My Orange Art

I was bored at work, so I turned an orange into a piece of artwork. It's suposed to represent how us as a society are constantly trying to fix things that are not broken. The orange is perfect, it came unadulterated from an orange tree, totally in it's natural state, yet we try to fix it by stapling it back together where it is not torn, and taping two pieces that are not separated.

We sometimes look more for faults in things than we should, when we should be looking at the good things, and accepting things for the way they are, and enjoying the imperfections if there are any. All of us can learn to shift our paradigms to the eyes of a child who observes, and enjoys.

My First Couch Surfing Experience

So, I've joined this website called couchsurfing.com. It's a website designed for travellers who want to stay for free when they travel, and a way for residents all over the globe to meet new people. It is a network of people that open up their homes for free to people who need a place to stay when they are outside their home towns.

So on Monday night, I had Ike stay with me. Ike is from Vermont, but he was travelling from Denver to Salt Lake via the Amtrak train. He was on his way to California, and needed a place to stay for a night before he went out onto the freeway and started hitchiking all the way to California.

He's a 19 year-old kid who, when he gets to California, will then eventually head up to Seattle to live on a boat off the Puget Sound with a couple of his friends.

I made him a sign that said "San Francisco" Monday night, and then Tuesday I dropped him off at Redwood Rd and I-80 where he started holding that sign and waiting for someone to pick him up. He called me at about 4:00pm, and let me know that he is on his way to California.

General Conference Weekend

Wow, general conference was great this weekend. There were lots of great speakers and wonderful words spoken from that pulpit up there in the conference center. It was interesting to watch conference when the new prophet is called into presidency. That will probably be something I only witness twice in a lifetime.

I decided to watch conference at home on Saturday, and it might have been a bad idea. It was Judd and Josh and I for the first session, and I think we all might have gotten too comfortable at one time or another. It was a good session though, even though I might have seeped in and out of consciousness.

I watched the second session at home as well, and then for the priesthood session I was able to go with John Busch inside of the Conference Center. That was a really good priesthood session. I really enjoy President Monson's personality, and his goofyness. You should have heard how loud that Conference Center got when he wiggled his ears. Wow. It was interesting, one of the conductors that was directing the music was actually in institute director that John and I had back in the student singles wards when we worked up in downtown Seattle on our missions. That was funny to see him up there on the big screen.

The Sunday conference sessions were great. I watched again the morning session at my house, and then for the second one, Emma Dille came up to have lunch with me, and then we went to the visitor's center on Temple Square to watch the last session. I enjoyed a lot of talks from that one. Jeffrey R. Holland's talk was great. He never backs down from being bold, and he always tells it how it is. He just told the world the important things about our church that makes us unique, and what makes us the true church.

I love to hear the conviction in the voices of the apostles. All of them have such a love for the Savior, and being able to listen and hear them speak really does give me strength. They truly are lead by God.

Emma and I walked around temple square for a while, and took some pictures on temple square. She had never been in the tabernacle, which was pretty amazing to me. She really liked it though, and I will take her to Music and the Spoken Word next Sunday, because she will really like it. Plus, it will be my last Sunday here in Utah for a while.

After the last session Emma just caught the Trax back to Sandy, and I walked around for a bit. I walked past some protesters like usual, they are always out there. This highly decorated military officer walked over to the protestors and started yelling at them, which definitely wasn't a good idea. I think it's dumb when people talk to those protesters at all. It's not going to get them anywhere, and they should just not do it and ignore them. They should not even be recognized, that's what they want you to do.

I did find a few interesting things around the protesters though. I found a man playing the bagpipes to drown out the protesters, and I also found a little happy man running around dancing with a smiley-face sign. I'm not sure exactly why he was doing it, but he was having a fun time at it. He was taking pictures of himself with others and the sign, and other wacky things. There's a lot of interesting people who come out for conference.

WSM Mission Reunion

Washington Seattle Mission Reunion!

Man, those are so much fun. It is so much fun to see a bunch of the friends that we served to faithfully around for those two years. It is just an amazing experience, and to be able to see those people that bring you back to those times, and those moment when you were having so much fun doing nothing but missionary work, it just so awesome.

I pretty much hung out with Busch, Duarte, Dickison, and a new addition, Barber this time. They are all people that I enjoyed being around the most in the mission. They were the ones that I leared the most from, and had the best experiences from being around. There weren't many other people I knew besides those guys too, the mission has turned around so much that most of the people that I knew are not coming to reunions anymore. I'm surprised I'm still going, I'm older than most of them.

After we hung out and talked for a while at the reunion, we went over to Cafe Rio where we got some food, and from about 9:30pm until almost 1:00am, we just talked about memories, and the experiences that made our mission worthwhile. What an awesome experience. I will never forget those times when we just stand around and talk about good times, and the fun we used-to have. Yay more missions.

Taco Trouble

I love Taco Bell, it's my favorite place to eat when I get fast food, but Taco Bell is not making me a very happy camper recently. There's this one restaurant down next to my work in West Valley that has been giving me horrible 7-Layer Burritos. I mean, just check out the picture! What the heck is that? That's not a burrito, that's an envelope with some rice and guacamole stuck inside of it. It's more like a 2-Layer Burrito. They really need to learn how to make burritos there,

or they will lose my business. On a scale of 1 - 10 with 10 the best, I give them a 2.

Weekend Birthday Party #2: Wendy Coutino

So, the festivities continued the next day, when Wendy was celebrating her 25th birthday. She wanted to go dancing, so some of us showed-up at her house, where we gave her a very unique cake right before we left to go dancing.

This cake was the best cake I have ever made. It was cut into the shape of the abbreviations for Guadalajara, Mexico: GDL. And it was also colored in the colors of the Mexican flag. I wanted to do something nice for Wendy, and this was the perfect way to do it. I took a little over 4 hours, but I got the cake finished. It is double-stacked, with icing in the middle. It is made from 6 cake mixes, in three different colors. The G was Chocolate, the D was strawberry, and the L was Sprinkles.

I was so excited about giving it to Wendy, and when we did, she loved it. I love doing things for people that let them know how much time and effort I put into doing it for them. I don't like just buying something and then handing it to them, there's not a lot of feeling attached to that I don't think.

After the cake, we went dancing. We went to Studio 600 where they were doing Latin dancing that night. Holy cow, I had such a fun time. I learned a lot of new moves, and really got loose out there on the dance floor.

I just asked Wendy if she had a good time, and she said "I had a great time on my birthday!" So, with the seal of approval from Wendy, you can put this birthday down in the books as a success.

Weekend Birthday Party #1: Bleu and Marissa

This weekend, three of our friends had birthdays. Bleu (My old roommate who's now married.), Marissa (Who's engaged to Israel.), and Wendy's which is on Saturday. The birthday party was really fun. We had about 25-30 people there, and they made chips and guacamole, cheese dip, and virgin margaritas.

(Bleu is the one on the left being hugged by his wife, Mickaela)

(Marissa with her fiancee Israel)

The nice thing about this whole party, was that I didn't have-to prepare a single thing. Mickaela asked if we could have the party at our house because it's big, and they prepared everything, and brought it to our house. All I had to do was provide the space. They even cleaned up the entire kitchen afterwards, so I truly didn't have-to do anything.

It was nice to see all those people, there were a few that I hadn't seen in a while.

This picture in the bottom of me, Wendy and Diego with bright-colored shirts was taken just for fun. I bought some bright shirts for my biking trip so that it will be easy for motorists to see me while I'm riding on the side of the road. We look like a bag of skittles.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this apartment. we have had many parties like this, and it really has been a lot of fun. It gets kind-of crazy having 8 guys under one roof, but it sure has been worth it.

The video below is when we sang happy birthday to them and gave them cake. They got cake all over them, and it ended up turning into a cake-throwing battle which I was not very happy about. There was cake all voer my apartment, and icing all over the shirt that I gave Diego to wear, I turned into the Hulk a little bit when that happened.