Thanksgiving Break

There is one word that describes my Thanksgiving break, "lazy." I did absolutely nothing for 10 days, and it was amazing. I was supposed to write a paper during the break, but I got an email from my professor saying that he was setting back the date a week, so I happily went along with my break. The drive down wasn't so bad because I didn't do it alone this time around. We left just a little after 6 in the evening and arrived home just before 2 in the morning. Passing through Las Vegas at night was pretty cool, I've never seen so many lights in such a concentrated area, and I now understand how you can see them from space.

At around 6 I had to wake up, meaning I only got 4 hours of sleep, because I had an event that I needed to attend. One of my brother's friends got married so that night I went to his reception. After that I went with my best friend to go to a surprise birthday party. It was a pretty chill time. I always enjoy partying it up. I spent a good deal of time at my best friend's house, and for the most part we just played DotA. During the week I went to another birthday party for another friend. This one happened to take place at Chuck E. Cheese's. Even though everyone was older that 18 we all still managed to have a fun time. Just goes to show that you don't have to be 4 years old to act 4 years old.

Other activities included spending time with my brothers. It has been awhile since all four of us have gotten together and done something. Thanksgiving morning we went and played in the turkey bowl. Unfortunately not many people showed up this time so we only had a 4 on 4 with two little kids. It turned out to be pretty fun, but if there had been more people like there have been in years past I think that it would have been better.

Thanksgiving dinner was fun. We got together with my mom's side of the family and ate at my uncle's house. It was good to see my relatives again seeing as I don't have much opportunity to see them much. I also got to see one of my cousins whom I haven't seen in over a decade. It was a good dinner too. The turkey was deep fried, and the beans had bacon. I got my fill of food, plus I got the honor of eating one of the drumsticks. It was huge. My mom got a picture of it, but she hasn't sent it to me yet. So that is what Thanksgiving is all about. Being with the family and eating a good meal. If you take one thing from this blog, that should be it.

The rest of the week went well. Saturday is always a good day in the fall because of college football. My brothers and I got our fill of football that day, especially the Auburn vs Alabama game. Auburn won which was good. Later that night we chilled in our spa and watched a movie. Then on sunday we made our triumphant march up to school again. I hated leaving SoCal behind because it is such a wonderful place. The whole week had been going well until we got about 30 miles outside of Las Vegas heading towards Mesquite. All of a sudden I heard a noise and the car started to swerve out of control. I quickly got control and for a split second I was in denial that I had a blown tire, but I put that aside and decided that it was a blown tire. I pulled over to the side of the road and we proceeded to change the tire. This was the first time that I ever had to change a tire, but it really isn't that hard. The bad thing was that it made our trip a whole lot longer because we had to drive over 300 miles on the donut spare going 55 mph. It was really hard for me to drive that slow. It was just the ending I needed to a perfectly wonderful week. But that's the way things go sometimes. Now I am back at school having to do school related stuff, plus work. I'm just glad no one got hurt and we made it safely back. That is what really counts.

My Dream Car

Ever since I have been a little kid, my dream car has been a Lamborghini Diablo. I have always been fascinated by this car because it is fast, and it has a unique design. When I was younger I bought this Hot Wheels Lamborghini Diablo, and it was one of my prized possessions. I love the scene in Dumb and Dumber when Harry and Lloyd pull up to the hotel driving a Diablo. I love how the car doors go up, and not out.

Of course the chances of me ever owning such a car is pretty slim. I don't see myself making enough money to support me getting this expensive luxury car. Even though I am a pretty good saver I am sure that other expenses would supersede the funding that I would have to put in in order to purchase a car of such magnitude. If money were not an issue though, I would buy one in a heart beat.

I know that it isn't a practical car to own, but it would be a pretty safe car to drive in terms of it having a small chance of being stolen. I heard a story of how in England there are only 2 in the whole country, a black one and a red one. This meant that if one ever got stolen it wouldn't be too hard to find it. I have told my best friend that when we are old farts that I would buy one and we would cruise around in it just for fun. What a wonderful dream it is. I'm sure that by the time I reach "old fart" status they won't make Diablos anymore, and I would have to buy one on Ebay or something. I have already looked at some on Ebay already just in case you wanted to know.

I love to drive fast, and this car would definitely satisfy my need for speed. I would have to learn how to drive a stick, but if I had this car I would expend all the energy I had to become the master of manual driving. It would have to have a spoiler because Diablos without one look crappy. I am fond of the purple paint job with yellow racing stripes. Either red or black would suffice as well. So there may be a day that I get to sit in the driver seat of this awesome beast and rev that v-12 engine sitting at my back. What a thrill that would be.

Christmas is Starting Earlier Each Year

I have noticed over the years that as soon as Halloween is over you start to hear advertisements for Christmas and radio stations start to play Christmas songs. It has always puzzled me because you haven't even hit Thanksgiving (which is practically a full month away) and there is already pushes for people to spend money on the Christmas season, which is still two months away. Commercialism has really taken the holiday season and condensed it down. For me I wish that they would spearate the two seasons again because they both have their unique aspects, and of course they are both times to sit back and relax for a bit. I am a huge fan of the holiday season, and like most people, it is my favorite time of year. It isn't because of the gifts that I receive or anything like that. No, during this time of year I see a general shift in the personality of people going towards the good side. People are more kind and giving this time of year. I don't know exactly what it is, but it always causes me to smile inside when I see acts of charity being done. I wish that people would be like that the whole year round, but that's not the way it is.

The Christmas season has always been an anticipated thing in my family, but we have usually abstained from doing anything Christmas-like until after Thanksgiving. We enjoyed both holidays to their fullest. On Thanksgiving we would go over to our grandparents house and have Thanksgiving dinner. That was always fun to have the family together. I never really had opportunity to see my extended family much, and this was a time that I could. The day after Thanksgiving is when the Christmas season started in my family. That is when my dad would break out the christmas tree that we had (it was fake because my mom was allergic to the real thing, and it was more economical) and my brothers and I would participate in decorating the tree. After the Christmas decorations were set up around the house is when you would start to hear Christmas music playing throughout the house. Within a few weeks of this my dad would put up the Christmas lights around the house.

Growing up this way I felt a greater appreciation for the holiday season. It is a great time of year, and I think that commercialism has rushed this feeling for most people. They don't get to enjoy the full aspects of Thanksgiving, and they are rushed into thinking about what they are going to get their friends and family for Christmas before everything is sold out. To me, that is not what the holiday season is about. Of course I didn't always feel this way. I was a little kid once, and I couldn't wait for Christmas, but now being older, I see the bigger picture. I still anticipate the holiday season, but I have a greater patience now for it. If we as a nation would just sit back and let it come then I think that it would help us all to appreciate better what this time of year really means.

The Weekend

What is the weekend for? Well according to a paper that I just wrote for my Greek and Roman Mythology class, the weekend is the time for people to unwind from the structure of the work week. I hold fast to this principle, even though right now in my life I don't really have any type of weekend because I am working as a delievery boy at Pizza Hut. But during the day on saturday I get to enjoy myself for a couple of hours. For example, this past saturday I went with some friends and played mud football. It was really fun running around bare foot in the mud tackling people. Although my body is still pretty sore from the intense exercise.

So what am I getting at with this? Well, seeing as I am in college some people would say that I should use the free time that I have to study and get homework done. I say that is a horrible idea. I hate doing anything school related on the weekend because I get enough of it during the week. I need that special time to relax from the everyday and do something unique and fun. That is why I usually get the stuff I need to done before the weekend, or I wait until sunday night to do whatever it is that I need to do. So far it has worked out pretty well for me.

So my message to all of you out there is to find a way to have some kind of weekend that is not plagued with homework, or work in general. Sit down and watch a good college football game or just get out and do something. We need that time to unwind from the stresses of the week. If we don't then eventually we will break and something unwanted might occur. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and it is supposed to be fun.

Pranks

One of the cool things about being creative is coming up with ways to pull pranks on people. I find this to be a fun thing to do because it allows me to express myself in a way that most people have a hard time doing. Of course there is a fine line between having fun and crossing the line into the extreme where people might end up getting hurt. I'm not for that, but a little harmless act is fair game.

When I was younger my brothers and I had an interesting prank that we pulled on each other multiple times throughout our childhood. When we were younger there were two rooms and four of us, so there were two of us in each room. Usually it my younger brother, Brenden, and I that slept in the same room, and my other two brothers slept in the other one. At night Brenden and I would sneak in to the other room and put up toilet paper all over the room so that when Garrett and Dustin woke up they would get all tangled up in toilet paper. A couple of nights later they would retaliate back with the same gesture. My parents were not fond of this exhibition of brotherly love since it was a "waste" of toilet paper. It was fun while it lasted though.

Over my college career I have had some pretty fun room mates and we have come up with some pretty fun ideas for pranks. One time we took around this blow up cardboard things of George W. Bush that was sitting in our apartment hall and we took it around sticking it up in people's windows. It was a fun time until someone asked us for the blow up back. Another prank that we pulled was popping a whole bunch of popcorn and spreading it on someone's floor, and to put the cherry on top of the cake we put a goldfish in their toilet. Good times had by all.

One of the pranks that I have been wanting to do for the longest time is getting a duck, putting it in a box, then placing that box on someone's door and when they open it up the duck runs into their house. That, to me, would be amazing. I have so many opportunities to catch a duck as well since every time I walk up to school there is a slew of them at this pond. A man can dream.

So as long as you are having some harmless fun go ahead and pull a prank on someone. It is a creative art that not many people like to explore. Life is about having fun, and what's the use of having fun if you can't drag some other people into it as well?

The Love of a Mom

If there is one thing that I can say it is that my mom loves me. I know that whatever I do that my mom will stick by me until the bitter end. It is a special love between a mother and her child, and I think it comes from the fact that we are born from our moms. There is some inherent bond that is forged that is very hard to explain, but is such a unique type of love that it can't be described either. Mom will always love you no matter what you do. Whenever you do something wrong and dad wants to give you a spanking, you run to mommy to save you from his palm. She is the one person who understands you the best. Of course there are those rare times when even mom is disappointed with you actions and will not side with you.

There has only been one such incident in my life where my mom was ready to give me the punishment of a lifetime. I was a junior in high school, and I fell prey to the wiles of my friends at the time. We had come up with the great idea to pull a prank on one of the girls on the cross country team. She had been parking in the senior parking lot (she was only a junior) and we thought that we would teach her a lesson. Her car was parked near a curb, so we decided to pick up the back of her car and put one of her rear tires on the curb. It was a harmless thing. Unfortunately I and a couple other friends got caught, and we had to put the car back into its original position, then go to the principal's office to receive our punishment. We all had to call our parents to tell them what had happened. I remember that when it came to my turn I was very scared because I had no idea what my mom would say or do to me when she found out what I had done. We ended up having to serve a saturday (spending 4 hours at school on saturday basically just sitting in a classroom).

This was probably the worst thing that I have ever done in my life. I am a pretty good person, and I haven't done anything to rash, but this one time I made the mistake of following the crowd (something I usually don't do). Of course we all make mistakes in life. It is about learning from those mistakes that is the real key. In the end my mom didn't kill me, but she gave me a good talking to. That is one thing that my brothers and I dreaded as kids, our mom's lectures.

There was always one thing that I knew if I did that my mom would come close to wanting to kill me. When I was younger, in elementary school, there was an incident where we had had the day off and we were out in the yard with my mom. I think my brothers and I were playing and she was doing some yard work, when we saw a few high schoolers from our church walking down at the end of the street. Apparently they had ditched school and were just wandering around. Well they ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time because my mom recognized them and called them over. She then had them march into our house and call their moms. After that she gave them a good lecture until their moms arrived, and then the real lecture began. I don't really remember what happened during that time because I was probably occupied with something else. All I remember thinking is that if I ever ditched school, my mom would kill me. So I never missed a class, and still haven't to this day. But in the end, I know that despite the wrong things that I have done, and will do, that my mom will always love me. And I love her for that. So here's to you mom, you're the greatest.

A Few Costume Ideas

Halloween has always been a fun time of year for me. I especially have always enjoyed getting tons of candy that I usually never ate and just kept for the year until next Halloween rolled around. One of the fun activities that is associated with this holiday is dressing up as something you aren't. Applying knowledge from my Greek and Roman Mythology class, the Greeks would view this "pagan" holiday (as my Mythology professor pointed out to us) as a Dionysian holiday seeing as Dionysus was not just the god of wine and partying, but of the theater, liminal abandon, and pretending to be something you aren't (that is where the theater comes in).

Over the course of my life I have had many a great costume ideas. When I was really young I remember one year I was a bumble bee. I think that was my mom's idea, not mine. (Hopefully)
A few years later when I was in elementary school I remember being an astronaut. It was a pretty sweet outfit, including a helmet with a visor that you could lift up and down. Although I think I looked more like a future spaceman than a real astronaut. That one lasted for a couple of Halloweens. The next costume I remember was my grim reaper costume. It was just a black robe with one of the hoods that had a mesh where I could see out, but people couldn't see my face. I think that i used it for 3 years. Then when high school rolled around I think is where I got a little more creative. A couple years in a row I dressed up like a fat hobo (because somehow that makes sense). I even had a little sack on a stick. One of those years I pulled this one off I ended up passing out candy to the kids on the block. I remember having an old plaid shirt with a pillow stuffed inside of it (to make me look fat of course) That's about all I remember of this particular costume. My senior year my friend and I went around the neighborhood together getting candy. I wore my lettermans jacket and had a plush alien on my shoulder, and my friend had aluminum foil on his head like from the movie Signs. We went around to peoples' doors telling them about how there was an alien invasion, while at the same time trick or treating. It was pretty brilliant.

The next two years I dressed up as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of course that's what I was for those two years anyways, so I don't think I can really count it as a costume, plus I didn't even go out to get any candy. When I got home the next Halloween I dressed up as a cambodian. I had a sarong (it's basically a piece of cloth that looks like a dress) and a cambodian shirt. I went trick or treating with my nephews as well. That was a lot of fun. So that brings me up until the present. For this year I'm not sure what I am going to dress up as. I have been thinking about being Fry from Futurama. I just need to buy a red jacket and some how get orange hair. It's in the works, but I think it would be fun. If I could get someone else to be Bender that would be awesome. I think that my inspiration comes from the fact that I am a delivery boy right now. If this idea fails I guess I could just put on my pizza hut uniform and do that. But that would be lame. Maybe I'll come up with something else. For now, though, Fry it is. I'm sure I'll have just as much fun this year as I have had in the past. And once Halloween is over the holiday season is just right around the corner. Man time flies.