Hardcore, Again I Say Hardcore

This weekend we took a trip that gave a new meaning to the word hardcore. 

Entry: hardcore
Function: adjective
Usage: "You're not hardcore unless you live hardcore."
Definition:  Kind of like what hardcore used to mean, only more so.

As you can see, there is a new meaning to the word hardcore.  But you might be wondering how the word came to mean something even more hardcore than it used to.  Well, let me explain.

We took a trip on Friday and Saturday to Arches National Park.  We left Friday afternoon and returned a little over 24 hours later.  In those 24 hours we packed in so much stuff that the very meaning of hardcore was not able to describe what we did, so it had to expand.  In those 24 hours there were about 8 hours of driving, 8 hours of hiking, 3 hours of sleeping and the rest of the time was divided between eating, using the restroom, hunting for a campsite, watching Jared and Emily fail at communicating, learning about cryptobiotic crust and considering the impact of silence.

We started with a midnight hike to Delicate Arch.  I've done this multiple times before, but this time was the most amazing.  The moon was so bright, and the arch was absolutely beautiful.   Robyn's photography skills captured the arch very well.

The next day, after getting to camp at about 3 AM we still wanted to get an early start (because the number of passes to the fiery furnace is limited) so we were at the visitor's center at 7:30 AM.  We ventured into the depths of the fiery furnace where we discovered that Robyn and I were the cutest couple.

But Jared and I were a close second.

We then ate lunch and again ventured out on another hike to landscape arch.

It was amazing, but by that point, the hardcore nature of our trip was catching up to me.  Having hiked twice as many hours as I slept, I was about to die.  I felt like Frodo and Sam as they crawled to the top of Mount Doom.  I almost crawled back to the car.  Luckily, I was not accosted by Smeagol or any equivalent enemy.  I can just imagine how difficult it must be to have your finger bitten off after a journey like that.

Anyway, I made it to the car.  I sat down and within minutes drifted off to sleep as we began the journey home.  My dreams reflected the fun that we had.  I was with great people.  I had seen amazing beauty in nature.  It was truly hardcore.  But I guess it's true what they say (and by they I mean Jack Black), you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore, and the journey of the arches was way hardcore.

The Ten Days of Jeff

Everyone is familiar with the twelve days of Christmas. It's the epic story of someone's true love who decided that Christmas was much too awesome to be contained in one day. They then proceeded to spend 12 days giving gifts that consisted primarily of birds and indentured servants.

The ten days of Jeff are similar in the following ways:
1. They were organized by my true love
2. My birthday, like Christmas, is too epic, it can not be contained. So it spills over into 10 days

The ten days of Jeff are different in the following ways:
1. My true love gave me zero birds
2. My true love gave me zero indentured servants (lords a leaping, drummers drumming, etc.)
3. It only lasted 10 days. She said that's because it is 2010. I'm excited for 2040 when we can have the 40 days and 40 nights of Jeff.

It was a fabulous experience. My true love made me feel very special. The best part is that all of the things she did were much more awesome than what the receiver of the 12 days of Christmas got. The gifts in the 12 days of Christmas were:
12 partridges in 12 pear trees
22 turtle doves
30 french hens
36 calling birds
40 golden rings
42 geese a laying
42 swans a swimming
40 maids a milking
36 ladies dancing
30 lords a leaping
22 pipers piping
12 drummers drumming
 
I don't know where I'd put all those birds, and I really don't know where I'd put all those people.  Here is what I received (or will receive, because some of these are still in the future) in the 10 days of Jeff (these were not all from my true love, family and friends helped too.  But my true love was the main orchestrator):
7 new books
3 new DVDs
1 jug of chocolate milk
6 reeses peanut butter cups
1 pack of reeses cookies
7 home cooked meals
3 meals at restaurants
2 cakes
4 cupcakes (thanks Kayli)
1 plate of cookies (thanks Cameron)
1 trip to the aquarium in SLC
1 trip to Moab (thanks Jared W)
1 blog post tribute to me
 
As you can see, my true love made the Ten days of Jeff truly glorious.  She's setting quite a precident.  I hope I can make the ten days of Robyn equally as awesome.

Thank you my true love!  Thank you also to everyone else who helped make my birthday amazing this year.

The World's Greatest Mystery

I'm trying to solve a mystery.  It's a classic whodunnit.  I'm going to need your minds, your eyes, your ears and your hearts.  This isn't a novel or a video game.  No, a real world crime has been committed, and I need you to help me find the culprit.

This mystery is a real head scratcher.  It leaves me muttering to myself, "WIT".  (That stands for What in Tarnation.  I see people using WTF, and I don't like what that stands for so I'm trying to implement WIT into the internet vernacular of the people.)

So here's the story.  As most of you know, in Orem City, we pay the city to give us the large black trash receptacles.  We fill those with our garbage and the city brings a big truck by to empty them once a week.  Well, we pay a few dollars extra each month to have a second one.  We don't use it all the time but it's nice to have in case we have extra boxes, leaves, grass clippings or other random waste.

The past two weeks our second trash receptacle has vanished for a day or two.  When it returns it is full of someone else's trash.  That's right, someone is actually walking up to the front of our house, stealing our trash can and filling it with their own trash.  Then they return it to the front of our house so that I can carry it to the curb on trash pickup day for them.

Do you understand why I am perplexed?  Do you understand why I say WIT?  Here's the really weird thing.  We like our neighbors, they are nice people.  They all seem fairly normal.  They don't seem like the type that would do abnormal things.  I am trying to imagine which neighbor does the following things:
A)Generates so much trash that it doesn't fit in their own trash can
B)Thinks it's okay to steal someone else's trash can
C)Thinks we won't notice when they return it full of their trash.

So therein lies the mystery.  This is where all of you come in.  If you happen to drive by my house and see someone stealing my trash can, let me know.  If you have wisdom as to who may be the culprit, I'd like to hear that too.  Or, if one of you is stealing my trash can:  Dude, just ask if you can borrow it.  I'll probably say yes.

My First Love

Robyn is my eternal love, my greatest love, my partner.  But before her I did have another love.  Years before I even knew that Robyn existed there was another.  My first love was a different kind of love.   It wasn't a romantic love, but my first love was a good friend, a confidante.  My first love was able to make a bad day good and a good day better.

We had known each other for many years, but it wasn't until my mission that I really developed strong feelings for my first love.

Here we are together.  You see, my first love was chocolate milk.  As a missionary I discovered that if you had a hard day facing rejection, you could come home to a cold glass of chocolate milk and everything felt better.  I also discovered that if you had a good day of teaching, you could come home to a cold glass of chocolate milk and you're good day became great.

Robyn has always been tolerant of my first love.  She knows that I have enough room in my heart to give all my love to her and still be able to love chocolate milk.  In fact, once when we were dating we had kind of a fight.  To make things up to me, Robyn made me dinner and bought me chocolate milk.  That's when I knew we were meant to be together.  She even bought me the right kind which is Meadow Gold Vitamin D chocolate milk, the best chocolate milk I have ever tasted. (pictured below)

Why am I sharing all of this with you now?  Well, this past week I had a glorious experience.  I was sitting in my office, like a good kid, when a coworker (Mike) came into my office to talk to me.  He was carrying something mysterious in his hand.  I asked what it was, and it was a jug of chocolate milk.  I asked where he had acquired it and he said it was in the drink fridge.  (Our company has a fridge filled with drinks that are provided by the company.)  My joy was full.  I rushed up the stairs to inspect the fridge myself.  Sure enough, there was a great multitude of chocolate milk jugs.  They weren't the Meadow Gold brand but they were chocolate milk nonetheless. 

My work has some excellent benefits such as 401K matching, insurance and so forth.  But this new benefit was one that brought me much joy.  I can now drink chocolate milk to my heart's content.  (Or to my heart attack, whichever comes first.)  This new benefit also helped me realize what the term "friends with benefits" means.  Clearly, no one has friends that give them health insurance or retirement funds, so a "friend with benefits" must be a friend that frequently brings chocolate milk.  Currently, I'm very happy about my job with benefits.

The Curse of the Y Chromosome

So I'm cleaning things up for the night to get ready to go to bed.  Robyn and I had ordered pizza from Papa John's, so I was putting the leftovers in the fridge and throwing away the boxes.  Of course, in each pizza box is the peperoncini pepper that they always include with each pizza.  I've always known of myself that I don't like hot things, so I've thrown this pepper away 100 times.  But tonight something welled up inside me, I had to know what it tasted like.  So I bit into it.  It wasn't the hottest thing I've ever eaten.  It didn't kill me or anything, but I certainly didn't enjoy it.

It got me thinking about why we do things we don't like.  How often do guys get together and say things like, "This tastes horrible, you've got to try it."  or "Man, that stinks, take a whiff."  The thing is that I've only ever seen males do this.  Maybe women do it too, but I've never seen them do it.  That's why I think there's something in the Y chromosome that makes us try stuff we know we won't like.  Not to mention, we often get joy in sharing the things we don't like.  I had a box of pizza puffs (a snack that was supposed to taste like pizza) that I had bought and didn't really like.  I had the box sitting at my desk at work for a month and made everyone that came into my office try them.  It was a blast!

I don't know why we do this.  I suppose we can't control our genetics.  But, I did go pick up some mulch at the compost station in Provo today.  The whole place really stunk.  You totally have to go with me next time to find out what it smells like.