Trick knee

Last week I was playing in a recreational basketball league. The week before this game I had dunked it three times and was eager to have more opportunities to slam it home. We were playing the best team in the league and I had a little bit of trepidation, but was still excited to try and dunk it on someone. Within four minutes in the game I was wide open on the right side and streaked to the hoop, as I went up I put all of my weight on my left leg and it gave out from under me. I looked like a fool! To avoid any embarrassment I grabbed my knee as if I had tweaked it to give the impression to everyone present that I had hurt myself. My friend Mike called from the bench, "oh my gosh, are you ok?" I indicated I was and continued to play the rest of the game as if no injury had occurred. You win some you lose some I suppose.

Lemons

Sometimes life gives you lemons and you just say, "screw the lemons"! I know that may sound weird, but I am finding myself guilty of not taking all the opportunities that come my way and oft times I don't recognize the lemons when they are in front of me. I took the gmat a few months ago in preparation for graduate school. I did not get the score that I thought I needed to get me in and was quite distraught about it, especially because I'd studied so hard and had a blessing indicating that everything would go great. Well, I overreacted a little bit and found myself a bit bitter. Fast forward to last week and I met with the admissions director at the U of U to see what I needed to do to get in to the program. She asked me what I got on the gmat and my g.p.a., to my chagrin she told me that I had more than enough to be accepted into the program. She then said she felt like she should tell me about another new program that the U just began offering focusing on global enterprise. I asked about the requirements for that and she named three upper level economics classes and proficiency in a foreign language. I found that I met all of the requirements and will be able to start as soon as January in the program. I learned a great lesson in patience and trust through this experience.
In other aspects of life I find the same things hold true. Like a friend will mention someones name and it will happen a couple of times and I feel like I should call them and it turns out that is just what they needed. Sometimes I also ignore these feelings though and feel like I missed out on something by not following through. There are certainly two ways to live life, make something of the opportunities that come our way or just let them lay by the wayside. A part of me definitely did not want to make anything out of the gmat and give up and take the test again to get a better score, but everything ended up working out. I wish I would be more trusting and go with promptings more, there have been times when I wanted to ask someone out and I just didn't because I believed there was no chance it would work out. I've had a fundamental paradigm shift and a greater desire to be trusting of inspiration that comes my way. I'm happy that lessons can translate to all aspects of life and be beneficial no matter what the experience.

Ironic

The Catholic Church is against capital punishment. I find that somewhat hypocritical considering that if it was not for capital punishment in Roman times, let's say circa 33 a.d., there would have been no crucifixion of the Lord. You can see the obvious problems of that event not occurring, so let's try and be a little consistent here. Condemning something that gave rise to your beliefs??? I guess it works if it fits into pop culture . . .

New music

New music coming out

Muse-The Resistance-Uprising is the first released track and United States of Eurasia is available, if you are a fan of 1984 this song is for you. There is a 3 part symphony called exogenesis that will be great too.

Ingrid Michaelson-Everybody, her last cd was not as good as Girls and Boys, but this one is promising

Jay-Z-Blueprint 3-Already released "Run this Town" with Kanye and Rihanna. Kanye disses Rav-4's, which is funny.

A.F.I.-Crash Love. Not super stoked, but I'll give it a listen. The new single "Medicate" is decent.

Favorite song right now: 1901 by Phoenix

Favorite Album right now: Wolf Parade-Apologies to the Queen Mary

Funny Song I like: I am not a robot by Marina and the Diamonds

Newest Band into my rotation of favorites-Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The world I live in

So summer has passed without a blog post due to other activities and hobbies. Once graduation hit I decided that I needed some new hobbies to keep myself busy. I have been engaged in watching a telenovela entitled Al diablo con los guapos (the devil with the good lookings) and find it very interesting. Here's the break down, a mother died at child birth and left her daughter with a necklace, but the girl (sometimes mistaken as a boy) really wants to know who her father is. On the other side of things, a dad recently killed his wife and his son's girlfriend and now his son is in a wheelchair and hates the dad with a passion. A friend of the family starts falling for the orphan girl who uses so many crazy ways to get by, like selling cards with saints on them and selling soda pop at baseball games. Oh, and you don't want to miss the coach at the baseball games, he is always good for a laugh. The series is heating up and one can only hope that everything gets solved in the 15+ hours left I have to watch of the show.
Another hobby that has been keeping me busy is running. I'm the kind of guy who you see running really fast on the street and say to yourself, "there is no way he can keep that pace up." well, you are correct, seconds after passing me you'll probably notice me slowing to a walk in your rearview mirror, I make sure to run on the busiest roads so as many people can see me as possible.
I've also become an avid reader this summer or as i like to call it story time. I like novels, especially Clive Cussler tales, for those of you who don't know Clive, well let's just say they are like Indiana Jones meets the ocean meets diabolical plans to take over the world. Pretty great stuff. The latest story I leafed through was about a bunch of people trying to control population growth by leaking viruses on cruise ships. Let me tell you, the action did not stop for a page. The funny thing is, this crazy novel was talking about population control just as I was reading another book about population growth, talk about contrasting views. Anyway, the basic concept is that the more humans there are on the earth, the more geniuses will be among us. Say if there is one genius per 1 million people, then we will have more geniuses. That is why it took man (according to scientists) thousands of years to progress so little, any invention that happened was rare and took a long time to disperse among other groups of people. So as the world becomes more crowded, there are actually more intelligent people on the earth to solve overcrowding, urbanization, and depleting resource problems. I also read that ten percent of the people who ever lived on this earth are alive right now! Think about it, the population has doubled over the last 30-40 years. That is incredible to contemplate and who knows how accurate it really is, but I like telling people that and I never have been questioned, so make of it what you will.
It's funny how prayers are answered through the strangest ways. A few weeks back I was going through something that some people might consider a difficulty and found it hard to be at work, anyway I prayed seeking an answer for this issue and was blessed with the comfort of a 50 year old mexican named Lupe. He started taking me under his wing for some reason and offered me solace and humor that I never expected. I'm way grateful for that blessing.
I have been pretty busy this summer, there are some things that I wish I would have done and others that I'm so glad that I did. It's always great to connect with old friends and seemingly not miss a beat once you've reunited, especially when you thought you would never talk to them again. Some relationships seem to permeate any things or distance that may come between them and make you feel happy just to say you know that person. Sometimes the greatest surprises in my life come from such simple things and make me so happy.

The month that keeps on fooling

So, I just read this rather unsubstantiated article but funny nonetheless. It appears that kids who list Lil Wayne as their favorite artist are the dumbest in the nation. Now I do not list Lil Wayne as my favorite, but he is constantly in my top five rotation. This article lacks some credence though. I think some of Lil Wayne's music is super clever, not all of it of course, but the man's word play definitely takes thought. I think this study is more critical of demographics and the kids who enjoy his music. I do not think that music can make you dumb, but if you are dumb maybe you listen to a certain type of music. That is more what it seems like to me, but I do not know. Anyway, check out the study that has lots of different groups on it. My favorite group is actually near the top of the study, so maybe I'm just half dumb. Study on music Preference!!!

Fooling April

So I spent April Fool's Day up in West Jordan and was fooled in a way that I never thought. So, I was watching tv in my front room and I got a knock on the door. I answered it and was greeted by two little kids from down the street. They seemed really excited and told me that my car was in the middle of the street. I thought they were just yanking my chain, but sure enough I looked and my car was in the middle of the street. Now I live in a circle, so there was no immediate danger, but my car was blocking nearly the entire street. Apparently my clutch popped out and the parking brake couldn't hold the car on the slope so it rolled back into the street. The kids had been playing in my front yard and were freaked out because they saw my car rolling back with no one in it. I was kind of embarrassed, so I ran inside to give these two heroes some reese's peanut butter cups. As I was running out to give them the candy I slipped down my back stairs right in front of the kids. I couldn't do anything right. I gave them the candies though and returned to watch my lfietime original movie. I'm not even kidding, I watched a whole lifetime movie yesterday at home because nothing else was on. Oh well, I sure got fooled.