Video Time-Who's Next??

So one of my first posts was about my incredible Arm Wrestling talent...or lack thereof. I had completely forgotten that video footage was taken of one of my "bouts" (is it a bout or a match? either way, I should have brought my punch card because I got worked like a part time job).

Anyway, I was taking some video of Blake at WalMart today and I found it as I looked at the other videos on my phone.

A couple things about this video.... first: Diana is really strong, she's not the bragging type, so maybe most of you don't know this...but she's got a lot of power in those shoulders/biceps/wrists/whatever muscle you use to arm wrestle
second: you really gotta pay attention from the beginning because I lose the right handed battle in the first 5 seconds. third: you may ask yourself after viewing this video why I chose to post it on my own blog, especially a blog that was created to show how awesomely manly I am.... well the answer is simple. While I am awesomely manly, I am also something of an idiot.

did you notice that my neck muscles had to tighten just to win that second match?? some people put their backs into it, but me... I put my whole body behind my endeavors.

Random Posts

Ok, so two years ago, while I was working one summer night at the Hotel, it was incredibly slow. So I just started writing various ridiculous stories/deep thoughts.

So I thought I'd post a few. Most are unfinished, but at least it's a start. Did I mention they're completely ridiculous? Also, there are probably more than a few grammatical errors, hanging participles and the like.

I need a Cork Screw, a Cabage Patch Kid, and a Microwave

“I NEED A CORK SCREW, A CABBAGE PATCH KID, AND A MICROWAVE!!!”

What a day it had been. You know those days when the moment you wake up, you know you should strongly consider staying in bed the rest of the day. Not because you are sick, or need more rest, or even because you hate the agenda of the day so much you would rather slit your wrists and do pushups in hot water…no…no, the main reason for your considering staying in bed is that from the moment your eyes slowly flickered open, you knew that the fates would align against you that day. Some one, some thing, some idea, was going to get you. You couldn’t explain it, but you knew it was going to be.

Like the man who walks the beach every morning throwing starfish back into the ocean. Hundreds lie before him, scattered across the sandy shoreline. Every day people line the beachhead, watching him save starfish after starfish, applauding his every toss. Then one morning, as he was throwing one particular starfish back to its briny home, a crab lunged out of the sand and clawed him on his pinky toe. Then a jelly fish did a gainer right out of the ocean and marooned itself on his lower neck region, which was an incredible degree of difficulty for the jelly fish, but also an incredible degree of pain for our friend the starfish rescuer.

So as the fateful story of the starfish guy races through your mind, you ponder the ramifications of your decision to stay in bed. After weighing the pro’s and con’s of missing a day of class versus what you expect to be a day from Satan’s underbelly; even going so far as to pull the abacus from beneath your bed, to get a logical and mathematical equation as to the odds you make it safely home again that night without so much as a hint of Murphy’s Law taking place. Once fully satisfied that your life will be miserable for the next 24 hours, but still not in the mood to upset your parents by failing to get to class, you put on your favorite pair of ski pants and Van Halen tee-shirt and walk triumphantly out the front door.

On the way to school you pass Mrs. Wrigley sawing her husbands riding lawn mower in half. While this strikes you as strange because Mrs. Wrigley doesn’t like the smell of 2 stroke motor oil, you’re mind doesn’t reflect too long before moving to the picture of Mr. Wrigley sitting on his grandson’s tricycle, licking a cube of butter, watching his wife go to town on his mower. Memories of your prior decision to not stay in bed are beginning to creep back into your mind, though not for long as the bus is approaching and you have to prepare yourself for which seat you will get. It is a widely known fact that for kids in school, “school bus seating” is as much a rite of passage as a “sweet sixteen” or bagging your first Trout on the River Kwai.

As you board the bus your eyes dart from seat to seat as if you’re looking for Waldo in one of his ill-fated locater books (my point is this: why does he always lose himself in overly crowded places, if all he wants is to be found. He should just go hang out at the Circle K like any other self respectable man). Finally you come to your throne-your champs elysees-your diamond in the rough- your ‘never-caught-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-if-you-sit-here’…chair. You all know where this most coveted seat is: 3rd from the back, on the right side…window seat. Just when you were certain getting up today was a mistake, the clouds part and sun shines down on you in all its effervescent glory.

Suddenly you think you’ve beaten the omen. That nothing could go wrong the rest of the day because you found “the seat”. Kids might go through their entire 8-12th grade without experiencing “the seat” and yet, here you are, lounging in comfort like the Sultan resting atop a pillowed pacaderm. The world was suddenly your oyster, and you intended to “dig it”. Even a tune made its way into your head, and you began to whistle some of your favorite “golden oldies”.

This euphoria didn’t last long however. The moment you step off the bus a snowball full of what can only be assumed was cat urine splashes across your face. It’s at this moment you begin to question the dame known as Karma. You knew it was going to be an awful day-all the signs pointed to such, and as a result, you were prepared for every rotten occurrence that may come about. But then Karma plays a nasty trick. She gives you hope. She lets you find the perfect seat on the bus, but doesn’t tell you that you’re sitting first class on a one way trip to Crap Town: population: you! You see, riding in “the seat” makes you soft. It makes you think you grew up licking the proverbial silver spoon. As a result you let your guard down. Had you instead sat in the worst possible seat (two rows behind the bus driver, so their mirror is such perfect position, that no matter how you tried to maneuver away from their glances, they could see you with such detail that they even knew how many cavities you had. Had you sat there, you would have had in no doubt the worse ride to school ever, but at least then your mind would have been sharp! You would have known to shoulder roll out of the bus and bolt for the classroom.

But Karma tapped you on the shoulder this particular day, and for better or worse, you found the perfect seat, only to be rewarded with pee soaked snow all over your face. Not one to overly dwell in Eyeore-esque despair, you wipe your face off with your new mitten, and head to class. First thing on Home Room agenda: lice exam. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the conscious pursuit of a healthy classroom, but I think school nurses just like to tick kids off, and this is their quarterly chance to do it.

To Be Continued…

I Told You So...

You know when your mom tells you not to lick a frozen pole because it will get stuck? Then your friends dare you by saying they’ll give you a dollar, and hey, what kid doesn’t need a dollar? So you end up licking it, getting stuck, and calling your mom through a muffled and embarrassing scream. Three cups of warm water and a thousand taste buds later, your mom calmly says to you “I told you so!” Those ‘I told you so’ moments are so precious aren’t they? I mean, what kid on earth hasn’t heard the ‘I told you so’ saying at least a million times from their parents?

Well, having established that we’ve all had the ‘I told you so’ drill, but have you ever experienced the ‘I told myself so’ story? Yes, I feel this happens at the moment when we are no longer dependents of our parents, thus we don’t have them telling us right from wrong, however we are old enough that oftentimes our minds have already gone through the ‘is this going to work’ process, and having come to the conclusion that this is not a good idea at all, we proceed to “lick the frozen pole”.

This very thing has happened to me on a number of occasions. There was one time when I was snorkeling off the coast of Kauai when I saw a vehicle that resembled a small submarine. Now comes the thought process: for what seemed like an eternity I waged battle with my subconscious about the pro’s and con’s of exploring this small submarine. In the end my mind said no, don’t do it. So of course that left me no option but to go and take a look. Upon reaching the outer shell of this strange sea vessel, I realized that it wasn’t a submarine at all, but a giant cucumber! As you can imagine, I was quite disturbed at the thought of a giant cucumber floating through the Pacific Ocean!

The origin of this cucumber is neither known nor important, suffice it to say that you could easily make quite a bit of cucumber salad with this sucker (mmm, cucumber salad with a little bit of vinegar, that would be great, especially with a nice BLT sandwich where the bacon is nice and crisp, and the tomato is so moist! Perfecto!). Upon examination of said cucumber, I found it had several electronic panels on it, with many random buttons and triggers. Once again the battle waged inside my head to touch the buttons, to not touch the buttons, and once again my mind said definitely not. So I of course began pressing buttons with such fever that I thought I was playing Wack-a-Mole at the fair! This was thoroughly exhilarating, as it took me back to a simpler time on the farm in Athens, GA.

My brothers and I (there were 16 in all) used to play a game where we would throw M80’s down the rabbit hole and see them come scramming up the other side. Then one time we decided to do it in a port-o-john only the fuse didn’t burn down as quick, and right when we ran out to wait for the explosion my uncle frank walked in to “read the funnies” as he liked to call it. Well let’s just say that he didn’t even get “the paper open” before that M80 put a scare into him like the Manager of an all you can eat buffet seeing my aunt petunia walking in for “Bingo Night”.

Where was I? Oh yeah: cucumber, buttons, wack-a-mole, aunt Petunia (ever wonder how one of your story’s end up being about something completely different then what you originally wanted?)
Anyway, so this cucumber begins to shake in the water, and I begin to ask myself two questions. First, why am I still in the water? I hate it when I get pruney! Secondly, I’m thinking: This shaking can not be a good sign!

And it wasn’t, so basically what had happened, is that my aunt Petunia and my uncle Frank wanted to get back at me for all the stuff I did to them, and so they launched this giant cucumber from Georgia, directing it where to go via this satellite, and they, knowing that I loved to push shiny buttons, programmed the cucumber to explode just as I was gleefully pressing the knobs and triggers.
Long story short, I knew I shouldn’t approach the cucumber, I knew I shouldn’t press the buttons, but I did anyway, and what did it get me? A whole lot of cucumber right in the schnozz. Lesson Learned: I told myself so!

Lottery=Muffins

Winning the Lottery is like eating a nice batch of assorted muffins from Costco. Before you even rip off the shrink-wrap, your mind is already processing the thousands of variations which to eat the muffins. Blueberry, Poppy seed, then the Double Chocolate Chip. No…wait….Blueberry, Double Chocolate Chip, then the gross banana nut with pecans on them, followed by a great poppy seed to make up for the nasty one previous… no…Cut up 4 different muffins into quarters, then take a quarter from each, mash it together and eat it like an apple! Yeah, that's it! An apple shaped-mashed muffin of ecstasy!!! And that’s kind of what the lottery is like.

I Love the Masters!!

I had Blake yesterday, and he is still getting over his Shingles, so it was mostly an "inside day". His medicine makes him rather drowsy, so he spent a lot of the afternoon in and out of consciousness. The one good thing is that it was the first round of the Masters. I look forward to this weekend every year! The first round this year did not disappoint either! How about Freddie Couples?? amazing. I would love for He, Tom Watson, and Tiger to be in the final pairing on Sunday. Fred and Tiger played a couple practice rounds together and are friends, and Tom was fairly critical of Tiger over the past several months, so it would be interesting to see them go head to head down the last nine.... I'm working the rest of the weekend, so my DVR is going to have a lot of golf on it!

remember when: topic continued...

I think, had we been just a little more business minded back in high school, we could have made a killing on creating and distributing "daydreaming mix cds". maybe titled "NOW that's what I call Daydreaming: soft jams you can really get your nap on to!" Missed an opportunity there. There seem to be certain artists that just exude "trips down memory lane" type songs. Several have been mentioned. Lifehouse is a huge one- so many great songs on what was it, their 2nd album?! When I replay my own personal video yearbook in my mind, Lifehouse is on the soundtrack several times.
I can't possibly talk about music-related memories without mentioning the King of Pop! I don't know how many people we had in Brad's car (the Nissan was it?), but it was packed, we put on "Black and White" and turned it up as high as it would go-all the windows rolled down. I'm sure we were heading somewhere, but for some reason my memory just has us circling the high school parking lot for the duration of the song. Then there's the Soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou- doing the El Guapo dance, while "Man of Constant Sorrow" filled the Senior Hallway....(we were so cool)
and then there's sweet sweet Journey. I can not for the life of me name another song that was on the Senior Prom Theme ballot. Was there ever any doubt Faithfully would be the one? Does anyone remember after it was announced, how excited Knowland was? I walked into the Seminary building and he was telling a group of Sophomores how that was his Prom Theme Song! You could see the joy on his face as he thought back... Hows that for a two-fer? Journey brings back memories of other people's memories! crazy good
Finally, how great was Dave's Bed?? It was the perfect canvas for our daydreaming scenery. Many of my fondest high school memories took place on that bed. That statement must sound very strange to outsiders, but that's just because you haven't had the blessed occasion to rest your proverbial laurels on that mattress and just veg out on some spectacular tunes! It was Euphoric.
Now if you excuse me, I'm going to pull out my yearbooks and put on some James Taylor~

Remember When...

So does anyone else have those moments when, you're driving in the car, or alone by yourself somewhere and something reminds you of a moment in your past? It happens to me all the time. Music especially brings flashbacks. For instance, tonight I was driving up to Scottsdale for a basketball game, and turned the AM sports radio show I was listening to, to FM to get a little energy for the game. Halo by Beyonce was on (one of my favorites, but that's another story). After Halo, I switched the station and Creed's "Higher" came on. I just started laughing out loud because I think of two things when I hear Creed. First is Scott Hall, he loved Creed (and may still, I haven't spoken to him in awhile). Second is a state soccer game against Mountain View. We had some student assistant coach from BYU, and on the bus ride up, he was trying to get us pumped up, so he gathered the Varsity in the back of the bus, pulled out a portable boom box, and said "Guys, for today's game, I want you all to go Higher" and he pressed play. But he had the wrong track on and "with arms wide open" came on instead. As I drove up to Scottsdale, I was laughing out loud at the pure spectacle of this guy trying to pump up a bunch of high school kids, and failing miserably as he turned on a slower song about nostalgia and fatherly responsibilities....HaHa! Priceless. We lost to Mtn. View, I wonder if it's because we didn't "go higher"? I think the only person pumped up by his speech was Scott! :) Such good times.

I mean, of all the songs people use for pregame music, I don't think Creed is ever on the play list. Period. Ahh, so funny....

Blake is incredible

Blake will be 21 months next week!?!? It's crazy that 2 years is fast approaching. I took him to the zoo last week. I wasn't sure how he'd like it. Dalisa had taken him a few months ago, and he wasn't too into it. But this time, he was all about it! He was mostly into the squirrels and birds eating zoo snacks that had fallen by the wayside, even more so than the exotic animals behind the various fences. But the pure joy in his face melted my heart!

He loves to come grab my hand and show me things. The other day, he was playing with his basketball hoop, and he came and grabbed my hand while I was sitting on the couch (3 feet away from the basketball hoop), and led me over to where he was dunking the ball, just so I could get a better view of his accomplishment :)

But I digress, back to the zoo (I jump at any chance I get to speak of his athletic prowess :) ... Blake loves Ducks. He and Dalisa sometimes go to feed the ducks by her house...we didn't have bread, but I had several ritz crackers. I gave Blake one to eat, and when he saw some other kids feeding the ducks, he threw in the remainder of his cracker, which brought more ducks over.

I gave him another cracker, which he took a bite of, and then proceeded again to throw the remainder in the water. He was very happy to share his crackers with the ducks.

After the Zoo, we decided to go up to Desert Ridge (Another JW Marriott Resort in the Valley). They have a sweet lazy river, and also a Nickelodeon kids program. Spongebob and Dora make appearances in the lobby each afternoon. We had an in, since my friend's girlfriend works in the Nick Kids program. So we went and swam for a little while (Blake looks total "surfer chic" but isn't really into the swimming thing yet. We're working on it though).

We went around the lazy river once, stopping for a brief time to watch the Nick Crew put pie in some guests' faces. I took Blake out of the tube, and tried to get him to swim a little bit. He wasn't having any of it. So I set him on the step of the pool, water going up to his waist. He took a few steps forward, stepped off the step and dunked himself in the water. He did not like this experience at all. I took him back around to our chairs, and after a few minutes of recovery asked if he wanted to go in again.

He didn't answer, but the look on his face gave a sort of "do i look like I want to go in the water?? If I want to get wet again, I'll get in myself, but until then, I'm good right here..."

We went inside to see Spongebob and Dora...I had hyped it up all day by telling Blake he was going to see Spongebob, etc.... he was excited!...until he actually saw Spongebob that is...then he got really scared.

That was as close as he would get, and he wouldn't let me leave his side at all. Hopefully I didn't traumatize him for life...I may never get him to watch Nick Kids, or wash the dishes for that matter.

You could see his little mind at work though. He kept a safe distance away, but always had an eye on the characters... I'd love to know what he's thinking in this photo. It could be something like "Get those gigantic cartoon characters away from me!" or it could be "did I turn off the iron?" both are valid reasons to worry I guess :)

Survey Says: AWESOME!!!

So the "Kneaders French Toast Knockoff Project" went very well in my opinion. I wish I would have taken a picture of my rendition, so you all could compare to the picture I stole from the web. I have some left overs, and I'm tempted to "plate up" a little presentation, but then I'd have to eat it, and though there are several differences between my french toast and the Kneaders original, one thing that remains similar is how full I feel after eating way more than I should have. It reminded me of the morning Justin, Brad, and I had breakfast at the Orem store. I can't remember exactly, but if memory serves, we each ended up eating 6 or 7 portions...wait..what's that? You mean, we're not in high school anymore? we don't have raging Metabolisms that would allow us to devour a Buick, if enough barbecue sauce was provided? Oh...ok then. Perhaps it was only 2 portions consumed by each of us, with someone eating half of a third... Yeah, that sounds more accurate.
Bottom Line is, this is a really good french toast recipe. So here it is-please enjoy!

From my extensive Food Network watching, I've learned that when doing French Toast, choosing the right bread is critical. The experts like going with a Challa or Brioche bread. I picked up some Challa from Arizona Bread Company yesterday before work.

I sliced it on a bit of a slant to get slices that had a lot more bread, and a little less crust.

Slice the bread, set it aside.

Mix together:
8 eggs
3 cups milk
1T brown sugar
1T vanilla
3tsp salt
2T cinnamon

Take a glass 9x14 baking dish and butter down the bottom and sides.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Thoroughly soak the bread in the egg mixture (the recipe I went off said to lay the bread in the dish, pour the mixture over the bread, and then refrigerate for an hour to overnight, but I soaked each piece individually for about 3-5 minutes and then set it in the dish).

lay the bread in the glass baking dish
sprinkle each piece with a little cinnamon
cut 2T of butter into tiny cubes and dot over top.

bake for 45-50 minutes.

Syrup:
1c brown sugar
1c heavy cream
1c light karo syrup

heat on stove, stirring until sugar is dissolved and it's warmed through.

we put some cool whip, a fruit compote of fresh strawberries and bananas, and the syrup on top of the french toast and it was Divine.

Eat Your Heart Out Bobby Flay!

Kneaders All You Can Eat French Toast

On my recent return to Zion, I had the wonderful opportunity to partake in the blissfully sublime "Chunky Cinnamon French Toast." Since that moment of eye-opening euphoria, I have had many an occasion to ponder the delicate combination of cinnamon, spice, and everything nice. The memories/drooling culminated the other night as I was watching an ultimate french toast Throw Down with Bobby Flay. And so...being that it's Easter/General Conference Weekend, and I was fortunate to get it off, I'm going to make some. I got the recipe online...I have to make a few adjustments, being that I will be without "1 loaf Kneaders Cinnamon Bread" but all in all, I'm very excited about it!