by the famous Fish and Chips place as well as the Cranberry Sweets candy place. I wasn't really shocked at how good it was, but still... edible.  NOT like the hamburger I tried to eat last night.  One day, we were driving home from WalMart, the only happening place in a 50 mile radius, and we see on this sign: Forby's, Home of the Burger Challenge.  And I'm not one to say no to a challenge. So we set a date and went over.  Now, I've done a burger challenge before at Fudruckers.  And I dominated it.  'till I walked outside and saw that the plants looked like they could use a little bit of fertilizer in the form of half-digested hamburger.  However, back then, I didn't prepare and I did it just fine.  However, here was a different story.  I had been preparing for something like the Fudruckers challenge... only bigger.  Well, I got half of what I expected.  It was huge!!! Three 2 lb patties with a ton of toppings.  The kicker were the sauces.  They gave me 3 darts and pointed me at a dartboard.  The first dart was for wasabi, the second for chili, and the third was wasabi again.  And they didn't go lightly on the wasabi either.  Now, if it would have been a reasonable amount, I think I could have made it through the burger at least.  However, I think they may have harvested a whole wasabi farm for my one burger.  Now, the problem was not how "spicy" it was, or whatever word you use to describe the shot of fire up your nose after you swallow it.  It was the taste that got to me.  There really is no word to describe how disgusting this burger was.  And then there was a huge plate of fries.  I served my mission in The Netherlands and Belgium.  The fries there are amazing! You pile up some mayonaise on top and chow down.  It's like heaven (clogging your arteries). These fries that I had to eat were nothing like them.  They were limp, over cooked and I swear they were made of the potatoes that rotted before they could cook them up and freeze them.  They weren't even warm! I'm pretty sure they brought them out of the fridge, where they were culturing the mold growing on them, threw them in the microwave, and plopped them on a plate.  You call those fries???  Biggest waste of money ever!!! I am repeating myself from another blog when I say: If you ever happen to be in Coos Bay or North Bend in Oregon, do everything you can NOT TO GO TO FORBY'S.

The Senses

Something that has fascinated me over the years have been the 6 senses: touching, smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing, and kissing.  Each of these have had a strange connection to our subconscious and at times, it's a pain to try and figure out the connections.  The main sense that triggers these connections is smell.

Let me start with one of my favorite smells in the world.  OK. So maybe it's not my favorite, or the best smell in the world, but it's probably the smell that brings back the most memories.  I served my mission in The Netherlands: the land of the tulips, and where everything is legal (prostitution, drugs, "medicine", etc.).  The substance attached to the smell has been said to be the "most widely used illicit substance in the world."  How about that?  Well, as you might have guessed, this particular smell is that of weed, the smell of people getting high, the smell of joy, of relaxation, of freedom, and of The Netherlands.  Now that I'm back in the states, the smell isn't so prevalent.  Here, it's illegal.  So in other words: no high, to joy, no relaxation and no freedom.  No freedom?  This is America! Come on now!  I am morally opposed to the drug, but at the same time, it brings back so many memories: knocking doors late at night, soaked to the bone because of the rain, the currency used to purchase food, the fries with mayonaise, train stations, different investigators and friends that were made there, biking through the forest, the lack of mountains, windmills, canals, flowers, clouds, stroopwaffels, the humidity, and the list goes on.  However, now that I'm in Oregon for a few weeks, the smell has been at least a little more frequent than when I was in Utah.

Another smell that triggers a connection, is girls.  Yes.  If you know me at all, I've got serious problems with girls.  From indecision of whether or not I'm interested in a particular one, to kissing too frequently too many girls, to hating them altogether.  However, each girl has a particular smell: the shampoo mixed with the lotion used and topped with their parfum. However, there are only so many different combinations of the three substances that occasionally two different girls have exactly the same smell.  When this happens, or even when a certain smell is close or related, my brain reaches into its depths to try to make a connection. Which one of my friends has this smell?  Which girl did I go on a date with who had this fragrance? Who did I kiss that had this smell? Who did I want to kiss who had that smell? It's a fascinating phenomenon.


One final smell that plays a huge role in triggering memories is that of food.  And if you know me at all, I've got serious problems here too.  But these problems aren't as serious as the others.  But certain smells of food remind me of different situations and times in my life.  Popcorn = movies. Steak = basketball (in high school, after every home game win, mother Clement made the basketball team steak.  Best grub ever!) and one that has been recently added to my list of: smell this and dry heave is wasabi.  I ate a hamburger with wasabi slathered on it.  And it was a heavy slather.  I took two bites and gave up.  I'm usually not one to turn down food.  Ever.  But this was terrible.  It was at Forby's in Oregon: the Home of the Burger Challenge.  They have yet to have someone who could do it.  However, I am confident that if their food was at least a little bit tasty, I would have dominated it:  3 lbs of beef on the burger and a huge plate of fries.  Not even the fries were cooked well.  They were limp, and burnt.  How they managed that is beyond me.  If you ever happen to be in Coos Bay or North Bend in Oregon, do everything you can NOT TO GO TO FORBY'S. The worst food I've ever had.  No wonder they have a perfect record with their burger challenge.

And Why Not?

Well, to start off, I must confess a few things:
1.  I'm not a writer.  And you might notice: my grammar sucks!
2. This blog, so far, has nothing to do with the year 1447
3. And I definitely don't have any connections to the orient. Except for my Asian friends like Jonny or Michelle.
But I thought I'd try my hand at something new.  And Why Not?

Let me tell you a little bit about myself:
I come from a family of 9 children.  Growing up, we've never had anything really nice except for each other. I don't think we've ever had a new car or a new house, and everything we own has been handed down at least twice.  My thoughts are kind of jumbled, and if I had any talent in writing, I'd probably write an eloquent segue to how I've gotten to the point where I don't hand down anything any more.  The reason being: both of my little brothers have just about outgrown me.  They both wear shoes bigger than me, and Josh, age 16, is just as tall as I.

But lets be honest: you (if anybody ends up reading this), don't really care about all this... stuff.  And why not?  Well, I just don't see my life history as... interesting.  Or connected to who I am and why.

And why not?  This phrase was coined not in the year 1447, but in the year 2009.  (Again, no relation to 1447.)  I lived in the Colony at the time with some guys who became some of my best friends.  At least some of them did.  I've always been a cautious chap and not very outgoing... until 2009 in the Colony.  I don't remember why this phrase was used or what it was in response to, but it's changed me.  I'm not very cautious any more.  I step on more feet.  I offend more people than I ever have.  And I've had more fun than ever.

This phrase also is one of the main reasons I am where I am right now: Oregon coast.  It is one of the main reasons I've met super cool people: I said yes to over 80 blind dates since 2009, yes to the festival of colors, yes to moving into an apartment with a couple of goons, yes to being president of the tall club at BYU, yes to girls who thought I was easy, or a player...

OK.  so this is getting pretty nostalgic, and the shower just opened up.  So on that note, I'll close with one of my favorite jokes: And Why Not?

Why don't blind people go bungie jumping?
Because it scares the crap out of their dogs!

That's all for now.  DUI!