Bizarre Bradyisms

Shopping

So there was this sale this past week at JC Penny’s and being the type of person that has a hard time spending much more than $20 on a single article of clothing, I took advantage of the opportunity.  Knowing I would need to dress up for work each day, most of my purchases involved dress shirts, slacks, and ties.  I did, however, buy some new jeans, more casual shirts, and some sweaters.  Who cares, right?  There is a funny story behind all this that I have to share.  After having spent around an hour and a half in the store, I went to go buy everything and my debit card was promptly denied.  I later found out that it was because they noticed a lot of charges coming from Colorado and put a stop to it because I hadn’t at that point updated my mailing address.  Back to the story, I didn’t have a phone on me to call the bank and ask why, so, being a little desperate, I looked around and saw the advertisement for a JC Penny credit card and asked to apply.  The guy in the store, his name was Monolito, asked for some basic information and 30 seconds later I was approved and was able to leave the story with everything in hand with a 10% discount on everything for having applied.

The thing I find humorous is that for all the store knows, my card could have been denied because I didn’t pay my bills, but they didn’t even care, and gave me a credit account to use at their store no questions asked.  Oh well.  No harm done.

Here are my purchases, judge me if you’d like, and tell me how I did.

 

Babies, Fires, and the Rain

There are a few things in this world that can capture and retain my attention for long periods of time.  Let me explain.

I think I spent, in total, over two hours this afternoon outside playing with my niece, Kambria.  There was nothing out of the ordinary or unique about it.  I simply took time walking beside her as she conquered the uneven stones of the front sidewalk, holding her hand as she trampsed through the bushes, showing her the sound a dead leaf makes, pushing her in the swing, but most of all, I just watched her.  And it captivated me.  So I began to think.  Why is it that I can enjoy watching a little baby girl interact with her surroundings so much so that I don’t even realize how much time has passed?  I don’t know the answer.

Similarly, I can stare into a fire and watch the randomness that occurs without even giving thought to everything else that is occurring all around me.  I love that.  The same thing happens with the rain.   I have come to remember how much I love watching the rain here in Colorado.  It is so clean and refreshing and magnificent.  In fact, the rain is like tears in my eyes.  It doesn’t occur very often, but when it does, that means something special just happened. 

Anyways, for those who have read the book or seen the movie “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” I think that answer to ”Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” isn’t really “42,” but is instead, “Babies, Fires, and the Rain.”

Living It Up

I made it through my first week of work without incident (as if I was expecting something bad to happen).  As with just about any other job I had, most of my time was spent sitting doing close to nothing because those responsible for me were too busy with other issues.  So, I tried to do all I could by shadowing some of the other employees for a while, reading up on as much documentation as I could, and then finally, towards the end of the week, doing some official training.  I spent about 2 hours in a one on one with the HR lady explaining to me all of the benefits that come with the job and going through all of the paperwork.  All I can say is “Wow!”  I have to choose a health plan, dental plan, vision plan, and pick a beneficiary for my life insurance.  It was really weird when she was talking about the accidental dismemberment part of the life insurance.  I had never really talked about my potential death so openly before.  Finally, I have to figure out my 401k plans because it became apparent to me (Thanks Dad) that being as young as I am and having no real bills puts me in a horrible tax bracket where the IRS is going to rape my paycheck unless I figure something out.  I suppose this is just as good a time as any other to start planning for retirement.

In other news, there was a Young Single Adult conference this weekend where the singles from 25 stakes got together to participate in the event.  I was told that people came from as far away as Laramie, Wyoming and Pueblo, Colorado.  If you ask me, that is a long way to travel (two or three or more hours) for an event like this, but hey, you do what you gotta do.  I, however, live only 5 minutes away from where it took place, so whenever people asked me where I was from, I simply pointed and told them I lived on the other side of hill. 

Anyways, on Friday night there was a concert from Kirby Heyborne, who is known for his parts in a number of LDS films such as The RM, The Best Two Years, Saints and Soldiers, as well as others.  To be honest, I didn’t even know he played music at all, so when I was told he would be performing, I was a little skeptical.  I soon found out that he is actually quite good and even has two or three solo albums out already.  Being the prepared person that I am, I was ready with my camera and took a few stills and video shots (see additional links below) of him.

Then on Saturday, everyone got back together and helped with a service project where we assembled and packaged hygiene kits for the Denver Rescue Mission.  The church donated some $15,000 and using that we all put together Ziploc bags with soap, a comb, toothbrush and toothpase, and a little insiprational card for each individual.  I think in the end there were a total of 11,000 packages ready to be delivered.  It was good and I met some pretty great people.  On a side note, I did get sunburned pretty badly, so I am looking pretty red just now and wearing a tie to church today was rough, but, this too shall pass and maybe I will learn for next time.  Don’t bet on it though.

  

I still haven’t decided what singles ward I am going to be attending here in Colorado.  Technically, I am supposed to be assigned to what is called the “Belleview” ward because that is what corresponds to where I live here with my parents.  I am a little reluctant to do so because it seems to not have a lot of people there and those that do attend are really young and hard to relate to.  The people I met at the event yesterday were from the “Mayberry” (?) ward that corresponds to the area where I have been driving to work each day and my thought is that perhaps in a month or so I may start looking and finding a place to live in that area because as much as I love being with my family, it is hard to have a social life living there with them.  Who knows what I will end up doing, but whenever they ask me to transfer my church records to the ward I belong, I simply tell them I am “ward shopping.”  On the plus side, I don’t have any callings and I don’t have extremely persistent home teachers coming after me.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Well, it is Friday and I have had a tough decision to make.

I have had multiple job interviews this week, and each one has ended with a job offer. Some of them have been quite impressive too. In fact, on Tuesday, I walked into a place expecting to take a short 15 minute technical quiz. Instead, I ended up staying for 3 hours doing an interview and walked out with a formal, written offer in my hands. According to the recruiter I was working with, that company (ViaWest) is usually very specific about its new hires and have turned away some “exceptional” people. That made me feel find of special.

During the course of the next few days, I had been calling and speaking with another recruiter about a position with Frontier Airlines.  Although I never had an actual interview because it was taking too long to get that arranged, it seemed like a really good opportunity with some awesome (think about it) benefits.  Oh well.

A few other interviews I had were alright, but they couldn’t pay me as much as I wanted. But, another job offer I had that captured my interest was with a company called Polycom, who does voice and video conferencing. I spoke with the hiring manager and told him I already had a pretty good offer on the table and would most likely be accepting it. He asked me to just wait a day, come and meet him and meet his current employees. So I did. I interviewed with around 5 different people over around 3+ hours, they fed me and made everything real pleasant. In the end, the manager said he would like to pursue the job offer with me, but that the HR processes would take a few days. I told him I would think about it and call him later in the day. Eventually, I called and turned down the offer, because it was a little further driving than I would like, but I got the following voicemail from him in return.

So, now, I start my new job on Monday morning in downtown Denver at 9:00 am. Not too bad for only being home for a week.

The Long, Long Road

I got really tired of sleeping on the couch at my old apartment so Sunday night I called up my Grandma and asked if I could crash at her house for the next little bit until I got everything figured out.  She of course said yes, so on Monday, I packed up the few things left I had at the apartment into my car, dropped them off there in Salt Lake and then did some work up in the city.  I still hadn’t made up my mind at that point what my plans were going to be and was just overall worn out.  Kyle called on Monday or Tuesday and said he had found a place for sure and then asked if I wanted in, but the moment he asked that, I decided to go home to Colorado.  It was a weird split-second decision and I’m not sure exactly why I said it, but I’m sure it was for a good reason.  So, after hanging up the phone with him I realized that my life had just drastically changed directions and I had some serious planning to do.  Talk about feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders.  Yeah, one step at a time.

So, I spent the next two weeks at my Grandma’s house and really enjoyed spending my time there with her and my aunt Sherie.  Some nights we had some fun in the the kitchen, other nights we did absolutely nothing, and still other nights we enjoyeda good movie or a TV show.  I even got to see them moving the lawn as a pair with the mower and weed-whacker.

Knowing I would need a job when I got home, I started scouring Internet job postings such as Monster and Craigslist.  I think that I ended up sending out close to 100 resumes or so and got call backs on about 10 of those, which I consider to be a great success.  My the time I was set to head out on the road to Colorado, I had in-person interviews scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Not too shabby if you ask me.

Earlier that week, my aunt Sherie asked me if I would be willing to go on a blind date with a niece of her friends who had just graduated from High School last June and was trying to get her old boyfriend who, from what I was told, had no self ambition.  I said sure, gave her (Sarah) a call and made plans to see this play called “Spamlet” at the Desert Star Theatre in Salt Lake).  She was only 18, but was quite mature for her age, and made the evening quite pleasant.  The play was just a rip on Hamlet and used a few crude jokes here and there, but overall, was quite enjoyable. 

Then, on Labor Day, I took Grandma and Sherie out for lunch at some sports bar / restaurant and then talked them into seeing the new movie
Ratatouille (Grandma initially didn’t want to see anything that had to do with rats).  It was a great time and we all enjoyed the movie.  Later, I met up with Kyle, Josh, Mike, and others at IKEA as they were beginning to furnish the house they moved into and later drove down with them to see their place.  It was a smaller, old house that had been retro-fitted when electricity came around (i.e. no grounded outlets).  They had already starting painting some of the rooms and while it was rough looking when I saw it, I know that they would all make it a great place to be at.  I helped Kyle tape his room off for his additional painting and then said goodbye to everyone (Josh, Christine, and Lynette) as they all left to go out for dinner.  It will be sad to not see them anymore, but I’m sure we will keep in touch every now and then.

One day, while back down in Provo I bought a shake at the local malt shop and then went up to the BYU campus to have my one last walk around and remember all of the good memories I had during my 2.5 years there.  I went into the bookstore, the library, walked around various pathways and landscaped areas, tried to get inside of the new Alumni building only to just see it from the outside, and I even climbed down into the “special tunnels” of BYU as they were open due to the business school’s construction going on.  A lot of thoughts and questions came and went during that time period.  I knew I had somehow made the right decision.

My parents arrived the next week on Friday night.  On Saturday morning we started packing everything in the trailer they brought.  I think it only took about 2 hours to get everything in and ready. I actually filled the entire trailer (5 ft x 10 ft), almost all of the SUV my parents brought, and all of my car as well.  My mom wanted to the new IKEA store while she was there in Utah.  We met up with my mom’s sister and her husband who were in the middle of moving from Heber to Pleasant Grove and spent close to 3 hours walking through that huge but glorious building.  We then went and saw their new house.  It was beautiful house sitting on something like 1.25 acres of land, which is quite big for being so close to the main part of the city as they were.  They even had a few hidden closets / rooms / walkways behind bookshelves which I thought was exceptionally neat.  All I can say it that I want that in my house some day.

Sunday night we got up early and left at around 7:00 in the morning.  I drove behind my Mom and Dad who had to set the pace with their car due to the added weight.  When going up the hills and mountains, we could only go as fast as 40-50 miles an hour.  No matter hard you pushed the gas pedal, even on a straight way, I could’t get it much past 70.  I say this all only because that explains why it took us 11 hours when normally it only took 8 or 9.  We traded off between my Dad and I driver the SUV and trailer, so he could rest a bit and so I could get some experience driving with such a big load.  It was fun and I got spend some time just talking to my Dad which hadn’t happened for a long time.  We arrived to see my older brother Nelson and his wife there with Hayden along with Eliza and Bryan with Kambria.  Although I didn’t see it at first, they made me this poster and had it hanging by the dinner table.  Good to know you are loved.  (Thanks Bryan and Eliza.)