Day 30: A picture of someone you miss

First things first.  Yes.  I do, in fact, have an afro in this picture.  It was for a play.  I promise.  And yes, I am, in fact, wearing a Phantom of the Opera sweatshirt.  Because I was one of “those guys” back then.

Secondly, this was my group of friend my freshman year in college: Ryan Workman, Corey Speers, Jeff Larson, and Scott Langford.  Not pictured: Frank Mayo.

I miss these guys a lot.  We had SO much fun that first year of college.  Even though, with the exception of Jeff, with whom I interact every year or so, and who actually reads this blog, I have next to no interaction with any of these folks.  I haven’t talked with Scott in probably 11 or 12 years.  But I miss them quite a bit.  Life moves on, however, and they’ve all gone their separate ways.  Ryan went to med school.  Scott is a city planner in Utah, I think.  Corey got a combination PhD/MD if memory serves. Jeff is an MBA an lives in hell Arizona working for a national pizza chain in their accounting department, I believe.  And my afro and I split up just weeks after this picture was taken.  I don’t miss the afro, but I miss being able to grow an afro.  If I tried that now, I would look like this:

So, guys, I hope you’re all doing well.  Miss interacting with you!

So, I love funny pictures, and thank to the Cheezburger network, I get access to a good 30-50 new funny photos a day.  Here are a few of my favorites:

This photo is a “hell-to-the-no” kind of photo. I have opted not to show the photo here at all.  If you want to subject yourself to the horrors of the full-sized version, you’ll need to go here.  I don’t want to accidentally stumble upon the full-sized picture if I’m ever scrolling through my blog again.

It is a photo of a big-ass spider.

I effing hate spiders.  Hate. Hate. Hate.

You can read more about my overwhelming detestation and loathing of all spider-kind here, here, here, and here.

Better yet, how ‘bout a picture of me with all of my immediate family members.  Including the far-away brother who is nearly done with his PhD in Sociology.  (And can I just take a moment to say how freakin’ jealous that makes me?  I should have been the first one in the family to get a PhD.  *grumble*)  Anyway…

With the family spread all over creation, and none of us with a bunch of money, it’s pretty rare that we all get together.  And it’s even rarer when there is a professional photographer to document it.  This photo was taken in the summer of 2006, I believe.  You can tell it was when I was doing Crazy for You at the Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley because there are red marks all around my mouth where I had the allergic reactions to all the spirit gum that was being used to hold my fake mustache and beard in place when I was playing the Bobby-As-Zangler part.

Before that, I think the last family photo we did was either in the late 90s.  And I apologize for the image quality.  I had to actually scan this photo into my computer with my craptastic scanner, because I don’t have a digital version of this image, since I didn’t take it.

So, this is my whole family nuclear family, with a couple of awesome in-laws thrown in for good measure.

Sunshine, blessed sunshine.  Let the peaceful, happy moments…oh, nevermind.

Sunshine has not always been important to me.  For two years, while living in the wastelands of Arizona (sorry Jeff & Elneeta…I don’t love it down there), I would do anything to get away from the sunshine.  When you’re riding a bicycle in a suit in 125 degree heat, it can really take the love of sun out of you.

However, since moving up here to Seattle (4 years ago this Friday), my appreciation for the sun has grown by leaps and bounds.  Part of it is that we only get about 7.83 hours of sunshine a year.  The other is that sunshine here isn’t like sunshine in Arizona, or even Utah.  It doesn’t suck the life out of you.  It’s indirect enough that it is almost always an enjoyable experience to be in the sun. 

My mood is directly tied to how long it’s been since I’ve seen the sun.  (Come March, I get pretty unbearable to be around).  We’ve had several sunny days in the last week, and I’ve even had casual acquaintances remark about how I seem like I’m happier.  It’s true. 

So dear Mr. Sun.  Please don’t be a stranger this year like you were last year. Summer not starting until July 5th just don’t really work for me.

My day: Staring at a computer all @#$% day long.

I wish it were more interesting than that.  I really, really do.

I thought about this one long and hard, and wondered if I should post what I really felt or whether I should do something a little lighter, but what the heck.  I’ll post my thoughts, but I’ll not go too deep.

I wish I could change the way that being gay is viewed.  By the culture in general, but more specifically, within the LDS church.  I wish that it was just another aspect of normal. 

I hate that there’s so much fear, misunderstand, anger, hatred, contention, and judgment around it.  I hate that gay rights have to be a “cause.”  I wish I could change the pain and confusion that other boys and young men will go through as they try to make sense of it.

I have a lot of wishes around this issue…many of which I won’t discuss on this blog, but mostly, I just wish it weren’t an issue.

Day 23 – A picture of your favorite book

I’m generally not one who is particularly sentimental about things, but recently, I was thinking about some traditions that are getting lost or are dying in our technological world, and it made me a little sad.   I was talking with my mom, and she said that she has my great-grandmother’s recipe collection, and I got to thinking:  When my mother passes away, which will hopefully not be for several decades, one of the things that I would most want is her recipe collection.  Boxes of cards with handwritten recipes and notes, notebooks filled with scribbled instructions and ingredients.  Food is such an important part of life, and helps to form such strong memories that having a copy of my mom’s recipes in her own handwriting would be a powerful link to my memories of her in the past.

I have a ton of recipes scattered all across various sites on the internet, most of them either recipes I found through Google searching or via some cooking experimentation of my own.  But I don’t have them collected anywhere.  I don’t even have a paper copy of my Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies.  So I decided that I was going to go out and buy a book to start writing down and collecting my favorite recipes. 

I tell you what: finding a recipe book is hard these days.  Nobody carries them.  Even stores like Bed, Bath, & Beyond, Sur la Table, and Williams-Sonoma don’t have any sort of recipe organization products.  On a whim, I stopped off at the local Barnes & Noble, and found the book pictured above.  It was the only recipe book they had in the entire store. I couldn’t find recipe card boxes or dividers (by food category) or those plastic sleeve protectors for 3×5 or 4×6 recipe cards. 

I think it’s sad that we’re losing our connection to our culinary heritage to such an extent that in a city like Seattle, I have to go to five different stores to find a recipe book, and that store only has one relatively ugly example.  With so many recipes available so easily, I can understand it.  But it’s sad.  There’s something special about flipping through a stack of well-worn, handwritten cards for that special meal you used to request on your birthday. 

So, my new recipe book is my favorite book.  It’s only got one recipe in it so far: my newly-perfect recipe for Caramel Pecan Rolls.  (Recipe coming in the next post!)  But I have it sitting out on the writing desk in my bedroom, and every night before I go to bed, I’m writing out another recipe. 

And mom, you better specify what happens to your recipe collection in your will, because if not, I have a feeling that Megan and I are going to come to blows over who gets it.

Day 22 – A picture of something you wish you were better at.  (Or, if we’re being grammatically correct, A picture of something at which you wish you were better.)

I typed “self control” into Google’s image search, and this is the image that came up.  I think it pretty neatly encapsulates my self-control issues.  Self-control is not something that I’ve ever been good at, and something that I wish I could do better.  I have SC issues with food, money, hobbies, relationships, homework, practicing instruments, cleaning, exercising, etc., etc., etc.

I think I would be much less hard on myself if I felt as though I was doing the best I could be in the self-control arena.  I have a feeling that this is an area in which I’ll struggle pretty much the rest of my life.  Or, you know, I won’t struggle at all, and just give into my “THROBBING BIOLOGICAL URGES.”  (It’s a Simpson’s quote.)

I would like to forget the period of my life between September of 2003 and May of 2004.  This would be the time when I was living in my own private hell Tennessee and working at a theater that I will not name here in order to keep from being found on Google when someone searches for the name of this particular theater.  I will go so far as to say that it wasn’t much of a jamboree.  Even with all of the bears that may or may not have been black.

What was black was my attitude, however.  I was still young enough, and a fresh enough graduate from BYU’s self-absorbed, self-entitlement program Music Dance Theatre program that I thought I was above what I was doing there.  Dressing up in these stupid, ugly costumes and prancing around for what amounted to WAY less than minimum wage.  I was having a rough time personally, dealing with some depression surrounding my self-esteem and sexuality. 

I will say that I met some of the most awesome (and most Christ-like) people I’ve ever known in my life while I was there, and I still keep in occasional touch with a few of them on FB.  If it hadn’t been for Ken, Tim, April, Charlie, Kara, Carrie, and Sally, I don’t know how in the world I would have survived.