The JourneY

It started as a simple suggestion by Mike for a Memorial Day activity. I then invited Eric to come along since he couldn't come down the day previous. Some time between that and the beginning of the hike of Y Mountain, it turned into a Bennett Family Excursion, where Mike and I happen to come along. Still trying to figure that one out.

At any rate, after listening to a fairly detailed explanation of the Y taken from Wikipedia by (Matt?), being handed about a dozen rocks from Sadie, a psychological analysis of Spock and why he has no emotion (the conclusion of which somehow came to "His only loyalty is to your entertainment"), lugging Sadie up only one of the switchbacks and nearly dying, listening to Carter ask "Have we gone 98 meters yet?" a dozen or so times until finally responding to him, seeing Molly's response to Mike's answer as to why his head was wet (a raincloud came and dumped on him and left just before Molly came up to him), and roughly one mile of hiking uphill, we came to the bottom of the Y. Mike basically told me that if I didn't hike to the top of the Y, I wasn't a real man. So I acquiesced.

What he "neglected to tell me" is that the section from the bottom to the top of the Y totally sucks. Like, it is as bad as the entirety of the hike up to that point. After much huffing and minor feelings of nausea, we got to the top and staked out a spot at the ledge. The rest of our group arrived shortly thereafter. Eric whipped out two things at that point. One, the camera:Sadie seems rather perturbed that the camera isn't focused solely on her.Pretty much the whole crew that was there.


Two, Strawberry Peanut Butter M&Ms. It sounds a little disturbing, but are actually rather delish. They are a tie-in to Transformers 2. I speculated why there weren't Autobot and Decepticon icons printed on the candies themselves. We decided that if the candy were in the movie itself, it would probably make the movie suck less than it inevitably will. We went down the mountain with few significant events, and Mike and I finished the day off by going to a pizza buffet, effectively negating all the exercise we had done that day. I weighed myself the next day and I had actually lost about two pounds from the days activities. I was rather happy with myself.

Also, today Ben came down for some business stuff and we went out to dinner to catch up. Ben really wanted to go to Tucanos (I did not object), a Brazilian grill where they come to your table with 12-18 different meats (depending on the time of day) over the course of your meal and offer you all you want. It comes with an amazing salad bar that included cinnamon-sugar covered bananas. Yummy. It's all unbelievably good, and if you get the chance to go to one, do not hesitate. My three favorite meats were the Tri-Tip, a teriyaki-beef (it's like the best tasting, most tender jerky ever), and fillet mignon wrapped in bacon. The pork loin was really good, too. Oh, and did I mention the cinnamon-glazed, grilled pineapple? Mmmmm.... After we finished, both of us felt like we were going to burst, so we took a walk around the shopping center before we got in our cars to head home. I weighed myself after I got back, and I definitely gained the pounds back I lost from my hike. But you know what? It was totally worth it.

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Laundry day, see you there...

Sadly, I did not meet anyone to fall in love with and ultimately kill. Sorry for the spoiler. Anyway, I went to the laundromat for the first time in a year today. Gosh I hate those places. There was actually a dearth of people there today, which was very nice. I got in and out whilst only having to see one other persons underthings tumbling. Also, if you have not watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog yet, I suggest you do so quickly.

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Webcam required

This is perhaps the coolest thing you can do with a webcam.

Also, after watching this vid, I want to marry both of these girls:

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

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Theft

I decided to take a post idea from a friends blog, that of going to your picture file, going to the sixth file, and choosing the sixth image to post and explain. I figured it would be pretty interesting considering some of the pictures I have on my computer. Turns out I was wrong.
This is a picture from when I went with my parents to Havasupai, near the Grand Canyon. And of all the pictures I have of it, this is easily one of the most dull. This shows a part of the switchbacks that took up the first mile or so of the hike down. It wasn't bad a bad part of the hike, with two exceptions. One: The horse caravans you see there don't stop. Period. So it's pretty much leap out of their way as soon as you can, or get trampled. Two: Hiking back up this while you are about to poop your pants is very uncomfortable. On the plus side, that motivated me to get done with this section very, very quickly. Huh, that turned out to be a better post than I expected.

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24

Here's a synopsis of my first day in Utah:

I got up around 9:45, got ready, and went to the bookstore to purchase my books for the semester. I only picked up three of them for now, since I won't need the fourth until next block, about seven weeks from now. Mike is doing a couple online classes, so he was there too. We get there, and the bookstore had maybe four or five other people in it. I'm used to BYU-I bookstore, where two days before a semester starts, it's pretty much packed with nearly every student and their moms for the entire day. That mean cramped aisles and very, very long lines. Depending on when you went, it wasn't uncommon to have to wait for 20-30 minutes to make your purchases. So it blew me away to go to the UVU bookstore and be able to freely walk anywhere I wanted with ease, not to mention going straight to checkout.

After we finished, Mike and I came home and got ready for the big event of the day: having a race to see who could beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time the fastest. Years ago, Mike and his friends had beaten the game in around 12 hours, so we expected to be able to do it in 10-12 as well.

Looks intimidating, doesn't it? This was the better of the ideas we had for video games for when I moved down. We had originally planned to play through all four 3D Zelda's in 48 hours, a feat some online gamers could not complete a while ago. Ultimately, though, we decided that we didn't have the willpower to do anything of that magnitude, and settled on racing on the Zelda game we both know best. I had some ambitious ideas on how to speed through the game, which didn't come to fruition. The only real shortcut I used was near the end, and I learned that from a speedrun I watched online. I ended up winning, with a final time of 8 hours, 20 minutes and 33 seconds. And yes, that was played straight through. Having done that, Mike and I agree that the 48 hr Zelda challenge is definitely doable. By the time I finished, it was about seven thirty, so we ordered pizza and then played Jenga and practiced throwing cards into a basket because we didn't have a cowboy hat handy. Afterward we chatted for a while and then went to bed around midnight. And thus ended my first day!

I still don't like Utah water, and it will take me a while to get adjusted to drinking it. I'm not terribly looking forward to when it becomes full blown summer down here, because I don't do well in the heat. Although that may help me sweat some pounds off, which I could desperately do with losing.

I'm excited to start school again, but also a bit worried, because it's been a long time since I've had to worry about homework, and I'm not sure how well my psyche will adjust to that again. Oh, and I hate that textbooks cost so much. I think they should have iPod Touch versions of them at a reduced rate. That would rock my socks.

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