not that there is anything wrong with that. . .

I received a "wall message" on Facebook from Brady Kerr today. Brady is the younger brother of one of my best friends, Trevor. What did Brady write? He reminded me of one of my all-time classic quotes. In Trevor's yearbook our senior year I wrote the following, "I will always remember our long chats in bed after a long night of dancing!" Trevor took the yearbook home, his brother Brady got a hold of it and started reading through all the messages his friends wrote, then stopped dead when he read my message. "Is your friend gay?" I can only imagine the discomfort of reading that type of message in your brother's yearbook.



Point #1: During high school Trevor slept over at my house every weekend night, automatic. He had a curfew but if he slept over at somebody's house the curfew obviously didn't apply; so he slept over at my house on the weekends. I remember even multiple weekend nights where we didn't even hang out but he'd come over at the end of the night.



Point #2: I had a bigger bed in my room and nothing else to offer besides the floor, so we slept in the same bed. I was usually crushed up against the wall and he was on the other edge of the bed. Separate blankets, plenty of distance. No need for concern here.



Point #3: All of us boys often went out to whatever dances or dance clubs we could get into on the weekends. Very little "dancing" occurred, more just weak attempts in our endless quest to meet girls.



So on a usual weekend night in high school, the boys and I would head out to find some dance, try to hit on girls until the wee hours of the morning, and after we all went home for the night Trevor would obviously end up at my house, at which we'd be talking for a long time before we actually fell asleep. All innocent enough, right?



All of this defense of course brings me back to the question, "What were you thinking?" Had I maybe reread the quote or thought it through before I wrote it out, I probably wouldn't be making a public defense about it nearly 10 years later.



totally heterosexual

Awkward . . . In My Mind

Do you ever get stuck in hallways in that awkward position where you are walking right behind somebody? So close that you want to pass them, but you're close to your destination so you'd end up cutting them off after pulling the pass?

So I'm at work this week heading to the restroom. In the hall a guy and girl are talking, standing across the hall from each other. Normal move is to pass right through, correct? Well, right as I hit the "pass through" point, they break off the conversation and the girl starts walking RIGHT in front of me. The problem is, now I'm so close to the restroom (up ahead on the right-hand side of the hallway) that I can't really pull a pass because I'd either cut her off to go in or just have to let her re-pass to go in. So I'm literally right behind this girl as she takes these few steps; I'm feeling so awkward that I'm dying to duck into the restroom as soon as possible because I'm sure she can sense me hovering right behind her. One more step before I can duck into the restroom, and suddenly she banks right, turns the handle, and ducks into the men's restroom!! What. . . just. . . happened?! Now I'm in a super-awkward position! Obviously I can't follow her right in, I have to freeze right there and wait it out until she realizes what she did and comes back out with the sheepish, embarassment grin on her face, right? The thing is, there isn't another door along this hallway for a long stretch; she didn't just turn in one door too early. What was she doing?

After waiting for what seemed like an eternity (ok, it was probably just a few seconds) she just comes right back out and continues on her way down the hall. No embarassed look, just confident as could be cruising down the hall. I double check the sign on the door for "Men" and head in about my business.

Here's the kicker, what I just wrote did not happen. Ha! Nope I just made that whole thing up! Well, just the girl heading into the bathroom part. I did endure the awkward, caught-right-behind-in-the-hallway walk and the girl was walking so freaking slow and close to the wall that I couldn't help but suddenly think, "This girl is going to duck into the men's bathroom!" Then I started thinking of what I would do if she did duck into the bathroom (Answer: Stand there in awkward shock until she came out with an embarassed look on her face). Then I started thinking, "Why am I even thinking about this?" Then I was cursing myself out in the bathroom for even thinking up something so A) stupid, and B) crazy. Do other people have crazy moments like this? Or am I just a big weirdo? I hope the former.

The Road

So after grinding out John Adams for 6 months, I needed a quick weekend read to kind of straighten myself out. This has been a quality first year out of college. I'm a huge reader but I didn't read much during college since I always had to read textbooks. My goal for this year was 4 books. I'm going to finish with 7: Kite Runner, No Country For Old Men, The Pillars of the Earth, A Thousand Splendid Suns, I Love You Beth Cooper, John Adams, and The Road. I didn't write my little "review" of all of them, but there they are for what it's worth.

The Road is the same author as No Country For Old Men, and it appears it will be coming out as a movie next year. I must say it is VERY rare for me not to like a book, but I must have missed the meaning of this thing or something. Set in the future where the world is basically destroyed, this guy is on a "journey" with his son, heading South, constantly looking for food. Can I just say that that last sentence pretty much sums up the entire book! I kept reading because I was sure something was about to happen; something big. Nope, just more looking for food (and of course finding it at just the right time). I almost never think a movie is better than a book, but hopefully there is some creative liberties taken to make this a little more interesting.

So I finish the year on kind of a downer as far as books. All of the other books I read this year were fantastic. If I had to pick a "best one" I would go with The Pillars of the Earth, but it was over 1,000 pages so it's quite an undertaking. I'm looking forward to starting next year with the sequel, World Without End, also a 1,000+ page beast. Just avoid "the road".

Rambo

So I'm up in Idaho Falls with Rachel's family over Thanksgiving and Rachel's uncle Garth says, "Let's go shoot some guns on Saturday". I'm thinking shotgun, handgun, .22, etc. He says, "We can shoot my new .50 cal". "Sounds like fun" is my reply. "You don't even know what that is, do you?" he responds. No I did not.

A .50 cal, as you can see above, is a mother of a weapon. The bullet was a solid 6 inches, the gun weighed about 50 pounds; so you're definitely not shooting clay pigeons with this thing. Standing about 10 feet behind the gun when it fires you feel like you're getting punched in the face with the kickback force. Pretty awesome power.

John Adams

So after 6 months of slow progress, I've finally finished reading the biography of John Adams, our Second U.S. President! The slow progress had nothing to do with the interest level of the book, I was caught up working late (as usual) and especially cuaght up studying for tests. I bought the book mid-June in the Orlando airport and didn't finish until a couple days ago. Quite a journey indeed.

Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the same day, which happened to be July 4, 1826, our nation's 50th anniversary? Crazy, whether coincidence or not. Basically the book noted that they were both determined to stick it out that far.

John Adams lived a pretty amazing life and it makes me want to read more biographies of Presidents. He was a Harvard-educated lawyer, yet he was never super wealthy. He defended the British troops who killed the men in the Boston Massacre, he lived all over Europe as a U.S. Ambassador during the revolution, and he lived a very simple life comparatively speaking. The author made many comparisons between Adams and Jefferson; the most interesting to me was how simple and debt-free life Adams lived and how lavish and debt-ridden life Jefferson lived. Adams died with a net worth of $100k, and Jefferson died with debt of over $100k and the sale of his entire his estate did not make up the debt. I found that very interesting when contrasting the two lifestyles throughout the book. If Jefferson was the "pen" of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Adams was the "voice". So very interesting to learn about these things that I hadn't even thought of before. Adams is also the "father" of the US Navy. David McCullough did an excellent job; I would highly recommend this book to anybody interested in a very important person in US History.

I think another interesting thing to me is to see what experiences a lifetime can bring to a person. Adams was not a war hero or anything like that. Besides becoming the President of the United States, he seemingly led a life that a normal person could lead; yet looking back so many experiences add up to make him an incredible person. That probably applies to many people all over. Adding up a lifetime of experiences can lead to a pretty impressive story for just about anybody.

When I think about historical figures, for some reason I just think about that person, alone, and their context. This book reminded me that Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, etc. all lived and dealt with each other. I'm sure they didn't know at the time what type of historical figures they would become, but it's amazing now to think that so many great minds with such foresight for our country came together at the same time.

Anywhere But The Chest!

I mean, seriously, this is getting a little out of hand, don't you think?

Isn't it supposed to be a chest bump?

Is this what they mean by "Utah Man"? I thought I'd bring it strong to start off rivalry week. Go COUGS!

Jumping Jacks

You know how when you're in little league football and every day at practice you do jumping jacks to warm up? Those who played know what I'm talking about when I say that you can't do jumping jacks and hold in your gas at the same time; you basically rip it every time you split your legs wide for the jack. Well, today I experienced a similar experience at work, speaking of the need to rip it, not speaking of anything related to spreading my legs or doing jumping jacks; that was just a reference.

So I don't really know what came over me or what I was thinking, but I was sitting at work this afternoon and I guess I just decided I either couldn't or wasn't going to hold it in any more. I proceeded to rip a GIGANTIC, loud and proud fart, followed up by a quick toot to polish it off. As soon as I ripped it, I froze, realizing that I was NOT alone nor sitting in the comfort of my home. I was at work, in a business environment, supposedly being professional. My co-worker sitting across the table from me froze as well. He looked up with a stunned face, "Did you just. . . Did you just do that on purpose?!"

What could I say? I hesitated for the briefest of moments before acknowledging my flamboyant rip, "Yes, I did just rip that and I apologize."

He hesitated, "Hmm, So that just happened. Wow." He seemed to shrug it off after that, but I'm pretty sure he will never feel completely comfortable around me again.

I had to get up for a meeting right after that and I couldn't stop laughing. I had to bite my lip so hard it almost bled. The problem isn't that I was laughing, it's that people ask you, "Why are you laughing?" Then what? Tell them you just ripped a giant bomb in the conference room and left your coworker in there to suffer the consequences? No, you're just screwed if you get asked. Luckily, I was successful in avoiding any questions but I did get a couple weird glances as I continued to laugh/bite my lip ferociously.

So what did I learn from this experience? Apparently nothing, as I sit down 30 minutes later after my meeting and immediately proceed to rip an equally high-decible blast. It was like I was sitting on a whoopie cushion, only it wasn't a whoopie cushion and these farts were definitely the funk. My coworker didn't verbally acknowledge the flatulence but I did catch him cocking his head toward the ground in that, "What in the world is he doing!" grimace. I'm sure if not from the sound but from the putridity reaching his nostrils. The answer is, "I don't know"

The Brandon Face

Rachel sent me this picture the other day with the caption, "This is a Brandon face if I've ever seen one!" I put it as the wallpaper on my cellphone and I laugh every time I open my cellphone. Too rich. I couldn't disagree as I know I pull such faces all the time. Such a shame my son has to pick up on some of my more embarrasing traits.

Belated Anniversary

So it was like 2 weeks ago but I've been completely overwhelmed by life so I haven't been able to officially recognize my 1 year anniversary of bloggins! I think it was officially on the 16th of October or around there. As of this posting I have made 63 posts which is good for an average of slightly above 1 post per week. However, I realize that I started off averaging about 1 post every couple days when I first started and I've digressed to about 1 post per month, so I'll have to pick up the pace to keep that average up. It was so simple to post when I started because I worked the graveyard shift every night. Now it's basically impossible to post at work and impossible to post at home (read: Cannon Ball) so while I have no shortage of topics I have experienced a dearth of opportunity.

So what have I learned in one year of blogging? I've learned that I love to write, especially about items that to me are frustrating or annoying. I've also learned that I'm not as prone to write about sports as I thought. I've certainly shared numerous sports posts, but I

(Sidenote: This is why I don't post as often. So this is what has happend during the 3 minutes I've tried to sneak in to actually write some of my thoughts down. Cannon has come in and pounded on the keyboard multiple times-I should have left all the insertions in my post here for proof- and then he dropped the absolute funk in his diaper. I went to change him on our bed-luckily unmade as will soon be relevant- as soon as I pulled his diaper off he pulled some 180 spin move out of my grasp and proceeded to smear poop all over our sheets and one of the pillow cases. So now I'm washing to sheets and the pillow case. I will now proceed to bang my head into the desk. Back to regularly scheduled posting)

originally thought I would breakdown every game of every sport as I am prone to do in conversation. While that has not happened, be on the lookout for a streak of Jazz/BYU posts. I've noticed that my favorite posts generally have to do with writing about my old memories growing up. As I feel this is generally a journal-type thing for me I've been pleasantly surprised at my range of topics covered. I have a stockload of things I want to write about but as noted above I'm struggling to find opportunities to sit down and write. I hope to improve, as with anything else in life. Here's to one year of blogging!

Why the Jazz are #1

One of my favorite lines of all time is from Colorado coach Dan Hawkins, "It's Division 1 Football!!!" Love it!

How on earth could #9 (soon to be # "others receiving votes) BYU play such a crappy game tonight against TCU? I can tell you exactly why, "It's Division 1 Football!!!!" Nice article in USA Today this week about the Cougs. Apparently they practice 90 minutes a day, all coaches are home by 6:30, and they are encouraged to make sure football is #5 on their priority list. #5? I'm pretty sure Rachel would argue (and I would have to agree with her) that football is higher than #5 on MY priority list, and I don't play. It's Division 1 Football!!!!! How about you take 3 months and inch that item up a few notches. 90 minutes of practice a day? I get that much exercise throughout the day and I'm 50 pounds overweight, slow, and sit in a chair for 12 hours a day. Could I play Division 1 Football????? Home by 6:30? I haven't been home by 6:30 this year! Note to division 1 college coaches. . . IT'S DIVISION 1 FOOTBALL!!!! Yes! Quadruple exclamation point!

This is why BYU is second to the Jazz. The season comes down to 2 games, the first time they lose and the game against the U. Can anybody provide a single good reason for attending or watching the UNLV game next week? Does anybody care? UNLV? No, nobody cares. BYU shouldn't schedule Northern Iowa or any other cupcake to open the season, they should schedule the absolute top team available (hello Florida State this year!!!!). Win, it kicks off huge momentum for a big season. Lose, I can take 3 months off until we play the U as all other games are rendered meaningless. Might as well get the loss out of the way early.

The Jazz can potentially win a championship every year (don't give me the 1984. I was 3 years old, I don't remember it, and it would take a minimum two-year run, including a BCS WIN the first year of the two year run, to make it to the BCS Title Game, and then have to win. Hmmm, I wonder what this year was supposed to be?) I already know up front that the Jazz won't go undefeated, but they can have a very relevant season. As for BYU I'm now left screaming at the television, "It's Division 1 Football!!! Get ready!!"

Game was over when: Max Hall threw his first "should have been" interception, only the guy dropped it. Clearly this defense could lock in on the fact that he looks right at his target after the snap and stays looking at him (being Austin Collie) until he throws it to him. Easy pick!

Game was truly over when: we run a sweep on 4th and 1. Note: GREAT CALL to go for it on fourth and 1. I truly support going for it on 4th and less than 3 anytime inside the 50 no matter what the situation. TERRIBLE CALL to run a sweep when your fullback and running back are power backs, not speed-to-the-outside backs. Power it up the gut with your full line of "pro level" linemen!

Emotions are running high, maybe I'll feel better in a couple weeks, when the Jazz regular season starts up.

I hate TCU.

My First Speeding Ticket!

So pissed! So pissed! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PISSSSSSED!!!! Yes! Quadruple Exclamation Point!!!!

You know how they say there are those who are sorry because they truly feel bad and they want to change and there are those who are sorry because they got caught? The "sorrow of the damned" if you will? Count me among the damned for this one.

Cruising along I-84 in Oregon on my way up to Washington (and when I say "cruising" I mean "doing my best imitation of a jet because I was flying") I get pulled over. On long drives it's hard to sit at the speed limit when all you can think about is making good time. I had to make up time becuase of an hour snow delay way back in Brigham City so you can imagine what I was doing to make "good time". I'm usually pretty vigilant about looking out for radar patrolmen, but on I-84 in Oregon it is pitch black with no highway lights anywhere. Oh yeah, one other thing, the speed limit is 65 all throughout Oregon, even if you're on a 5 mile straightaway in the middle of nowhere with about 2 other cars in sight.

So I'm flying along and I pass a police car. I know I'm done. No way to hide it, no way to put on the breaks and slow down to even remotely close to the speed limit. Flat out, red-handed in-the-cookie-jar caught. I generally go about 5-10 over as most people do, enough that if I was within distance of a police car I could simply let off the gas and be within range; but on this night as I was an hour behind on a 9-hour drive I let the lead foot get the best of me.

The officer was nice about it, marked me at 85 instead of my true, faster, not-to-be-acknowledged speed, so because of his "break" (and I say that meaningfully as he noted to me that without his "break" the ticket would have run upwards of at least an additional $200) the ticket is "only" $255. I had no idea tickets were so expensive. Good thing I had the seat belt on or it would've been another $100.

Yes, no need to ask, my wife was furious. She doesn't like me doing these long drives anyway. I'm officially in the doghouse this week and I'm not even home to do anything.

But I do have some good news. . . I just saved a buttload of cash on my car insurance! Ha ha ha! Seriously though, I just switched to Progressive 3 days ago and saved like $250! I'm sure all of that savings will swiftly revert back to no savings after my ticket is tacked on the record for my next quote in 6 months, but still, plug for Progressive.

I hate Oregon.

Postscript:

Thanks to my cousin Brad for his comment as he reminded me of the other thing I hate about Oregon. You can't fill your own gas! That is the most idiotic thing I've ever seen in my life! I've filled up once in Oregon, and I will never fill up in Oregon again! I now fill up right on the edge of Idaho and right on the edge of Washington coming back. I pull in right before Washington one night and the lady basically attacks my window! She tells me in Oregon I can't fill my own gas, even though I try to get her to let me five times. What type of morons in the state legislature thought up, "Hmmm, what can we do to make a good news story about creating more jobs but actually add nothing of value to society? I know, make a law that somebody else has to fill up your gas! Thereby creating more jobs!" Stupid.

I hate Oregon.

7 Random Things

My cousin said I was "tagged" and while I won't forward it (I don't forward emails so I won't forward this) I don't mind receiving forward emails. I still owe a few memory explanations as well, most notably to my friend Butter, but those are forthcoming as I continue to gather my thoughts weeks later. 7 random things that, if you know me, you probably already knew:

1-I'm a fitness/health fanatic, yet I'm fat and I eat the worst foods possible. Rachel probably knows this best (obviously she probably knows all of these things best being my wife and best friend!) I know EXACTLY what is needed to be in superb shape. I could tell you the perfect diet to rip you into shape in no time at all. I love reading about health and fitness: magazines, articles, books, etc. I've studied them all and I continue to read about it. So why am I so fat and out of shape? Well, there's one little problem: I love to eat! I love to eat pizza, hamburgers, french fries, donuts, drink soda, cake, ICE CREAM, bread, and everything else fattening and unhealthy. I keep saying "someday" but that day hasn't arrived yet.

2- I'm a huge reader. Speaking of reading fitness articles, I read pretty much everything. I love reading the news, books, magazines, etc. I could read the internet all day every day finding different articles about various random stuff (obviously after an exhaustive list of sports articles). When I worked for Comcast and really DID read the internet all day I pretty much had espn, sports illustrated, cbs sportsline, foxsports, desnews, sltrib, cougarblue, cougarboard, jazzfanz, realgm, and a few other .com sports websites memorized (seriously, I could've given you the inside scoop on hockey, which I don't even remotely care about).

3-I can't grow a good beard. My facial hair sucks (Rachel hates it anyway). I can't grow a full beard, it just grows long and ugly, not thick, so I pretty much can't grow a beard or a goatee, but I can grow a sweet mustache! I also have red facial hair which I think is weird.

4-I love music videos. I've written this before but I LOVE music videos. When I was little early morning Saturday had "Saturday Morning Videos" on one of the channels. Then in my teen years we had "The Box" which I would watch all night while working the graveyard shift at Pepperwood. (I never had MTV/VH1 growing up). Now I pretty much religiously watch the VH1 top 20 countdown on saturdays unless my cougs are playing. Even if I don't like the song that much, I think videos are cool. I always have ideas of what I would want to do for a music video.

5- I still daydream about playing in the NBA, the NFL, the Majors, etc. Hey, it could happen, right? 27 year-old fatty's make the leap all the time! Just kidding! Well, just kidding about me making some miraculous leap to a pro sports team, not kidding about me daydreaming. I know, I'm a loser!

6-Self esteem booster! I've been told multiple times by different people that I am the smartest person they know. (Totally conceited to write that I know, but hey, I just admitted that I daydream about playing in the NBA too). This is seriuosly the biggest compliment I've ever received in my life, I totally hope I can compliment people and make them feel as happy as I did when I was told that. I'm not really that smart, I attribute it to my mass amounts of trivial knowledge gained by endless reading of articles as mentioned above.

7-I love Bacon! Seriuosly, if you know me. . . Bacon, enough said.

Of Basketball and Cristian Mason

True to my word (even though I only got a couple suggestions) I received a FANTASTIC, ALL-TIME memory from my cousin Brad. As I grow older, my memories of being really young obviously grow fuzzy and more general; it's hard to remember specific events rather than what I generally did every day. Well, one memory will remain etched in my memory with HD clarity for life: the day Cristian Mason hacked a loogie on Rocky Bowlby.

Everybody in the neighborhood passed the summers playing basketball on my hoop in my front yard (for reference purposes- this is the hoop in Sandy on Borg Drive-where I lived until I was 12). A few other kids had hoops on the street, but mine was the only one that adjusted up and down; obviously, we lowered it to 7-8' so we could dunk.

The neighborhood group was pretty unique in that we spanned a large age-range. I was roughly 10, and my cousin Brad and Cristian Mason were 14-15 range, with other kids in between somewhere (Josh Clark, Nate Carlson, Travis Weis, Seth & Travis Baker, etc). I say this is unique because I know when I was 15 I would have never spent 5 minutes with a ten year old (I did indeed think I was pretty cool becuase I had friends that were in Junior High!) I do note that Brad, Cristian, and the other neighborhood kids hadn't necessarily grown to their life-size at 15, but I for some reason was freakishly huge at that age (I reached my life-size height, but not life-size gut :), by 7th grade). All in all on any given day we had quite a few kids playing basketball in my front yard in the summer time.

One kid that usually wasn't playing with us was Chase Bowlby. For some reason, us being jerk kids as we were, we never let Chase play with us. I'm convinced looking back that it was because he was just a couple years out of the acceptable age range; he being 8 and super-small compared to my being 10 and super-huge (again, with all other guys being generally older than me). Living only a couple doors up the street, he always came down to play, and we'd always make him sit and watch (I write this thinking how I'd kick the bejeezes out of punk kids that wouldn't let my kid play with them. . . that will become relevant later).

So one day, we were playing ball and not letting Chase play as usual. Chase's dad Rocky came home from work, saw his son crying about not being able to play, and decided to come give us all a talking to about excluding him from our game. I don't remember what words were said exactly, but I do remember Cristian Mason took it upon himself (being the oldest of our group and the Bishop's son, he had more clout to say what he wanted than anybody else) to defend our actions. He was even so brash as to start yelling at Rocky. Rocky kind of got in Cristian's face (again, looking back, what was he going to do to a 15-year old kid besides yell at him? I say nothing.) and then, all-of-the-sudden, Cristian hacked up a loogie and launched it right onto Rocky's suit!

Now, reread that last sentence of that last paragraph from two different perspectives: once as a kid witnessing an all-time demoralizing insult, and once as an adult witnessing the uttermost disrespectful act a kid could possibly pull. I note that as I distinctly remember this incident launching Cristian into legendary status among the neighborhood boys, but looking at it years later from the perspective of an adult potentially being more impressed with Rocky for resisting the instinct to just knock the punk kid out (Seriously, if a teenage kid hacked a loogie on you, is it even possible that you wouldn't knock him out? I didn't think so).

Rocky didn't knock him out, but he was infuriated, "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO DRY CLEAN THIS SUIT?!!!!! I JUST HAD THIS SUIT DRY CLEANED FOR $15!!!!!! YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR THIS!!!!" I assume $15 was a lot then, but regardless of the price, I've never seen somebody so mad. Needless to say, basketball was over for that day, but the legend of Cristian Mason lives on!

What a memory! I moved away a couple years later, as did lots of other kids from that street, including Cristian, Brad, and Chase. The lady that bought our house took out the hoop so when I drive by today my fondest memory is gone. I hope we didn't cause any lasting damage to either Rocky or Chase. I know Rocky hit it huge with dental insurance so I'm pretty sure things worked out just fine for him and Chase. Still, what mean kids; even though I didn't perpetuate the act, I can feel karma waiting for me when Cannon is 8 or so, for some punk kid to launch a loogie on my suit. He better have $15 handy!

Memories

I've noticed that I generally blog about my memory of something as it's triggered by something happening "in the now" if you will. Anyways, my cousin posted something similar to this a couple months ago and I thought it was interesting, but I'm going to add a little bit of my own twist to it.

His post (my cousin Aaron's) was something like this: Post a comment of a memory you have with me, any memory, whatever you want, whether you've known me forever or just a short time. He noted he would come to your blog and post a memory of you too if you made this same type of post. I will do the same but what I'm really going to do is if you post a memory I will write my own blog post with my own viewpoint of that experience-whatever it is. If this idea is totally lame you can tell me that too, but I kind of have a goal to start writing more often as I enjoy writing, but every time I think about it I feel like lately I'm getting a writer's block of sorts; maybe something like this will get me on a roll.

Fight Night!

I play basketball on Wednesday nights with my friends whenever I'm in town (which is not a lot lately). After we're done at about 10:30 we head over to the gas station, buy some drinks (mine is usually free as I've undoubtedly dominated somebody else, which in turn means I've earned a free drink on their dime:) ) and sit in the back of Britton's truck and hang out like some high school boys for a few minutes. Hey, we've even had some high school girls pull a u-turn to swing back past us to check us out! (After they saw we were a bunch of fat, 20-something married men instead of teenage boys they quickly took off--we admitted that it is unusual at 11 pm to see a group of grown men hanging out like this).

Anyways, that is not the point of the post, I'm just rambling. This past Wednesday we were talking about all of our old-time fights, post-game brawls, etc. After I left I got to thinking about fight night, definitely one of the funnest nights I've ever had.

If you've ever read my blog, it will be easy to picture the scene, as it is basically the same for any memory that related to teenage years---a bunch of dudes hanging out on a weekend night with no girls and nothing to do. We were at Jacob's house causing a ruckus. A couple guys start wrestling around and another decides to come in as a third party and deliver a devastating cheap shot elbow to the back! Hilarity ensues as we all start laughing at the tool who just took the blow (I can't remember who it was). Jacob's mom kicks us out of her house becuase we're causing too much ruckus, but now our adrenaline is all pumped up and we need to have some type of "fight club" night immediately. Ben offer's his house up as his parents aren't home. . . it's on!

The rules were as such: 1) no hitting the face. We formed a cirlce in Ben's front room, Kyle and I would usually get the action going by jumping in the middle and starting to fight, then other guys would jump in to try and cheap shot us: elbows to the back, knees to the thigh, kidney shots, stomach blows, etc. Even though you were in pain, it was so fun becuase everybody would jump in. . . while you were receiving a cheap shot to the back, you could turn around and deliver your own cheap shot to somebody else! Jeff started taking too many shots to his thigh; after a round of brawling he pulled up his shorts to reveal a monster bruise that pretty much covered the whole side of his thigh. Once we saw the weak spot, everybody was gunning for it the rest of the night. During one round I grabbed him and went in to knee him in the thigh once again; already in pain, he moved his leg outward to avoid the blow to the thigh, so instead he took a knee to the nuts! That floored him for a while, we outlawed knees or punches to the groin immediately after that:).

Once while standing on the side, Ben came up and stood in the middle of Kyle and I, then proceeded to extend his arms to both sides and land direct hits in both of our chests. He ran, we caught him, we pummeled him.

Highlight of the night, Chris Johnson was the only guy there who didn't participate. He stood on the outside of the circle up against the wall all night. We all tried to get him to come in and fight but he refused, instead just watching all night long. After a couple hours we were all beat (pun intended!) and laying around on the floor moaning in our pain. Whether he thought he was being funny or thought it was his opportunity to act tough, I don't know, but suddenly he jumped in the middle of the room screaming, "Bring it on!" There were no cheap shots to anybody else on that round, just all 10 or so of us pounding Chris Johnson. If somebody had walked in they would've thought we'd grabbed a guy off the street and dragged him in to beat him up. So classic!

I remember waking up the next morning with all types of knots in my back from all the elbows I took the night before. I was sore for a couple days. We tried to recreate the fight night multiple times after that, never to the same effect. I'm sure now it'd end up with somebody breaking a rib or something (I didn't get hurt that night, but I of course dislocated my shoulder on nearly every other night we attempted it). Teenage boys and fighting, too prime!

Football is King!

A couple weeks ago (pre-August 30th, Yes I know the exact date and you'll see how that comes into play in a second) my wife lamented, "Ohhhhhhhh! I'm so mad! Starting this Saturday you're about to become worthless for four months!" Why was I about to become worthless on Saturdays (and Sundays to a large extent, besides church of course)? Because that coming Saturday, August 30th, was kickoff day for the football season. I dare say 90%+ of males who read that last sentence had the following phrase pass through their mind, "YOU KNOW THIS!!!"

Yes, football is king. Even I can admit that, and I tout the Utah Jazz as my favorite team. I've learned over the years that the Jazz are my #1 because I follow them year-round, even in the offseason I'm always looking for news. My buddy Gerry, on the other hand, will call me in April-when football is farthest from my mind-to update me on some sophomore in high school who BYU is recruiting for 5 year from now (post-mission of course). That tells me I'm a Jazz guy; however, football is most definitely #1A. I pretty much only like the Jazz and no other NBA team or any other level of basketball. I LOVE football on every level: high school, college, and NFL.

If a football game is on, no matter what the level, I'm watching it until the end. In this past week while I've been out of town here in Washington I've watched college games, pro games, even a high school game of some USC-bound quarterback. I don't care, I love every second of it.

Rachel is so mad about Saturdays becasue she knows who is the King of the King of Sports-BYU! Two years ago, she wanted to spend Thanksgiving in Idaho Falls with her family. As soon as she suggested that, I called her Aunt in October (plenty of notice of course) to ensure she had CSTV so I wouldn't have to miss the BYU-Utah game; otherwise, she would've been spending Thanksgiving solo in Idaho Falls. Her aunt said she had it. . . she later realized she didn't have it and promptly added it to her satellite package before we came up, knowing the consequences of such a mishap could have been devastating. If I would've missed watching the Beck-to-Harline catch live, I don't know if I would've ever been able to return to Idaho Falls.

Football is so great, even playing pretend football is great. Yes, I'm talking about fantasy. Fantasy football makes games you would not usually care about (wait, that doesn't happen anyways) very interesting if you have a fantasy player on one of the teams. I play in multiple fantasy leagues, but the one I care most about is my espn league with my boys. There is nothing like smack talk all week long and glorious victories that players who actually do things on the field produce for me (two-time defending champ!). Again, "YOU KNOW THIS!!!"

Why is football so huge? I am convinced it is the scarcity factor. Only one game a week, only a few months of the year. Baseball and basketball have so many games that missing a few here and there is no big deal, but missing even a single game of the BYU season means missing them play that team for the entire year. If I miss us play UCLA this Saturday, when will I see that again? Granted, it's a rare situation where they're playing for the 3rd time in a year span, but usually missing any given game means waiting at least a year, and in non-conference games potentially waiting indefinitely, for the next game. I've missed two BYU-Utah games in my life, the two years of the mission, including the final game of Lavell's career, and I can pretty much guarantee I won't sacrifice that game again if it's at all within my power. Men across the state concur with an "amen brother!" All of this same scarcity applies to the NFL. I don't even have a favorite team, I'm pretty much happy to watch whatever game is on, whenever.

I am worthless on the weekends for a few months, and for that I apologize to my wife, who I love with all my heart. How do women put up with us?

My First Pair of Nike Shoes

It all started in the 3rd grade. We were shopping at the usual Payless for a new pair of shoes, a rare and momentous occasion for me. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never in my life obtain a pair of name brand shoes, a la Nike, Adidas, etc. so I had to find the most discreet pair of "Pro Wings-Eagles" available to hopefully just mesh in with crowd. I found a nice pair that were pretty much straight black; they could've been mistaken as any brand, right? Wrong. . . my dad finds a pair of $6 clearance shoes, silver and neon orange, with velcro straps, and announces he has found my new pair of shoes. If you couldn't guess, I cried that night.

It took months of convincing friends at school that I didn't pick my shoes voluntarily. Rather, they had been forced upon me; a cruel reminder that I lived in a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Springtime came, and as my feet were growing ever so slightly, I started to scour the weekly Sunday newspaper ads looking for a deal on new shoes so as to get rid of the velcros, still worn daily as if wearing a scarlet letter that screamed, "I am a loser!" Then came the night of reckoning. . . a night that changed my future forever.

I had found the pair of my tempered dreams. Like I said above, anything Nike, Adidas (my favorite two brands) was out of the question. The new dream was just to get something with laces. I found a Fred Meyer ad that advertised some McGregor's (FREAKING McGregor's for crying out loud! Does anybody even recognize that brand? I didn't think so!) for under $20. I took the ad over to my mother (avoiding dad at all costs of course) hoping she could pick them up for me and face the wrath of my father herself. I even offered to accept the shoes as next year's school shoes in advance.

"Whaaaaaat!!!!!!!!" My father came in, eavesdropping on my plea to my mother. I was too late, I had committed the unpardonable sin; being ungrateful for my 8-month-old-neon-orange-velco-$6 excuse of shoes. "You don't like the shoes we get for you, fine! From now on you will buy all of your own shoes and clothes!"

Tears flew freely to the pillow that night. I can't remember breaking down that hard for that long before or since. Was I so upset that I peed the bed that night? I don't know. It could've happened. I don't really remember. It was a long night of suffering, that's all I can say.

My current employment situation was as such: $2 a week for vacuuming and washing both our truck and our minivan. Not exactly employment that I would call gainful. My grandparents came to the rescue and offered to have me mow the lawn once a week. The original deal was $5/week, but the envelope each week seemed to gradually climb until it hit a consistent $10/week. $10/week about 3 1/2 months worth of summer to get enough money saved to buy next year's school clothes. At the end of the summer (after tithing of course:) ) I had about $100, I and knew exactly what I was going to do with it.

The shoes were at the Shopko there in Sandy on 9400 South. $50 for Nike high-tops, white and hot pink (ok so I still had some "neon" shoes. This was the early 90's). Every time I would go in to Shopko I would go make sure they were still there. I had waited all summer for this moment; the moment my tempered dreams vanished and I achieved the ultimate dream of Nikes. (The words of the Sandlot if you will. . . "Shoes guaranteed to make a kid run faster and jump higher. PF Flyers" but in my case of course Nikes). I admit a short sense of hesitation as I realized that I was dropping 1/2 of my summer's savings on a pair of shoes with still pants, shirts, etc. to buy, but only a moment of hesitation. It was one of the most glorious moments of my young life. I have a picture in my scrapbook from my first day of fourth grade, and every time I see those shoes I smile, knowing I was heading to school in style (the MC Hammer pants worn in that picture remind me I was actually not heading in style, but I digress).

Ever since that first summer right before I turned 10 I have bought all of my own clothes, shoes, etc. I have always said all growing up that I would never make my kids wear shoes they didn't want to wear, the cost be damned. Interestingly enough, as an adult I rarely buy shoes because I'm so cheap now that I don't want to shell out $50 for shoes, but I refuse to buy the cheap shoes as a matter of principle from my young experience. (Sidenote: I'll buy any clothes from anywhere. I'm not "above" any shirts, pants, etc. from any store. I'm just weird about shoes).

So there we were this morning at Famous Footwear, looking at a pair of $25 shoes on the clearance rack for Cannon. Rachel had a couple coupons so they were $10 off, in the end making them comparable to any Payless-priced shoe. I was having a hard time swallowing dropping any amount of money for shoes that will be worn for only a few months before he grows out of them (hmmm, sounds familiar). All Rachel had to do was remind me, "Didn't you say you would always let your kids wear nice shoes no matter what because you were so mad about it when you were a kid?" Once she brought that up, the shoes could've been $100, we were getting them. I was a few weeks shy of my 10th birthday when I got my first pair of Nikes, Cannon is a week after his first birthday and only a few weeks into walking. He kept the shoes on all day. I told Rachel it was because he knew he was walking around in style.

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Yesterday on all the websites there were announcements that Randy Pausch had passed away. Randy was a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University that famously gave a "Last Lecture" last September. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had only a few months to live. I had actually seen the book at Barnes & Noble with intentions to read it after I finished my current book. I was intrigued that his passing received so much attention, so I investigated this "Last Lecture" further. It has been viewed over 4 million times on youtube, so indeed it was clearly an inspirational talk. I took an hour out of my time today to watch it and reflect.

The lecture was centered on three points: 1) achieving your childhood dreams, 2) helping others achieve their dreams, and 3) lessons learned from both. The lecture was definitely inspiring, considering you were watching what a person really would say as their final thoughts because he really was anticipating death. He even admitted at then end that the real purpose of this presentation was to present his thoughts to his kids, not the crowd. However, what I've been dwelling on this past hour since is the first section, achieving your childhood dreams. He spoke about how he either did or didn't accomplish what he dreamed to do as a child. Most dreams he did accomplish, which was inspiring. I've been contemplating my childhood dreams and realizing that I hadn't achieved them all, which is kind of depressing, but you can't win them all. Maybe I can find some inspiration through my own self-analysis. Ladies and gentlemen, the childhood dreams of Brandon Ball. . .

Become the School President- I had this "dream" at every level, elementary, middle, and high school. In elementary school you didn't run for a certain position, they just slotted you according to vote count. McCall Bowen had one of the funniest speeches ever (which I went on to copy when I gave my speech for 8th grade President in a new school and new city) so I didn't win President but I did become the Sectretary. Copying McCall's speech in 8th grade propelled me on to victory (obviously with the help of some influential friends) so I did achieve my dream in 8th grade. In high school, I ran and won VP sophomore year, but when I went for the big score Senior year, I lost. It was a pretty crushing blow and truly a life lesson in humility. I was certain I would win, only to lose, and I can promise you at my tennis match that day after school at Hunter High School, Zach Stringham (my doubles partner) the opponents, and everybody else in attendance knew something had pissed me off that day (but we did come from behind to win the match!). Funny how specific events in life stay with you forever. To that point it felt like one of the biggest failures in my life, even though it was for the most part out of my control. One of the many quotable lines from Randy Pausch's speech was that "Brick walls are there for a reason." This was a serious brick wall that I had to push through and learn from. Interestingly enough, I'm sure it worked out better for me than had I won. I became really super tight with my group of friends during my Senior year and had I been the school president I could've conceivably hung out with a different crowd altogether, thereby ruining the multitude of spectacular memories I have from that year.

Become a Teacher-All growing up I wanted to be a teacher. I have distinct memories even in elementary school of wanting to be a teacher. Each year I would decide that I would like to teach the grade that I was currently in because that was the best grade ever. Obviously, my final teaching dream, which I still have today, is to be a high school teacher. Partly because of Mr. Randall, my favorite teacher at Copper Hills, partly because of the opportunity to coach sports, a la Mr. Price. I still have aspirations to be a teacher someday in a high school setting, but I always knew, even from that early age, that teaching is not as financially rewarding as I would want my career to be; thus, this dream took a backseat, at least for the foreseeable future.

Play Football for BYU - Randy Pausch's dream was to play in the NFL. I never thought about fame and fortune in the NFL, just glory on the field at Cougar Stadium (Now LES). I actually never dreamed about being the star QB or anything, either, just being on the team and being able to run out the tunnel with the crowd cheering. I have had a few opportunities to meet LaVell Edwards during my life, and being able to have him coach me was part of the dream, so I allow that to be somewhat representative of the dream. When you're heading in for your second shoulder surgery at the ripe age of 15, college football on any level is pretty much erased from your mind. Interestingly enough, I don't regret not playing for BYU since I really wasn't that good, but I do regret not playing the rest of my high school years. I wanted to go back and I didn't even care about getting hurt again, but parents reminding you of the cost of medical bills is pretty serious pressure to not play anymore (That's not a knock against my parents; just a reality of life that medical bills are expensive. Let's all agree not to tell my mom that I still dislocate my shoulder on a yearly basis at the turkey bowl on Thanksgiving:)).

Be a Drummer Like My Dad- I actually had this dream and fulfilled this dream as a youth. Our band in high school, Soma, won a a local battle-of-the-bands and we even produed a little 5-song tape. I still listen to our songs all the time on my ipod and play along. One song in particular I recorded much differently than the way I usually play it and it still bugs me every time I listen to it. We played a couple shows in some interesting places, even a couple bars. I never thought we were going to hit it "big" or anything; I just tried to appreciate that I was having a good time and that I was literally "living the dream" for a little while. I still have my original drumset and I'll head downstairs for an hour or so every now and then to play along with whatever song I want (this is the true beauty of the invention of the ipod).

Serve a Mission- What LDS boy doesn't have this dream? As a little kid, it's like your life consists of growing up and going on a mission. Everybody I talked to while on the mission basically felt the same way. You don't even realize that you have to live the rest of your life after that, you just have to make it to that point and head out the door. Now that I'm approaching six years of being home, it's still an impact point in life, everything basically consists of pre-mission and post-mission. The sad part is, you don't realize you're "living the dream" until it's pretty much over. The one saving grace for me was some advice I received from my cousin Eric a few months before I left. We were at Lake Powell together and he told me to keep a journal every day of my mission and I'd always be happy I did. In two years I only missed one day, and that journal-packed with both my musings and photographs of people I met-is pretty much my personal crown jewel of my missionary experience and for me one of the highlight achievements of my life.

Now, these dreams certainly don't entail the complete volume of my childhood dreams, but some of the major ones that have popped into my head the last few hours as I thought about this lecture. This isn't a last lecture for me by any means, but it is good once in a while to reflect on life. All the news articles said that this guy was an inspiration and I really felt it watching his lecture. On to the book for me, condolences to his family after his passing yesterday.

The Pleasantville Experience

OK, I've never intentionally used drugs in my life, but there is one night in my life where I am sure I was high on something. . . the night I went to see Pleasantville. . . in the theaters. . . on a Friday night. . . by myself.

All of my friends know about this famous event and pretty much every time any movie ever gets brought up I get the inevitable, "Maybe I'll go see it by myself like Baller did when he went to see Pleasantville!"

Why do I bring this up? You guessed it, I did it again, but under much different circumstances. I went to see the new Batman today lonestar; however, it was with good reason. 1) Rachel left out of town for the weekend, 2) I got off work unexpectedly at 2 pm, 3) all my friends had either seen it or were still at work, 4) the Dark Night is a man's movie (unlike a certain other movie from the past starring the man who would become Spiderman). So I caught the 3 pm Batman lonestar to kill some of my boring night away and to be able to participate in the conversations I hear daily about Batman. I'm sure I 'll still get ripped but I think I've provided enough evidence in support of my decision today. Well, at least enough to know that I wasn't on drugs.

The Pleasantville experience was a different story. I have no idea what happened or why it happened. My only explanation is that I was high. It was a Friday night, I know because I started out the night at the Copper Hills Football game. For some reason none of my friends were there; either working, coming later, whatever. After the game I knew that there was a party at another friends house, so I had opportunities to do something after the game, but for some reason I was thinking to myself, "I have no friends tonight and nothing to do. What should I do?" During this period of spaced-out thinking, I thought to myself, "I really want to see that movie Pleasantville, but I'm sure nobody else wants to see it. Maybe I should go see it tonight since I have nothing else going on." So I left the game (I'm sure we were losing big), hopped in my car, and went down to the Carmike on 90th and Redwood, which was the "it" theater at the time. Of course for Friday night dates, the place was packed. I bought my ticket, headed in, and ended sitting close to the screen, only a few rows back, dead center with people on both sides of me--giving 1 seat space on each side for the freak, of course!

The movie over, I got back in my car and drove to the party. Everybody, "Where have you been all night?" (This is obviously like 11:30-midnight range now after the game/movie combo). "I went to see Pleasantville." I shrugged it off like it was no big deal. . . people go see movies all the time, right? (Well, yes, just not by themselves). Them, "With who?" Me, "By myself". . . . . the second I responded by myself I knew I had just confessed a sin that would never be forgotten for the rest of my long-lived life. Laughter, mockery, and shame ensued. . . and does to this day.

64 oz. Dream

Is there anything more unusual than the simultaneous feeling of joy and disgust when you walk into the Maverik knowing you're going straight for the Torrent? On the one hand, you're thinking, "Ah, yeah! 64 oz of sweet nectar straight to the dome!" On the other hand, "Holy crap, I deserve to fall over dead the second I take a sip!"

Obviously the feeling of guilty pleasure overwhelms as I of course give in and go for it! I'm enjoying it right now, and if I let my feelings of guilt for pounding so much soda at once overcome, then I wouldn't be able to enjoy it! So I put those feelings away and gulp down a few more swallows.

Now, on the justification side, it is diet-Diet Dr. Pepper to be exact, the official Ball Family Drink-but there is no way that much soda can do anything other than give you a buzz for the rest of the night (which is what I need to stay up studying all night so that's why I bought it!).

Soda is such a pure addiction, I often compare it to smokers, except I'm one of the smokers who say, "I don't want to quit! I like it!" That's a problem since I should definitely quit (and smokers should too!).

Don't you just love hypocrites who say, "Quit drinking soda it's bad for you!" as they pound, yes, a 64 oz dream. Guilty as charged.

I made $600 billion in 2 hours!

Somebody talk me away from the ledge. I am ADDICTED to these "work from home" websites promising boatloads of cash and endless free time!

I've been addicted for about two weeks. I was watching an infomercial on tv that promised some outrageous amount of money, so I looked it up on the internet; of course it was a huge scam. The unfortunate part for me of course is now I get to thinking, "there has to be 1 legit work-from-home type business out there somewhere, right?" Well, no. "A little investigation" has turned into hours! Every time I'm on the net I look one up that I heard of and then dig to find out if it works or not. I've had to dig pretty deep and use ingenious google searches to find out the goods on some of them, but I haven't found a legit one yet. Of course my searches bring more and more of these "cash from home" type sites out of the woodwork, and I start my search again.

It's actually pretty frustrating to get all hyped up for "this is the one that works!" only to eventually find out that it's not. The lesson of course is that all of these sites are looking for the suckers willing to fork out the $50 or so for their "secret information of success" and usually ask for much more than that once you're into the system. The moral of the story: if you have to pay to get started, it's a scam, and you're a sucker.

One little problem, I'm DYING to be a SUCKER! I seriously cannot stop looking these different sites up and daydreaming about my gobs of money. As I said above I certainly do my diligence and find out the truth (which means I find out it's actually $50 down the toilet) but I'm still hopeful that I can drop my $50 somewhere! It's burning a hole in my pocket! Get paid to do surveys? YES! Work part-time and still make $10,000/month residual? Boom! Leave your true, legit career behind forever? I'm in!

Brandon Ball= Sucker (Well, not yet, but coming soon)

Death of an Email

My wife changed her email this week to a new email address. I'm out of town so I don't know the exact reasons why; maybe she thought after five years of marriage she should update her last name on her email. Whatever the reason, I received a new email from her this week from her new address, r.ball@live.com.

It's funny how in this day and age, even an email address can bring memories. Rachel's old address was rachepercy@excite.com. Right after I got home from my mission and we were first dating, we would email each other throughout the day as our little way of "flirting" if you will. She worked at the credit union as a teller and I worked at the now defunct Neighborhood Grant Network (with all the time we all spent on the internet there, no wonder it went under! Just kidding to any old bosses who read this!). All of the emails were usually only a few lines back and forth, but it was fun to sneak in little lines to each other during a long workday. I wish I would have kept some of her messages, but that was back in the day when storage on the free hotmail account was at a premium, so I had to erase frequently as her messages would constantly put my inbox at the maximum storage limit.

I remember one specific day when she didn't email me all day. I got home and called her and she said, "You'll never guess what happened to me at work today!" I say, "You got robbed!" Her answer, "How did you know?!" I didn't of course but she did in fact get robbed so she didn't email me because she was dealing with that the whole day. Being the pro that she was she inserted the little ink-explosion tablet thing and the guy got caught outside not too far away. Crazy how all these little memories start popping up just from something menial like a change of email address!

Anyways, those were good times when I would get a daily (or hourly) note from rachepercy@excite.com. Maybe she'll start emailing me again!

Die-Hard Fence Sitter

So I spoke to a guy the other day who told me he used to be a die-hard BYU fan, but now he's a die-hard Utah fan. I'm sorry, you used to be a die-hard BYU fan? Then why aren't you dead?

I hear this phrase all the time now and I don't understand what it's supposed to mean, especially if you change to a different team when the weather seems good. I'm pretty sure this guy was "die-hard" BYU in the glory days, pulled the switcharoo sometime circa 2004 (BYU's low point, the U's peak) and now can't switch back, realizing that fence-sitting is not an option for a true sports fan.

How could it be any different? There are few exceptions for changing your team. First, you pretty much have to pick your team, especially college teams, by the time you're roughly 14 or 15, so switching in your mid-twenties is unacceptable. You can keep your home teams if you moved from some other city to where you live now, and you can adopt a team if it comes to your home town. For example, if Salt Lake City ever gets an NFL or MLB team, I'll adopt them as my favorite team for that sport.

What are the classifications for a "die-hard" anyway? I don't consider myself a "die-hard" for BYU or the Jazz and I've never wavered in my support for either. Does it mean you still like them even when they lose? You have to follow them year-round, endlessly speculating on recruits, free agents, and other moves for the upcoming season? Do you have to buy a lot of their apparel? Are you going to be buried in their gear?

My take (and I don't know how this guy announced his change in loyalty) is that you have at maximum one opportunity in life to make a major "die-hard" fandom change, so you better be sure it's what you want to do because there is no going back. And if you make such change it better be very public for all friends and family to know.

I can think of one change that impressed me (even though it was a change to the wrong side). My uncle Dave is true blue BYU, in truth the reason that I'm such a BYU fan as I never knew of my own father's love for the hated U. Ironically, his sons are both U fans. I don't know which year it was, but Dave took his son Brad to the BYU-Utah game in Provo. Brad chilled in the stands until the 4th quarter when it looked solid that the U was goind to win, and pulled off his outer shirt to reveal a red Utah shirt underneath, thereby announcing his loyalty change loud and proud. Uncle Dave's words for him, "I will never buy you a ticket to a football game again!" Again, terrible decision to switch to the U, but at least it was cut and dry for all to see.

I won't be so nice to my son. If he ever pulls a stunt like that on me, I'll have his name legally changed to Benedict.

Why Men Need a Wife. . .

I just spent the absolutely laziest weekend of my life! I need serious help because my laziness cannot be stopped.

So I got back from my 2 weeks in Florida Friday night; Rachel had already left with her mom and Cannon out of town for the weekend so I was staring at a weekend by myself. “Ok, I’ll get tons of things done! Especially studying!” I thought to myself. Wrong answer. Get ready for a blow by blow of the most pathetic weekend ever.

Friday night, my mom picks me up from the airport around 8:30 pm. I tell her I have nothing to go home to so she can just take me to her house and we can watch a movie together. I go home to her house and watch 3:10 to Yuma with her and my sister. (Movie #1-great movie! I love Christian Bale and Russell Crowe).

Saturday, I wake up around 10 AM (I’m always good to get up by 10 on Saturday mornings because that’s when the 2-hour VH1 top 20 video countdown starts which I watch every Saturday) and do nothing because I’m going to a movie at 2 pm with my mom, sister, and brother. Yes, that was 4 hours away but my day was centered on it. We go to Ironman (movie #2-which was awesome by the way) and don’t get done until after 4. I stop by Lowe’s to get some fertilizer, fertilize and trim my lawn and mow the lawn of the vacant house across the street (my productivity for the weekend). I head inside for a nice night of sitting in front of the tv.
So it’s around 5:30 and I know I need to prepare my lesson for Gospel Doctrine the next day. Nah, I’ll procrastinate! I need to exercise anyway. I decide I’ll burn a few movies off my dvr list while I’m exercising. I watch About A Boy (Movie # 3-good show. I like nearly all of Hugh Grant’s movies) while exercising, so somewhat productive right? I finish exercising, finish the movie, shower, and think, “I should really prepare my lesson right now.” Nah, I’ll put on another movie! I watch Déjà Vu off the DVR (Movie #4-pretty good, Denzel Washington is always quality) and fold laundry. After it’s over it’s about 11 pm and I get down and dirty with preparing the lesson.

Sunday- the lesson went good as always. I go home teaching after church and help one of our families move some furniture (more productivity!). I come home and tell myself, “You haven’t studied a lick all weekend, get some studying done!” Nah, I hit up what was apparently Ryan Reynolds weekend on Comedy Central and watch Van Wilder (Movie #5-crude and not very funny but for some reason I sat through it anyways), Buying the Cow (Movie #6-I actually fell asleep for most of it so I don’t know if it was good or not—I assume not), and Just Friends (Movie # 7-I actually like this show and think it’s funny). Pretty intense marathon, eh? By then it’s about 9 pm or so and I should probably call it a night. But I check the DVR for any other recorded movies that I’ve been putting off (I mean-why not at this point right?) and decide to pound out The Perfect Storm (Movie # 8-George Clooney, Mark Whalberg, man crushes on both of them, what’s not to like?) to finish out the weekend of ineptitude.

I wish I could say that I was just dead tired after traveling for 2 weeks straight and I needed some type of major recuperation, but really I was just at home alone with nothing to do and no wife to get me to actually accomplish something. Good thing I’m not single, because I can certainly envision myself spending every weekend like that if I was.

Rachel got back Tuesday evening; she wasn’t even home 20 minutes before, “Ok, let’s go to Costco and get stuff for Cannon.” Back to normal, busy life. Feels good.

I love you, Beth Cooper!

So last week on my vacation I read "I Love You, Beth Cooper" by Larry Doyle, a fitting book to read as my little sister and sister-in-law just graduated from high school. Allow me to say up front that this book is HIGHLY recommended by me to laugh a ton and remember high school (and as everybody knows, I LOVE remembering high school).

Denis Cooverman is the classic nerd-geek-dweeb-valedictorian and during his graduation speech, he announces he wants to ensure he has no regrets, afterwhich he professes his undying love for Head-Cheerleader-Hottie Beth Cooper (trust me, hilarity ensues). How awesome would that type of announcement be from the podium! I remember from my graduation that Annie Smith's speech was funny, but I don't remember what it was about. Other than that, no lay-it-on-the-line announcements at my high school graduation.

Do I have any regrets over the years? I've though about this carefully over the last few days if I had any major life regrets or not. My one huge life regret is not learning to play the piano when my dad wanted me to. My parents started me at 8 and I hated it; after my dad died at 10 I think I lasted 6 more months before I convinced my mom to let me quit. Around comes high school (more remininscing!) and buddy Derek Colvin was awesome at the piano. "How long have you played?" I would ask. "Since I was 8" was of course his reply. What a gut punch.

Any other regrets? Anything I would announce from the podium if given a second chance? Oh how this eats at me! It's interesting because I can think of a lot of things I would say at the time, but now 8 years later I really wouldn't change anything. I've found that most people, even people who have had a lot of bad happen to them in life, say they wouldn't change anything of their past because that is what made them who they are today. I think about if I would say something, then I think, "But wait, would I be married to Rachel? Would I have any kids? Where would I be right now?" and since I don't want any of my present situation to change, I wouldn't want to alter anything of the past either. Crazy how that works.

Back to Beth Cooper. I want to re-read this book and I barely finished it. It reminds me of "Can't Hardly Wait" which is THEE high school/graduation movie for my age group. Basically, (SPOILER ALERT: I'm king of giving away the ending here) the nerd will go on to a successful life and the cheerleader will live the rest of her life remembering the glory of high school. Where do I fit in? I feel like life is definitely successful for me, but I definitely remember the glory of high school as well. I must be an in-between nerd (OK, full blown accountant nerd) with some level of cool (OK, full blown cool as well! You know this!)

I guess I've just been thinking about how old I am since my little sister just graduated a week ago, sending a sore reminder to me that I've been graduated for 8 years! Why do we have to get old? I'm not even old and I've already been saying that for a couple years! What will happen to me when I really get old! It is fun in my current Facebook rampage to see what people are up to and how their lives are shaping out; I can't believe how at one point in life I saw so many people every single day and now I've been years without seeing most of them. I've made new friends too, but none are as close as my friends from the good years of high school. OK, I admit, I'm still in contact with a lot more of my high school friends than the average person, but still. . .

One last story spawned from my reading of "Beth Cooper". The back of the book has a bunch of reader-submissions of embarassing moments from their teen years. I have an abundance of those types of moments, so I'll be happy to share one now.

First-Night '99

I'm downtown with Kyle Butterfield, Mike Lopez (then Mike Orellana), Trevor Kerr, and Nate Hull at First Night. We had bailed on a party at Shelbie Thorn's house to go downtown and "Get Action!" (As previously explained, that meant anything resembling a kiss from a girl) on the New Year. Midnight came and of course none of us had so much as attempted to even talk to a girl (typical night with the boys, eh?). Kyle and Trevor start talking to some girls so we leave to give them some space. They come running up a couple minutes later cheering about how they had just got kissed! This of course makes me super mad and I proclaim that I will get a kiss before the night is over.

We're walking back out of the central area and I spot a hot girl walking down the street with her friends. I promptly walk towards them, then swing around with her and the group of girls and promplty put my arm around her.

"Hey!" I say to her. I'm pretty sure she tought I was going to kidnap her or something.
"So, have YOU have a happy new year?" I ask her, meaning has she been kissed? "Yes, very happy." Was her reply.

For some reason at this point I lose it. I didn't specifically ask if she had been kissed or not, I just assumed she knew what I meant when I said that and I assumed her answer meant she had been kissed, thereby denying my implied request for a kiss. Bad move by me in retrospect.

I start fumbling my words like I do when I'm nervous and my Plan A hasn't worked out like I wanted it to. I finally stagger out, "Where do you go to high school?"
"Tooele" she responds.
"Oh! Do you go to Grantsville High?!" I ask this because 1) we played tennis against Grantsville so I was reaching for any type of connection to start a conversation and 2) I am a complete moron who didn't realize that I had just asked her where she went to high school.
"No, you idiot! I go to Tooele like I just told you!" Her scorn burned me to the third degree. I mumbled something incoherent and walked off. Nate and Mike followed in raucous laughter.

We stop on the sidewalk as all four have a good laugh. Then another girl from our school, Diana Tripodi, comes up and asks what they are all laughing at. They give a quick recap and she laughs, then follows with, "Oh! I would kiss you. . but, No!" then walks away. Scorned again to the delight of my buddies. I didn't even do anything to deserve the second blow but I took it anyways!

What a night. I will daresay that I had quite a few experiences of hitting on girls in my teen years where I was shut-down emphatically. But it's all part of growing up.

"I Love You, Beth Cooper". . . great read.

Oh yeah, I found out a few years later that Kyle and Trevor did NOT kiss those girls that night. Ha, ha, what losers :)

Ticket to Ride!

Don't have too much bad to say about my experience these past few days at Disney World with one glaring exception: scooter rentals! Holy crap, on multiple occasions I wanted to swear at somebody (even with the thousands of kids around!) at somebody cruising through the massive crowd on a little scooter! Just like the ones at grocery stores, slow moving, loud honking, and beeping when in reverse. Disney rents them out like strollers to whoever wants to pay. It is obvious to me that they are raking in profits just from scooter rentals; these things were everywhere!

Now, if a person is disabled, old, crippled, or something reasonable I think I could understand it. The thing is, the vast majority of the people on the scooters were just fat slobs who didn't want to walk all day. Hey buddy, you NEED the excercise! I'm quite the portly fellow myself but that doesn't mean I'm driving myself around all day. I understand that for some of the bigger people it would be a long hard day to walk that much because all of our family was tired at the end of the day, too; however, people would try to take these things up narrow ramps, bust through crowds, and give you the evil-eye treatment if they think you were in the way! Um, how about you walk like everybody else and then your pace will be the same as the rest of us? They morph from not being able to keep up the pace to being too fast paced because they have this magic motor machine! Again, these are not old or disabled people, just somebody who decided it was worth it to pay the money to ride for the day.

I can't believe how lazy America is (as I eat my hostess cup cake and wash it down with some more of my McDonald's 44 oz coke!). I think I'll go exercise now.

All I wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi!

If you knew that line comes from the song "Institutionalized" before just reading it, kudos to you.

Hopefully big post night tonight, we'll see how I feel, but I'm sitting in a Florida hotel waiting for tomorrow to come to get my week of training over with to head back home. I've been down here for over a week already with my family on vacation and now I have to sit through a week of work before I can go home. After this week I will have spent nearly a month of 2008 in Florida! Crazy times for me.

Anyways, on to the purpose of this post. Coca-cola as many may know is the #1 word in the world. That's right, it is a word that transcends languages; basically, we're going to learn that Coca-cola is part of the Adamic language (if you don't know what that is find somebody who does) because it's already universally understood! Well, in the past 9 days or so I've been to Sea World, a Carnival Cruise, and to Disney World (with McDonald's as the exclusive fast food chain of Disney World Resorts) and all are exclusively Coca-Cola. Now, I got over the fact that I paid $30 on the cruise for my 4 days worth of 1/2 can at a time "unlimited" drinks, $7 for my Sea World "refillable at $2" souvenir cup, and $2+ depending on the kiosk and park you bought your drink at from Disney World 20 oz Cokes, can't I at least get a little variety?

Keep in mind this is coming from somebody who loves Coke. I have no problem at all with Coke, I drink it all the time and it is Rachel's absolute favorite drink, but I couldn't help but notice myself noticing a guy with a 20 oz Diet Dr. Pepper and telling Rachel, "Hey, where did he get that?" I'm a big fan of Diet DP and Pepsi as well and considering I was on a historical soda binge (I'm sure I had at least my 2,000 daily calorie intake from soda alone) I would've appreciated some varitey in the process.

What is sitting next to me as I write this post and complain? A 44 oz McDonald's Coca-Cola, in my opinion the best tasting Coke out there.

By the way, the chorus to the song I mentioned above is "I'm not crazy" :)

More from the Journal. . .

So after all this Copper Hills craze by me the past couple days I've busted out the old Senior Year Journal. I know I haven't written in a LONG time and I'm really due to make some people laugh in life (most notable Lori Hand, Rachel's friend at work) so I've decided to take the plunge with another journal entry. The problem is, pretty much EVERY one of them except the first one I posted is SO embarrasing I get cold feet every time. I've decided that IF and/or WHEN I post these they will simply require some SERIOUS up-front commentary.

So this entry has to do with my Senior Year Homecoming date and the Homecoming Royalty voting, etc. I had asked Courtney Sorenson to the dance (which of course I have a journal entry about) and suffice it to say I thought I was going to be some big stud going to the dance with her and totally kiss her and make her my girlfriend, etc. etc (yes, you guessed right, none of that happend). So anyways, here are the true feelings of the balltrain regarding my ability to "mac" on chics (in this case particularly Courtney, with apologies to her if somehow she ever reads this) and my feelings towards my candidacy for Homecoming King. With my additional comments in italics:

10-12-99-Tuesday
I am such a gay fag. I barely got nominated for Homecoming King yesterday. I got nominated at the last second by the Girl's Tennis Team of all things. Anyways, today was the interviews to narrow it down to the finalists. I thought I did awesome (which I did), but when it started getting late and I didn't get a call I started feeling all sorry for myself. I got a call from Lexi Harlan (student body officer) a few minutes ago. I'm real excited, especially because now I can ask Courtney to escort me in the assebly, that's sure to score some points (Yeah-I couldn't because you couldn't ask somebody from school-my sister Stephanie escorted me). I want this real bad, but I'm sure everyone else does, too. Oh well, I really just wanted to be in the assembly, and now I am, who knows from there (I know, I'm a freaking tool loser!).

I talked to Courtney a little at lunch today. I totally blew it. I acted so stupid, I was in NO ZONE whatsoever. But, I had a plan to recity myself. Nick Zachman aids in her 8th period class with Mr. Randall. He was supposed to hit on her for me in front of the class. I even wrote a poem from this GAP commercial (I still remember the commercial! but sadly not the words to the poem) for Nick to read. Too bad he never did it and when I went to ask Courtney if Nick gave her the poem, she answered "no". I felt so dumb. I was at a low point for the day. Hopefully tomorrow, when I ask her to escort me, I'll have more lines up my sleeve than the empty air I was gasping for today.

Wow, to be eighteen again. That was brutal.

MySpace and Facebook

So I don't know why but the other night I basically wanted to have a high school reunion for myself (I'm a dork I know I still live in high school from 10 years ago). Sometimes going through all these blog links you track down people you haven't seen in years and you see what they are up to. I thought it was pretty cool, but in the blogspot world you can't really search for anybody, you just have to get lucky with the trail of links.

So what did I do? I signed up on facebook and myspace! I've always heard they were evil websites crawling with predators (who isn't a predator these days right?) Maybe I'm being too cavalier with my email posted all over the place for people to contact me if they want to. Anyways, I actually found that both of these sites aren't TOO bad; facebook clearly being the better of the two, but on both you can set it to private and restrict access to your page.

So anyways, I searched Copper Hills and found tons of people from the old days. I didn't really send out very many friend requests, just saw that people had accounts and thought, "Oh yeah! I haven't talked to that person in years!" So anyways, a little plug for the two "social networking" sites. All I really did on both was say "go to my blog or email me" so I don't plan on updating it, but it's actually cool to have some sites like that to remember old friends.

Heartbreak!

Oh, I HATE the Lakers!

Last night's game six loss at home to end the season was one of the worst losses I think I've ever seen from the Jazz. Even though they made it close in the end, the first half was so absolutely pathetic, you just knew they couldn't pull out a second half comeback. I will say watching Memo, AK, and Dwill hitting a combined 5 three pointers in the final 2 minutes was pretty exciting, but I'm just sick to my stomach even thinking about it a day later.

This was a championship opportunity lost. Game 5 was the real killer when they didn't pull one out in LA, but they seriously had the makeup of going all the way if they could get over the hump of Jazz versus Lakers Plus Refs/David Stern. I can't get over how the traitor Derek Fisher had 20+ steals on the series and from what I saw was called for exactly 1 (read: one!) reach-in foul. I can't get over the fact that Kobe shot over 90 foul shots in the series. 90 foul shots for one player! If he's got fouled enough for 90 foul shots, the dude shouldn't even be able to walk he would be hammered so bad; sadly, a stray breath in Kobe's direction equals a foul. I'm expecting David Stern himself to be at Team USA Olympic practice this summer, tallying up whoever fouls Kobe during practice and awarding him fould shots to start the game when he faces those teams next season. What a joke.

Another huge factor was the scheduling. I know we won game 4 last Sunday in our first home Sunday game in forever, but the scheduling was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO pro-Lakers it made me sick. The days between games, the start times of the games, all pointed to the Lakers favor. What joke.

Another Laker-favorite was the non-suspension of Ronny Turiaf after he took down Ronnie Price with the flagrant foul. People kept reviewing the play saying it wasn't malicious. Um, pretty sure when you lead with your forearm, then swipe at the head it's intentional. What everyone seems to forget is that the foul was called WAY eariler and Ronnie was just finishing out the play like lots of players do, only to get taken down. Suspensions have been dolled out for much less. Now, Ronny Turaf definitely wasn't the difference maker-I'm just pointing out yet another pro-Laker move by the league. What a joke.

Lots of people want to blame Boozer for a terrible playoffs. He definitely didn't play up to par, but it seemed like something was wrong. (You are saying, "no crap something was wrong, moron, that's why he sucked!") well, what I mean is he was either hurt or something else we didn't know about. Just my gut feeling. Maybe he just sucked. I try to keep in mind that Boozer was the first ever big-time free agent to sign with Utah so I try to give him a pass as much as I can bear; maybe I'm just witnessing the second coming of Karl Malone (Mr. Anti-Clutch). What can I say? I love Malone so I'll accept Boozer's disappearing act for this season. Hopefully he improves.

Last but not least, some matchups just don't work well for us. Basketball is a game of being the better team with better coaching and better players, but matchups also play a large role in victories. The Jazz have never matched up well with LA or San Antontio, but we own the Warriors, Phoenix, New Orleans, Detroit, etc. I can't put my finger right on why we don't match up well with those two teams, but we don't. If we could've avoided them until the Conference Finals maybe it would be a different story, but I'm left here to mope our loss.

Just one, Jazz, just give me one. If I have to live off it like I live off "1984!" the rest of my life, so be it!

Anonymous Comment

So I get a nice comment from a random pistolpete (profile not posted so I don't know who it is) trying to make some statement about how Malone has a kid. "How do you like Malone now?" he says, "I thought so." Umm, pretty sure you thought wrong moron. What type of loser comes into my blog where I pretty much write down my own thoughts and feelings for friends and family to read and for myself to reflect on in the future and tries to act like my blog is some fan-discussion site? This isn't jazzfanz.com or realgm; if I wanted to fight about Malone then I would post on one of those sites, not on my regular blog. But since you did, I'm obviously going to take the bait and respond. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I can hang with pretty much anybody out there when it comes to sports knowledge, especially current events. You think I don't know about Demetrius Bell, Malone's kid who just got drafted by the Buffalo Bills? Of course I know about him, Cheryl Ford, and any other fallacy of Malone's character you want to bring up. You might have noticed that I chose my words carefully saying that I loved to watch Malone play; that doesn't mean I support illegitimate children running around the world. If I had to keep track of all the saints in the world of sports, I'd end up giving up sports altogether. There are just too many bad guys running around in basketball and football (the two sports I really care about. I mean, seriously, can anybody even name a complete starting line up for even 1 hockey team? I didn't think so). All I can say about Malone and his kids is that I hope he's fixed his ways, which I assume/hope he has. And now my hipocrite confession: As much as I love the Jazz, I love my family and the Gospel more. I've railed on Kobe to my friends about how I hate him because he's an adulterer and worse, etc. but hopefully in reality people who make mistakes turn it around and are truly good people going forward. I would hate to think he or anybody else in any situation is cheating on their wives or having illegitimate children. Nothing is more precious than life and trust; I don't know the full details of either Malone's or Kobe's situations, but again I hope they're good people now. As for on the court, Kobe is the best in the game today but plays for the team I hate the most; Malone is still my all-time fave. Sidenote: one of the best lessons I learned in college was an object lesson where the whole class voted on the punishment for somebody who made a mistake. Right after reading the scenario, the whole class would vote for "justice", but after thinking about it and discussing it for a while, the majority would inevitabley swing to "mercy". Interesting how that works; I started this post with the intention of reeking "justice" on my commenter, but I end up preaching (to myself mostly as far as Kobe goes) "mercy". Just an interesting thought.

Love the Jazz!

Yes, Rachel wrote true. I love the Jazz (I'm writing this after the Jazz even their series with the Lakers 2-2 so that I'm in a good mood while writing. Otherwise, the title would be "Hate the Jazz!")
What is not to like about the Jazz? They are so freaking awesome! I love pretty much all Jazz players, even ex-Jazz players as long as they left under good terms (Read: I hate Mark Jackson and I'm VERY suspicious of Derek Fisher).
My favorite game ever? February 3rd, 1992. Triple overtime game over the bulls. Pippen was ejected, Jordan fouled out. Last game I watched with my dad before he died 3 days later. 2nd favorite, last year's game 7 win over Houston on the road. Watched the game over at Ben's house with everybody. I've never screamed so loud about hating AK47 right as he launched yet another ill-advised 3, only to never proclaim my love so loudly seconds later after he made the 3 which tied the game.
Favorite player? All-time, Malone. How can you not love Karl Malone? I will never understand how lots of Utah people don't really like Malone and profess their undying love for Stockton. You know, you can like BOTH of them! It's ok I promise. Lots of people say Malone wouldn't be the player he was without Stockton. I think that's crap. They were both incredible players who would've been awesome even if they didn't play together. Anyways, I loved watching Malone play. Back in 7th or 8th grade, I went to a game with Jacob against the Warriors and saw Malone score 51 points. Awesome game. We were on the 20th row or so, the bear kicked the actual game ball into the stands right up to us. It landed in some unsuspecting lady's lap right in the row in front of us. Figures.
Favorite current player: Paul Millsap. Of course I love Dwill and Booz (I will never hate Booz becuase he was the first big-time player to come to Utah as a free agent, so he gets a pass on any permanent dislike). I've loved Millsap since we drafted him. He is a perfect Jazz system player and I hope he never leaves. I just love Millsap and I basically have a mancrush on him because he's so freaking awesome.
Favorite opponent memory: I had a great run in high school of going to a lot of games in the lower bowl becuase of some opportune friendships with Nate Hull and Kyle Butterfield. They both took me to quite a few games and those were the highlights of my attendance at Jazz games. One game in particular, I was with Butterfield on the 3rd row across from the Jazz bench playing the Mavericks. The Mavs weren't great, but they had Michael Finley who was an all-star. The kid in the row behind us would yell in earnest to Finley, "Shoot it Finley! Shoot it!" every time down the court. Finally one time down, Finley pulls a sick spin move on Hornacek, drains the turn-around jumper, and then turns around, points at the kid behind us, and says, "That was for you kid!" The whole rest of the game every shot he made he would point over to the kid. The kid was beaming all night. I've loved Finley ever since.

Rachel always gets mad at me for getting so worked up about the games. People will say, "It's just a game!" What they don't realize is that it is more than a game, this team represent us! They represent our city, our state, and to some minimal extent our religion (those vicious mormon fans!). Beating the hated Lakers or Spurs is more than just beating them on the court, it's saying "Utah is better than California or Texas!" and seriously, you know you're thinking that and wanting that every time they play!

Anyways, I could go on forever, just wanted to validate Rachel's post that yes, I love the Jazz. Especially tonight after they beat the Lakers in OT. Just don't ask me after they lose a game. Then, it's "Hate the Jazz!"

The Deodorant Classic of '95

My mom watched Cannon for us today so I took him over to her house early on my way to work. Being my usual non-observant self, I backed out of her driveway without even looking. By the time I was in the road and looked over a car was basically about to t-bone my car; luckily the person saw me in time and had slowed down. I pulled out and saw that it was Brandon Clough, one of my best friends during my middle school years and who lived just two doors down from me growing up.

I called Brandon right then and we chatted for a second, nothing big. Funny how you stay in great touch with some friends and lose touch with others. Anyways (I'm rambling), the whole way to work I was thinking about some of our classic times in the early teen years.

During my middle school years Brandon and I hung out a lot with Shawn Olsen, Gerry, and DJ McCarty. Mostly all I can remember now is that we played basketball during the day and either Risk or Monopoly at night (Gerry usually won at risk, as anybody can tell you he is a conniving sucker when it comes to that game). Anyways, we all slept over at each other's houses frequently since we'd be up late playing the video games or the games mentioned above. One other common theme of us hanging out was somehow Brandon and I would always get into these wrestling/fighting matches, sometimes pretty heated. To be clear, these fights would end and we'd be cool with each other again pretty much immediately. I never remember fighting with him when just the two of hung out (well, ok, once he shot me in the leg point blank with a bb-gun, so I wasn't too happy about that), it was more of a result of Gerry or Shawn somehow getting into our heads that we were aginst each other, and egging it on until we finally went to blows. I remember frequent battles both outside on one of our courts or late at night inside, roughing up somebody's house.

One particular night will never be forgotten. I'm sure if Shawn, Gerry, or DJ read the title of this post they would know immediately what I'm referring to. I'm pretty sure they were all there but I know for sure that they know the title of this epic battle. We were sleeping over at Gerry's house like any other random night and they were egging us on to start fighting as usual. Obviously this was great entertainment for them, but it's quite clear now that it was amusing for the two of us as well as we were always suckered into it. For some reason Brandon had brought his own pillow up to Gerry's to sleep on, and at some point during the evening he moved it and a stick of deodorant fell out of it. I took the bait immediately, jabbing something to the effect of, "What type of fairy brings deodorant to a sleepover?!" We all got a good laugh out of it, except Brandon of course. No more encouragement was needed from the other boys, the fight was on.

I can't remember a more intense fight than this one. You would have to be able to visualize Gerry's family room but we wrestled around and punched each other for quite a while. Somehow we moved over to a corner beneath a little table where the phone was and Brandon started banging my head into the wall. There was also a little office chair in this corner, which he proceeded to bang against my head as well. I scrapped for a minute and flipped over onto my stomach trying to get out of this corner, when suddenly out of nowhere Brandon whips out his deodorant and screams, "YOU WANNA MAKE FUN OF MY DEODORANT!!!!!" and started hammering me in the back with his deodorant! I was laughing so hard I couldn't even feel him hitting me, which only infuriated him more. You can imagine the other boys eating up the high comedy.

Somehow the fight ended and we went to sleep, but it was big news the next day for any friends who weren't there to be eye witnesses. It was soon to be immortalized as the "Deodorant Classic of '95", the most epic of our many battles that year. Good times with the Clough.