Downtown Mound . . . . of grease

Tonight we went to Sammy's with all of Bre's roommates. It's this little hole in the wall joint right in downtown Provo right off center street. It was ok. I've had much better burgers for the price we paid. The "real pie milkshakes" were pretty good too. They put an entire piece of pie into the blender with the ice cream. It turns out pretty good. The people working there were really upbeat and seemed to love working there. The music was so loud in there that we couldn't hear the waitress when we were trying to order. One thing that they had that was really good that I loved was their sweet potatoe fries. They tasted pretty darn good with their fry sauce that they mix up themselves.

All of Bre's roommates sittin at the bar

Me and my guurrrllfriend.

Date Night!!!

Well tonight was a special night for Mack and I. You might say it was a typical night for me filled with homework and studying, but I was relocated while doing it.

Mack loves his car to be clean. He washes it at least once a week. Its a good thing that his dad owns the Alta car wash or else it would be costing Mack a lot of money. My car was in desperate need of a bath so he made me stop my reading for psychology and go with him to the car wash so he could wash my car and I just sat inside and did my homework.

Look at that beauty. Well hopefully it stays clean for long. I doubt it just because it always seems to rain after you wash your car wasting the 5 bucks you just spent washing it. Good thing it was for free. :D

Well 11 is a good number I guess. . .

11. Thats it. Thats all there is. 11 more Sundays until we get married. If I sound anxious it's probably because I am. For all of you reading this blog that are married (that'd be maybe the 3 of our readers that all happen to be married) you probably remember how bad it sucked to wait to get married once you have decided who you want to spend the rest of forever with.

Welp, it was Sunday today, I'm living at home in Draper right now to save money and I travel every Sunday down to my old ward where Bre goes to church. I like it alright. The Bishop in the ward is new, but he is great. A really sincere guy.

Right after church

So we're back at my house again for a nice night of homework. I have a test on tuesday that I've known about for a few days and for whatever reason I have procrastinated studying all the way til now. I've read through my notes one whole time. I have an essay that I have to prepare for as well. Bre has a ton of homework too. A lot more than I do and I just sit here the whole time distract her until she gets upset. I dunno why I do that and why I don't just sit my butt down and study. I don't even know why I'm writing this. I don't have time to! Oh well. For whatever dumb reason I like doing this. I wish you all a fabulous Sunday!

Bre setting up camp to do homework

Sad story

Well first off, the saddest news of all is that Bre's favorite restaurant in the entire world is going to be closed down. Compadres (in Hawaii) was a place she went every year for her birthday and now she is really depressed and can't pick a new place to go for her birthday.

On a brighter and hungrier note, tonight we cooked a little dinner as we usually do when I come to Provo and we study at her place. We ALWAYS have something with chicken in it. I dunno what it is, but we both LOVE chicken. And not to brag or anything, well actually, yeah I'm going to brag, I cook some really good chicken. hahaha though it really isn't that hard to cook. But I chopped up a bunch of garlic and and cooked up all the chicken and garlic and put it over some good rice and soy sauce. It was awesome. and I know you all wanted to know about what we ate. I was just trying to think of crap we could take pictures of and there really isn't anything. So this is us cooking.

Bre is really good at making rice :)

Me and my garlic chicken I'm so proud of.

If I were a rich man. . .

So we were doing homework as usual together at my house and since Bre is taking Russian I thought I would introduce her to a little Russian flavor. This is my Shapka. The fur comes from a Siberian wolf. Needless to say, Bre LOVED it and wants one of her own to wear all the time.

The time of our lives

Boring. Thats what our lives are. All we do is homework. Ugh...I'm so sick of school and I have so much more to go. I'm glad Bre will graduate in a year and a half. I've been thinking lately that I am going to finish up my Associate Dergree at SLCC and then after that maybe go to BYU-Hawaii and study international business. I don't even know how hard it is to get in though. I have heard it is easier to get into than BYU-Provo but if its not then I'm screwed. I think it would be a lot of fun to go back there and study. I'm sure Bre would love to go back there as well. She's so cute. I love her so much. She is such a smart girl. I'm definitely one lucky guy.
P90X is kicking my butt again. I had to take a 4 day break because my back was spasming but I got right back into it. I decided to do that week over again so my first "30 days" are going to be more like "36 days" I'll just get a few more workouts in before I go onto the 2nd Phase of the program. I'm starting to see a few changes. When I first started I could only do 2 pull ups, not I do 8. I've gone from 240 lbs down to 226lbs in a matter of 3-4 weeks. It's killing me, but I like it at the same time. I HIGHLY recommend it to any of you out there who want to get stronger. I've still got a little more than 2 months of the program to go and I can't wait to see where I'm at! Plus I'll be closer to marrying Bre. . . . :)
I also finished my book about the New York Mob tonight. It was REALLY good. I got a good look at how the Mob here in America was actually run since the early 1900's. I'm looking for a new book to read now. I might delve into a Jeffrey Deaver novel. He writes almost entirely fiction based murder mysteries but they are really fun to read.
I know part of blogging seems to be putting up pictures of everything I'm doing but I seriously can't find any excuse to even take my camera out of its case. I have nothing to take a picture of. I'll try and figure it out sometime and update you all on what I look like. hahaha
Oh yeah, and Bre has nothing to add. She agrees with all of this. Whatever that means.

Gouged

I bought the tickets for our Honeymoon to Kauai today and for some reason it kinda feels like we got gouged. I guess it was a local airline or something so the rates really aren't going to get cheaper but for how long the flights are etc. it seemed too much. We ended up paying almost $300 for the both of us to fly from Honolulu to Lihue and back. You know how long the flight is??? Its only 40 minutes! Its 101 miles away! Thats nothing! What we're going to be doing is getting married December 20 (which by the way, we called the Temple and set up the time for 9am!!!) then we're spending that night at the Shereton in Waikiki. After that, we're flying over to Kauai for 3 days and staying at the Shereton over there then coming back on Christmas Eve and staying the next week at the Queen Kapiolani I think. It's going to be a great little vacation! We're sooooo excited!!!

Ugh...my pores..

I just finished a book called "The Innocent Man", by John Grisham. It was some of the only fiction writing that Grisham has done as far as I know. But what happens is there is this local baseball hero named Ron Williamson in the little town of Ada, Oklahoma. They think he's going to be the next Mickey Mantle and such. He is really good and eventually gets drafted by a Major League team but then drugs, booze, and girls get in the way and he eventually gets back to his hometown where he goes insane, literally. There is a girl that is raped and murdered in a horrible fashion. The whole town is in an uproar over it and the police don't have any solid leads to who had done it so they basically just pick him and hall him into the station and charge him with the murder. He is tried in his little town with a bunch of jurors who want to pin it on somebody and they prosecute him and find him guilty on only one piece of minute evidence: a hair. What the prosecution chose to leave out in the courtroom was the fact that the hair was only microscopically related to the hair of Ron Williamson. And this hair could have belonged to almost anybody else in the town. But the jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to death. So he slowly goes insane sitting in a no contact prison cell on death row with real killers. He rots there for 11 years before DNA testing comes out and he gets a new trial and he is found innocent because he had no DNA at the crime scene at all. So they let him go without so much as an apology. So he sues the state for a mistrial or something and gets 5 million bucks. He dies not too long after that because of the complications of his time in prison.
Well, sorry if you wanted to go out and read the book. I still highly reccomend it. There are obviously a lot of details left out and it is a much better read than the paragraph you just got dragged through. I'm onto my next book "Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire" It talks about Rick Cowen, a NYPD detective in 1992 who unearthed the hard evidence that the FBI had been chasing for decades: proof of collusion among mob families in NY to extort billions of dollars from the nation's biggest corporations. All through the garbage pick-up industry. It's a true story by the way and I'm really excited to read it.
Tonight at work (I'm at work right now) I decided that I don't really like fried food that much. A few days ago at a FHE delio I had fried chicken and it made me sick, then tonight at work the chefs had the day off so we got take out chinese and it was just a bunch of fried stuff. I ate it a couple hours ago and I feel like grease is coming out of my pores. It feels disgusting. So I'm going to try not to eat it. I'm going to have to tell Breana that we can't have that deep fried turkey at our reception anymore. I know how much she wanted it but I don't think I can handle it. :) hahaha, just kidding Bre. Welp, thats all for tonight. I wish you all a degreased evening. Grease Out!

Finally...

Here you go Mack...this blog is for you. Mack has been nudging me to write a post for a week now. I haven't because I'm so busy with homework and car nightmares that I barely have time to eat and sleep. Also, when I do think of things to post about Mack goes and writes about it so I have nothing to say. But he has been a great help to our blog posting and keeping our 1/ occasional 2 readers entertained. I finally have some free time today so I thought I would contribute somewhat and hopefully get Mackenzie off my back.

School has been crazy. This is my hardest semester yet even though I have the least amount of classes I've ever taken. I guess this is what happens when you are a junior and start taking challenging classes. I almost wish I could take this semester off to do wedding things because there is not enough time in the day to do both. Its a good a thing I got fired so I don't have to worry about going to work. (I'll explain that in a bit) My psych personality class is ridiculous and philosophical, my advanced writing in psychology is a lot of what seems unnecessary writing (go figure..writing in a writing class...what a joke), my cooking class gives me a break from abstract thinking, thank goodness, and it feeds me, and then there is Russian. WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING!?!?!? Even though I have a private tutor, Mack, I suck. Russian is a ridiculous language. I have emotional breakdowns daily doing that homework. I have Russian everyday so I get no breaks. I've come to acquire test anxiety. We have quizzes every other day and I freak out. My teacher calls on people at random to answer questions and I always get asked the hard questions or the ones that I don't know the answer to. Just my luck. She knows I'm terrible so I think she is out to get me. Thank goodness for Mack. The only reason I'm barely surviving is because of him. I'm sure he will be happy when I'm done with this class too so he won't have to wipe my tears anymore and can focus on his school rather than helping me every second.

Oh yeah... my job thing... I was working as a student secretary for the Advancement Vice President of BYU. My boss was Kay who was the actual secretary for Fred, the VP. Well Kay is a nice lady but kind of scatter brained. She would forget to tell me things or forget that she told me certain things. In the summer I was working and one day I show up and Kay is not in the office. So I decided to just stay and work. Then I found a note she had written to Fred saying she was on a trip for the next 2 weeks, which she neglected to tell me. So for the next two weeks I didn't go to work and figured she would call me when she got back. She never did so I tried calling her once and she didn't answer. Then Mack came back from Texas so I didn't bother seeing if I should work for a week and assumed she would call me if she needed me, like she always had. No calls for 2 weeks from her. It got to be the first week of school so I called her to see what the deal was. She called me back the next day and asked where I had been for the past month. I told her I was right here. Because she hadn't heard from me she assumed that I had "moved on" and gotten another job. As if I would have just quit without telling her. I explained how I found out she was on a trip and thought she would call me like a normal boss would. She then basically told me that she didn't need me anymore to help her in the office because the new VP could do things himself leaving less work for her. Then she acted all nice nice and was asking me about my sister and Mack and asked if it would be hard for me to find another job. I was like whatever lady. So that is why I no longer have employment. It was just really weird.

Well I hope this post is satisfactory to Mack. I must begin my homework now...after eating a few cookies first though. :D

Sittin' on the King

So I was doing my normal P90X workout this afternoon and somewhere during the hour of my plyometrics routine a tweaked my back. It has steadily gotten worse and has been spasming for the last few hours. Really the only reason that I'm upset is I can't do my YogaX workout two days from now. Hopefully it will be healed up by then. I've taken a few muscle relaxers and those seem to help a bit.

It's been great being back in school these days. But now that I'm back Bre and I naturally want to be together all of the time so we just find ourselves doing homework whenever we're together. We've worked out a system where I go to Provo one night and we go to the BYU Library, then she comes down the next night where we just hang out in my parents guestroom (my room for the next couple months) and do homework. All we ever do now is homework....and planning for the wedding. We have the reception center picked out for the event in Utah on January 3rd. Its called "The Atrium at Western Gardens". It's a charming little place right over by my dad's carwash. The wedding planner Lance is going to do great things for us. I'm actually excited about the whole thing. I never thought that I would be too interested in all of this crap but I actually am. We're on to finding a caterer now and what food we want to have there etc. Bre still hasn't gotten her dress picked out. She is most likely going to have it made by some lady up in Heber. She hates all of the dresses wherever we go, so it'll go over better if it's made for her and she can tell the seamstress exactly what she wants.

This is in the main area of The Atrium.

Cлово моим домашним братьям!!!

In case you were wondering . . . the words above are letters from one of the hardest languages in the world!!! And Bre can now read it!!! She is taking a Russian class at BYU and she really has a knack for it. She just started a week or so ago and she knows the whole alphabet and can read really well! I'll be honest, I'm REALLY impressed at how quickly she has picked it up. It is an incredibly difficult language and seeing that I served my mission there and speak it, I'm really excited for her. Oh, and the title to this column reads "word to my homies".
(well, kinda. there is actually a different word for homies but the online translator didn't know what it was and I can't spell it out since I don't have a Russian keyboard, so this'll do. For those who speak Russian, it will be funny)
So she started all of her classes. She is taking the Russian class, a cooking class (lucky me!) and two Psychology classes that are going to be REALLY fun (and by really fun, I mean incredibly difficult and there will be tears...lots of them). So on top of all of this bull crap that she has to do for school, she is spear heading the planning of our wedding in December! Of course I'm always there for her with emotional support and help when she wants/needs it, but she is doing so well! I'm taking a lot easier load than her with a grand total of 3 classes: American History (same as the American Heritage class at BYU), a Public Speaking class, and a Biology class. It's still a fair amount of work but Bre sure does seem to be working a whole lot harder than me. I just can't wait til we are living together so she can help me with homework on a nightly basis. She's so smart! Marrying someone this smart and who remembers literally EVERYTHING is going to be blessing and I dare say it'll bite me in the butt. :)

Mack meets the 4am infomercial....P90X!!!

I'm not going to lie, I've never worked harder in my entire life. No I don't mean working for monetary means, but working my body to the point that I literally couldn't get into my car. It's tough, its hard, its EXTREME, its P90X! I saw it on TV at 4am one night and I'll admit, I was a little skeptical like I am of most workout videos I see that early in the morning. I'm the kind of guy thats just used going into the gym and pushing wieght around, eating protein and glutamine, and maybe doing a little cardio. But my brother and sister in law (Kurt and Noelle) tried it out and got great results so I thought I'd give it a go not knowing how hard it would be.
I just started my second week and it is going great! There are 6 hardcore workouts each week for 90 days. So I have a solid 11 weeks to go. I'm so excited to do this! There is an Ab workout that they call Ab Ripper X and holy crap it is the hardest thing I've ever done. It's 11 or 12 different moves of 25 reps apiece. I can't even finish it! I'm starting to try and finish the whole thing at 15 reps and I'm more successful. I hope I'll get up the the 25 reps and do the whole workout how its suppose to be done. I'm just excited to get ripped again! I let myself go during the summer because I just didn't have the energy to workout while I was in Texas and I lost most of my muscle. But its coming back! Thanks a lot to Kurt and Noelle for letting me borrow it!!! Off to a nice yoga sesh by P90X!

Back in Action

Well, I made it back to the good ole' USA from the country of Texas. It was pretty miserable as far as the weather was concerned. It stayed right around 100 with humidity between 50-90%. I'm just glad I didn't have to wear long slacks and a tie like on my mission in Russia. (In the summers it was well over 100 with a few weeks reaching around 116 with almost 100% humidity) So I'm just grateful I was able to wear a polo shirt and some shorts. I sold Pest Control for my cousins company called White Knight Pest Control (whiteknightpest.com) I actually don't mind the summer sales. It was worth it to my financially. Of course nobody ever makes what people promise them their first year but thats ok, I still made it worth my time. Bre and I will be going back down next summer to do it again. I'm pretty excited already to start going again because I won't have to deal with the few weeks of getting used to selling door to door so I can just get on it right off the bat. If anyone out there wants to give it a go, lemme know!!! So anyway, I made it home safe and sound, I still can't believe that I didn't get a flat tire or get anything stolen at the ghetto Motel 6 I stayed in in El Paso on the way back. I set my alarm to get up almost every hour to go check my car to make sure my stuff was still there. Everything that I own was in that car! If I had gotten it stolen I would've cried for a week. So I made it back and I'm working back at Cirque Lodge again. It's the top Drug and Alcohol Rehab facility in this great nation. It's located about a mile above Sundance with great views of the resort and the cirque of Mt. Timp. I really enjoy working there and meeting and helping people from all over the country and from all walks of life. I'm also going to school again taking a history class, a public speaking class, and a biology class. A little less hectic this semester but I think its ok since I'm getting ready to start my new life as a married man to my beautiful bride to be! I'm so excited to marry her! She is so so good to me and is so smart and funny. We never have a boring moment together. Ususally it revolves around me making a jack a** out of myself and her making fun of me, but its a good time none the less.