A Daily Slice of Awesome

We live on the edge of an embankment that drops off pretty precipitously to the road below. It's owned by someone who also owns some sort of store that seems so nondescript I can't figure out what they are selling. The trees and undergrowth has been left to grow wild and holy smokes, the blackberries invaded and have blockaded any access to the forest. The bark strip that I have before my precious, luscious lawn sort of reminds me of the DMZ between North and South Korea. No man's land. Recently though, the blackberries have been tunneling under the ground and sending shoots up right in the middle of my lawn! It's crazy! I watched one particular shoot grow for the better part of a month. I wonder if it thought it had succeeded in beating me. Little did it know, however, that I was letting it get big enough that I could get a proper grip on it and rip it out, roots and all. Yesterday, it was plucked and tossed back into its territory. I'm fine if they want to g...

Last week I had the opportunity to meet the Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown. I was invited to a small party held at an incredible house in Portland. Now, let's be brutally honest. I met her for all of like one minute. It didn't change my life. It was another interesting experience in a life full of them. She was likewise unchanged, and I'm sure has forgotten me. I think what's most interesting about this experience though is how incredibly out of place I felt. I'm lower management in a relatively small company nobody has heard of. I'm not a minority in any sense but as vanilla white male as they come. Other than chatting with a former co-worker for a few minutes, I conversed more and enjoyed talking with the valet than anyone else. We talked about the weather, politics, things we'd learned, and how neither of us felt like we belonged at the party--he as the help and me as the odd guest there to slush government a little. Nobody was unwelcoming by any mean...

We have done it, another section of this gargantuan puzzle down!! Two section down, six to go. It's a big project, but we persevere.

So, I'm a little out of shape in a big way. On a glorious Friday morning, having decided to take the day off from work, I set out to reclaim my riding prowess. I used to be pretty diligent. In fact, in undergraduate school (because if I say college I have to explain that I went several times and have to provide details on which  college) I rode up Provo Canyon nearly every day. I was the slayer of mountains then. Not so much now. It started off pretty good. I got up the hill out of our neighborhood and then rode down to West Salem via Glen Creek. It's a little up and down, but nothing my two pistons of manliness can't overcome. I got down on Wallace, and then turned down Edgewater for the return part of the brief loop I set out to conquer. When you get past the Safeway, you turn on Eola Drive to head back up to the neighborhood I call home. Now, when I say up, I mean up . From the perspective of a bike rider, a hill is at least twenty degrees steeper than it is in a car...

In our church, usually around the time of the yearly Priesthood Commemoration, we have a father's and son's campout at a nearby campsite. I've taken my son twice--I think we were sick last year unfortunately. This year, however, we were both healthy and ready to go hang out, play with the fire, and get virtually no sleep. I think the older I get the more my body needs my bed to get a proper nights' rest. Anyway, we started off the adventure with canoes. The boy got bored in about one spin around the pond. Seeing as how I have to all the rowing, I can't honestly say I was broken up about that. I think the fact people were catching salamanders out of the pond had something to do with his enthusiasm for dry land. I'm not huge on touching wet, slimy things. Especially when they wriggle. My son dived right in and probably would have played with the salamanders the entire time had I let him. I'll have to remember to bring hand sanitizer with me next time becau...

We were on our way home from my wife's sister's place where we had an exquisite dinner. Our son was trying to convince us that he should have more containers in his room in which to place his beloved objects. He is a hoarder. Any box, old can, or bag can be made into his new treasure chest. My wife wanted to limit the amount of possession-safes he had in his room. He led out with five, which seemed like a pretty good starting point. In negotiation, they teach you that most times, it's better to give the first offer--they call it 'anchoring.' He anchored a bit high, but it wasn't absurd, like ten, thus preserving the negotiation to the next step. My wife countered with three. He thought about it for a moment, and countered with four, right in the middle. The way he hesitated was perfect. You could tell he wanted to stick at five but knew he needed to give up some ground to succeed. A compromise was struck and a deal made. He can now have four receptacles in h...

We have finally moved into our new house. It's awesome. It quickly got increasingly more awesome once we took the water regulator out of the shower head and turned our sprinkler into a hose. Yeah, the environment probably takes another small hit for the team, and I'm a horrible person, but I really like it. A drizzle in the shower is pathetic. A jet stream is luxuriousness. I suppose the best part of a new house is the house, but for me its going to be the pool table that I can stick inside it. It should come soon. It's also nice to look out the window and see trees instead of my neighbors' houses and cars. Unpacking boxes is decidedly un-awesome, as was the truck that I procured to move everything into it. I have to say, U-Haul let me down something fierce. I made a reservation for the biggest truck in the fleet and for whatever reason, that reservation was cancelled and I got the 10-foot minnow in exchange. Despite being a gutsy little thing, it doesn't fit mu...

I know, I know, it has been a long time. You probably forgot this little corner of the internet existed. It's been a strange few months and I found it difficult to think of things I wanted to write about. Awesome things still happened, but I either found them repetitious, or just well...not awesome enough. That ended though this past Saturday. My wife and I took a quick trip up to Portland to visit Golden West Billiards. I'm in search of a pool table. They make them there--really nice ones. Behold, the Northwest: In a word: Awesome. It comes with a slightly un-awesome price tag, but when you're only going to buy something once for the rest of your life, then I say go for it. I should say that my wife let me because even more honestly, there's no way I could do something this nice if she didn't buy into it. Thanks! This beauty will grace our new home we hope to move into at the end of the month. I'm probably more excited about the table than the home, as w...

I had a Presidency Meeting yesterday, and we were discussing some possible topics for a future Elder's Quorum lesson. My counselor in charge of this upcoming meeting mentioned that he had been thinking a lot about how we as people living in this world, fallen as it is, can rise above that and find joy. It's a good topic. The world we live in is seriously troubling. Natural disasters, wars, corruption, and all manner of mayhem stretch from one side of the globe to other and up and down. Incivility at work and amongst the community, on and off-line, is the usual rather than the exception. The more connected we get to the world through devices the more I'm convinced we actually interact less, and in less meaningful ways. It's easier to email than call someone. It's easier to express oneself, often rudely or inanely, on Facebook than it is to find a friend and have lunch. Despite all of that, I continue to find and be surprised at the cool things out there in the wo...

I'm sure there are no shortages of commentary about the announcement of a reorganized First Presidency. Of no particular import, but interesting I suppose, I have shaken the hand of each member of the First Presidency. I believe that to be the first time I have been able to say that. I shook Pres. Oaks's hand when I was twelve or so, at a stake conference in Seattle. He was walking up the aisle to get to the rostrum and I stuck out my hand before he walked past. I think I startled him. I shook Pres. Eyring's hand on my mission, when he visited on a tour of South Korea. He spent time with us and taught us about loving as the Savior did. I shook Pres. Nelson's hand much more recently when he visited my stake here in Oregon. He taught us about the Book of Mormon, and found to his delight that his new pair of scriptures said and worked much the same his previous set had. My testimony now is the same as it was then, these are men called of God and are disciples of Je...

My wife was out of town ferrying a niece off to college and I had the kids for several days, by myself. I'm moderately proud of myself. They were alive, fed, sort of washed, and the house wasn't burned down or looked like a tornado had blown through when she got back. I'm even more proud because my daughter got sick on Friday with a stomach flu bug. I hate throw-up. I'm sure everyone does. From 5PM to about 12:30AM, she did battle with the bug valiantly until she came off conqueror and both of us were able to sleep. My son finally began today. I gotta say, he's a trooper. He doesn't complain. He gets in there, gets it done, and waits for the next time. I went in there to do a bowl change-out, just as he was completing another round. He finished, gave me a thumbs-up, and lay back down. Trooper. Both of them were. So, while the stomach flu is no fun and certainly not awesome, I have to say that my kids acquitted themselves well, even awesomely.

There are a few things I've noticed over the past week or so that make me both happy and sad at the same time. I think there's a fancy word for that but I can't quite put my finger on it, nor am I motivated enough to go and get my dictionary out. I love how simple things make children happy. I love how a red balloon from a restaurant can make my son the happiest kid on earth. I love when my daughter tromps around in pink rubber boots and a church dress. I like how she finds puddles to jump in, even if they are half-way across the parking lot. I like that a really cool fort-building set was initially not the most exciting thing they got for Christmas, but when it got to be time for bed time and the possibilities of sleeping in tents were realized, the present suddenly skyrocketed to best thing ever. I love that just about the only thing they really want and require is time and attention. Sometimes I'm more willing than other times to give it, but the investment alway...

It's winter, so to be expected, but holy cow, did it rain a lot today. I think it went hard, nonstop, for several hours at a time. Now, it's Oregon, and again, winter, so it's not like it's really unexpected, but there is something awesome about seeing the parking lot outside my office slowly turn into a lake. Then of course, there's moving someone into their house in the rain. It's nice. You get cooled off as you struggle with that oversized chest of drawers. Someday I'll be able to say I moved half the ward's furniture into their homes, upstairs in most cases, and in the rain. I should also add a quick shoutout to cheap tacos. There aren't a lot of options for lunch around the facility either. There's a Pilot station on the other side of the freeway that hosts a Subway and a Taco Bell. I hit the Bell fairly regularly and while there may be a certain amount of shame involved in going through the driver-thru, a few tacos really hit the spot. ...

In celebration of paying off student loans, we unloaded a bunch of our gain on some things I needed--new shirts, some running shoes because I'm going to attempt again to find some form of exercise that doesn't make me feel like I want to shoot myself, and then a nice dinner. There is a pretty good restaurant here in Salem called Table Five 08. They change up their menu periodically and tonight they served something called Pork Chile Verde. Man, that was good. It even had squash in it, which is something I typically loathe, but somehow, they did enough good things to disguise its evil presence. I would have taken a picture, but I ate it too fast. It was awesome.

A few days ago, my kids and I were enjoying a little time playing Minecraft. It's kind of fun having them watch me and ask me a lot of questions about what I'm doing or what I should do. Usually, it's a lot of them telling me what I should do. Sometimes their suggestions are pretty awesome. My son decided we needed a sign in the small outpost we'd created from all the baddies, as they've referred to them as. In case the picture can't be seen well, it's "Daddy's World, No Bad Guys Allowed." I like that. I don't think the game really cares about our edict, but I liked the sentiment. It's pretty awesome in fact.

I was skeptical at first that this really was a worthy investment, but Carpet Cleaners are pretty awesome. Amazon is a little scary. I don't know if my wife went in search of carpet cleaners or if it just sensed that our carpets were that dirty, but there was a sale on a highly rated cleaner, and we decided it was time. It was quite satisfying, and a little disturbing, to see something akin to really rich chocolate milk being sucked up from carpets that are vacuumed regularly. I'm not pointing fingers, but my kids room, the entry to the porch where they are constantly wearing muddy boots, and the area around their shoes were particularly horrific. Several hours and wet carpets later, our house smells heavenly of clean. Now that's awesome.

I have a long history with legos. They are a big part of my formative years, from castles to spaceships. I'm big on spaceships. The point of saying that is I'm an expert. I know how to play with them, and turn any pile of ordinary or un-ordinary pieces into something extraordinary. Last night though, I saw something that truly put me to shame. It was a new way to play with legos. I guess I never really considered how my lego people felt when I played with them. After a long day's session of building the perfect thing, I left my people in the bin, on the floor, or fixed in place in whatever epic battle I was interrupted in the middle of with bedtime.  My daughter, done with her people for the night, tucked them in, and then had me tuck her in.  When she plays with legos, she cares.

I was impressed. It's always kind of interesting to see how our hunt for the Christmas tree goes. I'll be forthright, I don't always like the adventure of trying to find the right tree. This year almost careened into disaster-land when we decided to attempt to find a new tree farm just by driving out towards the hills. I'm not good with wanderlust. I'm a find a place, go there, and ignore everything on the way kind of person. I'm also better at going to the same place I went last year sort of person too. Regardless, once we decided that wandering around in the hills with about thirty miles of gas left in the car wasn't a good idea, we went to a farm we were familiar with and I swear had a tree picked out within about ten minutes of wandering around. That's expeditious! The kids were successful as well, and got two Charlie Brown small trees for their room. They demanded lights--multicolored lights of course because what kid loves classy-looking white li...

My youngest brother was in town for Thanksgiving. Of course, he stayed with my other brother, who has unlimited movies, video games, and no children to break up the fun. I can forgive that, I guess. They both came down to Salem today to have lunch and though our hearts were broken due to our favorite Korean restaurant being closed for remodeling, we settled on excellent Mexican food and had a good time. It was good to see him and for the three of us to chat. I have awesome brothers. They would be more awesome if they both suddenly got rich and were kind enough to prop me up a bit. Until that happens, we'll patiently continue to visit one another and have cheap lunches.

I remember many years ago when we were visiting my Grandma in California and she wanted to buy us all a present. I wanted a domino set that was more than her budget but she was grandma and I was her grandson--as well as dead set on having that domino set. I can't remember if it was mom or dad that was sort of upset with me for wanting something expensive, but I feel a little bad even today. Regardless, my son has decided he wants Pokemon cards. *Groan* At least have some class and want Magic cards so I can play too. Realizing that he was short on money and long on desire, he informed us last night he wanted to make a phone call to Virginia Grandma (Who I guess can't be Virginia Grandma anymore since they don't live in Virginia). I told him in no uncertain terms he was not to start hitting up Grandma for money. This morning, he remembered he wanted to make that phone call. My encouraging wife let him do it, and he wanted to take the phone and hide in another room out of ...