FSS: Utah Arts Festival

Among other things I did this past weekend (mowed a lawn for the first time in at least 8 years, maybe more), I went downtown to the Utah Arts Festival for the first time. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but thought it might be something fun to do. And it was. And I'd probably go again next year. Certainly there were a fair number of eccentric folks down there (or coooooooks as my friend called them), but there was quite a bit of interesting art as well.

We managed to catch a 45 minute Improv set from some folks from The Off Broadway Theatre, and some Polynesian dancers, eat some greasy peesy, and check out a lot of art that was on display. Some of my favorites were some metal animals (moose, horse, etc) made from rusted farm implements, some more abstract stuff that was just patterns and colors, some good nature photography, and some old-fashioned looking signs painted on wooden boards. Anyway, made me think that I guess I do kind of appreciate art, even if I don't know much about how to make it, or art history. I definitely had some opinions of what I liked and didn't like and what kinds of things I might have purchased if I'd been in the market for some.

FSS: Two Dinners & a Movie Edition

This past weekend, I went out to eat both Friday and Saturday night with friends. Friday night I convinced a couple friends to go to Sizzler with me because I've just had a hankerin' for some steak and malibu and some cheese toast.

After dinner a larger group of friends went to see the movie Taken starring Liam Neeson. It may be the only movie I can remember seeing with absolutely no sub-plots. And it would have been a tiny bit more believeable if so many people hadn't shot at him with submachine guns at close range without killing him. My only other complaint is that the main girl who was in it also played Shannon on Lost, and I really couldn't stand her as Shannon, which made me still not like her here. I'll probably never be able to get past her as annoying Shannon. Seriously, what was Sayid thinking? I'm just glad that she didn't make it past the beginnings of Season 2. And even though we're now seeing all sorts of dead people, we've managed to avoid a return of Shannon.

And in case you were wondering, Saturday night I ate at Pei Wei.

FSS Sin Numero

Today at the Big Digital we're breaking out the old FSS tag. This last weekend was fairly eventful. Thursday night I already discussed (see previous post) and the excitement that was Utah's comeback victory over TCU. Friday night I went to the Jazz game with a large group (~38) from my ward. I had a good time driving to and from the game with some girls from my ward. Apparently the Oklahoma City Thunder were not a hot ticket. We got ours for $7 each and they weren't even the very back row or even in the corner. We were behind the basket, but up very high. The Jazz won without really being tested and it was Jerry Sloan's 1000th victory as head coach of the Jazz.

After the game some of us ended up at one of the guys' house and watched "The Man Who Knew Too Little". I fought off falling asleep until just minutes before the end of the movie.

Saturday I slept in a bit, and then worked on a few things (paying bills, preparing a Priesthood lesson). The evening wasn't as eventful as Friday, but I did end up stopping by a friend's birthday party for the pizza and cake portion, skipping the bowling portion that concluded the festivities, and opting instead to meet up with some other friends and check out an indoor soccer game, which was not all that exciting, but did conclude with an exciting last second penalty kick finish.

Sunday I taught EQ, had a home teaching visit, went to a dinner group, and finally to ward prayer, after which I headed home because I wasn't feeling so hot, and also had an early dentist appointment this morning -- got a post put into the root canal to support the permanent filling that went on top of it. So far I'm cautiously optimistic about my dental future.

FSS: Fun & Stress Edition

This past weekend was pretty full. Friday night started out slow, but did include a viewing of Hellboy and a moment where someone yelled "Psst" at me, but I thought it was the surround sound, which then resulted in that someone climbing in through the window.

Saturday I went boating with my ward up at Jordanelle and had fun riding a tube. Then I came back to Salt Lake and went to the Utah-UNLV football game. It was kind of stressful for a half, and then Utah came out in the 2nd half and put things out of reach early.

Also on Saturday, I found out that my newest roommate is going to be moving out at the end of the month, leading to some stressing about what's going to happen next, given that at one point our apartment manager had said that if that happened, we'd either have to move out or just pay the full rent with less than a full house. I talked with her about things today and she was much more positive about our chances of being allowed to find someone to move in to replace him. Guess we'll see what the big boss has to say when he gets back on Thursday.

Sunday was a typical full slate of meetings, but also I got a new 2nd counselor to replace the one who is getting married this coming Saturday. I'm excited about the new guy, and will definitely miss the old one.

FSS: September is Here

September is my favorite month for many reasons: Cooler, fall temperatures. Football season (Go Utes!). My birthday (Big 3-0 coming up!). Back when I had classes, September was a month when school was still exciting and not just full of homework.

This past weekend, I went to my little brother's football game (at least until it got seriously out of hand), watched Utah beat Michigan, hung out with my good friend Jon several times in preparation for his moving to Seattle this week, played a couple hours of indoor volleyball, played some Rock Band (got a flawless 100% playing lead guitar on "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?" on Hard), bought a new pillow, and finally found some slides that I could live with to replace my old holey ones, and found a new counselor to replace the one who is getting married on the 13th.

FSS 12: Late again!

This makes two weeks in a row that I've been late in getting this out. Maybe its the fact that all day long I stare at my computer and try to figure out what to write in my last paper, and it makes me not want to write recreationally so much.

Anyway, I'll keep this brief, but suffice it to say that this last week I did plenty of bowling. Two games on Friday, and three on Saturday. My lowest score was a 92, and my high was 146. The highlight of Friday was filming myself bowling a strike (while holding the camera in my other hand). Kind of like the Blair Witch of bowling. Its on Facebook, but since it wasn't on my camera I haven't been able to get it anywhere bloggable.

Also Friday night, I had a great time playing a game called "Buzz Word" with some friends. I think the fun of it just comes from the group and the different personalities involved. Lets just say some people were crying because they were laughing so hard.

Aside from bowling on Saturday, I didn't do all that much, aside from trying to find some sandals to replace the ones I have now, one of which has a have a hole in the bottom. I was, sadly, unsuccessful in my quest. Instead I bought a pair of basketball shorts, and some new swim trunks. Maybe I'll just have to make it through the end of the summer with my old sandals.

FSS 11: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Sorry I didn't get around to this yesterday, what with being all manly and all.

This last weekend was a pretty fun one. Friday night I met up with some friends in anticipation of our 11:00 showing of The Dark Knight. Prior to heading to the theater, we got take out from Italian Village, and then played Mario Kart on the Wii. Good times.

The movie itself definitely lived up to the "Dark" in the title, and was a very impressive film. Heath Ledger was great as the Joker, as were pretty much all of the actors in the main roles. Definitely not for kids, but otherwise worth checking out.

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Saturday, having been out pretty late watching the movie the night before, I managed to sleep in until 11:00. After that I was fairly lazy, but did manage to clean up my room a bit, wash some dishes, and sew a button on a pair of shorts that I'd been meaning to get around to for a couple weeks.

Saturday night I headed to a birthday party for a good friend who I don't see quite so much these days. I had a good time catching up with some people I hadn't seen in a while, and also enjoyed rocking out with some good old Rock Band.

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Sunday morning, I had to get up early for a 7:30 training meeting, and that happened to be the moment that my battery decided it was dead (leading to yesterday's post). Luckily, I was able to get a hold of another guy who was going and he was kind enough to stop by and pick me up. The rest of the day consisted of me bumming rides to whatever was going on (church, home teaching, ward prayer, movie night).

FSS 10: Rolling on a River

Happy Monday to all you loyal FSS readers who've been patiently refreshing to see what this last weekend brought me.

Friday night we had a stake-wide luau activity. For the past month or so they've been sending our ward activities representatives to hype it up with the following three items: 1) catered food, 2) hula lessons, and 3) fire dancers. 1) The catered food consisted of a single half-cup scoop of rice, a half-cup scoop of pork, and a half-cup scoop of canned pineapple chunks, which I declined. 2) The Hula lessons were I think dispensed to a high counselor and his wife. 3) Thankfully the fire dancing actually happened was pretty cool. Anyway, mostly at those activities I just end up shooting the breeze with people I know who are now in other wards. I did find a little time for some grass volleyball as well.

After the luau, I stopped by a park where some friends were playing ultimate frisbee, and watched for ten minutes or so until they were finished. The plan from there was to watch a movie at the apartment of some of the girls who were there, and eventually I made it there (after stopping at a Wendy's to get some food to supplement the luau), but most of the those who were supposedly coming ended up trying to help a girl get into her truck where she'd unfortunately locked her keys.

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Saturday I slept in a bit and then got up and got ready to head down to Provo Canyon to go tubing on the Provo river. Its become pretty much an annual tradition, and for $10, its always been a fun couple of hours in a cold river on a hot day. This time was no different, and with Kirsten's help we managed to round up a group of about 15 people, 10 who met in Salt Lake to car pool down. I managed to avoid falling in at all, and only got real wet at the very end when I had to disembark in water over my waist to make it to the exit point.

After getting out of the river, we stopped for late lunch at an In-n-Out ripoff in American Fork called Chadders. Its a decent imitation, but not sure I care enough to make a specific trip for that purpose.

I made it home in time to get a brief nap in before my evening events started. At seven, I was meeting up with a few friends to go to a pool party out in Draper. It was at the house of a guy I know from a weekly volleyball night (which may not be on hiatus). It was in a gated community out in Draper at what looked to be a potentially fancy home. And my unofficial policy on such things is "When rich people invite me to their house for a party, I should go check it out, because I might see something I would never see otherwise." This house was no exception. Nice pool out back along with a lot of grass and a basketball court. Also, it was right down off the north end of point of the mountain, so there was a great view of a large number of paragliders and hanggliders cruising around above us while we swam.

Eventually, after I'd had my fill of swimming and feeling like Father Time, we made our exit and stopped by the house of another friend to finish out the night. We'd talked about watching a movie, but ended up playing a game called "Buzz Word" that I enjoyed, perhaps because I was really good at it. The host told me he wasn't going to invite me next time they played, unless I promised to be on his team.

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Sunday morning, we had our monthly ward "Fellowshipping" breakfast, which is always a welcome way for me to eat breakfast on a Sunday. Sometimes I have to get creative depending on whats available in my cupboard. After that I had a presidency meeting, and we made it through church without any major incidents. I napped in the early evening and then made it to ward prayer which was well attended and then went to movie night after that, watching the first half of Newsies and the second half of The Incredibles.

FSS 9: Not exactly sure what the 'fin' is of this 'semana'

I'm in the midst of 7 days that I won't be going to my desk. Thursday I went to an old roommate's wedding which was super nice because all 6 of us old roommates were there. Friday was the holiday, followed by the regular weekend, and tomorrow I leave on a short 3-day trip to DC for a short conference.

So I guess today I'll just talk about my 4th of July weekend. Friday morning I got up and headed out to Grantsville to partake of the Grantsville parade that started at 11. My dad was riding in it as a member of the Grantsville City Council. Overall, I felt like the parade was a bit long, and that most of the "floats" were just people with trucks that had signs on them and they threw a little bit of candy. Tooele County Search & Rescue had at least 8 vehicles in the parade, which made me wonder a) how much gas money does it take to support that whole exhibit, and b) what happens if someone needs to be sought and/or rescued while the parade is going on. The highlights were probably the Tooele High marching band (Sorry GHS, but they were clearly superior) and a couple guys dressed as Napoleon Dynamite and his brother Kip, with Napoleon riding his bike, towing Kip behind him on rollerblades.

After the parade, we reconvened back at home for chicken and ribs off the grill, along with corn on the cob and other tasty goodies. I stayed out there until 6 or so, including a good game of "Ticket to Ride" with the special rules that my brother George taught us, which happen to be quite different from the actual rules, but still make for a good game.

After leaving Grantsville, I headed back to SLC for yet another BBQ, followed by fireworks at Murray Park. They were pretty good fireworks and it was fun hanging out with a lot of friends before and after.

Saturday was mostly taken up with errands and laziness. In the evening I went to a friend's parents' house where we played sand volleyball and then enjoyed the pool for a while when we were done.

I didn't take my camera with me at all this weekend, so you'll just have to imagine how everything was. Maybe I'll take some pictures in DC to share with you when I get back. TTFN.

FSS 8: Stuff White People Really Like

This last weekend felt like a tribute to the red states. Which I feel good about, being that I am from one of those red states, myself. :)

Saturday morning we had an Elders Quorum activity in the which we drove out to the desert and shot lots of guns at stuff, so my Friday night was taken up mainly in making sure that everything was ready to go for Saturday morning. After driving about an hour west of Salt Lake, we pulled off the highway drove a short distance out into the hills to do some shooting. We started off with some trap shooting, shooting shotguns at clay pigeons.

After exhausting our supply of pigeons, we moved down to a different spot and tried out shooting rifles, handguns, and assault rifles. The assortment of weaponry on display was kind of amazing. Not being a gun owner myself, they really aren't on my radar. So I was a bit taken aback to see guys that I know pulling out handguns, AK-47s, and AR-15s. It was certainly an interesting experience to shoot all the different types of guns, although it might have been slightly more entertaining had we done a better job with targets. We brought some cheap soda cans to shoot at, but those were gone pretty quick and then it was kind of difficult to pick things to shoot at.

















After the shooting activity, I headed back to Salt Lake, making a brief stop by the Tripp ancestral mansion to say hello. In addition to including several hours of shooting, the day also featured a cheap Saturday night rodeo experience. The Riverton rodeo was only $6, so I headed out there with some friends. I was semi-surprised to find that Jerry Hurst, who taught at my high school was the rodeo clown for the evening. I remember being in Elementary School and him coming and doing some magic, so I knew that he was a rodeo clown, but I'd never actually seen him in action, since I never went to a rodeo until after leaving Grantsville behind.

Anyhow the rodeo was fun, albeit the talent level was maybe a tad low and at times the announcer didn't do a very good job of keeping on top of the action. Sometimes riders would come out of the shoots on horses while he was still talking about something else. Also there was no audible timer for the 8 second rides, at least not one that the audience could hear. But given the cost of admission it was tolerable.

With a full Saturday, Friday night and Sunday seemed fairly nondescript. Or maybe I just don't feel like typing anything more today. :)

FSS 7: Bumper Cars

This past weekend started a tad bit early, with me taking off a little bit early on Friday to meet up with a girl who invited me to come to Lagoon with her (and two other guys) for her work Lagoon day. I'm not a huge Lagoon fan, but it was free and with fun people, so it was hard to pass up. Its been a couple summers since I last visited Lagoon, so there were a couple new rides for me to try out -- The Bat (such a waste of potential) and Wicked (Very fun, but super short). Given that I didn't have to pay anything to get in, I really didn't feel any pressure to ride a million rides and I felt like I had a pretty good time. One sad moment: finding out the old light-gun shooting gallery is gone. That was one of my favorite memories.

Saturday, I got up early to go do some early morning baptisms at the Salt Lake temple, and after our ward outing was over, I went back to bed until the afternoon. After running a few errands, I got down to the big business of the evening -- a demolition derby in Bluffdale. I've been to several derbies over the last couple years, usually in Tooele, but I figured I'd invite some friends to come to this one that was located within the valley. Turns out there was a lot of unmet demand for demolition derbies among my friends. We ended up with over 20 people who went with us. The derby itself was probably the least well-run of the ones I've been to, but still entertaining. The derby area was very small and lots of cars were getting stuck in the loose dirt. Despite that, we still had lots of fun, and there were even fireworks afterward. We finished off the night with some late night grub from the Cheesecake Factory. I can only stand to go there late at night when there aren't a million people waiting around for a table.















Sunday was its usual business with meetings in the morning and then church. After church I made a jaunt out to my parents' house to celebrate a belated Fathers Day and an early birthday for my dad as well. It was a short stay, but still nice to catch up and get some home-cooked dinner. I finished the night off with ward prayer and then a movie (X3: How is this movie so awful?) followed by a nice long chat with E. Harris.

More photos from the demolition derby here.

FSS 6: Viva Las Vegas!

Sorry to be a day late with this, but I just had a lot of catching up to do yesterday after having spent Fri-Sun in Las Vegas. We took off Friday morning early, Jon, Ben, Ed, and myself in Jon's just-barely-purchased Mazda 6. We made great time, making it to St. George around 11:30 and stopping for lunch at Utah's very own In-N-Out, which was as good as always, except that like everywhere else right now, tomatoes were off the menu. (How is it possible that every tomato is unsafe? Do they all come from the same location? Whats the deal? If I can't have tomatoes on my sandwiches/hamburgers/etc, the terrorists may have already won.)



Anyway, we cruised the rest of the way to Vegas and were able to check in a little early into our room at the Luxor. After relaxing a bit, we hit the pool for an hour or so trying to beat the heat a bit. Later that afternoon we met up with 3 of the 5 girls who were coming as well and walked most of the length of the strip to get to the Venetian where Jon and Ashley were seeing the Blue Man Group. Since we all wanted to spend time with them, we walked up there with them and found a place for dinner -- The Grand Lux Cafe which is run by the same people as The Cheesecake Factory, and was pretty tasty. We had an Asian Nachos appetizer that was really good, and I had a Kentucky "Hot Brown" sandwich that was an open-faced turkey sandwich with bacon and gravy. Once again the lack of tomato was a downer.

After dinner, those of us who weren't going to show wandered around the indoor Venetian Canal while we waited for the other two girls to arrive. Once they got there, we started our trek back down the strip toward our hotels (The girls were staying at the MGM Grand). Along the way we enjoyed the fountains at Bellagio, probably my favorite thing in Las Vegas. We also wandered around inside the New York New York hotel/casino for a bit, looking for a mythical ice cream parlor that seems to have disappeared since the girls were there last.














Finally we ended up back at the MGM Grand and watched some TV in the girls' room for a while until they decided it was time for us to go home.

Saturday morning, we were pretty lazy, eventually ending up at the Luxor brunch buffet around 11:30 or so. Good food, but maybe a bit on the pricey side. After that, we wandered around the Luxor and Mandalay Bay, flirting with the notion of checking out the Shark Reef at Mandalay, but deciding against it. We took a tram over to Excalibur where the guys bought our tickets for the "Tournament of Kings" dinner theater show there for later that night. Then we walked over to New York New York because some people wanted to ride the rollercoaster there. I was still feeling pretty stuffed from buffet brunch and wasn't really in the mood to ride a rollercoaster, but was happy to tag along.

Before we made it to the ride, though, we stopped in the arcade and played a few games (Dragon's Lair, anyone?). Once we got to the rollercoaster, there wasn't enough group enthusiasm for it to convince anyone to actually pay the $15 it cost. At this point, Jon had a genius idea that we ought to go see a movie. And it was a great idea. We got to spend a couple hours out of the heat, and it only cost $7.50 at the matinee price. We saw the new Incredible Hulk movie, and I found it fairly enjoyable. No real complaints. And given that I fell asleep every time I tried to watch the first one, I guess thats an improvement.



After the movie, it was time for the guys and girls to part ways (they were going to see Phantom of the Opera) and we headed to Excalibur for our dinner show. At the show, each section of seats was assigned to a different "country" and its corresponding "king" to cheer for in the competitions. We were in the Ireland section and our king pretty much sucked at everything he did. He lost every single competition he competed at. At one point he did have a pretty cool hand-to-hand combat scene with another king, unleashing a sweet ninja kick. But then later the opposing king pulled off a sweet rope swing move that was just too much for Ireland to handle. Overall it was a fun show, and the food was decent (although the choice of drinks was just water, Pepsi, or Diet Pepsi), albeit a tad greasy for eating without utensils.







After the show, we went back to our room and chilled until the girls were done with their show, and then we drove over to the MGM and then they followed us over to downtown Vegas to the Fremont Street Experience, basically a four block section that has a huge LCD ceiling over it, and its lined with lots of cheap-looking casinos and reeks of cigar smoke. There was a cover band playing a lot of fun songs, and we saw some guys ride around in one of those motorcycle-sphere-of-death things. After seeing two of the on-the-hour shows on the LCD ceiling, we made our way back to our cars and headed back to the hotel. The girls wanted to watch a movie or something somewhere, so I suggested we do it at our room, because I just wanted to go to bed, which I did.






Sunday, we slept in again, and filled our daily quota for nourishment at the Bellagio's brunch buffet. A little better food than the Luxor (e.g. prime rib) but our server was pretty slow with the drinks, and the hour long wait to get in was kind of annoying.



Anyway, after that we drove over to MGM again to meet up with the girls one last time and say good-bye. Well for one of them to say good-bye to one of us (not me). And once that was done, we were ready to hit the road. We made good time getting back to Salt Lake, stopping for gas in St. George, and for a quick potty break in Nephi. I didn't even need to eat again until Monday morning.

More photos from the trip can be found here.

FSS 5: A fairly low-key weekend

Hello again,

I'm cranking this post out while waiting for a query to finish running. Just trying to polish up some data for a meeting I have next Monday, quite possibly to get my committee to sign off on everything for the last part of my dissertation. I'd still need to write it of course, but at least I'd now for sure what they expect me to write.

Anyhow, this last weekend felt pretty low key. Friday night a friend from the ward invited us over to his parents' house to swim. In the process of inviting people to join in the fun, I got a counter-offer of a concert and movie from a girl that I'd met last week and was interested in getting to know better. Since I'd already invited a bunch of people to come swim, I would have felt bad not going to swim at all (plus swimming sounded fun), so I made a compromise and agreed to meet up with her and her friends for a late movie after they were done at the concert. So I went swimming and it was fun. We played beachball volleyball in the pool and there was a lot of fun people there. Then it was off to the movie. These girls had chosen to see "You Don't Mess with the Zohan", which from the previews I expected to be pretty silly but maybe funny nonetheless. Sadly, it was pretty silly, and at times funny nonetheless, but mostly the movie was way too raunchy and crass to be enjoyable. I wouldn't recommend seeing it, even if you've enjoyed other Adam Sandler movies. Just too much of the raunchiness in this one.

Saturday, the original plan had been to go boating, but given the cool weather, and the high cost of gas these days, those in charge decided it might be better to wait for a more enjoyable day. I was alright with that, and took advantage of the day to clean up the house a little bit as we were having the ward over for breakfast on Sunday morning. That took up only a little bit of my morning and then I quickly proceeded to run out of things to do. After a day full of odds and ends, in the evening I went to dinner at Red Robin with a group consisting of mostly strangers, but it was alright. After that I got a call from another friend and we ended up driving out to Draper to check out a birthday party for a girl he knew. Again, kind of ho-hum...there were about 20 people there sitting around a firepit getting smoky.

Sunday morning we had the ward fellowshipping committee come over to cook our monthly ward breakfast. I was a little nervous about having enough places to sit for everyone, but it didn't really seem to be a problem in the end. I had my regular church meetings, and spent the late afternoon watching USA-Argentina play to a 0-0 tie, which has to be considered a big coup for America. Team USA's goalie made some great stops in the first half and really saved the game for us. After the game I headed to ward prayer, and then went to a friend's house to watch a movie, "Live Free or Die Hard" which I hadn't seen since seeing it in the dollar movies a year ago. I have to say I enjoyed it again.

Now that I've got this new template, I probably should work on getting my camera out again. Luckily, I'm headed to Vegas this coming weekend with some friends, so that ought to be a good excuse for some photography.

FSS 4 featuring BBQs, Drive-Ins, and Other Sundry Events

This last weekend began with an excursion to my hometown of Grantsville for a BBQ with some high school friends. Back in March, we had set some parameters for food assignments based on performance in an NCAA basketball tournament prediction pool. As my picks went horribly awry I was tasked with providing the meat for this BBQ. As such, I would have felt a little bad begging out of the BBQ, even though at times its not the most fun hanging out with a bunch of married people and their children. Anyway, it turned out to be a nice evening and I also spent some time chatting with my parents and siblings at the end of the night. After returning to Salt Lake I ended up swinging by a friend's house to watch a couple episodes of Flight of the Conchords on DVD, and then enjoying a relaxing soak in his hot tub.

Friday's late night was followed by an early-starting Saturday. We had a stake service project at 9, and our ward was meeting up at 8:30 to car pool over to the location. We ended up at a place called Bend-in-the-River along the Jordan River parkway pulling weeds for the most part. They split the large group into smaller groups and my group ended up pulling rye grass from around some rose bushes. Saturday afternoon was used up in resting, grocery shopping, and printing some home teaching assignments at the church.

Saturday night marked my first trip to the Redwood Drive-in of this calendar year. Approximately fifteen of us gathered at my house and then we headed over to see Prince Caspian, which I found to be passably entertaining. It had been long enough since I read the book that I really wasn't sure what was going to happen for most of the movie. The second feature of the traditional drive-in double feature was the Patrick Dempsey-helmed "Made of Honor" which from the trailers I'd seen appeared to be some kind of "My Best Friend's Wedding" retread, and as such I figured I'd call it a night and check out early. Most of our group was of a like mind.

Sunday morning and afternoon were filled with my usual meetings, and then in the evening I was pretty lazy. I finished the night off with ward prayer at Robin's, where I met some cool new girls in the ward, and then headed to Jason's and ended up watching the Bourne Ultimatum, a fitting follow-up to last week's Bourne Supremacy.

FSS 3: Lots of stuff going on

This past weekend was full of stuff, and yet somehow I still managed to feel lazy. Friday night I saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and while I've since read negative reviews that I can understand and somewhat agree with, I did still have an enjoyable time watching it, so I feel like 4 stars (out of 5) is fair given my experience. I probably won't go see it again, but it was still worth seeing. I went with a friend, and it was a nice evening.

Saturday I was mostly lazy during the day, but did make a jaunt over to Wal-Mart to have a key made for our new roommate, who then proceeded to call me and back out of moving in with us. :( We've (and by "We've", I mean "I've", as my roommates haven't done anything to look that I can tell) been trying for the last two months to find someone to rent out our master bedroom to, but have not had much luck in finding people, despite a lot of people wanting to come look at it. I would think that if they had a problem with the price they wouldn't even come look, but that doesn't seem to be the case. If we don't find someone before the end of June I'm going to start thinking hard about moving somewhere else.

Saturday night I went with a group of friends over to the U of U institute for a BBQ/Dance/Drive-in, where the BBQ consisted of hot dogs only, along with generic chips and pretzels. And I managed to spill catchup on my shirt within the first 20 minutes. Luckily I had a sweatshirt with me and was able to wear that over. We hung out for a couple hours and split about the time the movies were starting up, and headed back to my place where we enjoyed some Brian Regan on DVD.

Sunday was fairly full with church stuff, and hunting for roommates, and then Sunday night a large group was gathered at my first counselor's house for movies and fun. The end of the evening featured a fairly awkward situation involving myself and two girls, one of whom said, "Oh, I forgot something in the house", and the other of whom said moments later "I'm thinking you need to take me out either this Saturday or next. Which works best for you?" The whole story along with some other comments on dating probably deserves its own post, but for now suffice it to say that I felt put on the spot and somewhat manipulated into an uncomfortable situation. Also hearing girls complain that "guys need to date more" is starting to get pretty old for a variety of reasons.

Yesterday was Memorial Day and after a lazy start to things I headed out to my parents' house for the middle of the day where we played cards and Phase 10 Dice, and had BBQed chicken for dinner. I made back to SLC in time to catch up with some friends for dessert at Chili's and some Mario Kart Wii to bring the long weekend to a close.

Quick question for those of you who read this far: Are you enjoying these updates? If so, take the time to make a quick comment and say so.

The Return of Fin de Semana Stories

Remember when I was going to try to give more updates about what I'd been up to? Well its never too late for a second chance, right?

This past weekend was a pretty fun one. Friday night I went to Cafe Rio with about 10 people from my ward, and then after that we headed over to another friend's to watch Game 6 of the Jazz-Lakers series. The Jazz trailed by a lot for most of the game which made it pretty hard to watch. Then at the very end, they made a tremendous comeback only to fall 3 points short, with two chances to tie in the last 5 seconds. And thus ends the Jazz's season. I feel like it was a successful season, although if our goal is to win a championship, we need to make sure we've got all the pieces in place that we need. Right now, my hope is that they can hang on and stay healthy and outlive all the other current Western Conference contenders, but that seems like a bad way to try to win.

Anyway, Saturday I spent catching up on some errands that I needed to run (grocery shopping, paying bills, etc.) and then had a blind date Saturday night. It felt like a pretty typical blind date -- nothing to write home about, but thankfully not too painful. Maybe I should have a better attitude, but I rarely go into those things with high hopes. Not entirely sure why, but it does seem like if I have a hard enough time finding girls that like enough to want to pursue a relationship with, choosing from girls that I know, the probability of someone else (who in this case, doesn't hardly know me either) picking someone for me to go out with that I'm going to end up being interested is pretty low. I still feel like I went in with an open mind, but lets just say my expectations are pretty low on those things.

Finally, Sunday was pretty full of church stuff: ward breakfast, EQ Presidency meeting, church, three home teaching appointments, and ward prayer. In between some of those things, we managed to finally have someone come over and look at our room for rent and decide that they were interested in moving in. I'm not counting my chickens until they at least move some stuff in, and maybe not until I see that first rent check, but it sounds like a pretty done deal. So that was a pretty good thing to have happen. Finally, I finished off the night watching "School of Rock" with some friends, and got to point out the Spider move to some people who had never noticed it before.

Speaking of optimism, I'm tagging this post with "weekly feature", so we'll see if I can't keep it up.

Fin de Semana Stories

I'm having this idea that maybe if I come up with a good title/acronym I can get myself excited about doing more than just showing you a video once a week. So I've of course thought about writing on Mondays something called "Weekend Update" but that name has of course been taken by SNL and who knows how many other things. So I'm going to call mine "Fin de Semana Stories" which if you speak Spanish you'll know stands for "Fin of Semana Stories". :) Kidding aside, "Fin de Semana" actually means Weekend. Plus I figure with that name I can abbreviate it as FSS and maybe someone will thing I've got a new version of RSS going on.

Anyway to kick off this inaugural FSS edition, I'll tell you that Friday night I went to the "Grand Kerfuffle" an annual outdoor concert event up at the U. This year's show had three decent bands: Augustana, Hellogoodbye, and Shiny Toy Guns. There was also a local band that we missed. We only got there about an hour after the offical start time so we were surprised that Augustana was already playing. Personally, their music is my favorite of the three bands that played, but they were having a few issues with their sound and that really seemed to bother them a lot. Anyway, they were interesting and have at least two songs that I really like: "Boston" and "Sweet and Low".

Hellogoodbye was up next and they are pretty nerdy guys and played a fun set of songs that I really don't know. It was during this set that it became clear to me, if it wasn't already, that some people will mosh to pretty much anything.

Finally Shiny Toys Guns, who I probably am the least familiar with, finished off the show with a lot of energy, both on their part and on the part of the crowd. Like I said, I didn't really know any of their songs going in, but they were a fun concert band because they really were rockin.

Now, as for some metadata on the evening, I actually had a date with a long-time friend of mine, and we ended up doubling with her ex-roommate and her husband, who both happen to be good friends of mine as well. The sad part of the date was that about half an hour before I was supposed to go pick her up, my car died and refused to be revived. So, I was happy that this date was with someone I was already good friends with and I didn't feel too ashamed to have to call her and ask her to pick me up. My roommate joked, "You might as well forget your wallet while you are at it." But as I'd already acquired concert tickets it really wouldn't have made any difference.

I spent part of Saturday getting my car towed over to the shop and moving some furniture for my grandpa who's moving from a rehab center to an assisted living center this week. Then we went to a birthday dinner for he and my cousin at the Olive Garden, which I must say hasn't changed much in the probably five years its been since I was last there. It likely won't be breaking into my list of places I want to go out to eat anytime soon either. Just not a huge fan.

After family time, I ended up going to see 21 with some friends. I found it to be pretty entertaining, and it made me want to track down the book of the true story the movie was "based on", or perhaps "inspired by".

And finally, on a non-FSS-related note, a company in Wisconsin emailed last week to say they want to fly me out there to interview for a software developer job. However, when I got back to them with dates that would work for me in the time span they mentioned, they disappeared. Seriously, its been five days since I emailed them my available dates, one of which would require me to fly tomorrow night, and I still haven't heard back from them. Once again proving my theory that Germans love David Hasslehoff administrative incompetence is pretty much a universal constant.