Don't be such a Halloweenie!

It's Halloween eve, but it feels like Halloween has already come and gone for me.
That's great news, because I can officially bust out the Navidad music! Because up to this point, I have only been listening to it unofficially. What can I say, I am my mother's son.
This week came and went largely as any other. Classes bringing discouragement for the future punctuated by brief periods of ecstatic volleyball and country dancing... and then Friday came. We lost our last flag football game of the regular season to complete our record of 0-4 (with one forfeit). Then the night ended with an utterly lame Halloween party. Two wards, one DJ, about fifty people in a parking garage, and no phone numbers. Surprised? Shouldn't be. It's like I don't even care even more. That wasn't the reason the party wasn't hoppin'. I think it was because my expectations were WAY too high. I mean, I actually believed they were going to play music other than hip hop, Hannah Montana, stand-in-a-circle-and-bounce kind of music. I've had WAY too much of that being an EFY counselor, and frankly I'm not very good at it, being white and all...
The night was still fun though. I mean, at the football game one of our players showed up in jeans so I had to lend him my sweats. Good thing I was wearing spandex underneath. He was like, "I need to borrow some sweats." sounding all Italian and like. It's from a movie.
For this costume party, I pulled a last minute French man, seriously thought of about 2 minutes before dance party liftoff. I donned a long-sleeve yellow shirt (ha! yellow), a scarf, expensive looking aviators and french looking facial hair (black make-up). So, nobody could guess what I was... one girl thought I was Brad Pitt. Wow. Anyways, about halfway through the dance, or more towards the end, I did my typical swap into the EFY polo, and nobody noticed. It was kind of dork... I mean dark. I never even made it to my third costume of the night: Tracy McGrady's little brother who got kicked off the team because his jersey was too big and his shorts were too short. I left at about 10:15. Lame.
Thus was Halloween's Eve, except I finished it with some Halo 3 (and I actually didn't get motion sick this time) and NBA 2k9 at my roomy's parents' house.
Now that it is Halloween, I can finish this blog post. Not much doing today, though it felt nice to wake up and not have to go get yelled at for once, even if I did wake up at 11:30 and waste a good chunk of a good Saturday. I went trick-or-treating with Jake, Lindsey, Andrew, and Zabes, and it was a way better time than that silly dance party. Shoot, the only dance party that would be better would be one with the girl standing there alone and the Journey playing loud, and the eye lock from across the room that is so intense it's almost creepy... the move, the conversation, the number, the dance, the duet... the rest would be history. Unfortunately, seren-dippity (sp?) has never worked in my favor, oh cursded concept!
So Happy Halloween! And here's a shout-out to pops on his sixty-some odd birthday! A toast to the golden age of wisdom, success, and never-ending enthusiasm! Every day brings me one day closer to that same age... or at least I hope so.

Season of the Green Fleece

Wow, it is nice outside. The fall is such a wonderful time of year, even though it's too cold to wear shorts so I wear the same pair of pants pretty much 5 days a week.
What do I love about fall besides the weather? Well, football obviously, despite its disappointments. I'm not just talking about the Cougars either... I mean, flag football is a gang of fun. The best games happen on Thanksgiving and New Years, which both fall on or after fall semester.
Then there is December, the most wonderful time of the year. Even just thinking about it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!
ACK! This blog is entirely too happy. I need to go have something bad happen to me. Maybe I'll go ask a girl out...
Quote of the day: "The defensive players just hang out with the defensive players. They find the other players... offensive!" Snicker.

For My Next Trick, I Will Make My Paycheck... Disappear!

So I get called up Saturday night by my good buddy Creer to go to an EFY counselor reunion bonfire extreme extravaganza party. Wow, so many words in one event... like a grilled double-decker crunchy baja ranch burrito supreme. One day, Taco Bell, you will use my ideas and never look back!
Anyways, Creer tells me to meet him at Gold's Gym, where I park and jump in his car to go to this shin-dig in Spanish Fork. It's like 8:30 at night. We don't get back until 11:45.
Perhaps you know where this is going?
My car was gone.
155 dollars later, I get it back from the impound on Monday. 155 dollars!
Some of you may be thinking, "Hmph, pocket change", but you have to realize this is the pay equivalent of over 16 games of reffing football. That's 16 hours of getting yelled at, called names, and being generally hated. I thought about trying to pack that 16 hours of hatred into the ten minutes that I talked with the tow-guy, but I figured, "Na, he didn't write the rules". Then again, the extra 15 dollars of storage fee that I was charged for leaving the car there on Sunday when it seemed to me that the place was closed because the gate was shut and the business office there not open (saying specifically on the doors that it was not open on Sundays) seemed a bit unfair. When I asked the guy who I should call to discuss this, he gave me the number of the office and said it would just come back to him. I tried to explain how it all seemed a bit underhanded, but he said that their pick-up service was open 24/7, and had I called sooner I would have known that. I told him I did call on Saturday night, and no mention of such was made to me. He didn't know what to say then. I guess I just got screwed on this one.
Imagine how much of this could have been avoided if I was just a bit more observant at Gold's Gym. There was a sign posted, warning of non-patrons and after-hours people getting booted/towed, but it was not posted at the entrance I used.
Clearly, this is a sign that it's time to go back to reffing basketball. Intramurals. $10.50 an hour. After only 15 games of that jank, I will have made up the loss. Until then, hello ramen dinners, lunches, and breakfasts!

I Heart Tuesdays, but not as much as Thursdays

This being the first Tuesday night in a while that I haven't had work, I decided to go country dancing! You know, they have this club thing every Tuesday night... so I go and one room is filled with swing kids dancing to smooth jazz or blues or something unfamiliar to me, and the other ballroom is filled with people standing in lines, dancing to music you might hear in Abby's lab (from NCIS) with only their arms. I didn't look too far into the room; I was afraid I might see a giant monitor with Big Brother on it.
Where's the cowgirls at? Shoot...
This week I get to interview Brad Wilcox for one of my assignments in 211. I don't know what to ask him yet, I only know that I have to focus the questions on some issue today. I'm thinking maybe Education today, and what's wrong with it... or maybe something EFY related... or perhaps when are MC Hammer pants coming back into style?
In other news, today in the plasma clinic, I was sitting there waiting for my money (the "donation" having already taken place) when this old guy sitting next to me straight up passes out. He hit his head pretty hard on the floor, but no blood. Good thing too, cause then I might have passed out too. That would have been ironic.
Ok, it's getting close to 8. I might have to jet for NCIS soon. Otherwise, the bartender will ask me, "Son, what'll it be", "I want a shot at that red-head yonder lookin at me". The dance floors hoppin and it's hotter than the fourth of July!
It's a song.

A Dental History Nightmare

Last night, I had about 3 terrible dreams of losing that pesky tooth again... during one of those particularly nasty nightmares, I lost about 4 teeth in addition to the one.
That's what I call dental trauma! Baddabing!
Looking back, since that fateful day of August 29, 2005, my smile has faced many trials. After the six month odyssey of reconstructing it in the first place, I have lost caps on my teeth on... three?... different occasions. And there is that one tooth. You know, the one next to the front teeth that you may have seen me once or twice in my life being without. On the day of the bike wreck, it was broken in half, I have pictures to show it. The first permanent crown that replaced it was disintegrated during an intramural basketball game, it being unable to withstand the pressure of a man's nogin coming in direct contact with it. That's about the time I got to know Dr. Pinnegar here well. That was around March of 2008. A year goes by and the tooth is back in place, until a pick up basketball game in May of 2009. This time it was an elbow, and the crown came out largely intact, but the tooth underneath suffered more loss. As such, it's harder to get a crown to bond to so little remaining actual tooth. The temporary filler crowns never wanted to stay put for the ensuing several months (except the one which the guy in Angleton put it, which covered me through EFY), and even the permanent crowns have now vacated twice. It leaves me to wonder... is it just meant to be? Perhaps my future wife is to love me in spite of my looks, and not because of them... snicker.
So, over four years later, I am still having nightmares of that terrible night on Livermore Road in Folsom California with my trainer George Bush, biking in my dress pants (that would also not make it through the night) and squatting on that pavement thinking to myself: "Did this really just happen? Oh well, give it a year or so, and I won't even remember it happened..."