Mormon Lingo

When I talked about my religion while at Conserve there was some Mormon lingo that I had to explain, which was okay and even fun. Kai and Garrett are great people to talk religion with, because even though we were talking about religion they still managed to make it one of those conversations that you're just laughing the whole time...I miss you guys!

I was thinking about that conversation while reading one of the older New Era magazines and this piece caught my eye.

WHAT WE SAY	WHAT OTHERS MAY HEAR	WHAT WE MIGHT SAY INSTEAD
My ward …	My area of the hospital …	My congregation …
The stake dance is at the stake center.	The dance involving cuts of meat is at a storage center for cuts of meat.	The regional youth dance is at the regional church building.
At Mutual, we …	At the common [word missing], we …	At our youth activity night, we …
In this last dispensation …	In this last [something-or-other] …	In our day …
Apostasy	A lake of noodles?	Falling away
Deacons, teachers, priests	Men who work for a church, people who teach in school, and religious men in robes	Young men 12–13 years old, 14–15 years old, and 16–17 years old
Beehives, Mia Maids, Laurels	Where bees live, [no idea], and some kind of plants	Young women 12–13 years old, 14–15 years old, and 16–17 years old
Celestial kingdom	A fairy-tale land, maybe?	Heaven, or where Heavenly Father lives
Premortal existence	A parallel universe, perhaps?	Our life as spirits before we came to earth
I’m going to seminary.	I’m studying to become a minister.	I’m going to religion classes for youth.
We’re going to do baptisms for the dead.	We’re going to do something morbid.	We’re going to the temple to do special ceremonies on behalf of our ancestors.
My older brother is in institute.	My older brother is in an asylum.	My older brother goes to religion classes for young adults.
The gospel has been restored.	The stories inMatthew, Mark, Luke, and Johnhave been renovated. or Christ’s message has been refurbished. or Christianity as a whole has been repaired.	The Church that Christ established was changed and fell away, and now it’s been brought back, along with His true teachings.
We have our agency.	We have our business with clients.	We are free to choose.
Word of Wisdom	Good advice	Health code

Valentines Dance

Okay, I know some people complain about how Valentine's Day is a waste of time, how we shouldn't use it as an excuse to tell someone you care, etc. and I agree...but I'm going to talk about it anyway!
So, Valentine's weekend was great for a number of reasons; my brother and I had a church basketball game against another ward (for those of you who are not Mormon that's another congregation.) and we won, well, dominated would be a better word, 52: 29 (Bwahahaha!) It was my sister's birthday, she turned 14, and was able to go to her first dance which was the other fun thing that happened. Madison (my sister) was so nervous, but really excited! After a few dances with her brothers she started to fish for other partners, and for some reason had absolutely no problem finding any... :) (look at the pic's below and see if you can tell me why :)

I made sure that my sister was doing well on her own and then started to rock the dance floor myself :)
We had some pretty good line dances; the well known's: Cotton Eye Joe, It's Electric, Cupid shuffle and a few others, and throughout the dance there were plenty of slow dances (it's Valentine's after all) which were great. I don't understand why guys don't like slow dances, I mean, most of the guys from my ward (again, congregation, for you non-Mormons:) just did wall sits and stands during the slow dances, maybe it's because they don't know how to talk to a girl while dancing? I don't know, personally I think that I talk too much. Fast dances are great fun, swing dancing and break dancing are great (not that I'm a fantastic break dancer) you really get your blood pumping and get to bust some moves, but come on guys, enjoy them both!

Free advice to guys in general; learn how to dance! And not just how to shuffle back and forth to a slow dance, get some spins and dips in there too, you get remembered longer than normal!
Swing dancing is my favorite! It's fast and energetic, and loads of fun! Though you do get a bit dizzy with all the spinning you and your partner end up doing :P

Well here are the first pictures ever posted on my blog, I plan the next ones to be of flaming swords!!!

Myself, Madison and Preston at Madi's first dance.

Preston and I with some friends holding up Madison, luckily we didn't drop her afterwards! It's been done!

Well, that's all I've got for tonight, Happy Valentine's Day to you all!

Cheers!

I Love Dairy Queen!

Okay, for those of you who don't know me: I work at Dairy Queen. I like working there; free food and ice cream, a good manager and some truly hilarious coworkers! Yesterday I got called in at about three so that one of my coworkers could go home early. Anyway, as soon as I got there I walked into Andrea and Kelly (my manager) laughing their heads off about something (I never did find out what it was... oh well) as usual.
I worked with Katy and Steven until closing time, and that was probably one of the most fun times I've had at DQ. Katy and Steven constantly rag on each other, for example:

Katy: "pick up that piece of tape Steven!"

Steven; "you do it, I'm mopping"

Katy: "I'm cleaning the windows, come on, it'll take you three seconds!"

Steven "I don't want to....Dexter!"

I ended up taking about three seconds to pick up a tiny piece of tape about the size up my thumbnail that they had been arguing about :P Such is my life at DQ.
Then there are the truly original quotes from the drive through.

"The thing is mad at me!"

"Can I have a large Oreo Blizzard?"..."no" (the costumer was a friend, we would never do that
ordinarily !)

"I need a medium cookie dough and a Oreo brownie earthquake and...(we thought he said) some of that white stuff on side." ..."Marshmallow cream? Did you want marshmallow cream on the side?"...."what?! I said I was waiting for the wife to decide...what are you try to say?" (oops steven!)

 Other random quotes:

"Go team Dairy Queen!"

"I've never given CPR to anyone who needed it..."

Dairy Queen wouldn't be Dairy Queen without laughter. And life  without laughing wouldn't be worth living. :)
So get out there and LAUGH!!!!

No Pain, No Gain.

We've all heard it, and at the time we were probably sick of it too. But, unfortunately for your body...and mind, it's true. Sorry.
I had this experience today, I've been practicing poi quite a bit lately and I finally figured out the windmill/chasing the sun/whatever you call it, and am now trying to do the 3-beat weave behind my back. The good news is that it's possible, the bad news is that learning it a great example of "no pain, no gain." I consistently manage to hit myself in the back of the leg, and now I can barely walk :P
Same goes true with any activity, take parkour for instance (another of my pet hobbies :) doing the simple stuff is fine, but if you want to do truly practice the art then you need to be prepared for some pain; falling is a big one, running into things, failed flips (ouch!) etc. are always a possibility.
Hmm, knife throwing also, I kinda hesitate to mention this one because of the number of near serious injury incidents. The only thing I'll say about this is that the catching of sharp objects between your palms that you see in movies is something that actually works... more than once.
School undoubtedly makes the list, enough said.
And I think I will add friendship as well, you can be 'friends' without pain, but in my experience these aren't as meaningful and you definitely don't miss them as much. Sharing painful experiences together and confiding in each other are things that mark true friendship. You can't know the sweet if you've never had the bitter.
I'm pretty sure the the journey of life, love, and the pursuit of happiness would be meaningless without pain.
Not that I like pain, don't get me wrong, I go out of my way to avoid it myself and inflicting it on others (most of the time, sometimes I snap a little bit though (sheepish grin) But if you've never had pain in your life then you haven't truly lived.
Pain can also be an ache inside you when people you love are no longer with you (cough, Conserve people, cough) but when they are gone you realize that they are the kind of people you need to surround yourself with... throughout your life.

"no pain, no gain"
what a silly little saying
you've heard it once, you've heard it twice
you've heard it fifty one-million times
or was if fifty two?
it's true though, what they say
those parents and teachers
friends, scholars and preachers
your soccer coach and training sergeant
the one thing they say the same:
is that without pain
there is very little gain.
But oh, wouldn't it be nice
to have someone who
never wants to hurt you
but even so, they hurt you anyway
but you wouldn't care
you would hold them close and say
"it's okay"
"no pain, no gain"
"and my pain...IS my gain."

Flame swords!

So, yeah, I admit it, I was bored. I have this fascination with all things fire, I've done fire staff, torches, burned Chinese symbols into the ground, created flaming walls of fire, monster bonfires, and a filled bowls with camp fuel and set them on fire to name but a few. (this summer I plan on getting some fire poi, that'll be fun!) Sure, there have been accidents, one involving me stupidly pouring gasoline on a small forge fire that I was using to heat wire, but that's another story.
Back to flame swords, coolest things ever and super easy to make. I used metal golf shafts, rags for a wick and wire wrapped around the rags to hold them in place.
My brother and I spent about forty-five minutes working out a routine with non-flaming swords which was pretty impressive, not to toot my own horn or anything. But as soon as we let 'em up we realized that there was no way it was going to work! So we just had a short little sparring match until his sword burnt out, which was really fun and looked kind of cool. There are some cool fire sword videos out there for those who look for them, maybe you'll find the one that was my inspiration!
Next time we'll be more prepared, so stay tuned for awesomeness!
Oh yeah, I'm thinking fire whips would be fun sometime... at this rate something really bad is going to happen :P
Cheers!

Library Time.

The library is a nice place, it has lots of things I love in it: books, tables, quiet, books, people studying while I am studying, books, movies (some of them) and books. I love books.
I'm currently reading the books the books by R.A. Salvator, notably the Drizzt books. They are about a black skinned elf from underground who has left the Underdark and come to the surface to find a better life, he finds that as well as adventures aplenty. Drizzt is a master swordsman and a parkour practitioner. Both of which I enjoy :). The library is a great place for peace and quiet, studying, drawing, reading or writing this blog post! It's also a good place to people watch, you get to see the kind of people who come to library, some of whom I couldn't really see ever checking out a book. Then there are the creepy old men who sit on the other side of the room and stare at magazines with one eye and stare at you with the other.
Well, I had better hurry up, I need to go to work in few hours and since most of the snow has melted it looks like we'll be fairly busy tonight :P.
I think I'll find a thick book or two or three to take home. :)

Rows and rows of shelves
they line the rooms 
like a labyrinth
with 
rows and rows of books
that fill the shelves, 
with stories
trapped between the pages,
waiting for someone
waiting for you 
to set them free
waiting to paint
a picture 
with a thousand words.

Snow Again!

It's back! After about a week of bitter cold, meaning around ten degrees outside, it finally warmed up enough to snow. Sound weird? That's what I thought when I first heard it, but, yes, it can be too cold and dry to snow. There you go! If you didn't already know that then you have learned something today! Good job!
Anyway, as I've said before; I love snow, I looks beautiful coming down and when it blankets the earth in a layer of downy fluff, plus it makes dirty streets and sidewalks look clean for a while. Another nice feature is it's use in snow sculptures, if enough comes down,  I plan on making Slender Man 2.0 in my front yard. And yes Mei-Jing, I'll send you a picture of me kissing this one too.
But for all that my current favorite feature of snow is that it muffles everything. Less cars, less people and less noise! It's like the world is going to sleep under the soft embrace of a snow blanket.

drifting downwards, towards my face
snow flakes, sparkling as they drift through space
falling as quietly as a whisper
they cover the ground in gleaming white
shining in the moon's pale light
as I walk through the trees 
my breath fogs as I watch it freeze
the end of summer fall and spring
winter snow,
it blankets the ground under it's downy wings.
as I walk through the trees
through a blanket of white,
I'm happy to know
I'm not alone,
this silent, snowy, night.