Tuesdays with Muerte

I just got home from volunteering at the Provo D.I. with Brad Wake. We had fun collecting donations and throwing clothes into the clothing baler. I even got to walk out with a new piece of furniture. It's a DVD rack for Hunter so his media stuff doesn't lie around everywhere. What once took up an entire corner of our livingroom, now takes up only two vertical shelves. They told me at the D.I. that if I wanted to work there for three months, they would pay for $3000 of a vocational school like EMT training (only $650-700) or even graphic design school. They are looking for "hard workers" to set examples for the "other" workers there. The pay would be $11/hour. Shall I consider that?

I signed up at the beginning of the semester to be a youth mentor through at BYU service organization called, ACCESS. They told me they would send me an email with contact information back in January. Nothing came. I went back in February and inquired again about the service opportunity and they again told me to wait for an email. Well, it came yesterday. My female partner's name is Rose Wachter, a Bio-Chem nerd with a great smile, and our "little sister's" name is Faith Smith, 8 Years old. When I called up Faith's mom, Darla, yesterday, I heard a black woman's voice on the other end of the line. I thought, "Cool, a black family in Provo!" I told Darla that I was excited to finally meet Faith and apologized for the months of absence. She kindly chewed me out for not being more on the ball and agreed to let me and Rose take Faith to a BYU tennis match and then to my ward talent show. Rose was good enough to block out 2 hours for us and gave me ...

Since I've been swimming 4-5 times each week, I have begun noticed some interesting anomalies while I sleep. DREAM ANOMALY #1: I woke up out of a dead sleep choking on the air in my mouth. I thought it was water and I couldn't suck it down my throat. I sat their for probably close to 3 seconds trying to convince my mind that it was o.k. Finally, I loosened up my trachea and the air returned to normal circulation. Wierd. ANOMALY #2: When I woke up the next morning, I had the distinct taste and texture of fingernails in my mouth. The crazy thing was that I immediately sensed that they were not mine. I later checked all my fingers and confirmed that their nails were all intact. It must have been my subconscious trying to tell me not to go swimming towards the end of the week when the pool is super-full of dead skin and bacteria. (24 Hour Fitness cleans the pool, hot tub and saunas on Sundays when they are closed for business.)

I just finished the "relationship bible", by the author of Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus. It was very insightful. Not only did I discover more about how to please and pursue the opposite sex, but I also learned at lot about myself that I just didn't understand before. Here are my favorite gems: *There are 5 stages of dating that provide couples with a strong foundation to support a loving relationship throughout their lives 1. Attraction 2. Uncertainty 3. Exclusivity 4. Intimacy 5. Engagement *In my past relationships, I have often jumped right to stage 2 after the first date, while the girl I'm with is still in stage one. When I don't call her back, she is left clueless as to how I feel and probably thinks I'm pretty rude for not calling back. *Why I don't appreciate my date reaching across my seat to open the door for me: A man hungers for the opportunity to make a woman happy. "When the woman is too eager to please, a man doesn't e...

So I took the advice of many of you and started to investigate a career as a firefighter. I researched all the options on the web and determined that the UVSC Recruit Candidate Academy in Provo was the best one for me. I spoke with a counselor on site who walked me around and introduced me to some cadets and instructors. Everything looked good. One surprise was the "para-military" attitude that everyone exhibited to me. They explained that in the cadet academy, it was like boot camp where you get demerits for things like scoring poorly on a test or looking an instructor in the eye or not saying "sir" or "mam" or standing when anyone of rank enters the room. --Sounds fun to me. I've got all the paper work in front of me. If I were to pursue this, I would have to do the following: -Apply online to UVSC under "Fire Sciences" for $35 -Meet with a Fire Counselor and sign up for some required courses, like anatomy, and apply for the Recruit Ca...

By the moon's light All night, all night Not feeln' so bright. That was the last thing I remember Donald Sutherland saying to me before I woke up. Last night's dream had a film noir setting, like I was in Gotham City. The city was dark, full of crime and mistrust and on the brink of city-wide gang wars. As the protagonist, I was a disillusioned 13-year-old boy with the power or gift to heal. I didn't know how my power came to be; I was found by a wealthy, old hermit [Michael Caine] who manifested my same abilities to heal others. He took me under his wing and trained me to use my new found ability. There is one other like me that I train with. She is a girl about my same age whose name I never quite caught. Together, we practiced our "art" when we received a call on our cells from Caine indicating that there was a bloody accident that we could practice on. We always rush to the scene of the accident by whatever means possible. I start the healing...

Last night I dreamed I was an international pilot, but I wasn't a very good one. My co-pilot and I slept most of the way over. An Attendant came back to the cockpit and gently reminded us that we were supposed to be in Tokyo, not Hong Kong. I tried to explain that it was just a detour. [In reality, I had forgotten to type in the new return coordinates to Tokyo after flying from Hong Kong to LA. Once we landed in Hong Kong, I somehow convinced all 400 passengers over the intercom that Hong Kong was really the destination where they wanted to be anyway, despite most of them not being able to speak the language. Once there, I decided it would be a good idea to pick up a new profession. Fortunately, I was approached by a Chinese University Track and Field Coach. He offered me a position on the team. Despite having a program about a sophisticated as my Junior High School, I readily accepted. He told me that the only way any of us were going to be able compete was if I took t...