Ramblings By Steven

Soooo I haven’t posted on here in like…a frikkin long time. At some points it was because I seriously had nothing going on and nothing to talk about. Then very suddenly life got insanely busy and I just didnt have the time or the energy to blog. But now, amidst a 3 day Lost marathon and in a city that is all but empty of its usual college-aged inhabitants, I find myself with some time.

Sooo what have I been up to? Well November got pretty crazy after my last post thanks to my application to my major which was due and I have this stupid perfectionist and procrastinatory way of doing things that I think are important. Yes procrastinatory is a word. I know this because I was the one who made it up. Just now. Anyway we will discuss the freaking application crap later.

After that Life got kinda boring. I kept going to classes and hanging out with this really awesome girl named Sarah. I stopped working my glorious job, serving tables at Dennny’s, so that I could focus on school more…yeah I really just ended up focusing on my social life and playing a lot of Wii witgh my roommates. Yeah it was insanely productive time. There were a few things due the week before thanksgiving but mostly everyone else had a pretty crazy week so I had no one to hang with and nothing to do. That meant nothing to blog about either…sad I know.

Right before leaving for thanksgiving break things got really good with Sarah…and they still are really good…so that’s good . Sadly enough I think that means that any rants about stupid girls that I would normally produce on a frequent basis…well you don’t have to worry about those for a while. Thanksgiving break was pretty fun. Driving home to Colorado and back meant that the actual break part of break was shorter, but still nice. We had a great turkey dinner and played some football. I went and banged up my shoulder during the game by ramming another guy. It’s still killing me. Stupid football. This is why I have never been an athletic guy.

I was gonna get a car while home too, since mine was worse off after the accident than I’d realized, but then the clouds opened up and God said “I hate you Steven” (that is a quote from THe Little Rascals, in case you didn’t know that…well not the Steven part…in the movie it is Alfalfa). Anyway longish story shortish, my dad bought two cars pretty cheap. One was ugly and ran real good, the other was pretty and ran almost as good. So my dad registered the pretty one before I got into town for thanksgiving. Then while I was in town driving the car around it died on me. But because the DMV and junk were closed for the holiday there was no way to register the other car before I headed back to Utah for school. And tho we tried our darndest, we couldnt fix the prettier car. So I had to ride back to school with the friends I’d ridden out with. And have remained car-less since then. Sad story, I know.

When I got home from thanksgiving there were only 2 weeks of classes left before the end of the semester. That meant Group projects and other projects and papers and all kinds of crap being due. Add in all the time I was spending with Sarah and…yeah no time to blog. One of the Group projects we worked on those 2 weeks was a “photo essay” for my film class. We titled it A Flu to Remember. Check it out. It came out pretty good. When we finally presented it in class for our final it pretty much blew everyone  away.

And so finals week began…and you know that whole procrastinatory perfectionist thing I mentioned? yeah that happened. I ended up getting them all done, but didn’t do particularly great on any of them except that one film class. I guess I can live with that. I will just have to step it up next semester. Once finals were over I got to spend almost a whole day with Sarah before she took off for home and then…well then I had nothing – correction have nothing to do. My roommate Ty and I began a Lost marathon on Saturday and have been going strong ever since. So far we have watched 35 episodes of the show. The whole first season and about half of the second. It’s been pretty much awesome. For any Lost fans out there you should try it. There is a lot of stuff from the beginning of the series that ties into stuff in the 5th season. It’s crazy how well they did tying everything together.

I have barely left the apartment. We left to go get Beto’s (delicious trashy Mexican food) on Saturday and went to church on Sunday, but today…well Ty left for a bit today and I…I took the trash out. LOL. While taking out the trash I did find a pretty sweet Lazy Boy recliner which we of course retrieved and now resides here in our living room. It is pretty much awesome. It has a built in phone…isn’t that like the coolest thing ever? okay maybe not ever but how about the coolest thing you have heard in the last few hours? Yeah I thought so too.

Tomorrow however the relaxation ends… or at least changes. My family and I are going out to California to see my grandpa and other extended family. Grandpa still isn’t doing his greatest, but he is recovering and doing better than before. Either way I haven’t seen him in almost 4 years and it’s a good time to go out there. So tomorrow my family is driving out from Denver, stopping here, and then we will all continue to the bay area. I said that the relaxation might simply change because first I will be sitting in a car for like 11 hours on my way out there and once we get there I really have no idea what we will do…maybe just sit around and have our own marathon, I really don’t know. I’ll let u know later.

The great news there is that my dad has managed to get my car working and will be bringing it out here tomorrow when they pick me up. Can you say YAY? that’s okay I can say it enough for all of us. See some of you may know how much it sucks not having a car. Dating for example…dating sucks…okay doesn’t suck…but is complicated a great deal by not having a car. I have been car-less for the entire time Sarah and I have been dating. She has never even been in my car. Because it sucks, and does not run. At first we did group dates where other people drove and then we did a lot of going to each others’ apartments and watch TV or movies. Luckily she has a car so when we wanted to actually go out and do things she could drive. As I may have already stated Sarah is all kinds of awesome and chill, so she doesn’t mind driving. But like trying to open her door for her when she has to unlock it first, and having her drive me around…kinda sucks the chivalry out of it all. BUT NOW or at least starting tomorrow I will have my very own vehicle once again can I get another YAY? why thank you.

And so that has been my life over the last 6 weeks or so. The semester is done, I found a great girl, and now it is off to Cali for Christmas. I will probably blog again soon, but in case I don’t get one in before Christmas then Merry Christmas!

So write a lot more posts than I actually publish on my blog. And a lot of them make me realize that there is a lot of stuff I don’t wana tell people. I used to think I was a pretty open guy. I always try to just lay it all out there for everyone to see. But looking at the stuff I don’t post… really has made me realize what I don’t want the world to know.

A lot of them have to do with “why don’t girls like me?!” kind of stuff. I whine about that a lot to my roommates – heck we all whine about it to each other – but it isn’t the kind of thing I want girls reading I guess. LOL I try not to be a whiner but the truth of it is I fail at that sometimes. Mostly these ones say things like “I am a good guy dangit, I’m funny and entertaining and somewhat spiritual, I try to be a better person than I am and I don’t get why girls don’t dig that.” See I don’t even like writing that much on that topic. I may not even publish this post.

Other posts I write and don’t post usually have to do with things going on in my life, or the lives of others, that I, or they, do not want the rest of the world to know about yet. These are hard. These are usually things that have an effect on me and that’s what makes me want to write about them, but sometimes I just can’t. Example: A few weeks ago my grandpa had a heart attack. He’s had heart problems before and this time was pretty bad. My mom flew out to California to be with him while he recovered and went through different procedures and stuff, so she was pretty stressed and worried.

During this time I got in the car accident that I talk about in one of my previous posts. The very first thing I thought when I got home that night was “mom really doesn’t need the extra worry in her life so don’t tell her” I even told people who knew about it and they were understanding and cool about keeping it from my family – cuz once anyone in my family found out she was sure to know within hours. But it was hard cuz I really wanted to blog about it. That accident, tho small, made me think about A LOT of stuff. Only one aspect of it is really mentioned in my post that I published, but there were a lot of thought processes that were triggered by that night and the subsequent ramifications. BUT I couldn’t talk about it till grandpa was doing better and had gone home from the hospital.

Some of my other posts are more self loathing than anything else. I have ramblings on pride ad ramblings on my epic failures. I guess I don’t like for people to see me doubt myself. Does that make me cocky or something? I dunno. I know I’m not perfect but rambling on for paragraphs about how much I suck just…I dunno. I imagine that people wouldn’t want to read that. That’s what FML is for.

Maybe some day I’ll decide to post all of them, and maybe not. I guess only time will tell. Though I did think of some pretty good idea for other posts in the process. So, stay tuned.

When I was younger I used to babysit these kids. One of them loved to play what I call the why game. It drove me insane. In the why game what happens is the kid asks a question and the adult answers. The kid then takes that answer and turns it into a why question. for example:

Q: what’s your favorite color?
A: Blue
Q: why is that your favorite color?
A: Because the sky is blue.
Q: why is the sky blue?

You can see that it can get more complicated from there. Eventually I usually just had to tell the kid to shut up and go to bed.

But I have been thinking a lot about the Why Game lately. I’ve even started playing it with myself. I like to think it is a modified more mature version…but I’m probably wrong. It always seems to lead to pretty deep self-examination kind of stuff. Something I don’t think I do a ton of on here. I have found that I mostly criticize people and society…but not myself…So anyway I thought it would make for an interesting blog post.

Q: Why do I procrastinate school work?
A: Cuz there are a million things I’d rather do.
Q: Why are those things better?
A: Cuz those things involved girls, and fun, and food.
Q: What’s better about those things than school?
A: Everything.
Q: Why?
A: Cuz school is boring and I have lame classes that I’m not interested in and I hate busy work.
Q: Why aren’t I interested in my classes?
A: Cuz there are all these dumb things I have to take before I can take the classes about stuff that I like. And even the classes that are about stuff I do like, they still fill with lame busy work that is lame.
Q: What’s busy work exactly?
A: Anything that’s not necessary. Stupid little worksheets about stuff we learned in high school. Dumb iclicker quizzes to pad the grades of people who don’t know how to prepare for a tests and inhibit those of us that do.  Group assignments where I wana rip my hair out cuz the rest of the group are morons and I get stuck with most of the work.
Q: Why do I get stuck with most of the work?
A:Cuz I volunteer for stuff too easily. When a task gets tossed out there and no one jumps at it I always have to take the bullet and do it. And then when someone falls through I pick up their slack so I don’t feel guilty for pushing it off on other people.
Q: Why would that make me feel guilty?
A: I dunno…cuz I like complicating my own life.
Q: Why do I like complicating my own life?
A: Well I don’t LIKE complicating my life but at least I’m not all idle and stuff when I have a lot going on.
Q: So I want to have a lot going on?
A: I guess in a way yeah. I’d rather be busy than sit around all day.
Q: Why?
A: Cuz when I sit around all day I get into trouble
Q: what kind of trouble?
A: Well a lot of stuff, I eat a ton…I watch…things on TV that are in no way uplifting…I text people a lot and we talk about nothing and it get’s confusing.
Q: Why’s it get confusing?
A: Cuz it’s hard to know what people mean in text messages. You can’t hear the inflections in their voice or see their body language or be sure when they are being sarcastic. Cuz lets face it most of what’s said in a conversation is not said in words.
Q: Why don’t I just call people then?
A: Cuz people might be in class. or in the middle of something important. Also I have serious issues understanding people on the phone. Heck I have serious issues understanding people in person sometimes.

And thats enough of that….you get the idea. It could go on forever. Maybe next time I’ll do something a bit deeper. like Q: Why do I trivialize anything deep? Why can’t I openly spill my guts to ANYONE? Like the people who read my blog?….yeah that’d be good. Next time!

I served as a missionary in Recife Brazil for 2 years. I was more or less 8 degrees form the equator the whole time. It was HOT. But I did not serve there by accident. I like to think that I had some influence on the Lord’s decision to send me there, because I prayed really really really hard when i sent in my mission papers (application type thing) that I wouldn’t go anywhere cold. And it worked. Prayer works.

However years later when I had moved home I prayed and asked him another question. I asked him if I should move to Provo and go to BYU. He said I should. At the time I didn’t really think about the weather because it was summer/spring time and  warm. However now that it is snowing outside, I remember that I really hate cold weather and that winters here are dang cold. This is no bueno.

I’m from Colorado so I am no stranger to cols weather. That does not mean that I enjoy it however. Somehow everything hurts more when it’s cold. Somehow everything from getting out of bed to showering takes longer when it’s cold. But most of all I get all goosebumpy and shivery and I hate that. I hate the cold wind blowing in my face until I can no longer feel my nose. I like being able to feel the different parts of my body and know that they are still functioning. I do not like wondering just how long I have left until my fingers and/or toes fall off.

Now cold weather does have its merits. There are snowball fights, snowboarding, sledding, snow angels, snowmen,  ice skating with pretty girls, and that awesome feeling of walking out of the cold and into a heated building…but that’s about it. Everything else about it sucks. So now that winter is upon me…I’m looking for reasons to like it…because maybe if I can find enough reasons to like it then I will hate it just a tiny bit less and hate myself a tiny bit less for choosing to live in such a cold place. Until I can find a certain amount of things to like about it…Well I’m just gonna have to rely on the fact that the big guy upstairs told me that this is wheere I should be.