A Date with Katniss

I'm married to Katniss Everdeen.  Okay, that's not actually true.  But my wife is basically the same as Katniss.  Not so much in the "I kill other children who are trying to kill me in order to survive" sort of way.  Also not so much in the "I'm the reluctant face of a nationwide rebellion against tyranny" sort of way.  Mostly, just in the "I shot an arrow once" sort of way.

When I say she shot an arrow, it wasn't so much in the "I shot a real arrow and became a master at it in order to feed my family" sort of way, but more in the "I bought a Nerf toy bow and arrow for a date night with my husband" sort of way.

You see, Robyn and I try to do a date night every weekend.  We take turns being in charge of planning the date.  Probably 90% of the time, this means we take turns deciding where we'll go out to eat.  But on Friday, Robyn decided to get creative with our date.  She went to the store and purchased some Nerf weapons, and we became toy archers for the evening.

We setup these blocks as targets.

I make archery look good.

It turns out that toy bows and arrows are even harder to aim than the real thing.  It took us like 45 minutes to knock down all of our targets we had setup.  But the important thing is that we did it.

If Robyn is ever in the Hunger Games, The Capitol will broadcast this picture to all the districts.

If our society ever implements the Hunger Games, Robyn and I could totally win it.  But only if everyone agrees that the only weapons allowed must be Nerf weapons.

Check Your Blind Spot

You probably think that the title of this post is some kind of metaphor about how you should be more aware in your life, and look for the areas where you are not seeing reality.  That would be a great blog post for the future.  This one is just a rant about drivers.  Is it really that hard to check your blind spot?  Considering the number of times that I've seen people not do it, you'd think it was some kind of Herculean task.

There's one particular individual I'd like to rant about that personifies mankind's inability to turn their head slightly before moving their steering wheel.  I have affectionately named our villain, "GMC Sonoma license plate 2469G".  That's just a name I came up with.  I call her Lil' 9G for short.

A few days ago, I was driving along on the freeway, minding my own business.  Lil' 9G was passing me in the lane to my left.  Here's the thing about passing me.  9G came from behind me, that means there was no way she didn't know where I was.  As she passed me, she got to the point where I was in her blind spot.

A normal person would think, "That person that was in front of me a moment ago is not visible in my mirror.  I bet they are in my blind spot.  I should keep moving forward until I can see them in my mirror.  Then I should check my blind spot to be sure it's safe before moving over."  But that's not what Lil' 9G thought.  Being the wise person she is, her thought process went something like this.  "Just a moment ago I saw a car in front of me.  I went forward a few feet, logic would say that person is now to the right of me, but since I can't see them, they must have magically vanished.  It's like when I was little and I would close my eyes to make everyone else vanish from the world.  Well, I guess I better crank my wheel to the right."

As Lil' 9G began entering my lane, I pondered my options.  To my right was a giant semi, so I couldn't go there.   I did crank my wheel a little to the right to avoid a collision.  I came within a few inches of the semi.  I also laid on my horn.  Lil' 9G said, "I hear a loud sound.  I guess I better keep going."  I slammed on my brake and 9G just came right on in.  I'm pretty sure the person behind me had to slam on their brake to avoid hitting me.  I almost spun out from swerving to avoid 9G and then swerving the other way when I realized I was about to hit a semi.

You want to know the worst part of the whole ordeal?  Well, I suppose the worst part is that I came within inches of death.  But the second worst part is that Lil' 9G was completely oblivious.  She could have actually killed me and been none the wiser.  In fact, I choose to believe that Lil' 9G has already killed countless millions.

The moral of the story is that Lil' 9G is still at large.  If you see her, stay far away, she might kill you.  Also, if you have the option, feel free to slash her tires.

The second moral of the story is that you should check your blind spot.  It's really not that difficult.

The Time My Wife made me Steal Ice

I'm a hardened criminal.

Okay, not really.  I didn't actually steal anything.  I don't actually have the ability to do that.  However, it was very similar to stealing.

Here's the story.

On Saturday my wife went grocery shopping.  That's a true act of love, because I hate grocery shopping.  (I hate shopping in general, but grocery shopping happens to be a subset of shopping.)  After performing this great act of love and sacrifice, Robyn came home and let me bring all the groceries in.  (In exactly one trip, as per my lifelong commitment to never take more than that.)

I brought everything in and then suddenly Robyn gave a shout of sheer pain and exasperation:  "Oh no!"  To properly understand the urgency of the situation, you would have to hear her tone.  But just believe me when I say that it was clearly a big problem.  I quickly asked her what was the matter.

"I bought the ice but I forgot to pick it up!"  It was one of those situations where you tell the cashier that you want to buy a bag of ice, but then you grab it yourself on the way out the door.  She had forgotten the "grab it yourself" step.

It was very urgent because we were having a friend over for dinner and she wanted to do Italian sodas.  I offered to run to the store and grab the ice.

She gave me the receipt and told me to walk in and talk to customer service to get permission to grab the ice.

I drove to the store.  I walked over to the ice machine.  I grabbed a bag of ice and got back in my car. I didn't talk to anyone.  I just took it.  I had the receipt in my hand in case anyone questioned me.  But no one did.  So as far as everyone was concerned, I totally stole it.

I'm not gonna lie.  It was kind of exciting.  Even though I wasn't stealing it, since it was already paid for, it still felt like I was going to "get caught".

But more importantly, the Italian sodas were delicious.

2014 Year in Review

I normally write this post at the very beginning of January. As you may be aware, it's almost February. But I'm writing it now because this is when I got around to it. Here are some of the cool things I did in the year 2014. It was a pretty good year. Clearly, not as good as 2015 is going to be. But no year can compete with 2015. Am I right?

 Without further ado, here are some of my favorite events or accomplishments of 2014 (in no particular order):

• Walked/Ran 591 miles
• Biked 632 miles
• Went on a cruise
• Set foot in 9 states
• Utah ( I live here)
• Idaho
• Washington
• Texas
• Pennsylvania 
• New Jersey 
• Wyoming
• Arizona 
• Nevada
• Set foot in 4 countries
• United States (I live here)
• Honduras
• Belize
• Mexico
• Lost 11 pounds  (After getting off diabetes medication, my weight loss significantly slowed down.  But at least it's going in the right direction.)
• Did our first Scuba Dive in the Ocean
• Wrote on this blog 90 times (not my best year)
• Took up backpacking
• Went inside 4 LDS Temples that were new to us
• Ogden Utah
• Houston Texas
• Rexburg Idaho
• Idaho Falls Idaho
• Acquired 2 new nephews (I know it's totally offensive that I wrote about one but not the other.)
• Ethan
• Logan
• Read 72 individual works totaling 17,461 pages.

It was a pretty good year, if I do say so myself.

Snow Shoeing

As you probably know, Robyn and I have been making an effort to be more healthy and more active.  During this process, we've taken up hiking, biking, scuba diving and various other activities.  However, we've discovered that all of the aforementioned activities are primarily summer activities.  This doesn't mean you can't do any of them in January, it's just more difficult.  (But next week there is supposed to be a low that is above freezing for a few days.  I'm totally biking to work.)  Because of this, we have ventured on a quest to expand our horizons to include more winter activities.

Our first winter activity that we decided to embrace was snowshoeing.  We called up my BFF Jared W and invited ourselves on a snowshoeing adventure with him.  Jared probably thought to himself that he wanted to do something more hardcore, but since he's awesome he planned a trip that would not kill his fat friends.

We went up Guardsman Pass in Big Cottonwood canyon.  Jared supplied the snowshoes, and he took us on an adventure.

Look how cute we are.

It turns out show shoeing is hard.  Have you ever hiked in sand?  You know how you kind of take one step forward and sink a half step backward?  Ya, that happens.  Only, it's like if you were hiking on sand with 25 pound weights strapped to your feet.

The people we were with were hardcore.  Bryce, in particular, likes to get a good workout so he intentionally strays from the trail to make it more difficult.  I told him he could get a way better workout by just being fat.

You're not hardcore unless you live hardcore.

My fatness definitely made it so that my heart rate stayed up as I was climbing that mountain.  I was sure glad I wore shorts.  I was dripping sweat like a maniac.  (I'm not really sure if maniacs sweat more than the average person, but let's just say I was sweating a lot.)

It was hard work, but the scenery was beautiful.  There's nothing like an untouched blanket of snow in the middle of a forest.

Hiking beyond the horizon.

It was hard work climbing up that mountain, but it was almost as hard coming down.  Jared just rolled down.

It looks like he's falling to his death, and he is, but it was on purpose.

I wasn't quite that adventurous. I did my best to walk.  But as I was walking down the mountain in 4 feet of powder, my feet would slowly slide and my mind was too blown to be able to keep me balanced.  I fell down several times, and when you fall you sink.  You don't realize how deep the snow is until you're trying to stand up and everything you put your weight on sinks 4 feet below you.  It was an adventure but I totally got out alive.

All in all, I'd say it was a success.  We had a good time in nature with some great people.

The peeps

I'm pretty sure we need to get in better shape before we attempt it again.  But it was fun, and Robyn sure was cute.

Changing a Lightbulb is Hard

Before you get too far into this, you should know that I'm well aware that I'm not handy.

But the following story possibly takes it to a new level.

Robyn's brake light on her car went out.  This means that she needed a light bulb replaced.  One would think that replacing a light bulb would be a fairly simple process.  It probably is fairly simple for most people.  But Robyn didn't enlist most people to assist her.  Robyn enlisted me.

Taking a light bulb out and replacing it with a different light bulb is fairly simple.  The problem with this particular light bulb is that you have to take apart the whole light assembly in order to access the light bulb.  Then you have to put it back together again.  Do you see where some level of handiness is necessary?

It started out fairly simple, I unscrewed one screw and that totally worked.

The second screw was where the whole process fell apart.  The head of the screw was stripped so that the screwdriver couldn't grip it.

My knowledge of taking stuff apart consists of 1)Insert screwdriver into screw head and 2) turn screwdriver counter clockwise.  When those 2 steps failed, I was at a loss.  I then spent the next hour trying larger screwdrivers, trying to grip it with a wrench, and other such useless tactics.

Then it occurred to me that being handy is no different from the rest of life's endeavors.  Anything life throws at us can be solved by Google.  (Feel free to cross stitch that last sentence and hang it on your wall.)  Google said to put duct tape on the screw head, and the tape would fill in the gaps.  It totally worked!

In the end, we successfully changed a light bulb.  It only took about an hour.  It was not a success that made me feel confident in my handiness, but it sure increased my confidence in Google.

Aren't you so proud of us?