Today, Rebekah asked me a question:
"Why do you hate phones? Did you get traumatized by a ton of prank calls as a kid?"
At the time, I gave a short answer:
"Phones are satanic abominations."
Now, I shall give a longer answer in the form of a short (but true) story:
For the past who-knows-how-long (since I turned 18) I've received occasional calls from some military recruiter who wants to recruit me into the military or something. Basically, it's annoying, and I don't know how to handle him.
Anyways, I answered the phone today and the person I was talking to said something like "Hi Alex", told me his name (which I didn't recognize), and sounded almost exactly like the aforementioned military recruiter. (After all, who else that you don't know would be able to call you by name at the start of a conversation?) Being the kind of person who's afraid to hang up on any phone call whatsoever (just ask my parents), I continued on with the conversation. He said a sentence asking for something or other but all I got out of it were phrases such as "Elder West" and "I need some information" and "can I talk to your Mom or Dad?"
Too confused to form a proper response (for one, I still thought he was the recruiter; for two, I thought he was referring to me as "Elder West") I decided that it would be best to follow his instructions and give the phone to one of my parental units. However, it turned out my Dad was gone (at the fireside) and that my Mom was in the bathroom. She was on her phone talking to somebody else at the time, and I told her it was a military recruiter. She declined to talk.
After some dithering about wondering what to do, I finally asked "Wait. Who is this?"
It turned out he was just somebody from the Singles branch or whatever and wanted to know Andrew's mailing address and return date.
That was embarrassing.
(Feel free to insert the expletives of your choice here (ie "Holy cats!" or "Dargleschnikees!").)
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Border Straddling
This past week was the Priest Quorum high adventure. Basically, we kayaked down the Columbia most of the week (I'd say the total distance was somewhere around 60 to 70 miles), which meant that we were basically in Oregon half the time and in Washington half the time. The kayaks fit two people, so we all ended up with partners. Mine was Joseph. We tended to be near the back of the group, but that's not because we got tired quickly or anything (even on Saturday I didn't feel very sore, if at all), but because we just tended to row slower. Overall, the trip was pretty fun and yet miserable (and yet fun because of said misery).
I'm now going to write a detailed day-by-day summary for those who like reading novel-sized blog posts.
On Monday we spent most of the morning driving down to our destination. I occupied my time by playing some of those fancy LCD games that happened to be in the vehicle I was riding in. I mostly played Checkers and Solitaire (Checkers was better). We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Burgerville. I ended forking over $9 for a cheeseburger, pop, and fries (it ain't Bargain-ville, that's for sure). The main attraction of the day was the White Salmon River, which we white-water rafted down (our outfitter was RiverDrifters.net). It was pretty fun, although nobody fell out of the raft I was in, unless you count the time when our guide tricked us into capsizing ourselves. The best part was when I was able to "ride the bull" (ie sit on the front of the raft).
We spent the night at Beacon Rock State Park. Naturally, some us decided to hike up the park's namesake before dinner. The trail was about a mile long with 800 feet of elevation gain. A few of the people decided to run up the trail, getting to the top between 11 or 15 minutes, but most of us decided just to walk up instead thus taking about 25 minutes to get to the top. The people who opted not to go hiking made dinner instead, but they were patient enough to not start eating until we came back about an hour or so later (9 PM or so).
Also, that night the ground that night was very hard and rocky. Even with my sleeping pad, it made me want to kill somebody.*
Tuesday was the day we started the actual kayaking of the trip. We spent most of the morning breaking camp and trying to figure out how to fit all of our gear into our kayaks with the troop gear as well (which included trivialities such as food, water filters, and cooking supplies). The short answer is "We did." Their was also business regarding vehicles that the adults had to sort out. Also, Brother Goff was sick, so he decided not to go kayaking (though I have a sneaking suspicion that there were weightier reasons too), but I think he was down in the area the whole week. Anyways, we didn't start the actual kayaking until after noon. It took us about an hour and a half to reach an island to stop at (that timeframe pretty much became the standard for stops on the trip). Some people felt like the place would be a good place to stop for the night, but Brother Magelsen said it was only about halfway. Later in the trip when we were close to the place we ended up camping, we were kayaking on a surprisingly shallow portion of the river. It was so shallow at points that we occasionally had to get out of the kayak to walk and push it to deeper water.
We eventually got to the island where were to camp. However, it took us a while to find a suitable campsite. On one side of the island there was an encampment of some people with a pirate flag near the beach. (Witnesses claim said pirates were nude, but I am unsure of the veracity of that statement, having not seen the campers myself.) The opposite side of the island was also all beach, but it didn't have any suitable spots either. All of the leaders doubted that there were any sizeable clearings inland. Eventually we found a place on the island that was generally flat, clear of vegetation, and far enough above the shoreline to not get flooded or anything. We set up camp as soon as we could because it was starting to rain.
That rain, when combined with the sand, was pure evil. Quite a lot of wet sand got our tents and sleeping bags, and the tents were unusually leaky (a couple unlucky souls ended up sleeping in a lake of sorts). That made most of us want to kill somebody.*
Weather-wise, Wednesday morning wasn't much better. It was still rather rainy and sandy. However, when we started kayaking, we learned the power (and sound) of MUSIC. We discovered that when we were singing together that it was easier for us to stay together (especially if the song was "I'll Make a Man Out of You"), and the time seemed to pass faster. Also, it seemed the weather seemed to clear up when we were singing church songs ("100 bottles of beer on the wall" didn't seem to have that effect).
(Note: The next paragraph is potentially gross.)
One thing I should mention now is that unlike every other kind of conceivable high adventure, bathroom facilities didn't seem to exist. Thus, my main strategy was "hold it in as long as possible." However, this strategy had it's flaws so I ended up needing to go during the first stop on Wednesday. However, the "island" we stopped at was more akin to a pile of rocks than something hospitable, so there wasn't any real privacy. I attempted to do my business on the alleged island by asking everybody to look away, but I caught some of the allegedly adult leaders taking pictures of me, so I opted to do my business at the next stop (which had far more vegetation). I'm going to kill somebody* if those pictures end up being published in any form.
The campsite that night was easily the best on the trip, but that opinion probably stems from the fact that the weather was much better than any of the other days. It also had a very private "bathroom", but that was a bit difficult to use. During the night we decided to play capture the flag, which was fun, even though the beach wasn't particularly suited for it.
Wednesday night was also the night when the adults decided to slightly scale back the length of the trip, after coming to the conclusion that they overestimated the distance most of us could go per day (and they wanted more time for us to goof around). I suspect that this form of overestimation also led us taking a dozens of more hot dogs than we were capable of eating.
The next day, Thursday, was also pretty good. By then we had all pretty much gotten used to kayaking, so I guess that's the reason I don't remember as much of it. We stopped once at the shore by some motel place, which was the closest we had been to civilization for days. We also stopped at a nice park (with a bathroom!), where we were able to meet up with Brother Goff again. He was willing to take the garbage we had accumulated by that time during the trip, and he also gave the poor souls of the flooded tent a replacement. The campsite we stayed at was also pretty nice, but it didn't have any of the nice features of the previous one (like a peninsula).
It did rain a little bit while we were there, but fortunately not during the night. While we were in the tent taking shelter from the rain, Derek (not the new guy) came up with the idea of having us do choose-your-own-adventure style thingies which he "directed." Each story was strictly a "one-player" affair, but they were creative enough that they were fun to listen to anyways. For instance, Austin had a story where he was a pirate or something fighting ninjas that happened to be from his hometown. Chris's story involved a sci-fi space battle and had the character "Blue Star Commander Hotness" (I believe that is simultaneously her name and title). Most of these stories ended with rather gruesome deaths, but in my case I got "lucky" and somehow won. I won by being stripped naked by nude pirates (cf Tuesday) even though Derek established earlier in the story that I was inexplicably naked, so thus this contradiction led to me joining the pirates (rather than being flayed). Granted, I'm not sure if that could be considered a good ending or bad ending. Anyways, these types of stories ended up being added to our repertoire of ways to spend time on the trip, thus leading to many more stories, but I still think Derek's original stories were the best.
Also, I think I'm supposed to say something that day made me want to kill someone* (to keep the pattern going), but I can't think of anything in particular that made me angry that night.
Friday ended up being our last day, rather than Saturday, mostly because we weren't going to do any kayaking that day anyways. The kayaking, again, seemed to pass rather quickly. We made a couple of stops, one of which was at the weirdest shore I had ever seen (it was made of some weird, bubbly, sandy, clay-like substance). Joseph and I did a couple of those choose-your-own-adventure stories to pass time. Also, their was much more water fighting than the previous days. I especially liked it when at the end everybody soaked Tani and Jarret (two of the primary instigators of the water fights).
After arriving at the beach the adults had to go get the rest of the vehicles from where we started, which took about two hours. During this time we emptied out the kayaks and put them aways, and then ate a bunch of stuff for lunch, such a cereal with soy milk. Said milk was so poor tasting that it made me want to kill someone.* We also played around a lot, doing things like using sticks to choreograph sword fights and such.
The ride home very much the same as the other car ride. I spent much of my time playing the Checkers and Solitaire LCD games, and we also stopped at a burger place (which was thankfully much cheaper). When I got home it was past 9 o'clock, and my parents were in their room watching TV. Apparently they were surprised that I was home. Anyways, I decided to do what was good for me and take a shower, especially since I hadn't changed my clothes since Monday. If for some reason that grosses you out, you could reinterpret that sentence as "I budgeted my clothing usage as to have mom do as little laundry as possible at the end of the week."
* You know who you are... *Ominous music*
(Alternative footnote: Not really.)
I'm now going to write a detailed day-by-day summary for those who like reading novel-sized blog posts.
On Monday we spent most of the morning driving down to our destination. I occupied my time by playing some of those fancy LCD games that happened to be in the vehicle I was riding in. I mostly played Checkers and Solitaire (Checkers was better). We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Burgerville. I ended forking over $9 for a cheeseburger, pop, and fries (it ain't Bargain-ville, that's for sure). The main attraction of the day was the White Salmon River, which we white-water rafted down (our outfitter was RiverDrifters.net). It was pretty fun, although nobody fell out of the raft I was in, unless you count the time when our guide tricked us into capsizing ourselves. The best part was when I was able to "ride the bull" (ie sit on the front of the raft).
We spent the night at Beacon Rock State Park. Naturally, some us decided to hike up the park's namesake before dinner. The trail was about a mile long with 800 feet of elevation gain. A few of the people decided to run up the trail, getting to the top between 11 or 15 minutes, but most of us decided just to walk up instead thus taking about 25 minutes to get to the top. The people who opted not to go hiking made dinner instead, but they were patient enough to not start eating until we came back about an hour or so later (9 PM or so).
Also, that night the ground that night was very hard and rocky. Even with my sleeping pad, it made me want to kill somebody.*
Tuesday was the day we started the actual kayaking of the trip. We spent most of the morning breaking camp and trying to figure out how to fit all of our gear into our kayaks with the troop gear as well (which included trivialities such as food, water filters, and cooking supplies). The short answer is "We did." Their was also business regarding vehicles that the adults had to sort out. Also, Brother Goff was sick, so he decided not to go kayaking (though I have a sneaking suspicion that there were weightier reasons too), but I think he was down in the area the whole week. Anyways, we didn't start the actual kayaking until after noon. It took us about an hour and a half to reach an island to stop at (that timeframe pretty much became the standard for stops on the trip). Some people felt like the place would be a good place to stop for the night, but Brother Magelsen said it was only about halfway. Later in the trip when we were close to the place we ended up camping, we were kayaking on a surprisingly shallow portion of the river. It was so shallow at points that we occasionally had to get out of the kayak to walk and push it to deeper water.
We eventually got to the island where were to camp. However, it took us a while to find a suitable campsite. On one side of the island there was an encampment of some people with a pirate flag near the beach. (Witnesses claim said pirates were nude, but I am unsure of the veracity of that statement, having not seen the campers myself.) The opposite side of the island was also all beach, but it didn't have any suitable spots either. All of the leaders doubted that there were any sizeable clearings inland. Eventually we found a place on the island that was generally flat, clear of vegetation, and far enough above the shoreline to not get flooded or anything. We set up camp as soon as we could because it was starting to rain.
That rain, when combined with the sand, was pure evil. Quite a lot of wet sand got our tents and sleeping bags, and the tents were unusually leaky (a couple unlucky souls ended up sleeping in a lake of sorts). That made most of us want to kill somebody.*
Weather-wise, Wednesday morning wasn't much better. It was still rather rainy and sandy. However, when we started kayaking, we learned the power (and sound) of MUSIC. We discovered that when we were singing together that it was easier for us to stay together (especially if the song was "I'll Make a Man Out of You"), and the time seemed to pass faster. Also, it seemed the weather seemed to clear up when we were singing church songs ("100 bottles of beer on the wall" didn't seem to have that effect).
(Note: The next paragraph is potentially gross.)
One thing I should mention now is that unlike every other kind of conceivable high adventure, bathroom facilities didn't seem to exist. Thus, my main strategy was "hold it in as long as possible." However, this strategy had it's flaws so I ended up needing to go during the first stop on Wednesday. However, the "island" we stopped at was more akin to a pile of rocks than something hospitable, so there wasn't any real privacy. I attempted to do my business on the alleged island by asking everybody to look away, but I caught some of the allegedly adult leaders taking pictures of me, so I opted to do my business at the next stop (which had far more vegetation). I'm going to kill somebody* if those pictures end up being published in any form.
The campsite that night was easily the best on the trip, but that opinion probably stems from the fact that the weather was much better than any of the other days. It also had a very private "bathroom", but that was a bit difficult to use. During the night we decided to play capture the flag, which was fun, even though the beach wasn't particularly suited for it.
Wednesday night was also the night when the adults decided to slightly scale back the length of the trip, after coming to the conclusion that they overestimated the distance most of us could go per day (and they wanted more time for us to goof around). I suspect that this form of overestimation also led us taking a dozens of more hot dogs than we were capable of eating.
The next day, Thursday, was also pretty good. By then we had all pretty much gotten used to kayaking, so I guess that's the reason I don't remember as much of it. We stopped once at the shore by some motel place, which was the closest we had been to civilization for days. We also stopped at a nice park (with a bathroom!), where we were able to meet up with Brother Goff again. He was willing to take the garbage we had accumulated by that time during the trip, and he also gave the poor souls of the flooded tent a replacement. The campsite we stayed at was also pretty nice, but it didn't have any of the nice features of the previous one (like a peninsula).
It did rain a little bit while we were there, but fortunately not during the night. While we were in the tent taking shelter from the rain, Derek (not the new guy) came up with the idea of having us do choose-your-own-adventure style thingies which he "directed." Each story was strictly a "one-player" affair, but they were creative enough that they were fun to listen to anyways. For instance, Austin had a story where he was a pirate or something fighting ninjas that happened to be from his hometown. Chris's story involved a sci-fi space battle and had the character "Blue Star Commander Hotness" (I believe that is simultaneously her name and title). Most of these stories ended with rather gruesome deaths, but in my case I got "lucky" and somehow won. I won by being stripped naked by nude pirates (cf Tuesday) even though Derek established earlier in the story that I was inexplicably naked, so thus this contradiction led to me joining the pirates (rather than being flayed). Granted, I'm not sure if that could be considered a good ending or bad ending. Anyways, these types of stories ended up being added to our repertoire of ways to spend time on the trip, thus leading to many more stories, but I still think Derek's original stories were the best.
Also, I think I'm supposed to say something that day made me want to kill someone* (to keep the pattern going), but I can't think of anything in particular that made me angry that night.
Friday ended up being our last day, rather than Saturday, mostly because we weren't going to do any kayaking that day anyways. The kayaking, again, seemed to pass rather quickly. We made a couple of stops, one of which was at the weirdest shore I had ever seen (it was made of some weird, bubbly, sandy, clay-like substance). Joseph and I did a couple of those choose-your-own-adventure stories to pass time. Also, their was much more water fighting than the previous days. I especially liked it when at the end everybody soaked Tani and Jarret (two of the primary instigators of the water fights).
After arriving at the beach the adults had to go get the rest of the vehicles from where we started, which took about two hours. During this time we emptied out the kayaks and put them aways, and then ate a bunch of stuff for lunch, such a cereal with soy milk. Said milk was so poor tasting that it made me want to kill someone.* We also played around a lot, doing things like using sticks to choreograph sword fights and such.
The ride home very much the same as the other car ride. I spent much of my time playing the Checkers and Solitaire LCD games, and we also stopped at a burger place (which was thankfully much cheaper). When I got home it was past 9 o'clock, and my parents were in their room watching TV. Apparently they were surprised that I was home. Anyways, I decided to do what was good for me and take a shower, especially since I hadn't changed my clothes since Monday. If for some reason that grosses you out, you could reinterpret that sentence as "I budgeted my clothing usage as to have mom do as little laundry as possible at the end of the week."
* You know who you are... *Ominous music*
(Alternative footnote: Not really.)
Sunday, May 31, 2009
What's Up?
If you haven't noticed, I haven't updated this blog since the end of last quarter. Man time flies by fast...
Anyways, in case you're wondering, I'm on track for graduation from high school this week, but I am a bit annoyed by the fact that my college finals are the week after graduation. Seriously, what kind of scheduling is that?
This weekend has been rather fun. I went on the Fathers' and Sons' Campout on Friday, which was pretty fun (although I wish more people in my age bracket would've went). We got to launch model rockets, which was pretty cool. I named mine the "USS [My name]." It managed two successful launches, which is more than I can say for some of the rockets. Some of the failed launches were rather hilarious. In one case, a rocket wasn't even able to get off the launchpad, despite the engine going at full blast. In another case, a rocket almost immediately went straight towards the ground. One person purposefully launched a rocket without fins to see what it would do (it went in circles for a bit). Good times.
Yesterday, we went to see Up in 3-D (see above). The 3-D effects weren't that noticeable, so you might as well skip out on it, unless you want to see Carl Fredrickson's stubble in all of it's glory. Either way, the film is easily on par with Pixar's other movies, which is just another way of saying it's a hole-in-one. Go see it now.
Also, today is the last day in the bunker. Awesome. I can't wait to be able to drink milk tomorrow.
Anyways, in case you're wondering, I'm on track for graduation from high school this week, but I am a bit annoyed by the fact that my college finals are the week after graduation. Seriously, what kind of scheduling is that?
This weekend has been rather fun. I went on the Fathers' and Sons' Campout on Friday, which was pretty fun (although I wish more people in my age bracket would've went). We got to launch model rockets, which was pretty cool. I named mine the "USS [My name]." It managed two successful launches, which is more than I can say for some of the rockets. Some of the failed launches were rather hilarious. In one case, a rocket wasn't even able to get off the launchpad, despite the engine going at full blast. In another case, a rocket almost immediately went straight towards the ground. One person purposefully launched a rocket without fins to see what it would do (it went in circles for a bit). Good times.
Yesterday, we went to see Up in 3-D (see above). The 3-D effects weren't that noticeable, so you might as well skip out on it, unless you want to see Carl Fredrickson's stubble in all of it's glory. Either way, the film is easily on par with Pixar's other movies, which is just another way of saying it's a hole-in-one. Go see it now.
Also, today is the last day in the bunker. Awesome. I can't wait to be able to drink milk tomorrow.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Last Days
Thursday was the last day of my Volleyball class this quarter. It was like any other day, except that that the teacher congratulated us by telling us that everybody present at class that day happened to have an A. He also named the Most Valuable Player and Most Improved Player, and I happened to be the latter.
Thursday was also my last day of my Excel class. The teacher knew that not everybody would be able to finish the week's work by that day, so she allowed us to finish our work by Monday and e-mail it to her. I was one of the people that needed that extra time. In any case, I'm 96% sure I have an A in that class.
Today was my last day of Trig class (ignoring the final on Wednesday). We didn't do much, other than review some stuff for the final, and turned in our final projects which involved vectors, a piston, teamwork, and using arcane spells to divine answers to the questions.
Today was also the last day of my Fiction Writing class. We got back our final projects we turned in on Friday (10 pages of writing). I got a B+ on the project and the class itself. The teacher's illegible handwriting indicated that my strong points were irony, sarcasm, and the ilk while my weak points are descriptiveness in terms of setting and character and such. Strangely, one of the authors he recommended me to read was Kurt Vonnegut.
Anyways, the main attraction of the class period was the contest to "write the opening for the worst novel ever." There were about 9 people who volunteered to read their entries to the class. Mostly, the entries either fell into the lines of "trying to hard" or "not trying enough." Personally, I think I struck a perfect balance between the two with my entry (warning: may not be suitable for human consumption):
Thursday was also my last day of my Excel class. The teacher knew that not everybody would be able to finish the week's work by that day, so she allowed us to finish our work by Monday and e-mail it to her. I was one of the people that needed that extra time. In any case, I'm 96% sure I have an A in that class.
Today was my last day of Trig class (ignoring the final on Wednesday). We didn't do much, other than review some stuff for the final, and turned in our final projects which involved vectors, a piston, teamwork, and using arcane spells to divine answers to the questions.
Today was also the last day of my Fiction Writing class. We got back our final projects we turned in on Friday (10 pages of writing). I got a B+ on the project and the class itself. The teacher's illegible handwriting indicated that my strong points were irony, sarcasm, and the ilk while my weak points are descriptiveness in terms of setting and character and such. Strangely, one of the authors he recommended me to read was Kurt Vonnegut.
Anyways, the main attraction of the class period was the contest to "write the opening for the worst novel ever." There were about 9 people who volunteered to read their entries to the class. Mostly, the entries either fell into the lines of "trying to hard" or "not trying enough." Personally, I think I struck a perfect balance between the two with my entry (warning: may not be suitable for human consumption):
UntitleableDespite the fact that I was unable to read that without laughing, that piece beat it's closest competitor by a factor of two, thus netting myself the prize of a book which I'll probably never read.
The sweet smell of her sweetsmelling crimson lip-liner, which immaculately accentuated her puffy lips, inebriated her awe-stuck consort as they happily skipped in an exuberant manner over the white stripes of a zebra crossing before they stopped to snog each other on the yellow lines, making sure to intertwine their twin tongues in the fashion of a wet silk rope, thus halting all traffic from progressing down the parkway.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Talking and Talking
Today I had the "pleasure" of giving my third sacrament meeting talk ever. I gave my first talk somewhere around Pioneer Day 2006, and the subject was (obviously) about pioneers. When I was called to give that talk, I started hyperventilating into a paper bag before I even put down the phone. Fortunately, for my second talk, which I gave about a week before this blog started, I only started hyperventilating when I heard that I would be speaking along with some High Council speakers. This time, I didn't hyperventilate at all, despite the fact that the bishop only called me on Friday. Then again, that probably had to do with the fact that, coincidentally, I had to speak about the same subject as last time (that is, the Sacrament).
In any case, I think I'm getting better at this whole "public speaking" thing. My talk was met with nigh-universal praise. All I need to do now is learn how to not sweat like a pig and how to inflect my voice so I don't sound monotone.
In any case, I think I'm getting better at this whole "public speaking" thing. My talk was met with nigh-universal praise. All I need to do now is learn how to not sweat like a pig and how to inflect my voice so I don't sound monotone.
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