Music and Lyrics

Dear Readers, Just so you know, the title comes from one of the songs written by Queen. Go look it up. Today I spent a good couple of hours in a semi-unproductive hobby of looking through coins. There was a United States Quarter map in my room that needed to be filled with about 12 states, so I decided to fill it. I have a jar of coins from various events and so I looked in it to find all the quarters. I decided I would try and find a coin from every year as far back I could find. You'll be pleased by my results. Quarters : Every year from 1975 onward to 2008. I found some from the 1960s and even a couple from the 1950s. Dimes : Not quite as successful. I have found a dime from every dating back to 1985ish and a lot from the 70s. Nickels : Very surprising in this category. I found a nickel dating back to 1943. I also found a 1952 and a couple more from the 50s. I can't remember what years I'm missing, but I'm pretty sure I have every year from about 1965 - 2008. Pennies...

Dear Readers, The world needs to know how amusing young women's volleyball can seem in the eyes of a referee. Imagine throwing a ball into a room full of teenage girls with a net in the middle and a few guidelines on how to use the ball. Sometimes it goes over the net...but that occurs seldom enough that the other team is surprised when it does make it over. Being the referee, most of the time all you do is whistle the end of a play. On occasion you have to know rules when a coach or parent tries to refute an action by one of the players. On the better part, you just whistle and point in a direction. Yes, Young Women's Volleyball is great. Especially when used as a fellowshipping activity. :)

Dear Readers, The title is really a stretch to connect to my thoughts today, so don't pay it too much thought. The song it originates from talks about a guy in high school who was working really hard. He didn't want to go to college or take girls out on dates, no...he was working for a car of his own. Now, I'm working for use of a car before I leave, but it can relate. The kitchen floor has only been cleaner than today on one occasion...when it was first put in by my Father and Brother-in-law. They worked hard to put in all the tile and grout it before sealing it all up. I proclaim that the sealent used on that day now starts to come up with a combination of scrubbing really hard and kneeling on it with a towel. The point remains, it can now have feet walk on it without fear of gaining undesired attachments... I started packing missionary things today! It seemed logical to start packing up every useless thing in my room and send it off to Deseret Industries. Everything else...

Dear Readers, My sister, Holly, recently bought a treadmill which I helped install in her condo. It was a heavy sucker, I can assure you. Anyway, buying a treadmill seems like the biggest waste of money if you ask me. Granted, Holly is going to make it work by reading while she walks/runs, not something you can really do without a treadmill. Other than that, why on earth would you buy a treadmill? First, it allows you to do something in your room you can do just as easily outside...run. Go run around the block. Go run to your friends house. Save the 400-someodd dollars you would spend on a treadmill and spend $50 on a good pair of running shoes. Shoes can be even cheaper than that. Another thing: treadmills are big and bulky, taking up all sorts of room in your house/apartment. Sure, some brands have treadmills that "fold up" and lean against the wall or something like that. They are still there. Not to mention leaning a 200-400 pound object against the wall does not seem lik...

Dear Readers, Good Luck, Elder Alden! You will be a great missionary! Driving to Elder Alden's Farewell address today, I noticed something. Radios are essential for car travel. At least when driving alone. Elder Alden, my good friend at roommate at BYU is from Park City, thus I drove to his ward to hear him speak today. I drove in the car my parents just bought for my brother's use in Logan while he's at school. The car has several interesting attributes, including the seatbelts' application. There are two belts in this car, one that comes down over your chest and one lap belt. No, they are not connected. The car has been around in our family(My cousin owned it before my parents bought it) for about 17 years. That's almost as old as I am. Anyway, the whole point of this post is to share how this car doesn't have a radio. Driving can become very tedious when not listening to music, talking with friends or something of the sort. Don't get me wrong, I love driv...

Dear Readers, Yesterday I drove down to Provo. Simple enough, right? Wrong. I made the mistake of leaving right in the middle of rush hour and got caught right in the middle of all that south bound traffic, which is apparently full of people who don't know how to drive. Granted, I was in a little bit of a hurry. Although, if you don't know keep up a good speed on the freeway, don't get on during rush hour. Here's a memo to myself...don't drive behind slow, red Mustangs for more than a block. It's extremely frustrating.

Dear Readers, Ok, so I can't fit the entire title into the title box. It's a good song, go look it up: "You make me smile." The title can apply to anyone, I've found. The rest of the lyrics would probably refer to a best friend or a significant other, but anyone can make you smile. They all have the own way of doing it. Some are just funny all the time and you can't help smiling when you're around that person. I know some who take care of people so well that you just smile when they're doing something for another. Others you can talk to about your problems and no matter what they say, it seems to make sense and you feel better...thus a smile. Ok, a smile doesn't always come in that case, but people usually smile after that. Anyone can have a blonde moment and make everyone smile because of it. I'm glad I've got friends who can do all of these: have blonde moments, take care of others or have an episode of hyperactivity that you can't he...

Dear Readers, Note to self: check what time zone your watch aligns with. I was working at a house in Murray today when I looked at my watch because I needed to leave to go with the missionaries at a certain time. My watch was an hour later than the actual time. Being stuck with my bike, I thought I was going to be late for our appointment. Needless to say, I didn't push myself nearly enough while running cross country. Thinking I was leaving an hour later than I planned, I booked it up 45th south and made it from state street and 48th south to my house in 35 minutes. On my bike. Well, it turned out, as mentioned above, my watch was off by an hour. So I made it home an hour early and was dying from riding so fast. Now you're hearing it about while I wait for my appointment. Better early than late, I guess.

Dear Readers, I was at home, getting ready for another day in my fourth grade class. It's September 11th and the day has been on my mind all week. My title for this entry, as is common, comes from a song sung by Alan Jackson. Unfortunately, no song can come close to describing where each one of us one that September morning when the World Trade Center, The Pentagon and countless lives were damaged or destroyed. I was just shy of being 10 years old and I was scared when my grandmother called our house and asked to talk to my mom. She told me to turn on the television before handing the phone to mom. The news networks, all in a frenzy, were showing images of two buildings, side by side, that were smoking. Later I heard that they had collapsed. Where I was is of no significance. Where all of those people who gave their lives were, that's what matters. The firefighters climbing the stairs that would crumble beneath them, the passengers in those planes that never reached their desti...

Dear Readers, I leave in less than 6 weeks. Wow, that's exciting! :) Today I went with the missionaries to the temple again this morning. I woke up at 6:30 and got my dad up so he could be dropped off at work on our way. He was in the shower when he told me to go get the missionaries and get him on our way back. I took the grey car to get the missionaries and they told me when I got down there that another companionship needed a ride to the temple. So we went back and got the Van and we were already late at this point. We got the other elders and dropped dad about a block from work. We were late for the 8:00 endowment session, so we had a lovely time preforming Initiatory. We had a lovely time and had McDonald's for breakfeast. A good morning.

Dear Readers, I had a wonderful night on Monday. First off, we got back from our great family vacation in St. George and unpacked all the food we never ate. That night I got to see my girl, too! :) It was only an hour with her, but we read her recent blog posts and looked through the pictures from St. George. Afterward, I took Curtis and two of my best friends back up to Utah State. We shot the breeze about anything and everything while we unloaded all their stuff (I'm so happy Mabel got her Collage) before heading out to some chinese resturaunt, which is where the funny Karma comes into play. Julia, upon seeing the salt and pepper shakers at our table, decided it would be funny to unscrew the lid so the salt would all come out at once for the next unsuspecting customer. She did this before she got her food. Guess what? She was that unsuspecting customer. Way to go, Julia! We all had a good laugh and a great night. :)

Dear Readers, So I have some rules on Facebook. If you don't know what Facebook entails, go look it up or ask a randow teenager on the street. They'll tell you all about it. Anyway, most of rules are to keep me safe on facebook from Online predators and whatnot. Not that I'd ever really be a target for something like that, probably more like identity theft or something of the sort. I have over 700 connections on Facebook. How is that being safe? Well, I have some rules about who becomes connected to my pages on the networking site. 1. They must have at least 3 friends in common with me already. Sorry to those trying to break onto the facebook scene through me, you have to have a couple friends other than me. 2. There must be a picture of them on their profile. Whether they're tagged in someone's album or their profile pictures, it doesn't matter much. As long as they have two pictures up that I can tell are that person. There are many other rules such as...

Dear Readers, Long Road Trips have a special power over me. At home, I don't usually have drawn out conversations with my family over meaningless or intense topics. However, we're on vacaction. Driving for almost 8 hours in a car with your family, you get to talking about various things that may not even matter in a week. Yesterday we went up to Tuachan Amphitheatre to see "Tarzan." The costumes, special effects and overall show were pretty impressive. Tarzan was amazing mostly because he was ripped and he could sing fairly well. Kala wasn't all that impressive, though. Anyway, back to riding in the car. This was one of things we talked about on our many driving adventures yesterday, during which I got to drive Holly's Car! Wahoo! We also talked about how actors have low moral values and musicians are better on average, but still not that great. I'm writing now from the condo we're staying at in St. George. Hope you're having a great weekend. :)