The winding trail ahead.

As many of you already know, Robyn and I got engaged a few weeks ago. If you don't already know the story of how I proposed you can check out Robyn's blog and read all about it. I figured since several others have also written about me being engaged (including, but not limited to Jared, Ann and Carrie) it was probably about time that I write something myself. The story has already been covered very well so I thought I'd just share a few of my thoughts on the experience of being engaged. To help illustrate my thoughts I would like to share this picture.






This is a picture of the trail leading to the meadow where I proposed to Robyn.
I include it here because it is a place of great memories for me, obviously, but I think the picture itself carries great symbolism.

The picture shows a trail ahead, but the trail winds off to where you can no longer see where it leads. Yet you can see enough to know that it will take you to a beautiful place. Being engaged is like that for me. I don't know exactly what to expect, but I know that where I'm going will be wonderful. The trail slopes upward slightly. That means it will take work to travel along that trail. You can see mountains far in the distance. This indicates that this turn in the trail is not the end of the journey. Rather, the journey is really just beginning.

Standing where I am, looking at the trail ahead, anticipating the adventures to come I feel great excitement and joy, but at the same time there is the slight fear of the unknown. Of course, for me, the hardest part, is that I have made the decision to turn that corner and now I just have to wait until October 11th, to actually get the chance to see what lies ahead.

But the best part is knowing that when I do turn that corner it will be hand in hand with my love. In Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins addresses his nephew, Frodo, and says, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road and if you don't keep your feet there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." I don't know where this road may sweep me off to, but I do know that whatever joys and sorrows lie ahead, we will face them side by side for all eternity.

Memory Tag

Today's post is not a story by me. Today, the story is by you. I got this memory tag from Robyn's blog and I thought it sounded fun. So here are the instructions:

1. Leave a comment of a memory of ME!
2. Put these instructions on your blog so I can visit you and leave a memory I have of you.

The progressive Shave

I know this post is a couple weeks over due, but I have had many inquiries from those who wanted to see pictures of the progressive steps I went to as I shaved my beard. But, first, for those who don't know the story of my beard, I must tell it. My girlfriend, Robyn went to Hawaii without me for 2 whole weeks. I missed her very, very, very much and so I decided to have some sort of symbol to show my protest of her leaving me. The symbol I chose was that I wouldn't shave until I saw her again. After 2 weeks of not seeing each other we were so excited to be together again but she was a little wierded out because she had never seen me with a beard before. She gave me a big hug and a little tiny peck because she was frightened to kiss me. Since we had been reunited I decided it was time to shave it off but I shaved it in stages. After each stage I would emerge from the bathroom and Robyn would be in charge of giving me a kiss and taking my picture. Without further ado here are the stages:

Stage 1. This is what I looked like before shaving.








Stage 2. Shaved my cheeks









Stage 3. Goatee and Sideburns








Stage 4. Goatee without sideburns







Stage 5. The ugly Handlebar mustache. (Robyn would not kiss me at this stage)








Stage 6. The Mustache. (Robyn reluctantly kissed me at this stage.)






Stage 7. Cleanly shaven. Happy reunion. (this is a picture of Robyn and I on a hike the next day.)










Epilogue: A few days later I ran into a friend of ours at the grocery store. Upon seeing that my beard had been shaved she got really excited because she knew that meant Robyn was home so she straightaway went to Robyn's apartment to see her. It turns out everyone loves Robyn.

Wikipedia might make your face spontaneously combust.

Warning: The following post contains spoilers about the plot of Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

For those of you who are mocking the above warning, I just want you all to know that I am a movie purist, I would be very offended if a movie was spoiled for me without my consent. Since the movie is still in theaters I figure there may still be some purists out there who haven't seen it. (Although, let's be honest, they saw it on opening day like I did.)

Anyway, today's thoughts are somewhat related to that movie, but they are thoughts that I had a few days back while I was at work. So here's the scoop: So as most people who know me have come to find out, I'm a fairly curious person and often in conversation something will come up that I don't know enough about and so I'll usually research it and the next day I'll tell the person I was talking to that I found out more and they'll usually act interested but secretly be thinking about how I'm kind of a geek. Well, at work, I often have those conversations, only the difference is, I'm sitting at a computer so I bust out google or wikipedia and find the answer then and there.

Well, I was talking to my friend Mike, there was something we both didn't know about and so he said I should bust out wikipedia (he knows the drill by know.) That's when I stopped and said, "wait, what if my face bursts into flames?" He was confused by that question and rightfully so. But let me help you understand my train of thought: In the climax of Indiana Jones, the bad guys return the crystal skull to the aliens and they decide to give a gift of knowledge to Col. Dr. Irina Spalko (played by Cate Blanchett) They begin downloading all the information they have to offer, and at first she is so excited to gain this knowledge. But then suddenly her brain overheats or something and her face bursts into flames. At this point she was less excited, based on the fact that her face was burning and she was screaming. This is where my concern lies. What if the human brain overheats when the hard drive is full? I consider myself fairly knowledgable, I learn new things everyday. What if I'm reaching my limits?

At this point, Mike and I stopped discussing whatever we were discussing and decided instead to discuss what would cause my face to burst into flames. We decided it is most likely not a problem of filling up the space, that really wouldn't make sense. More likely it was the speed of downloading the information that caused the overheating. If this theory is true then I should be safe reading wikipedia, as long as I don't read it too fast. So, I'm going to try to slow down for safety's sake. But, if you don't see me for a while it's likely my theory was wrong and I gained too much information. If that is the case, look for me near a computer or possibly in a library or bookstore. But be prepared for a mess, my face may have melted.

Holes in my life

Today's interesting story is actually two interesting stories, but they both took place in the past week and they both involve holes. As such, I felt it was appropriate to bring them together into one post.

The first story is the story of the hole in my wall.

I'm not sure if you can tell the size of the hole in the picture. There is nothing in the picture to really refer to. So I'll just tell you, the hole is about 2 and a half feet wide and about 4 feet tall. It's a pretty good hole. It's also a pretty good story. So the story starts with the smell. I don't want to get into the story of the smell, because there was quite a battle fought to defeat the smell, and that battle was about a week long but it's not that interesting of a story. Let's just say that there were lots of smelly things that were destroyed. The last smelly thing was the refrigerator that had died. I don't know how long it was dead, we weren't really using that fridge anymore but it still had some random food in it that went very very very bad.

Once we discovered that fridge as the source of the smell it had to be vanquished immediately. So, clearly Zack and I decided to vanquish it ourselves. We put it on the dolly, making sure to secure the door closed so that no smell (or goo or other strange entities) could escape. We were using all of our might to get it up the stairs. We were doing well but we decided we needed to rest. We stopped with about 2 more stairs to go up, and just held it in place. I was holding it from below and Zack was holding in from above. Well, somehow it started coming down toward me. Zack apparently lost hold of it and in an effort to save me from certain death he yelled, "Move! Move! Move!" In an effort to save myself from certain death I did such things as move move move. Unfortunately, I didn't move fast enough. My main objective was to stay upright as I'm running backwards down the stairs. I figured if I fell over and the fridge ran over my body and landed on my face then I would be fairly unhappy, and relatively dead. So I accomplished my main objective and did, in fact, stay upright. I couldn't, however, get out of the way in time so the fridge hit me right in my stomach. I was pinned against the wall and was somewhat disheartened by the situation, since I couldn't really breathe. Zack rushed down the stairs and lifted it off me which I appreciated. As soon as the pain of having a fridge crush stopped, I realized that there was also pain in my back side. That's when I examined my location a little bit closer and realized that I was embedded in the wall. Imagine my surprise! I had gone through a wall without even realizing it. So now my wall has a very precious Jeff print in it.

On to the next story. This is the story of why there is a hole in my hand. It's not as interesting, but the picture is cooler. (I put a link to the picture instead of having it be directly in the blog, because it is somewhat gross. Most people won't mind it, but I knew Robyn wouldn't want to see it. So anyone who is not Robyn can follow the link.)

I went to the store because I needed a new and glorious barbecue. (As a side note, it was one of the greatest purchases of my life.) My roommate was helping me take it out of the truck. When he lifted it he didn't support one side very well and it started tipping. My pride and joy was about to fall to the ground and die, I was not going to allow this. I reached up and grabbed it on one of the stainless steel edges. I was able to safely lower it to the ground but not without the stainless steel scraping away the skin of my hand. If any of you ever eat food that was cooked on that barbecue I hope you realize the sacrifice I made.

That's all I have to say about that.

Hello World

Anyone who has ever done any kind of programming will appreciate the title of this post. For those of you who have not, I will fill you in. When you are learning a new programming language the first application you always write is the "Hello World!" application. All it does is print the words "Hello World!" to the screen. It's a chance to get your feet wet in the most basic pieces of the new language doing something really simple. Well, this is my "Hello World!" blog. I'm getting my feet wet in this new form of communication.

It has recently come to my attention that interesting stuff happens to me all the time. Most of the time I love to tell stories about the interesting stuff that happens to me. And while I do believe I am a much better story teller in person, I decided I should have a medium where I could share some stories in writing, and thus this blog was born.

Then it occurred to me that I may want to just share random thoughts as well as stories, so I have named the blog "Thoughts and stories" so that I can reserve the right to post either one of them. I look forward to sharing all the things that enter my mind.

Oh, yeah and before I forget: