Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Just in case all y'all were wondering about whats up...

Life is currently pretty decent. And by pretty decent, I mean flipping schuweet, with some discrepancies that prevent it from being fully flipping schuweet, such as the fact that I will shortly be moving. Hurray! I think. Possibly. I mean, I do like the people who live around here, but the rent woman is becoming somewhat psycho... I do believe she may in fact honestly have a serious mental problem. But the fact remains we are renting from her, and as she is quickly descending from the town of unstable to the city of tweakerville, we are relocating! But not too far from where we are currently, at least thats the plan. So it's not like I'm suddenly picking up and fleeing the state. Nah, I'm going to be hanging 'round for a bit longer. Can't get rid of me that easily!

Anyways, enough on some of the things that aren't so hot in my life... Whats going on thats great? 

Well, for starters, I'm reading this awesome blog, that you should all go check out. (The link is right where I said "blog" in case you missed it. It's pretty sweet) The lady that writes it, Abigail Nussbaum, is really one awesome individual. She's got a BSc in computer science, and in her spare time writes reviews for all things amazing. Pretty much rocks. Also, she watches Dr. Who. Which pretty much makes her amazing in my book. She is a feminist, not saying thats a bad thing, but if you have not experienced a review on a movie such as, say, Scott Pilgrim VS. the World by one, be prepared for somewhat of a culture shock. It's very interesting and eye-opening to read reviews on so many things I've enjoyed that see it through a slightly different lens, and I've become somewhat of an avid reader of her blog over the last couple days. If you followed the X-men movie review link I put in my last post, it was also one of hers. 

Another thing thats pretty cool is the Savior of the World production I'm in. Just so you all know out there, yes, I am religious, and I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Also commonly recognized as the mormon church or LDS. And I am currently involved in a Production about the life of Jesus Christ, which is pretty fun. I love singing, and I love choir, and since I enjoy church immensely as well, I go to my church choir as well, and its the church choir thats really putting this on. I (during the two acts of the production) get to play through the roles of three different angels, a roman soldier, a resurrected being (From the people who rose from the dead in Jerusalem), and then just a stander-by in the chorus. So I get I think one actual spoken line, and I get some solo stage time (Read - 4 to 5 seconds), and I get to sing a lot. Regardless of your religious viewpoint (And I view Atheism as merely the religious choice not to believe in anything, not a lack of religion) I think that the life of Jesus is an exemplary one that all can gain from, whether you believe it or not, so I feel that this whole production thing is a very neat event I get to participate in. 

A third thing is that I'm involved quite heavily in scouting, and in summer camps in general. I've lived my summers as a lifeguard for a local camp since I was 14, and before that I had been going to scout camps since I was 11. So, scouting and camping, particularly during the summer, has always been of great importance to me. And swimming. And basically anything to do with water, like sailing (I was the sailing instructor last summer). But what the point I'm leading up to is that I get the opportunity to be a youth leader at Camp Helaman, which is for 16-19/20 year old boys. I'm one of the six young men who run the camp, and its all youth lead, which is really cool. If you've been involved in scouting, you probably understand how crazy that is to have a full on camp that actually runs and operates that way. Anyways, we've been planning and organizing and doing the logistics for this thing with a committee of adults since last fall, and now in two weeks it'll be here. I'm crazy ecstatic about it. Like, this thing has literally almost been a full year in the making, and we plan on having about 200 youth at the first session (Theres two sessions, each a week long, but my group is only in charge of the first session). Now, that may not seem like a huge number, but if you've ever worked at a summer camp, you probably know that 200+ youth in a smaller area, and trying to run that camp successfully is a huge undertaking. To compare, the scout camp I usually spend my summers life-guarding at, a busy week is 300-400 youth, from around the nation. A really crappy overloaded week is 400-500. But thats on 400 acres. Now, camp Helaman is on about 100-200 acres. Its about half the area of the scout camp,  but nearly the same amount of kids. It's insane. But fun! And I'm so happy for it to be here, but I know I'll be sad to see it be over.

But its all good because the very next week I'm going to that scout camp I lifeguard at and training my replacements as sailing instructors. Which makes me happy. 

And now to wrap things up, I feel I need to mention a good friend of mine, Emily. We've had an interesting past. I don't know particularly how she feels about it, but in my eyes, she's always been my intellectual nemesis. You know, the good friend who you constantly strive to be better than? Yeah, thats her. Whilst I was plunking about on a piano, and then giving that up in favor of trumpet and trombone, which I gave up for community college, and then picked up some self taught guitar, she was going about her way, playing violin. And getting better and better at it. There was a period of time where we dated, and most of our dates consisted of going to events she was playing at, and then going out for a fancy dinner afterwards, and possibly sitting on a dock and just looking out at the water. Point being, musically, she had me beat, and we both knew it. So while she took AP classes, I took to community college life like a fish. Meaning I busted arse my first year or so and then realized that its a community college where the credits I do earn won't actually do me any good, unlike her AP classes. So, I do have 4.0 GPA's in calculus (which oddly enough is the ares I scored lowest on my IQ test - mathematics that is.), but I'm going to have to retake that darn class once I get to a university. The fact however that we were taking different courses led to us having heated debates (never arguments) over which was better - AP classes, or Running Start community college classes. Turns out she was right, but while she was stuck doing super study for her AP classes, I coasted through my classes with relative ease, enjoying my free college tuition period. The truly funny part though is that we're both going to be going through school for the same thing - Math Education. I personally don't know (Read - don't remember) what she specifically has in mind, but personally I'm going for university/college level math instruction. I don't particularly want to be stuck in a classroom of kids who are in that room not for self enrichment, but because they're forced to be there. I mean, I could probably teach them and do a good job doing so, but it's not what I want for myself. I want to be the the cool college math professor! (Those do exist... somewhere... I hope) Anyways, Emily is a superduperfriggingfantasticlyamazingcool and rad person. And much smarter than those silly Evergreen students...

And I'm leaving it like that for tonight. Thanks for reading everyone! And whoever is reading this in Israel and Germany, I just think its amazing that you're reading my blog. I never thought that I would have anyone other than just a couple close friends read this, and so its really just too cool to have viewers on an international level. Thank you! And goodnight!

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