Bizarre Bradyisms

Summer To-Do List

During this past winter when the weather was bad and I hated being outside because of the cold, I was constantly thinking about all of the activities I wanted to do this summer when the weather was wonderful.  It has almost been a month already since the “summer” (ie not in school) started and want to make sure I get everything done.  Actually, as I come up with ideas and remember ones I had maybe forgotten, I am going to continue to update them here so as to remind myself not to let the time fly by without attempting to make each one happen.  If there are suggestions or additons, I’m always open to ideas and welcome the input. 

• Skydiving
• Utah Valley’s Parade of Homes (Done)
• Camping (Done)
• Ice Blocking (Done)
• Southern Utah (Done)
• Sandy Aquarium
• Timapnogos Cave (Done)
• Purchase something from IKEA (Done)
• Train ride to Colorado
• Mountain Biking
• Hogle Zoo (Done)
• Fly a kite (Done)

You may notice that when I origionally post this entry that Parade of Homes is already crossed out as being completed.  Why? Well, yesterday, from about 12:00 until just before 9:00 in the evening, I was trampsing all over Utah County walking in and out and around of some pretty awseome houses.  There were at total of 31 homes this year and I only missed about 8 of them because I ran out of time.  (Not to shabby for one afternoon.)  On the plus side, I really got to know a large potion of Utah County with which I had not yet been aquainted.  While I had no final destination and I knew beforehand that I would end up back at home, I did spend close to 6 hours in my car and had my own version of a road trip.  It was, in fact, great.  During said trip, I realized something: Utah is not all that bad.  When you get outside of the Provo/Orem area and into what I will call a real suberb (ie diversity exists) and there are children playing in their yard, riding their bikes, setting up a lemonade stands, this bad after-taste I have had in my mouth for the past 2 years quickly disappears.  I’ve mentioned a number of times before that I would never even think about staying in Utah after I finish school, however, I think my determination towards that end is waning.  I won’t go so far as to say I’ve fallen for the Utah culture, but it is growing on me.  Only time will tell. 

So, about the houses.  I think the most expesive one was around $3.3 million, but all of them were pretty cool.  A large majority of them had whole-house automation and a basement level home theater with leather recliners and stadium seating. On a funny note, I was wearing a blue polo shirt that had the NASA logo printed on it, and everytime I walked into one the the houses, without fail, their salespeople were immidiately asking me what I did for NASA, thinking that I was some young stud ready to through down mad money for a house.  My responce was always the same, “Yeah, wear this shirt for them.”  When they realized I was joking and really had no interest in buying, the undeserved respect that was previously granted to me was immidiately revoked with a very humorous facial expression.  You probably had to be there.

–Warning– I about to step up on to the soap-box.  Be advised that the following may be unbearablely ridiculous for all individuals.  Remember, you have been warned.  –End Warning–

I think there are times in our lives where we, as people, introspectively analyze ourselves and accept who we are and who we have become as of late.  Usually, these times are provoked by some recent event that we are trying to deal with and work through.  Afterwards, we leave as stonger people, pumped and primed for all of the crap that life will undeniably and unadvertedly throw at us.  It happened to me once in high school when I realized that I was a nerd and would never completely fit in with the crowd.  It happened to me when I first left home for school.  Yesterday was also one of those days.  It almost appears as though the frequecy of such occurences is getting exponentially larger as time goes by.  Perhaps that has something to do with maturity and simply growing up.

–End soapbox–

I had been asking this one girl out a number of times and honestly enjoyed having a friend I could ask to go places with.  Then one night, I kind of got what I interpreted to be a cold shoulder, waited a few nights, then just to verify the suspicion within myself, I tried asking her to come to the Parade of Homes with me and got turned down. It wasn’t that big of a deal, and I can interpret the hints, but I was a little frustrated knowing that now I’ll have to either find someone else to tag along with me this summer go them alone.  Trying to get someone else to come with me at the last minute almost produced fruits, but, for a lack better “words,” let’s just say work got in the way.  Que será, será.  (What will be, will be).

While venting my frustrations outloud to the world as I drove with the windows down and stereo blasting, I realized a few things that I may have forgotten about myself.  Sometimes I need to remind myself of them, so here I go. 

I am a different type of person.  A different type of guy.  Individually unique.  Wierd.  I enjoy cooking.  I really do.  It is the one artistic outlet that I have where I feel any resemblance of confidence.  When I have time to really prepare a full meal and not have to rush through it because of some other impending commitment, it feels like the world is in the palm of my hands.  I enjoy chick-flicks.  I really do.  They make me laugh, they make me cry, they inspire me.  I don’t like competitive sports.  You may be able to get me to sit down and watch an half and hour of some random game, but if you were to ask me to play a game of soccer or football where points are going to be counted, you can bet my interest will only last for about 15 minutes.  I do enjoy throwing around a frisbee or playing catch, but always just as way to relax and pass the time away.  I can only be interested in one girl at a time.  Even though it may have only been one or two dates, I somehow feel a commitment to that person, even though from her perspective there isn’t and shouldn’t be.  I don’t like to be the center of attention.  I get my kicks out of watching other people feel important and having them lead the group along knowing that participated in making that happen.  I love to work hard a something when I enjoy it and am challenged by it.  If I’m not into it, I can only last about 2 months before I just give up all hope in search of something better.  I don’t like shopping.  Going to a store without a specific purchase in mind is kind of like pulling teeth.  I think I’m a romantic.  I’ve never had much experience in that department, but based off the thoughts I often have and things I’d like to do for/with my future spouce, I belive it fits. 

With all of this in mind, I am not saying that who I am today is who I will be 10 years from now and I can’t change and become a better person, but I am saying that we each have our tendancies that define us and challenge us.  These are a few of mine.  I sure more will pop up and glare their faces at me sometime in the future.

On to something less serious.

I, along with a few other people from my job, had been bugging the owners to get new phones, because the Cricket ones we had were horrible.  About 45 minutes of talk time and if you didn’t charge them everynight, they wouldn’t make it through the next day.  So, they finally broke down and signed up for Sprint phones and I got them to buy me a Motorola Q Smartphone.  It syncs with Outlook over Bluetooth (if you don’t know what that means, just imagine it having some really cool function, lasts about 3-4 days before I have to charge it, and has unlimited mobile internet access.  I’m pretty excited about it.  On the other had, I want to absolutely ensure that I won’t turn into one of the crazy corporate guys that lives or dies by their Blackberry.  Not gonna happen here.  No way.  If the service works out well, I’ll probably cancel my personal phone with Verizon, and forward that number to this phone, saving me close to $45 a month.  Here’s hoping. 

Open Book vs. Closed Book

When I first was hired at my current job, I was really interested with how one of my bosses had gotten to where he was in life.  He was something like 26 and was a part owner in the company.  One day I had a conversation with him and inquired as if I could ask how it had come to be that way.  He stated that he was an “open book” and would be more than happy to share his success story with me, which of course he did.  The interesting part about it all is that about 3 months later, as a part of some general chit-chat between us two, how he had learned that although it is good to be open about things in life, it is almost important to understand personal privacy and know how to respect yourself enough to limit sharing details that are best left out of public knowledge.  Why do I mention this.  I’ve been thing about it recently and I think that over the past 6 months or so, I have been pretty open about who I am and what I am struggling with.  There is nothing wrong with this and I don’t regret having done so at all, however, I think from now on, I am going to try and be a little less specific in publishing my personal information with the world.  Of course I still want to share the generalities of my life with the few (very few) select people in the world who are interested (who knows as to why?), but I think that a something are best left behind the protection of a closed cover.

Somewhat on the same topic, I had a performance review with bosses today concerning a raise I asked about around 4 weeks ago.  It went well.  At the time, I initially requested a 6.5% raise but there were a few things that I needed to adjust before they would be willing to give to me.  Then this morning, they said they were really happy with how things had been going and gave me a 10% raise with the possiblity of an additional rise in a few months depending on a few factors.  Not to brag, but a compliment one of them gave me was that they have been really surprised at how much I have changed in the 7 months I have worked there and that from their perspective, I appear to be really driven in my attempts to improve myself, my technical knowledge, and my relationship skills.  It is always hard to analyze yourself, so hearing things like that are always a good morale booster.

Now that that is out my system, a few updates.  About 2 weeks ago, on the same day as the previously mentioned car wash, Kyle and I went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of PVC pipe to construct a large outdoor projection screen to be able to show our frequent movie nights outdoors.  Overall it cost, ~$25 total for all of the parts (plus I bought a PVC cutter) for a large frame on which to mount the screen.  In fact the screen is two twin size bed sheets sewn together, so if I remember correctly it is about the size of, well, let’s just call it big.  Excited about our success, we had our first movie of the summer out on our little patio and watched Pursuit of Happyness.  It was great. 

On the most recent Saturday, a few of us went up to a friends and family preview of a brand new store called IKEA in Draper.  It is a home-furnishings-esque place and although the company has been around for awhile (based in Sweden), this is the first one in the midwest part of the country.  My thoughts about it:  It was great.  In fact, I think it has surpassed my previously favorite store (Linnens ‘N Things) to take the #1 spot on my list.  They design and sell all of their own products, keeping prices low, and have a number of other great ideas that keep things interesting.  Then even have a pretty good restaurant in the store where you sit down and use the same type of furniture that they sell in the store.  Overall, I think I will be making more frequent visits there, even though my purchases will close to non-existant.

The dinner groups that our apartment hosts on a bi-weekly schedule are going well.  This past Sunday I cooked some parmesan chicken as the main dish with a whole bunch of other side items.  I actually attempted to whip out a copy of Chili’s Awesome Blossom and what not a complete failure (I couldn’t get the breaded covering down into the middle of the chopped onion), the associate oil fire that occured not once, but twice, really added to the excitement in the kitchen.  PS – Cleaning the kitchen after something like that is not fun. (Thanks for your help Kyle!).

After dinner, we cleared the table and had poker night.  Recently Josh, Kyle, and I had been playing Texas Hold ‘Em with pennys that limited how crazy the game could get.  So, I succommed to the urge and bought a set of poker chips which turned out to be really nice and that night was first time we got around to using them.  Now, please understand, although it was Sunday, no real money was used and it was just for fun.  I held out for bit but eventually lost it all and the game came down to my date (Hilary) and Josh’s brother in law (Dustin) who were pretty evenly matched.  They decided to go all in without even checking their hand, and by luck, Dustin took it all.  I think we are going to try and figure out a way to host a weekly poker night for anybody who wanted to participate.  Who knows.

  

My Dad came over from Colorado at the end of last week to visit a specialty doctor here in Provo that came highly recommended from my Aunt.  I spent some time with him on Thursday and Friday which was great and he found out that he is allergic to cats (there are four of them living in their house right now!) and a number of other things were out of wack for him.  I sure it was nice to finally have some validation after having gone months of feeling horrible and having everyone say that he was fine.  Hopefully with time, he can get better.

A pretty major decsion has presented itself to me recently based on how I am doing with school (which is not great) and altough I am still thinking it out in my head, I am leaning towards doing something similar to the following:  Take a 6 month break from attending normal day classes and instead focus on individual classes offered through independent study until Winter Semester comes along.  This way I can go as fast or as slow as I want, and still not drastically affect my graduation plans.  During this time, I am thinking about taking out a student loan to finance purchasing a fair amount of Cisco gear to allow me to focus on studying for my next certifications here at home and maybe finish those my December.  The only problem is that it is around 10-15-20k total and I would eventually be able to turn around and sell them for ~75% of their value when I was done, I don’t know how real of a possbility that possibility is.  I’ve mentioned this to a few people I know and while their initial reactions are that of “You’re crazy,” the more I think about it, the more I like it because I love doing that type of work.  I suppose you could even call it my passion. 

To finish it all up, tonight, a few us went and saw Celtic Women live at the East Center in West Valley here in Utah.  Josh was the one who got us all hooked on them about a year ago so when we learned they were coming, we decided to make sure we saw them.  Their songs are fun and the singers look like they really enjoy what they do by how they interact with each other and the audience.  I suppose any performer is going to do that, but it appeared to be just that much more for these ladies.  Although the seats were not fantastic (nor cheap) and we wish that they would have used a projection screen somewhere so we could see their faces, it was an evening well spent.  I asked Hilary to come with me and I enjoyed having her there with me.  Even though the others in the group bought their tickets seperately, we all ended up sitting really close to each other.  I think it has been about 5 years since I attended a concert like that that was not on the BYU campus and I believe that I like them.  I’ll have to find a way to get out a bit more. 

 –And that is the end of our broadcast day–

Introducing Gwen, Chloe, and Lola

Next to my apartment, there is a Tesoro gas station that recently went out of buisness.  The interesting part is that it closed its doors about 2 weeks ago right before gas prices jumped really high ($3.15 is just ridiculous) and so the sign still shows the older prices.  As people drive by, they see the great deals, drive in, notice each pump says out of service, drive up to the store window and see the closed sign and then drive off in an upset furry.  Quite funny to watch actually.  Wanting to wash his car, Kyle suggested that we each (him, Josh, and I) each take our cars under the now abandoned roof of the gas station and we all clean our cars.  So we did.  We “borrowed” their old hose, hooked it up to the apartment faucet, drug it half-way across the parking lot, and gave them a good scrub down.  At the end, they each looked absolutely marvelous.  And to add to the confusion, with us being there at the service station, even more people drove through hoping to score cheap gas only to ultimately fail.  Mass pandimonium it was. 

In case you are wondering Gwen (Mine), Lola (Josh’s), and Chloe (Kyle’s) are the name of our cars, kind of like a female Three Musketeer thing.

Ode To The Otter Pop

We have what was once a large, but now diminishing, stockpile of Otter Pops in our apartment freezer.  After arriving home from work, I often make numerous short trips across the large expanse of the kitchen and somehow find myself reaching into the cold unknown only locate and grasp that which has indeed become such a meaningful part of my evening routine.  I enjoy them so much, I thought I would write an ode.  Here it goes.

Hi, my name is Brady and I’m a…

Now don’t get all concerned and I think I’ve joined AA, because I haven’t.  However, if it doesn’t already exist, I am thinking of starting something called KTA, (kitchen tools anonymous) because I am addicted.  Yes, you heard me right, I can’t seem to get enough of them and my latest falter was for some flatware.  After not having matching utensils for my recent dinner party and knowing that they would continue to occur frequently, when Amazon had a sale, I jumped in head first and purchased a sparkling, new, 100 piece 18/10 flatware set.  I was so proud of them, I even laid them out on the table and took a picture. 

School is out for good (lucky me!), but on the last day of finals I started coming down with a cold that lasted for the next 4 or 5 days.  I am also glad that it occured after the semester was done and I really haven’t been sick at all recently so I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later, but still, it is never much fun.  Anyways, I’m over it and life is alright.  In fact, it is fantastic.  Thursday night after Kyle finsihed moving in, he threw a low-key graduation party/barbeque for himself and invited a number of friends over.  I really liked just having people over and seeing them smile and interact with each other.  Due to the bright and beautiful summer weather we have been having here in Provo recently, my roommates and I all heeded the call of the season and left church early on Sunday to go enjoy a each other’s company at a nearby park.  A minimalistic picnic was involved and I even got extremely wet while “playing” in a large fountain that was there as well.  

When my previous roommate Chris moved out, he left a number of pots and planters that I ended up buying from him because he did not want to take them to Texas.  So, I cleaned them all out, mixed in some new soil, and planted some flowers.  I’ve been watering them every night for about a week and just recently, I’ve noticed some mini plants popping up in their search for sunlight.  It is really exciting.  I don’t remember exactly what seeds I bought, but I’m expecting some wildflowers, sunflowers, and this other fairly tall (~5′) red flower to grow.

I have heard it said that there is only one thing constant in this world: change.  I would like to expand on that thought and claim that there are in fact two things: change and my mother.  Let me explain.  Last week I explained here that I was trying to get over being a little depressed and was struggling with life overall.  Lo and behold, a few days after as I was talking with my parents, my mom mentioned that she read what I had written and was a little concerned.  I’ve always know that I am a task-oriented person instead of a relationship type of person, and while good in some ways, it is a hold-back as well.  I do what ever is takes to get something accomplished and I appear to be somewhat of a “cold” person on the surface.  This is especially obvious when it comes to girls.  It takes me months of at least knowing someone before I feel like asking them out, and while I am not really in a rush, it doesn’t help me on the dating scene.  So, Mom and I talked for quite awhile about other things and suggestions she had for how I could choose to make my life better.  What was shared was not anything new or astonishing, however, I enjoyed it and I appreciated that wisdom and insight that she shared. In short, she told me to stop caring about what others thought or about how they might judge me and to instead start caring about others and helping them instead.  For example, when I’m in a situation where I feel at all unfcomfortable, I am supposed to ask someone I’m with questions about themselves.  I’ve thought about bit and I am actually trying it.  So, even though Mother’s Day is still a week or so away, I would just like to state how great mothers are, especially mine.

Continuing with that same train of thought, our common group of friends went out to dinner at Mimi’s again and instead of ordering something specific, I asked the waiter to surprise me with something.  She was a little taken back, but in the end, agreed.  I ended up with a shimp pasta bowl that was really good.  I tried asking questions about people, and I liked learning about what inspires people and makes them tick.  Also, when I was signing my receipt for the bill, I wrote a note to the cute waitress we had asking her on a date, and telling her to call my number if she was interested.  Honestly, I’m not expecting anything to come of it, but if it ever does, great.  Also, my boss bought tickets for everyone to see Spiderman 3 on Saturday and because I’m the only one who is either not married or engaged, I recently asked someone I’ve known of for awhile to come with me.  Don’t know if it’ll happen, but I’m trying, and I’m not really worried about what will or will not happen.

(The following is sung to a commonly known LDS Church Children’s Song)

[?] Oh what do you do in the summertime, [?]
[?] When all the world is green … [?]
[?] Do you drink lemonade? [?]
[?] Or sit in the shade? [?]
[?] Or lay in your newly purchased hammock and watch as the clouds go by? [?]
[?] Is that what you do? [?]
[?] So do I! [?]

In short, I bought a new hammock to waste away my summer evenings in.

And in closing, today I went up Salt Lake to work with a couple of my clients, and becuase I finished up early with one of them, I decided to get kick it for awhile up there in city and strolled through Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, and Linens and Things (they finally built one in Utah, yesssss) for a hour or so and then went to visit my Aunt Sherie at her work for a little bit.  It was so relaxing in a way I can’t explain, but while walking around I realized that life it not merely a destination, and instead of trying to push myself so hard and so fast to get where I think I need to be, I should just slow down and enjoy the scenery.  Seems obvious, I know, but never too late to do something about it, right?