BYU HAS CLAIMED FOOTBALL INDEPENDENCE AND WILL LEAVE THE MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE AFTER THIS YEAR!

Today was the last day of August! Holy cow! I can't believe how quickly the summer flew by.

Not too much happened today. I went to my 8:00 tap class and reviewed the syllabus and then got out early, as is usual for the first day of classes. I then went home and did some stuff before heading to the bank to withdraw $1300 for mike and his friend's cut of the firework money. I stopped by the grocery store on the way back and picked up some things, including some fresh ingredients for lasagna, the recipe for which I basically made up and sounds like it will be delicious. I have garlic and onions to sautee with olive oil to make a sauce with diced tomatoes and basil, then I'll have layers of a cheesy bechamel sauce, wilted spinach, meat, ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, more flavorings and topped off with a 6 cheese italian blend. It sounds phenomenal to me and I can't wait to have time to make it!! After grocery shopping I went to work for 8 hours. That was uneventful. 300 people came to swim for 4 hours today. Yay.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) will be super busy. I have 11 o'clock lecture for music 201, then I'll run straight to a tv to watch the news conference on BYUtv about our conference re-alignment. Right after that I have to hurry to Wells Fargo to open my new checking account. I got a $100 bonus at work today! I'll just use that to open the account. From there I have to go to my re-scheduled doctor's appointment at 2:40 (it was at 10, but with class at 11 I had to move it to be safe). Then I'll hopefully have time to rest up for a few minutes before heading to swim at Seven Peaks with Mary. From there it will be night and I'll go home to sleep before having to get up at 7 to be ready for tap again on Thursday at 8:00 am. Busy, busy busy!

But yeah, I totally got a $100 bonus for all my work carrying out the huge catering we did last week. I was excited!

I think that's about it. I'm excited to get my package in the mail in a couple days.

I did it. I started another huge step today. I went back to college. I dropped off my endorsement, registered for courses and went to my first real college class in years. I also deposited a check for $2330, $1030 of which is mine. It felt good. Even though I know it's going to suck having to study a lot, it felt great. Turns out, I'm in a class with Michael. We're going to split the cost of books and it should make studying and homework easier. He's over here all the time anyway. Here's a look at my school schedule. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have tap dance at 8:00-9:50 AM. Then in the evening I have Honors University Writing from 5:10 to 6:25 PM also on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays I have Music 201 with Mike from 4:00-6:50 PM. No class Mondays and no class Fridays. It was not even close to the schedule I thought I would have, but, I think it may be better. We'll see. These are the 3 classes I failed and need to retake to get my GPA up. It would be nice to take mission prep and it would be nice to retake Book of Mormon, but this schedule is what is going to get me back to where I need to be.

Today I also purchased insurance and set up a doctor's appointment for Wednesday at 10:00 AM. At this visit, I'll just be getting a physical (I thought that since it's been 2 years since I've seen a doctor, it would be ideal to get all my vitals checked and such) and then I'll have the doctor clean my stinking ears out so I don't go deaf again and I will discuss my health with him. It's the same doctor who I went to before with all my fatigue, so he'll want to hear how things are going now. Once my mission papers are going, I'll go in for a mission physical, which I'm sure will involve all sorts of invasive procedures and possibly those one things that they poke in you and suck your blood out with. I won't say their names. My arms tingle thinking about it. Anyway, maybe he can recommend a good dentist too.

But, yeah, things are going really good. I just need to find work soon so I don't have to worry about money.

Well, the pieces are all in place and tomorrow (which is more like today for anyone reading...or maybe even yesterday for some of you) I should be able take my signed ecclesiastical endorsement to the correct office and then I can register for classes. I have the times for the classes I need to add and because some of them are full, I am going to go to the classes tomorrow and see if I can add any of them. My only concern is the Writing 150 class, which I HAVE to retake and pass this semester. All of those classes are full, so it may be a difficult task getting into the section I need. I already have a spot reserved in tap dance. Mary went on and registered for the last spot. When my registration block is removed, she'll drop the class and I'll take the opening immediately. Music 201 shouldn't be a problem. I should be able to just get a permission to add code from the teacher and then register with that. I applied for a job that I hope to interview for in the next couple days. They wanted someone to start immediately. I'll expound on the job more later.

The paycheck from Phantom was put in the mail Friday evening, so it will for sure arrive in the next mail delivery! That will give me $1600 in my bank account. Add the $600 this paycheck on Friday and I think I am in good shape! My bishop is still working on getting my papers started and we will meet next week. Because I'm taking classes, there's no real need to rush anything. I'll take it nice and easy, get it done as quickly as I can, but not worry about rushing things. I'd like to have it all done soon though so I can get the call and prepare for it.

Other than that, things are going well. I sold some books for Amelia and made $100. I will try to sell the 3 bags of books left from both Amelia and Mary and see if I can't bring in some more cash for them. I gots to get to bed now so I can be up for 8:00 classes.

One last thing! I added a third party comment board to the right side of my blog so you can now comment for real. It says "Comment Here" for the title and then says monjeier below that. Right beneath the monjeier is a link that says "Leave a Response". Just click that, fill in the form and you can now tell me all your thoughts!

Sorry I haven't been keeping up too well with this blog this week! I have some things for today's post.

First, I forgot to mention my meeting with an academic support adviser on Tuesday. All I needed was to meet with an adviser to turn in my academic plan thing. By what is obviously more than a coincidence, I was scheduled with a different adviser who usually deals with students who do seriously poor in their courses. I say it's more than a coincidence because she figured that since I was scheduled with her, I might as well get the full experience. She told me what 3 classes to repeat (Music 201, Writing 150 and Tap Dance) so that my GPA would be back up. I need to repeat those 3 because this is my last chance to retake them before new policies come into effect next year that would average my grade for retaking with my original failing grade. Then she gave me tons of advice on studying habits and methods and reviewing methods. She wrote down things for me and I got a copy of some to do lists and schedules to help me plan things out. I went in to just get the registration block removed. I came out feeling more positive about and prepared for college than I have ever felt.

The past two days, not too much has gone on. Yesterday, Thursday, was a boring day. I went into work at 10 to clean up from the ginormous NuSkin exclusive the night before. I spent several hours scrubbing and wiping and mopping and got things ridiculously clean. So clean, in fact, that several people from other departments who were around commented on how clean it was. It was essentially the cleanest it has ever been. I didn't do it all, but because the people who helped all had to leave for several hours, I did get a lot of the cleaning done myself. After that I supervised another small exclusive that was super slow. In 4 days of work I had 41 hours. Now I get to just sit back for a couple days because due to weather, I postponed the fireworks trip to Wyoming. I think we're going to just do a day trip when we reschedule. We'll go up some Saturday and spend the afternoon playing frisbee or something, then we'll do fireworks that night and come home really late. We'll see though.

Today was a nice day. Mike and Annie came down and we moved Mike's stuff to his apartment. Once he moved his stuff, I realized exactly how much stuff Amelia left behind. WHAT THE HECK AMELIA!!!! I have like 50 boxes of your stuff!!! I have nowhere to store anything of my own because every spot is already taken. Anyway...we moved Mike's stuff, went to Wal-Mart and then decided to go chill at Seven Peaks at get some Vitamin D. We hung out there for almost two hours then headed home (there were only a handful of people at Seven Peaks today). Mike and I went to a BYU women's soccer game that we won 5-1 and Annie headed back up to Salt Lake. By the way, if anyone wants to win lots of money, bet against Grandma. She doesn't think I'll go on a mission. I don't think she expects anything from me ever. According to her, I haven't done anything for the past year or two. While there probably is a little truth to that last year, this year I have accomplished so many things. I have a list I'm putting together of everything I've accomplished just this summer alone. I'll put that out soon. Tomorrow I'm going to make $100 from selling some books and our check from Phantom arrived at the Salt Lake warehouse today and they sent it to here. It should arrive tomorrow or Monday, depending on if they got it processed before it was too late today or not. The total is $2309, which means Mike and I will each get $1000!!! That will be my tuition money. By my calculations, I have $700 in the bank now, $1000 coming tomorrow or Monday, and then another $600 in my paycheck next Friday. That's $2300. What now Grandma! I'm actively seeking a job for when Seven Peaks ends so I should be in good shape with housing and all that. I'm meeting with the bishop again Sunday (we finally go back to 9:00 church this week!!!) and my mission papers should be started.

That's all the news I have for now. Things are going well as you can see.

Apologies for the super lateness of these posts. I have spent just about all my energy and every ounce of hard work the past 2 days preparing for the largest exclusive catering event Seven Peaks has ever done. 25 hours (10 yesterday, 15 today), it is all done and I am actually pretty content. Things went great. We did not get the 5000 we expected, the number was more around 2500-3000, but that worked out great because we are not equipped to handle 5000 with catering. I don't think I said much about this catering, so I'll briefly explain it. Nuskin was coming and they were bringing up to 5000 people. They purchased the highest catering we offer, which is unlimited hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, pulled pork sandwiches, drink and all the snacks we offer (pretzels, nachos, fries, etc...) So, we had to order an entire semi of food and had to leave the refrigerated semi trailer at the park to store all the food there was sooo much. We spent the last week planning for it and coming up with as many time saving methods as we could. Yesterday our food arrived and we began moving it where it needed to be. In all, myself, another supervisor and the food manager moved close to 1.5 or 2 tons of food. That's 3-4 THOUSAND pounds of food! That number seems low...but either way, it was a lot of food. Today, the food manager had to go to a golf tournament sponsored by our food supplier, so I took charge of preparing for the catering. We still had a checklist a mile long and only 5 employees (high schools started this week here) to do it all with. Thankfully, 4 of those employees were exceptional workers (3 were supervisors, myself included). We thawed out thousands of chicken breasts and a stink load of pulled pork and did all sorts of work. We were impressed with ourselves. If you had come in at 8 am when we had this morning and saw we were about a day behind where we needed to be and only had 8 hours before the event began and you had to have everything cooking or cooked, you would have thought it was impossible. But, we did it.

I would love to go into detail about how much fun we had moving food around. We used a john deer gator and stacked food high and did all sorts of hilarious and fun things...but you really had to be there. I do, however, want to say one thing. Since I became half deaf temporarily in my right ear, I've had trouble hearing people talk to me from that side. So, my natural reaction was to say "huh?" a lot. Well, that kind of evolved into what is now the funniest inside joke ever. I say "huh" a lot when people are talking to me...occasionally even when I hear them. I say it in a bit of a raised voice with a bit of a pitch raise. I also say it more like "heh". It's another thing you kind of have to be there for, but at times it is the funniest thing. I do it mostly because it has melted away all the frustration I had over being deaf. Plus it just makes work so much more fun. The employees can't stop laughing. It's a hoot. I can even use it to get people's attention. I'll call their name and they won't respond, so I just say "heh" and they immediately turn. Anywho...

Now that this ginormous catering is over, things will slow down massively at Seven Peaks. Tomorrow I'm going in early to help finish cleaning up from today. We got a lot done, but there is still tons to clean. Then I'm supervising a small exclusive without catering tomorrow afternoon. Then I'm off work until next week as I head up to Wyoming on Friday!

I've been having a problem for the past little while. I have what I suppose is some ear wax jammed way back in my right ear. I woke up one morning a week or so ago and could feel the clog and could not hear much out of that ear. It kind of went away but has been recurring for the past week and a bit. Then, this morning, I woke up and once again I could hear virtually nothing in my right ear and I could feel that it was clogged. I tried all I could to remove the clog, but only got some little pieces of ear wax. This stuff is in there good. I went through the entire day today half deaf. It actually gets extremely annoying after awhile. I tried some home remedies but nothing has worked yet. I even heated up some olive oil and put that in my ear for a few minutes. I bought a medicine syringe and after the oil had been in there for a couple minutes I had my manager squirt warm water in with some pressure to try to displace and remove the wax. That did nothing. If anything it just jammed it worse. Anyway, if I'm lucky I may be able to hear again in the morning. If not, I'm working hard to get everything in order this week so I can register for classes by Thursday. Then I can get insurance and try to see a doctor and get this junk out!

That's the news for now.

Today was a good day. I woke up this morning and turned on Music and the Spoken Word. It was a good one. They sang Morning Has Broken, Oh What a Beautiful Morning and some other good songs I like. When the time came I went to church. This was the last week of summer church. Next week we'll have a full size ward again and we'll start meeting at 9:00 am! I'm excited. I like morning church much more than afternoon church.

Anyway, as most of you may know, I met again with my bishop about a mission. I told him that I wanted to start papers for a full time mission instead of a service mission and so he'll get the online process started this week. I'll meet again next week and he'll give me the information so I can take care of my part. I haven't made a final decision, but when I think about it, I'm excited at the prospect of going back to school at least half time this fall semester. I can retake a couple courses to get my academic standing in better position for when I return to finish school and it will also help my brain get back into thinking mode. I can cover the cost of tuition easily and probably 2 months rent with what I'll have by the end of my job, but I'll have to take another job to cover the second half of the semester's rent and cover mission prep stuff. I think it will all work out well. I'll make a final decision on school as soon as I can. Hopefully by Wednesday at the latest.

This will be a very busy week and I look forward to it. Things have improved 100 times since the start of summer and I'm very confident in the future I now see.

Oh...I almost forgot. Both last Sunday and this Sunday I received compliments on my ties. Last week I was complimented for the dimple in it. Odd as it was at first to have someone appreciate the dimple, I felt good about it. Then this week, a different girl (they were both girls complimenting me) complimented my tie/suit choice. I wore my grey suit with my blue and pink tie. It looks dashing as heck in my opinion and apparently I'm not alone in this opinion.

Another week has come to an end. It went by pretty quick for me.

Today, unfortunately, went by slooooowly. Every hour dragged painfully by. It seemed like an eternity before 8 hours had passed. Then, of course, it was really busy and I had to stay 40 minutes longer. At least that part flew by.

I got a bike pump today. A friend at work was going to come inflate my rear tire because it was half flat. When he showed up, he gave me the pump he used. He said he has another one he uses so I could keep that one. It was pretty awesome. Now I don't have to buy a pump!

Well, I won't try writing words that just aren't coming, so I'll end this one now. Meeting with the bishop tomorrow!

Today seemed to blow by really fast. One minute I was at the store picking up some donuts on the way to work, the next I was eating take out pasta for lunch. A blink of the eye later and I was depositing my $775.83 paycheck. I was a little disappointed in that actually. My net pay was $900 and a few cents. While I haven't been taxed before due to my number of exemptions, as I should have known: the more I make, the more they take (hehehe, catchy phrase!). Anyway, $60ish went to social security and medicare, two programs I will never benefit from...heck, I'm not convinced anyone is benefiting from them. Anyway, another $60ish went to federal and state taxes. Hopefully I'll get that part back next April. Regardless, I'll take $775 any day. Still waiting on that Phantom Fireworks check, but, really, who actually expected that to be on time!? Please...knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Well, I might as well put out some real news. I admit that recently I have had a mighty good little struggle with the idea of a mission. Reading the Book of Mormon gave me some confidence and being around people who are helping me prepare has also helped. But, real help came in an email the other day from dad. I'll keep the contents of the email private, but essentially it gave me a lot of insight on things I was having difficulty thinking about. When I meet with my bishop again on Sunday, I'll share with him the email and I will inform him of my decision to forgo the service mission prospect and begin filling out mission papers for a full time mission. As dad said in the email and as I have felt as well recently, if I'm not supposed to serve a full time mission, my application will be rejected. Considering this new path, I'm not sure what to do about school. I don't know what the time line will be...I'll find that out before I make any more decisions.

Don't worry guys, this whole roller coaster ride will soon be over and you won't have to worry about my future too much.

I apologize for the delay in my post yesterday. I will explain the reason for the delay in today's post.

Yesterday was August's Seven Peaks Employee party. We went to a place called Jump On It. It's essentially a building with tons of trampolines all connected. There are even trampolines at an angle on the walls. This link will take you to their home page. Click "See Inside" to get a short video shot of the inside.

http://www.jumponitparty.com/

So, I jumped on trampolines almost non-stop for about 2 hours. Apparently, maybe because I've had so many concussions, it was too much for my head. After I had been done jumping for awhile, my vision got black around the edges and very blurry. That lasted for a good 20 minutes or so. My body then kind of went into a numb-like state. Not totally numb where I couldn't move, but numb and tingly-like and I couldn't concentrate well. After a while, those cleared up, but a headache came on. It started small but grew quite quickly. I was supposed to help my manager move his furniture after the party. By the time we got to his apartment, my head was pounding , particularly in the front, and I was sensitive to light and sound. Luckily he had someone else to help move furniture, because after moving 1 piece I felt like I was going to either puke or pass out. At that point, I would have loved to have passed out and woken up a day later feeling fine. He took me home on his way to drop his furniture off where it was going. By then I felt like I had a fever and was really hot and I was in so much pain I could barely think or talk. I literally walked through the door, emptied my pockets, changed into some light shorts and hopped into bed. I will spare you another detail involving another ill symptom. I'll just say that I had to go to the bathroom twice, I had to sit, and it wasn't puke. If you get my drift. (If you don't get my drift, that's ok, don't think about it too much). I got up 3 times in the night. The first two trips were to the bathroom, the 3rd was to get a cold, damp towel to drape over my throbbing forehead. The towel helped. I was boiling hot and freezing cold at the same time. With my shirt off at this point, the towel gave me a good balance. I was under the covers to keep my chilled skin warm, but the towel kept my hot head cool. After enduring a lot of restlessness due solely to the extreme feeling of my head wanting to explode, I eventually fell asleep. There was someone next door or below me vacuuming and cleaning loudly (it was past 1 AM at this point), but the headache/migraine kept me from being bothered by it and it did not keep me from finally sleeping.

When I awoke this morning, the throbbing pain had ceased. Unfortunately, I did still feel pain in my head. Any time I tilt my head downwards, it throbs. Every sneeze throbs. Shaking my head too much throbs. Basically, I've spent the day trying not to move my head any which direction. I feel like I received a concussion, but I never hit my head. The only reason I did not puke all over the world last night is because for the past 3 years or more since the last time I puked (which I think was the time I came home to Kentucky and was sick the whole way back), I vowed to not puke again. Despite a few times where my body wanted to make me puke and all I had to do was say "ahh", I have gotten good at making myself not puke. Anyway, all the symptoms of a head injury were there except for an actual impact to cause one. I'm led to believe that my brain got all jumbled from the jumping and the physical activity. It's actually not new to me. When I played soccer on an intramural team two years ago, any time I went all out running and exerting myself, my vision would get black around the edges and I'd feel similar symptoms to last night. Maybe I should talk to my doctor about it and make sure I don't have any real problems.

Anyway, I spent the entire day cleaning today. I did both my and Mike's cleaning checks. I started around 8:30 or so and I'm actually still not complete and it's almost 6:00 pm. I took a short break to close my Deseret First Credit Union account. The only Provo location, which is 2 blocks down, is closing, so there's no point having an account at a bank I can't get to. I withdrew the $25 in my savings which is all I had in there. The cleaning checker offer guy came and since I did Mike's first and I'm staying in this apartment in Fall and have been cleaning all day, he passed us both off.

I know this post is long, but I have 2 more things to tell. First, that kid I fired. I completely forgot to mention that his father called us 45 minutes after we fired him. His father actually thanked us for holding to our values and doing what was right and had to be done. He was thankful for that and he was glad that his son was going to be able to learn from this earlier in his life rather than later. The next day, which was Wednesday, he brought his son in and his son had a card for us. In it he apologized for his actions and expressed regret for letting down his manager, supervisors and co-workers. He also included money to pay us back for what he stole and he put in extra to make sure he was "honest in his restitution". I was impressed his father handled it so professionally and while I'm sure he nudged his son a lot to do it, it took courage for his son to do that too.

I will end on a funny note. At work yesterday, I broke a chair I was sitting in. I was just sitting in a white, four legged plastic chair and out of nowhere the back 2 legs snapped at the top. I fell straight down and back a little with what was, according to the co-worker that witnessed it, the funniest face ever. As I went to throw the chair away, people saw and I got the whole fat person treatment. That's ok. I know that none of my 7 and a half abs were the least bit offended and neither was I. It was, after all, a rare treat to be the skinniest guy ever to break a chair from just sitting in it.

The deed is done. This morning, a few minutes after 9:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time, I fired an employee for the first time in my life. Despite preparing myself since yesterday for it, there's just no way to be prepared for that. I was probably almost as nervous as the guy I was firing was. I kept it pretty brief. It was all over within a couple minutes. We discussed the things he had done and he told me exactly how many times he did those things. Then I told him that because of the repeated offenses, we had decided to let him go. He knew it was coming. No matter how much he wanted to avoid it (and he had been for the past couple days since he was caught doing what led to him being fired), he knew it was a reality. Within 24 hours he would need to turn in his uniform and badge and could not swim at the park unless he pays. I asked him if he had any other questions and he declined. He stood, shook my hand and as he turned for the door I told him I was sorry it had to end this way. He acknowledged the situation and before leaving said that he knew it was his own fault. After he left, I filled out a separation notice with HR to make it all final. He no longer works for Seven Peaks Water Park.

After that, the Foods Manager and I had some breakfast at work and the day went on from there. I now have experience hiring and firing employees.

This evening, after work, I went down the street to the annual BYU Cougar Kick Off. They have all the fall sports teams (Football, Women's Soccer, Women's Volleyball, Men's and Women's Basketball and some track people) at the soccer practice field. Lots of sponsors are there with booths giving away small swag and they talk to the head coaches of the sports and a few players. Bronco Mendenhall, as usual, was the highlight of the evening. I got signed posters from the women's soccer and volleyball team. I got a football poster but didn't want it signed (long lines mostly deterred me from it). I also got a KSL frisbee and some BYU bumper stickers. It was a fun event to go hang out at for a bit. I got to see one of the veteran football wide receivers dance on stage and do a back flip off of the stage. I'm sure if Bronco was still there, he would have cringed seeing a player back flipping. Now I'm home trying to get a head start on my cleaning. I have to do both my and Mike's cleaning checks on Thursday and somehow I have to make it look like 4 people's things are all my own, while hiding my illegal items as well. Yay!

Hello, hello and happy Monday. I'm not sure about all of you, but, my Monday was quite good. No real problems. Work went smooth. I stayed an extra 2 and a half hours for no particular reason. I still worked and everything so I wasn't wasting time or anything.

The only downfall to today was the decision to fire an employee. I won't give too many details, but, this employee has a history of getting free food when he should not and lying about it a lot. It added up to too many problems and so I decided we should just let him go. Since I was the supervisor who confronted him in the past about these problems, I am going to be the one to talk to him tomorrow morning and inform him of our decision. The foods manager hates firing people, so, since I have never done it before and I want experience with that, I will be doing it alone. I'm a little bit nervous and anxious, but I think it will all go smoothly. I'm pretty certain he knows that we're onto him about it, so he should just accept it.

Anyway, that will be the highlight of tomorrows post. I'll tell you all how it went.

Today went pretty good. I'll keep it somewhat brief.

Church was excellent. I met with my bishop again and we went over what the mission interview is like so I can be somewhat prepared for it next week when I meet with him again to be interviewed. By then, he will know more about service missions and we'll decide if that's what's going to happen. Keep in mind that I can do a service mission and then a full time proselyting mission too. I know most people say service mission with a bit of hesitation, but, I feel that whether that's the only mission I do or if it is a pre-cursor to a full time mission, it's what I should do right now. There are some service missions that are somewhat full time where I would be working 40 hours a week. Anyway, once we know more about what's available and such maybe any questions people have can be answered.

The sacrament meeting talks were the best we've had in ages. A different high councilor that's spoken to us before spoke with his wife. Both of their talks were amazing and I've never seen a congregation more attentive. I took a lot away from church today.

After church, Annie, who came down this morning and went to church with me, hung out at my place. We had some dinner and watched a movie. That was about it today. This week will be work as usual. Though I will be taking a day off to get my cleaning check done and get some important errands run. I have to register my bike, close a bank account, do all mine and mike's cleaning, get some milk and eggs and maybe a couple other things and who knows what else...all on Thursday, and most of those have a strict time limit and have to be done before certain times that day. OH BOY!

Today I have an interesting story to tell. I'll get to that in a bit. But first, as the big picture to the left shows, I got a haircut today! I decided to swing by the BYU Barbershop before work. I'm pleased with the result. I usually don't style it, so it will look a little different than the picture. (The picture was taken minutes ago from my webcam.)

Anyway, work was good. It was a little busy but we all worked through it and had a fun Saturday. My story begins when work ends. As I sent my employees home for the night, I realized that my decision to take the bus today was a bad idea because buses don't run past 6 or 7 on Saturday nights. I walked to get my hair cut and took a bus from campus to work because my knee (the one I banged up yesterday) wasn't really up for riding a bike again yet. A quick note on that, the tip of the bone is bruised a bit so while I can walk fine, kneeling or putting any more strain on it than walking hurts a lot. Anyway, so I took a bus to work today and then realized later there was no bus home when I got off. It being an absolutely beautiful night, I had no problem walking. Now, when I walk places, it gives me time to think. Sometimes I think about important things, sometimes I just let my mind wander. Today, I began to let my mind wander. As I approached a tree that hangs over the sidewalk, I heard a light rustling of the leaves. My mind being in wander mode, as I walked under the rustling branches, I wondered what would happen if a ginormous snake tried to swallow me as it swung down from the tree. I came to the conclusion that I would manage to escape the snake. Having quite the tale to tell, that would probably land me on some tv shows. I wouldn't really care to be on any show except for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. But, I wouldn't want to just recite my story. I would want to be asked questions about myself too. In my head I continued to entertain the thought of being interviewed by Jay Leno. I figured the most interesting thing about me to him would be that I'm Mormon. I continued to think about the questions I would be asked and somehow that led me to being asked about immigration. I think that illegal immigration is just that. Illegal. A process has been drawn up through which people can become legal citizens. Regardless of what "experts" say, illegal immigrants, even if they are productive and good, burden our governments. My mind kept linking that to other things and somehow that got me to relating it to marriage. It's something that has been established and you don't just want to alter that suddenly. Though, in this day and age, people want to alter marriage as well. Marriage is something that can only be between man and a woman. Despite this having been established for centuries, people have become confused and want to alter that. All these things I was thinking about, I realized that all they do is bring about confusion. The only thing they accomplish is tearing down the unity of people. This entire nation could be torn apart by the differing views, which come from Satan, on things like illegal immigration and gay marriage. Even if you don't believe in God, you can easily see how evil has penetrated the roots of society. After thinking all these things, I have to believe that those things are there for one purpose, to break apart the unity of countries, churches and even friendships and families. I know it's totally weird that walking under a tree could lead me to this, but, it did and I have no doubt that that's exactly what is happening, especially because I just finished reading in the Book of Mormon about what happened to the Nephites and Lamenites who were constantly destroyed for allowing similar things to permeate their societies.

Well, that's my story. I hope it made sense. Hopefully the comments are working now, because I'm sure anyone who reads this will have some comment to make. For the record, you don't need to comment that I'm weird. I already know that!

Tomorrow I meet with my bishop and will hopefully come away with a decision on what's going on this fall for me. Hope you all have a good weekend! Summer is almost over.

Ok, let me just say, watching a scary movie while you're living alone is not the best idea. I have even seen the movie I watched before and I watched it during the evening before the sun set. I still just about peed myself twice. The movie is "When a Stranger Calls". That movie, if you haven't seen it, is one that really scares you because it isn't a slasher, gory, non-realistic movie. It's as real as they come. Here's the synopsis: "During an otherwise routine babysitting gig, a high-school student is harassed by an increasingly threatening prank caller." Yeah...a girl alone being stalked. So, when you watch this one alone it scares you even more. It usually takes me a day or two to get over watching this one. I'm writing this from next to my subwoofer and the air blew at me and made me jump. I keep looking over my back. I had to turn on all the lights and open the front door. Funny thing is, before I even turned the movie on I knew I would regret it big time. I was so right. I'm paranoid now! I purposefully watched it during the evening when the sun was up so that 1) I wouldn't pee myself and 2) I could watch some comedy movies after. I guess I had a good Friday the 13th experience now.

Speaking of Friday the 13th experiences, there were a few at work. First, I kept bumping my elbows and knees and arms and legs and hands and fingers and entire body into objects that haven't moved all year. One kind of eerie thing did happen too. They announce on the radios we use the hourly gate count so we know how many people to expect. Well, today during one hour there were 666 people that entered in an hour. I was like...really? On Friday the 13th of all days? If I was giving the gate count, I would have added a person or two. Anyway, on my home from work I was standing up on my bike and changed gears, which isn't a good idea, but, I wasn't thinking and the gear shifting jolted the bike a bit and my foot that was on the peddle went down and my knee just slammed into not just the rock hard frame, but there happened to be a little bolt or something that would hurt more if you were to hit it...and of course I did. My knee is currently swollen quite a bit, right above the left knee cap, on the inner side. Quite painful.

In other news, all of my roommates are out and I am alone until the 25th. It's kind of exciting, but kind of lonesome too. I'll be working most of the time, but I will be home every night which could get boring. I was sitting on my couch last night when I realized I'm alone, so I thought, what do bachelors do when they're living alone? Five minutes later I ordered a Papa Johns special. Extra Large 3 topping pizza for only $12.00! I even paid a buck twenty-five (the store is 2 blocks away) to have it delivered and gave a $2 tip. I felt like the typical man. Thankfully, I'm not the typical man, so I'll be making my own pizza next time.

Only one more week of full days at work! Starting the 23rd we go to half days. Based on my interview with my bishop Sunday, I'll determine whether to look for a full time job or part time job or whatever for when this one ends. I'm pretty excited to be done with Seven Peaks. It has been a great job, but I'm ready for something else now. Wow, this post has gone on pretty long today. Lots to talk about...it also helps that I'm trying to calm down from that scary movie before I watch something else. Anywho, I'll leave it at that for today. Bon voyage!

So I said I wasn't going to get to see Mary and I didn't really think I would either, but, I did! Last night, she was kind enough to stay up a little late to come over for a bit. I went on my bike and picked her up. She borrowed a bike from her brother in-law and sister and we biked to my place. We talked and laughed and listened to some tunes for about an hour before she had to go. We biked part way and then walked the rest so we could talk some more. It was really nice to see her and it really made my week. She'll be busy with her sister's graduation and moving her sister and brother in law to Salt Lake, so, no more Mary until she moves back here in a couple more weeks.

That is really all that's worth telling today. The food stand I was running was really slow business, so, since we were all really tired today, we closed it early. Tomorrow is Friday the 13th. I don't think I'll watch any scary movies. I'll watch a comedy instead.

I do have updates on something I talked about awhile ago. When I complained to the management about the bathroom mildew, they came that week and put mildew/mold inhibitor on the walls and painted them all over. The bathroom looks really good now and when you clean it, it doesn't feel dirty anymore. I kept meaning to put that on here, but kept forgetting.

I was scheduled from 9-5 today. I ended up working 9-8! More hours!! We had an exclusive scheduled for ancestry.com. They were bringing 1200 people and they were getting meals. Instead of the regular burger or hot dog, they had the choice of hamburger, hot dog, chicken sandwich (which cook from raw and take 5-7 minutes to cook usually), pb&j, veggie burger or chicken nuggets. Having run into long lines with groups before, we were prepared for it this time. We had a couple hundred burgers cooking and in the warmer with a couple hundred chicken sandwiches going as well. This way, when they came to get food, bam, bam ,bam, they were through. Well, usually it takes a half hour to an hour before people come and get their food. Today, people came through the gate and got in line before even putting their towels and stuff down. Thank goodness we were prepared. The lines shot back instantly at both stands, but with every window open taking food vouchers and having drinks and burger buns ready on plates, the lines went quick. Though startled at first, we did very good. I was on the grill from 5-7:30 grilling up chicken and burgers. All in all, it went well. We eventually ran out of our stocked up grill food, but we kept grilling so quick no one had to wait long for anything.

Inception last night was great. Lots of people said you have to watch it a couple times before you understand it, but, we all understood it. Maybe because they said that we were more focused on it. Either way, it was a very intriguing movie and I'm sure it's going to win some awards when award season comes around. It was cool to get in free too. We felt so special being ushered past the ticket taking booth...even though it was a Tuesday night and no one was around to gawk at us.

Not much going on besides work the rest of the week. I'll look for any fun things to do, but, it is Provo and it is the end of summer.

As you may have noticed, I changed the background of my blog. I searched over 50 pages of background templates before I found the one I thought looked best. The only complaint I have is that the picture isn't centered. If I was any good at HTML editing, I'm sure I can fix that, but, I'm not. Commenting should now be easy. Just click the button below the post and it should take you to a form to comment from. I think I'm going to put together a picture slide show to go beneath my picture. We'll see how long it takes me to do that. I'll probably forget. One change I made was I made it show fewer posts on the main page. You can still access any post from the archive on the left, but I thought it would be better to have only 10 posts on the page.

That's really the biggest thing that happened today. I worked 10-7 and then came home. I am going to the movie Inception in half an hour. One of our food employees has worked at one of the local movie theaters for 3 years now and so her manager lets her "sneak" in people from time to time. Tonight, the foods manager and the supervisors are going to a movie for free! I've never been "snuck" in before, so that will be cool. I feel like a VIP. Mary is coming into town with her parents for her sister's graduation tomorrow, but they'll be really busy moving her sister and attending graduation stuff so I won't get to see her.

As you may have noticed, today is 8-9-10. I thought that was pretty cool.

Anyway, today was a normal day. Very few people at Seven Peaks, so not much went on there. Annie stayed over last night so she and Mike packed up all his stuff and moved it to a friends house to store. They did that while I worked and then after work we all went to Wal-Mart. All the things I needed (bike reflectors, a bike light and a helmet) they were out of. Well, they had a helmet but I haven't decided which style is safest, so I didn't get one yet. I'm just going to go to the bike shop and get all the things I need later this week.

I did make one purchase today. It was not an essential purchase and to be honest, it was a little bit frivolous. I bought some speakers. The speakers I used to have, the ones the dog chewed, finally died awhile back. When I got those I sold the other ones I had because I needed the cash more than 2 pairs of speakers. Since the ones died, I've just been using my tv for music and movie sound. But, my tv speakers are kind of lame, so, since I'm working 105 hours in a paycheck and have not bought myself hardly anything this year, I decided this would be my little splurge. I promise it won't happen anymore. I'm doing fine with my old clothes and my old shoes. I did tell Mike though to look for a suit for me in Korea. If he can find a cheap one ($50 or less) I'll get one. I also told him if he finds some good, cheap (under $20) shoes (which apparently they have good shoes sometimes for dirt cheap), I'll get some too. Ultimately I do not expect to get much from Korea, but, if a super cheap thing comes along that I need, I'll probably have him get it for me since it's WAY cheaper than here.

Besides work, I don't have much planned for the next two weeks. I'm working every day this week and also every day next week. I just want to rack up hours and increase my bank account. The next day off I have planned is August 27th and 28th, when we are hopefully going to Wyoming.

I found a Muppet video I wanted to share. I thought it was hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvDvTnTGjgQ

Well, I did it. This morning I successfully finished reading the Book of Mormon, cover to cover. I have to say that the replica version made it easier to read and follow, but it was my true desire to read it that helped me read it so intently. I recommend the replica version to anyone who wants to re-read the Book of Mormon cover to cover. The new version, with all the verses and such, is irreplaceable for studying, but the replica version is really great, even with all it's typos and 1800s-looking page mis-alignments and such. Not to mention it looks cool.

Now that I've read the Book of Mormon, I think I'm going to read the Doctrine and Covenants and brush up on my church history. I'll also study preach my gospel and the other standard works.

Today turned out to be a great day. It started with finishing the Book of Mormon, then church was great as well. The lessons were good and the talks in sacrament meeting were also very good. Mike and I were asked to bless the sacrament, and that was really good too. At the end of the day, having been just home taught as well, my joy is almost full. I say almost because I haven't had a super good meal yet. Once I have that, then I think my joy will be full.

I have another meeting scheduled for next Sunday with the bishop. I need to renew my temple recommend and also decide what is going to happen with a mission. My goal is to have the next step in life planned out more by the end of next Sunday. Whether that be school this fall, a service mission, a proselyting mission, a ward mission, or whatever.

Let me just first say, Hallelujah! After a grueling week of 57.5 hours of work which included mostly 10+ hour days, I now get to enjoy one day off before going back in every day next week again. I went in at 6:00 AM to help make food for the 1st Annual Seven Peaks Lifeguard Competition. The event went well and it will hopefully grow every year. After the event I had my 9-5 shift and I have to be honest, I didn't get much done today. I was flat out exhausted. I guess I still accomplished lots today, but I directed employees more than physically assisted them. Anyway, once the closing supervisor got in today, I finished up what I was doing and left early at about 4. I had a nice, short power nap when I got home and then I've been just relaxing all night.

I tried to change my blog background but couldn't find a suitable replacement. Though it seems that changing it and then changing it back fixed the comment problem. You should be able to leave comments now.

Though I'm only 50 pages away from finishing the Book of Mormon, I knew that even trying to read today would have profited me nothing. My mind was just too tired to be able to get more than 2 pages done in a half hour. I plan on finishing it up in the morning. I'm very excited to finish it. Being able to read and understand everything and remember it all has really made a difference.

Whew...the past two days have been pretty busy. Thursday I was working until late and then had to get to bed quick because I had to be at Seven Peaks at 7:15 this morning to help with employee olympics.

I'll recap Thursday first. Thursday was a super slow day for Seven Peaks. The park was closing at 3:30 for an exclusive event, so not many people planned one coming. Add to that some morning thunderstorms and rain and there were only 300 people that came to swim until the exclusive began. The exclusive was a pretty cool thing. There is a very popular and respected orthodontist in this area that has 3 brothers who are also well respected and popular orthodontists. They do yearly parties and this year they rented out Seven Peaks for it. Between the 4 dentist and 1 other dentist with a different last name (but might be related still), they had 4,000 people come to Seven Peaks. From what I hear, they invited all of their patients and the patients' immediate family. That's about 800 people per dentist office. I was impressed that so many people were there. Several of my employees attended because they too go to one of the family orthodontists.

Today was a good day. It started off with the Seven Peaks Employee Olympics. I didn't really want to compete, so I helped a bit with setting up and judging. It was a lot of fun to watch people doing the different events (stuff like a tube carry, dippin' dots eating contest and other fun water-park things). We also got free breakfast and a t-shirt we were allowed to wear today. After the olympics ended at 11 am, I sat out in the sun with my shirt off to get some Vitamin D and some tanning. I pulled out my Book of Mormon and finished up Mormon. I'm now 50 pages from finishing, with only Ether and Moroni to go. I expect I'll finish Sunday morning. After that I put my swim suit on and soaked under the hot showers there and then went to work. The park closed to the public at 7:30 for a short exclusive with a company called Klune Industries. Dad may have heard of them. They are an aerospace company that do contract work for the government. Anyway, they were a smaller group of around 400, so it wasn't too bad. We finished that up at 9:00 and got ready for the pool party (basically a big high school dance party). Once that was under control, I left around 10:06. In all, I spent 15 hours at Seven Peaks today. Just over 9 of those I was paid for. As of now, I have close to 48 hours. Tomorrow I'm going in at 6 am (paid this time) to help cook food for a charity lifeguard competition. If I get the 11 hours I'm scheduled for tomorrow, I will end this week with 59 hours! Next week I'm working every day as well, so my next paycheck will easily have 100+ hours on it! That'll net me about $850. So, things are going pretty well! I got a paycheck today for $534. I'll finish off my debts I think and then be seeing pure profit for once in my bank account.

Well, it's 11 pm and I have to be at work in 7 hours, so I should go get some shut eye. I'm going to re-design my blog soon and see if I can get comments to work. I'll play around with a few templates and see how they look.

Remember how busy I said it was at Seven Peaks yesterday? Well, we were even busier today. It was so jam packed at the food stands I can not even describe it. Trying to take food to other stands you had to weave in and out of 4 or 5 different lines. It was absolute insanity! We had a few more employees to help today and even pulled some managers from different areas to help on the grills. All in all, I'm very proud of how my employees handled it. We had thousands more people from Intermountain Health there along with a couple hundred BYU Sports and BYU Dance camps who also had meal vouchers this week. The weather kept us busy through the end of the day. We had lightning a couple times and when that happens they have to close the attractions until 30 minutes after the last lightning strike. During that time, food stands generally get longer. As if that was possible today. Anyway, storms came and went today until about 5 pm when some storms rolled in and lingered, eventually causing the park to close at around 6:15-6:30ish. With a couple of 5 minute downpours, everyone who hadn't eaten had left the park. Most of who remained were BYU people and IHC people waiting for food. Once they were helped, the park closed due to weather so we didn't have to worry about any more lines. I still managed to get most of my hours today. With what seemed like hundreds of chip boxes (we ran completely out of chips for a bit today and had to make a run to Costco to buy 600 to keep us afloat), burger boxes, fry boxes, condiment packet boxes and all sorts of other boxes and messes around, we had a good hour and a half of cleaning to do. After that, I stayed for a half hour more to finish up and get paperwork done. I left 1 hour short of my schedule, so I'm still going to hopefully have a big paycheck.

After work, I went home and just chillaxed. Watched a movie with Mike, ate some candy, made a smoothie, talked to a friend who got back today from his mission. The rest of the week will be pretty busy at work and I'm ready for it. There are lots of exclusives going on and plenty of groups to go before the end of the season.

I work the afternoon shift tomorrow, so I'll get a lot of reading done in the morning. Hopefully get done with 3rd Nephi by tomorrow. Getting really close to finishing!

Today was just an insane day. We had close to 3000 people in the park from one group in addition to regular patrons. All 3000 had a meal voucher. Basically, between noon and 8 pm when we closed, we had huge lines. At the busiest point, at both of our stands, we had as many as 200 people waiting to get their food. It was just madness. We did all we could to keep customers happy and move the lines quick, but there were still a couple people who complained. The same company (Intermountain Health Care) is supposed to bring 3000 more people tomorrow for the same deal. We're trying to bring in 8 extra employees to help deal with the masses. We also had to make 2 emergency food orders because even though we got an order in today, we were wiped clean of hamburgers, hamburger buns and a whole bunch of other stuff. Due to the lines and the need to order more food and try to schedule more people, I stayed 3 hours after my shift had ended. In two days I'm already at 19.5 hours this week. Tomorrow, I have a 12 hours shift and Saturday I am coming in 3 hours early for an event. By Saturday night, I should have around 59-60 hours this week! Ka-ching!

I finished up Helaman and I'll try to get some reading in before or after work these next few days. Should still be easily done with the entire Book of Mormon on Sunday.

I bought my sports pass today. I should be able to use it quite a bit before I get called on a mission. Then if I leave, I'll sell it or give it away. Speaking of sports, pretty much every important person involved with BYU Athletics is at Seven Peaks tonight. The owner of Seven Peaks wanted Legacy status as a donor, which costs thousands of dollars. To get that, he invited the BYU football team and coaches and practically everyone involved with BYU athletics to an exclusive night. So, rather than pay cash, he does a big event like that as his donation. I saw coach Bronco Mendenhall there with his kids and lots of people who I'm sure were important but I had no clue who they were. It was pretty neat.

Today I finished up Alma and am moving into Helaman. My goal is to finish Helaman up tonight or tomorrow, depending on my level of tiredness, and then I think I can be completely finished with the Book of Mormon by Sunday. At that point, I'll probably read through and study Preach My Gospel.

It being August, things will start to get fun again. The big Cougar Kickoff where you get to meet all the fall sports teams and enter for prizes and get free stuff is coming up in about 2 weeks and from there Women's Soccer begins some pre-season and then we dive right into lots of sporting events and other fun stuff. Should be exciting.

Happy Birthday Michael!

Today turned out to be one the best days in a long time. I got up this morning and read a bunch in Alma, then headed over to my interview with the bishop. The bishop is actually new, having been called as bishop barely a month ago, but he's been in the bishopric for a good 6 months to a year or so. Anyway, we talked about me and my family and my life and my job and all that so he could get to know me better and then we talked about a mission and what I've talked to the old bishop and the stake president about with that. Since he is new and has never done this before, he is going to find out this week everything he needs to know about mission papers and also service missions and then we'll go from there. I feel really good about it all and I look forward to meeting with him again soon.

After some good lessons and sacrament meeting, I went with my home teaching companion (who is from New Zealand and who is also a good friend that I sit with during church...ask Mike about him) and got all of our home teaching done for this month. With that having taken a good hour and 15 minutes and it being around 5:30, we were pretty hungry. So, since I made Phillip (that's his name, by the way) shrimp scampi with mike and annie last week, I went to his apartment two doors down for a chicken salad tonight. It was dang good. It was really great to have a huge heaping plate of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, avocado and marinated cooked chicken topped with greek dressing. It was even better that I didn't have to do much of the cooking at all. After that amazing fast-breaking meal, we had a bunch of strawberries and other food the rest of the night while just hanging out, relaxing in front the tv. While I did not accomplish my goal today of finishing Alma (I'm 30 pages away), I did have a much needed break from life and work, and since I did read for hours this morning, I'm ok with finishing Alma tomorrow. My mind and body needed that reboot.

Anyway, this week is going to be a beast! I'm working Monday through Saturday, covering for 2 supervisors who will be gone for different parts of the week. If I work all the hours I'm supposed to, I'll have about 51 hours! Though I don't get overtime pay, combine that with what should be a 40 hour week next week and my next paycheck should be somewhere around $700. With the bank paid off, I'll eliminate the rest of my debt, pay my rent and, with what's still in my account now, have a good $500 or more in the bank. If you include the $1000 I should get from the firework tent and the rest that will accumulate from Seven Peaks and my bonus, I could have as much as $1500 to $2000 in my bank account in September.

PS- If you guys ever want to comment on my posts, all you have to do is click the title of the post, which will take you to a page that isolates that post and has a "Post a Comment" link at the bottom. Remember, you do not have to be a registered user to comment!