Skinny Jeans

Those of you who know me very well at all also know that I have a little bit of emo in me. For those of you who don't know what emo is, check this out. Oh, and for those of you who do know what it is, still check it out. It's funny, ya?

It's me to a tee. ;) But for those of you who know me even more also know that I have a serious jones to get a pair of these:

I'm dying to know what people think! So far, 1 out of 200 people that I've asked has said H yes I should get a pair of skinny jeans, and the other 199 told me I was crazy or took all of my shoe laces, knives and swords or just walked away in disgust. But I know my blogger friends have my back, right? RIGHT?

Peace.

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Wow

Just real quick... I stepped onto the scale this morning.... I've lost..... 25 lbs. Since the first week of February. Feelin' great! I'd like to thank all of those who helped me, supported me, and tempted me with sugar. That's all.

Peace.

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The Number 75 is a Grotesque Animal

It's been 24 hours since it happened. The past day has been somewhat of a daze; a blur. I'm not sure if I can recall all of the events that took place; however, my story needs to be told. Names and actual events may have been changed.

Let's start with the night before. I recall stating:

10:00....night before.....My nerves are going crazy.....

I tried to sleep after this, but all of my attempts were in vain. Some strange man came to visit me and stole my projector for the night. The attempt he made to wish me luck and calm me down made exactly no difference. I felt the need to empty my insides into the porcelain. Nerves were shot; the energy drink I mistakenly drank was haunting my mind and playing games with my body. I was wired for three hours until I crashed, but it would not let me sleep.

As I made the next attempt at slumber, I began receiving texts, a very welcome distraction, from none other than the CG. My nerves were somewhat calmed during the texting, but soon peaked at an all new high as I tried, yet again, to sleep.

The hours rolled by. 12:00....1:00....2:00....At 2:30 someone showered......3:00......4:00....Only three and a half hours until I had to wake up. Lord, I cried, please help me sleep. I remember nothing else until 7:20. Finally, a little sleep.

After about 10 minutes of talking myself into getting up, I moseyed into some clothes, and lazily listed to campus. 8:40......time to head over there..... 8:45....people start showing up. 9:00.....the committee show up wearing skulls and crossbones, gnashing their teeth; snarling, rabid.

This was no normal presentation. As I begin my talk, I can feel the daggers being stared at me by each member of the committee; I can hear their thoughts, saying, "This is no defense. This is a joke. I will stick him. I will devour him. He will not pass." Am I scared? Absolutely not. I felt a strange power and confidence from my mustache. The presentation went smoothly, packed with multimedia and 3-d graphics. During the applause, as the public are leaving, I begin to fear for my life. "Don't feed me to the wolves. I'm vulnerable." But no harm befell me; the snarling, foaming mouths of the committee were transformed into welcoming, pleased smiles.

It was over. I had passed the test. I will diminish and head into the West.

Peace.

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The Nervous Curse

10:00....night before..... S-WORDS!!!!

My nerves are going crazy. Immodium helps...

Wish me luck. Will write about it later!

Peace.

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Librarian

I recorded a song when I was in Denver on my puny little MacBook microphone in GarageBand. I think it's the best one I've done so far. Well, I wanted to share it with people, but it's too hard to email it to everyone I know...so I decided to make ANOTHER VIDEO!!!!! This time, I made a slideshow of about the past year of my life and the people that have had so much impact on me this past year. I love you all and thank you for always being there for me!!!

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Today

Things I'm feeling today (and yes, another boring list...I'll write a good post again soon...):

• I will never go to Beto's again. I had only half of a bean and cheese burrito this morning (midnight). Immediately upon eating it, I began feeling sick. Today I'm still feeling sick, I have no desire to eat anything, and I feel weak and light-headed; dizzy, almost.
  
• This week is going to be the busiest week of my life. I have to a) put finishing touches on my thesis; b) create, edit and put finishing touches on a slide show presentation telling the story of my thesis; c) finish writing another lame list on my blog about things I'm feeling today.
• Forgive me if I don't blog much this week. I guess it won't be much different from every other week since I generally blog one time per. I intend on staying on campus all day every day. But the catharsis I'll receive upon passing my defense NEXT TUESDAY will be worth it. For sure.
• Oh by the way, since this is a list of things I'm feeling today, I guess I better say that I'm pretty much freaking out. The whole defense thing NEXT TUESDAY so frightening to me that I just want to say the eff-word every time I think about it. I don't say this word, mind; I just have a strong desire to scream it at the top of my lungs.
  
• Today I learned about efficiency in my stats 6720 class. My kiwi professor kept abbreviating it as eff. I thought it was funny as hell. So for the rest of the hour, each time he wrote efficiency on the board, I abbreviated it as eff. You'll only find the word efficiency written once in my notebook.
• I was way excited today because I learned that Sharpie Pens now come in more colors than just black: green, blue and red! My dreams were then shattered as I went to the USU bookstore and they had no such interesting colors. In some ways I'm glad I'm getting the H out of Logan in 1.5 months, ne'er to return!

I'm pretty sick of this list. I can't think anyway. With the Beto's poison still in my system, and Meizzle Okeyella constantly distracting me, it's no wonder. I want to run away to Spain (in May). Anyone down?

Peace.

PS - There's a Jack's Mannequin concert in Idaho Falls on the 9th of April. I'm going with some friends, but anyone who wants to go is invited! Buy tickets through here.

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The Central Limit Theorem

I was accused of normality tonight. I'm not talking about statistical normality, the kind that invokes the central limit theorem (CLT). Nobody has ever intentionally invoked the CLT on me and made some assumption that I come from a normal distribution. But tonight, I was called normal. I'm not sure how well I jive with that, and here's why:

• I like statistics. Some would call this masochistic.
  
• Some would also call me an emotional masochist, whatever that means.
• Any type of masochistic behavior is not normal. Though if you looked at the population of masochists in the world, they may follow a normal curve. Again, CLT.
• And again, not normal.
• I made fun of a girl named Rachel today on the plane. No, no, I didn't know her. She sat next to me and tried to touch the butt of the guy on the other side of her. Then she couldn't get her seat belt on...I told her it would easier to get it to work without a phone in her hand. She then played Labyrinth on my iPod and we watched an episode of Arrested Development. She told me that she liked my fohawk-glasses-sport coat look, to add her as a friend on FB, asked if it was going to be awkward for me to meet her boyfriend as we walked together to the baggage claim, and then introduced me to said bf.
  
• I like being awkward, awkward situations, making others feel awkward, and the word "awkward."
• I argued with Micah about the word random for 60 minutes on the way home from the airport. I'm still right, btw.
• I'm writing a list of reasons that I'm not normal on a very public blog.
  
• I almost forgot an "l" in that last sentence. Can you guess where?
• I write things like the last item on the list and then reference it from this item.
  
• I hate [most] condiments, yet I dip my [plain] cheeseburgers in ice cream.
• I didn't get mad at the dumb H-ers at Southwest Airlines for losing my guitar. A normal person would probably freak.
• I called them dumb H-ers in my head.
• This list is getting pretty long, but I can think of one million more reasons that I'm not normal. If you want the list in its entirety, I'll pick up a [fruit] pizza, maybe a shake and a salad from Cafe Rio, and we'll chill. And by chill, I mean that I'll list off one-by-one the rest of the exhaustive list...ad nauseam.

Peace.


PS Does anybody see anything funny about this picture? OK, I know that what he wrote is weird, but can you notice anything else...out of place?

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For Seth

Last night I sat through what may have been 2.5 of the greatest hours of my life.  The Broadway musical Phantom of the Opera in all its glory.  I don't want to talk about it for fear that any attempt to describe it would completely diminish the power of the music and the irrefutable awe-struck state in which I remained as I left the theatre.  In layman's terms, it was awesome.

So instead, I'll write a post about my friend.  I like dedicating posts to people.  This post goes out to Seth Derrek Durfee, or as we call him on the street Sir SDD.  

As many of you know, Sir SDD is the type of person that people instantly fall in love with.  He is good at everything he does; be it from writing/playing music on all instruments and cooking to street dancing and ninja fighting, he does it and he does it well.  A true multi-faceted guy, if you will.  He's a big fan of stencils: drawing, cutting, spraying, and all other possible applications of stencils that are both known to be in existence and invented ones.  Go here to see some of his work. Tonight as I was riding about Denver, I saw something that, in Sir SDD's own words, was legit.  

It's a purple truck.  With a stencil of Frankenstein on both sides.  Sir D, let's see ya pull this one off!

Peace.

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Curses

I put a curse on Las Vegas tonight.  There shall be snow for the next 3 days.  Sorry friends.

In other news, I procrastinated actually working on my thesis today while my MacBook took care of some business (chugging away at code for about 27 hours), and played Pokemon Diamond all day preparing for March 22, when Pokemon Platinum arrives.  It's interesting that, even though I'm 27 years old, I get super excited about pre-ordering the new Pokemon game so that i can get this figurine, named Giratina:

and when Toys R Us have a pokemon give-away, meaning that you can go to the store with your Nintendo DS (Lite), turn on your copy of Pokemon Diamond or Pearl and receive a new, uber-powerful, level 100 pokemon, named Regigigas.  They really need to come up with better names.   

Mayhap you are asking yourself, "Will he ever grow up?"  No.  I will be a Pokemon playing, Las Vegas cursing (or cursing in general, for that matter) nerd for evermore....or at least for another month--when life forces me to grow up, as I was so casually reminded this evening.  Thanks.

Peace.

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Catharsis

I'm finally the H out of Utah, and I'm H-ing happy about it.  I landed in Denver tonight and now I'm just chillin' at my sister's all week, and I couldn't be happier.  I have a lot to do this week, so I may be a little OC, if you catch my drift.  But it's just what I needed...especially since I don't have the means to get to Spain.  I would run away in a heart beat if I could....

So I freaked out a little bit on Friday afternoon, when I got a piece of paper signed by each member of my graduate committee, which by signing they agreed to be present on the 24th of this month for my final defense.  This is going to be the scariest thing I've ever done....other than when I called Temple Girl to ask her out.  She never returned my call, btw, so that's history! And then there was this one time when [this sentence has been omitted to protect those involved from the law].  So 3rd scariest thing I've ever undertaken.  I'll be preparing for that this week and putting the finishing touches on the ol' thesis.  Arrrgh.

That's all.  Peace.

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POOF!

That was a flatulent from myself to all of you!

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Three

and.....

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Two

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One

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The Summer Shoot

I was a lucky man this last week.  After never having gone on a photo shoot in my life, I got to shoot photos of 2 (count them, 2!) beautiful women in one week.  It was way fun!  Saturday, my friend Summer (of Summerpedia, which needs to be updated, mind) came up from [city] and we drove to a couple of cool locations to shoot some pictures!  I got my own camera back, so I was more comfortable, and we just had a good time.  Since Summer is naturally hott, it was easy getting great shots of her.  So I hope you enjoy them!  

I had to teach her how to make a serious, natural face.  

After that the shoot went fine....

A typical Summer pose.

This is one of my fav's and may I add favorite shots to take.

Another of my favorite shots.  You can tell, can't you.

This was my most favorite shot of the day.

Well that's it, folks.  Two posts in one day...I'm exhausted. 

Peace.

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Take Two on Superman

For those of you that have been fans of Resplendent Sunrise since the beginning, you may remember me talking a bit about dating in my first post (see here).  In that post I mentioned something about the relationship that Lois Lane wanted with Superman, yet curiously didn't want anything to do with Clark Kent.  It's curious in that Clark Kent, as the more intelligent portion of our society knows, IS Superman.  I related this to my experience with dating and friendships.  

Why bring this up on a public blog? First of all, nobody reads my blog, so it doesn't really matter what I say on here.  Secondly, I've been doing a lot of thinking for about six years (since I've been in college) and I've come to this conclusion: it's nearly impossible for two people of opposite genders to become really good friends without one or the other (or both) developing feelings for the other person.  For those of you that disagree with me, think back to every friendship you've had like this where the two of you became super close, and ask yourself if there really wasn't something there, either on your end or theirs.  I think it's the exception that this doesn't happen.  

A friend of mine once said that sometimes we don't tell people how we really feel for whatever reason.  Maybe it's fear, that impeding abyss, that keeps us from saying how we feel: fear of rejection, fear of what may happen, fear of fear itself.  Instead of opening ourselves up and taking a chance, we pretend contentness (yes, that is a word...) with friendship so as to not have to face our fears and not risk getting hurt.  The irony is that, in each of these friendships, the person who has developed any degree of feelings beyond friendship will always get hurt.  The other person will find someone else, start dating, get married, etc. and unknowingly cause pain in their friend to some degree.  In most cases, the former will never let on how they are truly feeling, and will still listen to their friend's problems, and attempt to be genuinely happy when things for their friend go the way they want; moreover, they also look back with regret, wondering what could have happened had they the guts to express how they felt.  

So what is the point of all this?  I don't have a point, really.  I don't have the solution to this.  I wrote to provoke deep pondering about the friendships we do have and to open our minds at the possibilities that could lie right in front of us.  Is it more worth making someone happy being the friend they need or opening up so as to not have regret later?  Do we fear the unknown and be idle or be bold and risk the chance of getting hurt for what could be something so great?

I'm out, but let me know what you think!

Peace.

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