To Halloween

I like candy. I like the night. I like to party. Halloween, I don't know where you came from, but thanks for being here. Because you rock Halloween, I need to thank you for some awesome Halloween memories I have from the past.

First off is your song. I remember all through elementary school we sang the song that goes, "H-A-double L-O-W-double E-N spells HALLOWEEN!" In fact, for some reason the music teacher we had thought she had to teach us that same song every year. Not sure if she realized we remembered it from the previous year. Maybe our class teachers told her how bad we were at spelling. I don't know. Either way I love that song still and it's stuck in my head right now.

Next memory comes from the dinners I always had at home before going trick or treating. Macaroni and cheese with hotdogs in it. I think pretty much every year. As we were eating my dad always tried to be as scary as possible too. He was pretty scary. Not in the way he was going for, but he was scary.

Oh man, the things you have made me dress up as in the past, Halloween... A Ninja Turtle like 2 or 3 times, Jason, a pimp, and a die. Yes, a die. No, not die as in dead. Die as in dice. My brother and I were dice. I think one of my dad's bad puns was behind that.

All the candy, all the calories, and yet, no cavities caused by you. Thanks, Halloween!

To the bag boy at Smiths...

Okay, so this is in response to the assignment Shayne gave us.

I went to the store today and decided that for the assignment I should buy someone a gallon of milk. I was going to try to do is strategically too so that I could get it to someone who looked like they really needed it. I planned my timing in line for check-out and it was perfect. A poor older gentleman got in line behind me clutching foodstamps and a gallon of milk. I got to the front of the line and the checker started checking my items. I leaned over to the bag boy and told him that the gallon of milk I bought was for the man behind me and that when I walked out he needed to give it to him and tell him it was from me. He signaled to me that he understood. He winked even. It was great! I felt awesome. Here I was helping someone out with something they really needed. I pay for my groceries and head out to my car. I get in my car and start driving off just in time to see the man who was in line behind me come out... not with the gallon that I bought for him. The bag boy blew it. I don't know how, but he did. I mean, he winked at me signaling he knew the plan! I hope someone got that gallon of milk. If not, at least Smiths can resell it so I got to help them.

Sorry I didn't get to do the cool thing, Shayne. Maybe next time.

Another...

Game winning goal with 42 seconds left... Is it bragging yet?

To Boy Scouts

So, Boy Scouts, I have some advice for all of you. Before I give you this advice I need to tell you all about a roommate whom I will just call J. Schwarting for now. Perhaps that's too obvious so I'll just call him Jeff S. Point is, he is my roommate, and there are some lessons tone learned from him.

Now that I think about it this more this is going to have to be a multi-part epistle. Today then I teach two important lessons by way of a story.

Jeff is the king of doing stupid stuff. Sometimes we, as Jeff's roommate, sometimes encourage him to do dumb stuff. One morning after about 14 minutes of being awake we talked him into deep frying a twinky and a marshmellow for breakfast. He filled the frying pan with oil and got started with heating it up. For some reason he wanted to check how hot the oil was by flicking a few drops of water in it. Well nothing happened and so Jeff thought that maybe he would check how hot it was by putting a quarter cup of water in it. Well, we all told him it was a bad idea (cuz we draw the line at arson) but he is a pretty stubborn kid. So he put the water in the hot oil. Guss what happened next... Yup. The oil popped and splashed onto our burner, catching fire. Then of course the oil in the pan caught fire. The flames were burning the ceiling. Smoke filled the apartment. We had ourselves a grease fire. By some crazy stoke of luck the fire only lasted like 15 seconds and somehow nothing got burned. However, there are burn marks on our ceiling and there was oil everywhere. Then we walked over and turned off the stove.

So that's the background. Lesson one, don't try to get your buddies who do dunh things to do dumb things. Lesson two- and listen to this all you Boy Scouts cuz I know you all like fire- don't put water in hot oil.

Pretty easy. Just don't do it.

A short question

Is it bragging for me to say on here I scored 5 goals today in my soccer game?

To the Little Robby in All of Us

So when I was a little kid my parents always used to have some cute little-kid nicknames for me like Roberto, Robby-B, Sport, etc. I don't know why but for some reason it seems like a bit of that little kid has come out in me this past week and I was kinda hoping to get a little bit of that out of all four of you who will read my blog. I'm probably gonna reveal a lot about myself and how strange I was as a child (not saying that I changed much) but hopefully some of you can relate.

Remember playing with Marble Works? Maybe you have but you just can't remember. It was this toy set made up of a bunch of plastic pieces that you could assemble any which way to build vertically and create the world's coolest gravity-induced marble races (that's right, gravity induced. That means its green!). I remember saturday and sunday mornings spent with my older brother and sister trying to make the coolest marble-race tracks ever! I always made the coolest ones. The green marbles, which were mine, always won too. I remember getting upset when I lost or when my brother or sister wanted to change one of the race elements that I would throw a fit and just run everything over. That was awesome. Then K'nex came along with their big ball machine and the marble works never came out from under the stairs again. I don't think I ever figured out how to make that one right...

Sunday afternoons as a little tyke were always a delight. They consisted of making forts (again with my siblings), watching the old animated Book of Mormon Stories videos (The Tree of Life was by far the best one cuz Nephi saves that guy from falling into the hot chocolate river), and eating chocolate chip cookies. After the video I always used to love sitting in the fort and try to find where Waldo is or spy that sneaky Nephite and his buddies. The fort was by far the coolest part, but again I remember when my brother or sister wanted something I didn't I always decided it would be best to ruin it for everyone by standing straight up and just demolishing the fort.

Four-on-four soccer games where only about 3% of the soccer field would be used at one time. Boys' and Girls' Club basketball where even 7 foot hoops weren't low enough most times. Little League Night at the Kingdome and free Griffey shirts. Team Parties at Round Table Pizza and wasting all my money on that dang Simpsons arcade game.

Power Rangers. Yup. My brother and I used to pretend that we were Power Rangers. And I know what you're thinking, "Yeah, so did everyone else" but no... We made up our own Power Rangers and dinosaurs to go with it. My bro had an amethyst that he used as his morphing rock. For some reason he wanted to be a purple ranger, which I always thought was girly as a kid, but mine wasn't much better. I had an old lava rock and I was the maroon ranger... One time at our great aunt's house we couldn't figure out how to turn off the TV and Tales from the Crypt was on so we pretended like we were fighting that creepy skeleton guy who hosts it... (This is getting more embarrassing than I thought it would)

I used to wake up super early as a kid. Like 6:00 am every day. I would go and wake up my parents right away until they told me I couldn't wake up until 7:00. I still woke up at 6 but I would go out and sit on the kitchen floor and watch the microwave clock (the only digital clock we had at the time) until it read "seven-oh-oh" and I would run into my parents' room and jump on the bed between them. Those were the types of times that our moms or dads would say "I love you this much!" and hold out their arms as wide as they could. I never thought that was fair since I was so much smaller than them, so I found a way to one up them. I pinched my fingers together as tight as possible and said "I love you this much!" Of course my parents would get sad at first but I was a smart kid and I knew the world was round so I explained that what I meant was that it went around the world connecting my two fingers, forming a circle. Then they felt better.

*Sigh* how I wish life was still that simple. How I wish I could just go back and do it all again. Yeah life is good now, but life is also scary sometimes. Decisions have to be made and sometimes it's confusing knowing what it best or what God wants for you. Why can't life's biggest difficulties just go back to finding Waldo's blasted shoe that he lost on the last page...

To Apple

Well, you've done it. You've amazed me again, Apple. I remember that first you amazed me with the iMac when I was but a wee lad. It was hip and cool and colorful. It happened again when I was in high school and you gave us iTunes and the iPod. I fell in love with my first iPod. I was one of the first people I know to get one. I used it for a good four years before going on my mission. After getting home of two years in the Philippines I was blown away by the iPhone, MacBook pro, and other fancy stuff you had to offer. Well now again I am impressed. I just purchased your new iPod touch and after enduring the delays of a global supply chain have been putting it to good use. In fact, I'm writing this thank you letter right now from the comfort of my living room floor. The touch display is impressive. The operating system, commendable. The apps just make me happy. It is so big yet so small at the same time. Thanks for this great new innovative product. I expect more great things out of you and I know you won't disappoint.