I spent the summer back home in St. Louis (as can be read about in previous posts) and I just got back to Salt Lake City a few days ago. However, I didn’t stay long. It was less than 24 hours before I was on a plane to Long Beach, Cali. One of my oldest and bestest friends from high school, Heather Archer (now Shaw) and her husband Kevin, lives in LA. Since I’ve been promising to head out for a visit since they got married over a year and a half ago, I decided it was finally time.

The weekend was a blast! The first day, Heather and I went down to Huntington Beach for breakfast at the Sugar Shack and to hang out at the beach. I bought my very first pair of nice sunglasses with great hesitation as I lose sunglasses all the time but I figured that since my eyes seem to be getting more and more sensitive to light with each passing day, it was time for the investment. Plus, when we actually did head down to the beach I could stare extra long at all the hotties in bikini’s and not look like a freak! HA! Seriously though there was some major TNA, I love HB. We hooked up Kevin later and went to see Tropic Thunder. –> Hilarious. I loved it.

Kevin is the editor of Personal Watercraft Illustrated and as such was able to share one of his perks with me. He has access to some of the top of the line Sea-Doos and WaveRunners out there and was more than happy to take me out on them. Now the last time I rode on something like this was on a young-men/young-women church activity when I lived in Chicago. So roughly over a decade ago. The machines we rode were pretty cheap and we weren’t allowed to drive them without an adult on board. Not to mention we were in a really calm lake. I conveyed this information to Kevin on our way to try and pick up the machines (which is another story in and of itself). He got this fire in his eyes and started telling me all about where we were going and what I was going to be riding. He assured me that it wouldn’t be anything like my last experience. He was going to be taking us out into the open ocean; off Dana’s Point. He then told me I’d be riding a Sea-Doo RXT-X. This is apparently Sea-Doo’s top of the line “Musclecraft”. I pretty much laughed myself into a stuper when he told me it only weighed about 1000 lbs and had 255 horsepower with an approximate top speed of 65+ miles per hour. Yeah I know, I crapped my pants too. My Mitsubishi 3000gt has 220 horsepower. It was amazing. It took me a little bit to grow some balls but I got the speedometer up to 57 for a little bit at one point. But we cruised around 40 - 45 for the most part. Kevin and Heather rode a Honda we cruised up and down the coast for almost 3 hours. We stopped to check out the sea-lions on the bouys and we saw dolphins swimming no more than 50 feet from us. However, the highlight was when we stopped to rest just off the coast from the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant (its the one from The Naked Gun that looks like BOOBIES!). It was amazing and worth every bit of the hassle it took to get the boats. Sorry again to Kevin for that hassle because you’re the one who really had to deal with the headache. Seriously, it was amazing though and worth getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to drive to Dana Point. Thanks again.

Afterward, we were all pretty exhausted so we went home, showered up and took naps, at least I did. Then dinner and we went to see Pineapple Express. It was pretty ridiculous. It was really funny and I was glad to see that it didn’t meet my expectations in that it wasn’t all about sex and drugs. It was all about drugs but no sex. I’m sick of these movies that are nothing but sex and nudity and try to make it funny… like Step Brothers -> It had its moments but overall, stupid. I would highly recommend both Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder for as much as that is worth coming from me anyway.

Sunday was pretty chill. We went to church and then just chilled out and played some card games and grilled up some steaks.

Monday, Kevin had to fly to Florida for work and so Heather and I went and rented kayaks and paddled out to jelly-fish cove where there are hundreds of jelly fish that you can pick up and pet. It was pretty freaking cool. We then walked around Downtown Disney and watched The Dark Knight at the IMAX theater. I thought it was good in a normal theater but it was even better on IMAX.

So here I now sit in the Long Beach Airport at 6 am listening to a mixture of boarding announcements, tsa messages and the Beach Boys while I finish this post via my iPhone. I don’t want to go home cuz that means the vacation is over and so is my summer. Time to be a responsible adult again.. HA!

It day was April 8th, 2008.  I was studying for my upcoming Physics exam with my laptop and a Mega 100 gallon Big Gulp from the local Sev.  As I sat there trying to figure out the difference between radial acceleration and tangential acceleration, my mind fogged, my eyes glazed over and my proverbial “train” jumped the tracks and hit a wall.  After what could have been hours or only a few moments, I wiped the drool off my chin and reached for my beverage in hopes of getting my brain going again.  It was at this moment that all hell broke loose.  The cup evaded my grasp and tumbled over in slow motion towards my HP laptop.  As it landed, liquid splashed everywhere and I heard escape my own lips a sound that my roommate would later describe by asking me if “the queer [in the apartment behind us] had just been bitch slapped”.  The screen went blank and random lights flickered on and off and then nothing.  It was dead.  Good thing I had the foresight to pay $100 for the Accidental Damage warranty when I bought it… or was it?

The next day I went down to Best Buy, without the laptop, to ask them what I should do.  I was told that I could either bring it in or contact HP myself.  I was also informed that since Best Buy would have to send it to HP anyway, it would probably be faster and easier if I just went through HP myself.  So I called tech support.  The guy was barely understandable but troubleshot the situation and informed me that it would be covered under my warranty and they would send me a box and I would have it repaired or replaced in 2 - 3 weeks.

The next day, a box shows up.  I package everything up and drop it off at the nearest fed ex.  I get an email with a link to all the info and status of the repair and everything.  I have no worries at this point and promptly focus on more important things, i.e. Physics for Scientists and Engineers <vomit noise here>.  Time passes and I realize I hadn’t heard anything so I checked the website and it says I should be getting my computer back tomorrow.  So I used the 1800 number given in the initial confirmation email and I navigated via voice command to the “Check Repair Order Status” option. When the agent picked up he immediately told me to call a different 1800 number and hung up on me.  I barely had time to get the number down. I called that number, I got an agent who told me that I had to call the 1800 number I had just called. I couldn’t understand the explanation so I just hung up and dialed the first 1800 number again. I went through the voice commands again and was then put on hold for so long that I instead got on the internet to use the online chat support.

The chat agent couldn’t spell and continually gave me incorrect information. First he told me that my computer was fixed and should be on its way back to me.  When I asked for a tracking number, he gave me the HP Service Order Number and told me it was my FedEx tracking number.  I knew it wasn’t a tracking number so I asked him if it would work if I put it into the tracking page on FedEx’s website and he replied “yes, of course”.  Of course it didn’t so I called him on it and he disconnected the chat on me.  Besides lying to me about the tracking number, he was also unable to give me any information that I did not already have in front of me before I contacted him.

A few days later, I received a call from a woman who I could barely understand and she told me that my computer was NOT fixed and it wouldn’t be fixed for another 2 - 3 weeks. I wanted an explanation and she wouldn’t or couldn’t give me one.  Or at least that was all I could make out since she had obviously never spoken English before.  So I checked online again only to see that HP was STILL waiting on parts for my laptop. I still cannot understand why it would take over a month for a giant company such as HP to order, receive and install parts to fix a laptop. On top of this, I tried to inform this woman that the new date was after I was moving home and I needed to update my shipping address.  She told me that I couldn’t. (I think).  She said I needed to call back later to do that and that she wasn’t able to.  Eventually I was able to call back and change the shipping address.

The next deadline comes and I get another call from HP telling me that yet again my laptop is not repaired and won’t be for another 2 - 3 weeks.  I had many words for this person but they didn’t understand me and I barely understood them.  I told them that I needed a laptop and I was very very very dissatisfied with everything and I wanted a replacement since it seemed as though they couldn’t fix it.  She said she couldn’t do that and when I asked her to put someone on the phone who could she refused so I hung up.  I decided that I would wait for the next deadline, now May 20th.

May 20th came and so did my laptop.  I opened the box, plugged it in and turned it on.  Many of the buttons were still sticky and I couldn’t take the battery out because the slider was stuck.  I couldn’t turn off/on my wireless because that slider was too sticky.  I opened the RAM port and the hard drive port to see what was going on and I noticed that there was a ton of rust and white calcium corrosion inside these bays.  On top of this, the quick launch buttons above the keyboard didn’t work.  They didn’t even light up.  I decided to go to my other computer and write a letter.  There was no way in hell I was calling another 800 number and talking to some towel-head camel-jockey who couldn’t speak English.

I found a form mail on HP’s website to send a message to the office of the CEO of HP.  So I wrote a 4000 word rant detailing my experiences and sent it.  The next day I got a reply email saying they apologized and my email would be escalated to the proper people.  The next day I got a call from a man who spoke excellent English and resided in the good ol’ USA.  He was, however, just as unwilling to help me as anybody else.  He told me the best he could do was refund my 1 year phone support plan worth $130.  I told him that was unacceptable and that HP was going to either fix the laptop or give me one that worked.  He refused.  He went on to tell me that I didn’t have the accidental warranty and they had done all the repairs they did do as a “courtesy” for me.  So I told him where he could stick his refund and accidental plan and that I would never buy HP every again and that I would never recommend HP to any of my friends or family ever again.  So PEOPLE, don’t EVER buy HP if you can help it.  It just isn’t worth if, by chance, you end up having to deal with their customer service (if you can call it that) or technical support.

Finally I called up Best Buy here in St. Louis and explained the situation.  They told me that the Best Buy in SLC had informed me incorrectly and that I had to go through Best Buy and that is why HP treated me the way they did.  So I took my laptop into Best Buy here and told them that they would either have it fixed or they would replace it.  They said OK.  Two weeks later, I got a call saying that I needed to come in and pick out a comparable laptop since they couldn’t repair mine.

Yesterday, June 2nd, I went in and found a Dell Inspiron 1526.  It has a 2.0 ghz dual core AMD Turion 64 bit processor with 3 gigs of ram and 160 gig hard drive.  So its much better than the one I had.  Plus its a Dell.  However, they didn’t have any in stock at the store and because I went to that store for my repairs, I couldn’t go pick this laptop up at a neighboring store.  They told me they’d have one shipped over from another store and it would take 2 weeks.  Needless to say I had a few words for them and I walked out of there pissed.  Well, today, June 3rd, I get a call saying it came in and I could come get it.

So the saga ends, almost 9 weeks later.  I finally have a laptop back.  I have had Dell laptops in the past and I have had to deal with their customer service and tech support before.  I also have had to go to them to honor an accidental warranty and I have nothing but good things to say about Dell’s service and support.

]]> http://www.chimptank.com/2008/06/03/adventures-in-hp-tech-support-land/feed/ http://www.chimptank.com/2008/05/16/transplantion/ http://www.chimptank.com/2008/05/16/transplantion/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 19:14:30 +0000 Mark http://www.chimptank.com/?p=58 I have arrived!… in St. louis.

For those who do not know, I have transplanted myself from Salt Lake City to St. Louis for the summer. There are so many reasons for this move but mainly because Protective’s office is out here and they want me to work full-time for the summer so it’s easier to be here. Another good reason is that I needed a change of scenery. I mean Salt Lake City is great and all but… well, I’ll stop that sentence there so as to not offend anyone.

I left Saturday, May 3rd around noon and I finally pulled into my driveway here in St. Louis around 3 am on Monday, May 5th. It was a long and arduous journey. Saturday I drove for approx. 12 hours straight through to Colorado Springs to stay the night at my cousin’s house. Along the way I got pulled over twice. Both times right outside Breckenridge. The first time I was given a $50 ticket for “not turning from a turn lane”. WTF? I had no idea I couldn’t enter a turn lane then decide not to turn and get back on the main road. Later, I got pulled over by two cop cars. The cops had been following me for about 5 miles and clocked me doing 90 in a 45 and then 105 in a 60. I had no idea, it had been 10 hours of straight driving and it was 11 pm and I was exhausted and wasn’t paying attention. I told the cop my story and he took my license and went back to his car with the 3 other cops. Literally 25 minutes later he returned. He gave me a warning and told me to “never come back to Colorado if I plan to drive like that”. I have now been banned from a Wal-mart in Orem, my high school in Alabama and now the state of Colorado. HAHAHA! Awesome.

Later, coming through Kansas I got pulled over again going 110 in a 75. I got another warning. I am probably the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to being pulled over. My running total is now at 21 pull overs in my 9 years of driving. I have only been issued 4 tickets and of those 4 only 1 has been for speeding. The others were for stupid things like expired tags or broken lights and once the issue had been fixed, the courts tore up the tickets.

So I guess thats basically the story. I’m home in St. Louis now, living at home again. I’m working full time for the Asset Protection Division of Protective Life as a web developer. It’s a good time. A bunch of great people on the web dev team. Our leader is fearless and mighty. I’ll be taking a class at UMSL starting on June 9th I believe. When I can, I plan to travel a bit this summer, so I’m going to be pretty well occupied.

So far I’ve been to Chicago for my mom’s birthday/mother’s day. We went to a couple Cubs games and saw some sites. Best steak I have ever had was at the Chicago Chop House. Amazing restaurant. Now at second place is a place called Stoney River here in Chesterfield, MO.

I am planning a few more trips to Chicago over the summer as well as a trip to San Francisco for my buddy’s wedding near the end of June and a trip to LA to visit an old friend and her husband come the beginning of August.

I am moving back to St. Louis for the summer. This past week has been nice. I haven’t had to think about physics once and it has felt good. I’ve just been organizing and packing. I hate moving but I am pretty happy to be getting out of Utah for the summer.

My experience with a Prophet of God…
When I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, we were blessed to have one of President Hinckley’s smaller temples built. I remember that President Hinckley came all the way to dedicate that temple. I don’t remember exactly, but my father was serving in some capacity on the temple committee. That gave us the opportunity of being in the Celestial Room during one of the sessions in which President Hinckley dedicated the temple. Because this temple was one of the smaller ones, the Celestial Room was not very big. I remember sitting in my seat waiting for President Hinckley to enter the room to then give the dedicatory prayer. The feeling when that man entered the room was so peaceful and hopeful and joyful. You could feel it wash in as though a dam had broken and the flood waters followed this man. The spirit was so intense and I remember thinking that I would never feel it stronger. I don’t know that I have felt it stronger than at that moment in any other experience except for one. On Friday, February 1st, I decided to go down the conference center to wait in line to pay respects to the man I called Prophet for 13 years. I waited for a little over 4 hours, about 1.5 hours of that outside in the 20 degree weather. A news report said that over the two days, Thurs. and Fri., that President Hinckley’s body lay in state at the Conference Center, that over 60,000 people waited in those lines for a 20 second view of a Prophet of God who had returned Home. As we got to the floor on which the Prophet lay, I remember talking to the people in line behind me. We received a gentle “hush” from a Conference Center worker and we turned a corner. As I crossed the threshold into the next room, I remember that same feeling. That flood that washed over me back in Birmingham, Alabama, hit me again, only stronger. It was almost unexpected and in an instant I could not keep tears from my eyes, no matter how hard I tried. The feeling became stronger and stronger the closer I got to casket. As I walked past it, I looked at the man who had been called of God to serve. Everything inside me affirmed what I had already known, here lay a man of God, a Prophet called to lead the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. As I crossed the threshold out of the room, I felt that feeling remain with me, though not as strong. I would have waited in line, in the freezing cold, for days to experience that again. Again, there is no doubt in my mind or my heart that God is real, that His son Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of mankind and that this church is lead by Christ through a Prophet who is called and set apart by the laying on of hands.

While he was always an old man, he seemed to identify with my younger age group very well. Whenever he spoke to us about issues that faced our age group, he was very well versed and spoke as though he he truly understood what we were going though. You could always see the love and caring spirit in his eyes. Because of this, I had always felt that he would live forever as our prophet. Even though, of course, I knew inside that the day would come that he would pass on, it just didn’t seem as though it would ever happen. I have talked with many of my friends and peers and they have said the same thing. We all loved our prophet and will miss him terribly.

However, with the death of a prophet, our loving and caring Father in Heaven has promised us, ever since the First Vision and the calling of Joseph Smith as the prophet of the restoration, that He will never again leave His children without a prophet. Today, the church had an official press conference in which they announced the new prophet and 1st presidency. The new Prophet and President of the Church is now Thomas S. Monson. President Monson is then given the opportunity to choose two counselors. These three men make up the 1st Presidency. President Monson chose President Henry B. Eyring and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf as his 1st and 2nd counselors, respectively.

The calling of a prophet has been reported by several media sources as a “long-standing tradition”. To many it might seem to be this way because the most senior Apostle is always chosen as the president of the church. However, from an LDS point of view, we look at this as more than a mere tradition. I believe that when God calls a man to serve in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he is in a way of expression, set on a track. This track eventually leads to one of two ends: a call as the president of the church or a call home to that God that gave him life. I believe that if God does not intend for current most senior Apostle to take the presidency of the church, He will call that most senior Apostle home to Heaven before He calls the current president of the church home. This in turn will advance the line of seniority amongst the Apostles.

The Lord guides and leads The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Of this I have no doubt. It is now His will that President Thomas S. Monson take over the mantle of Prophet and President of the church. And now as a Church, we sustain him as a Prophet and we will follow his counsel and guidance as we did President Hinckley’s. As for me, I hope that I can give greater heed to our newest Prophet and follow his counsel better than I did that of President Hinckley.

Glenn Beck had some thoughts on the passing of President Hinckley:

I have added 5 new albums with approximately 700 new pictures along with close to 200 new pictures in assorted other albums.  So check them out!  A lot of them were overdue but now there they are for you viewing pleasure.

The new totals…

31 Albums
3286 Photos

The only pictures I have yet to sort and post are all of my pictures of Lorna.  I have close to 2000 to sort through but a lot of them are doubles and triples. I hope to be able to find the energy to do this in the next couple of weeks.

Its Jan. 3rd and its 10:15 pm in Honolulu, Hawaii. We left the island of Kauai at 4:40 pm and landed on Oahu around 5:15. We were expecting our connection to take off for Dallas around 6:30 and yet, here we sit in the admiral’s club. It could be worse, ok it could be so much worse and I have nothing to complain about, so I won’t. Just to state the facts though, apparently, our plane’s generator failed during its flight to Honolulu and is now here on the ground being repaired. The ever elusive “they” have informed us that we are expected to leave around 11:45 (assuming they can fix the thing). As I have said, I have nothing to complain about. The fact of the matter is that this delay has afforded me more family bonding time in the beautiful city of Honolulu. The last time I was here was a decade ago when I was 15 and holy crap it has grown. We took a taxi downtown and perused the various shops and watched the sunset on Waikiki beach to the sounds of a hukilau in the background.

These past 12 days have been great. Who could ask for anything more than spending Christmas and the start of a new year with their family. Especially when the rendezvous is the Garden Island of Hawaii, Kauai. The trip began at 4:30 am on a sunday morning. It had just snowed and the little widget on my Windows Vista sidebar said it was 17 degrees outside. My brother John and I were flying home to St. Louis to spend Christmas with the family before we all departed for a much warmer climate. Being home is always a good time, hot tub, big screen, Sam-dog, the kitties, pool table, all you can eat buffet (refrigerator). When I am home, I generally forget to sleep because I have to catch up on the use of all these goodies since I haven’t seen them in so long. Usually it isn’t a problem, however, this time, my lack of sleep resulted in being run down by the rhino virus. He definitely used that big horn on the front of his face to tear me a new A-hole. It wasn’t pleasant. I’m just now getting over it, which is good because having a cold on an 8 hour flight just isn’t fun.

Christmas was good but it didn’t really seem much like Christmas. My brother Will is in Idaho serving his mission and my older brother Joe and his wife live in Portland and were going to be meeting us in Los Angeles. Plus, the Christmas gift this year was the trip to Hawaii and because we were going to be gone, we didn’t really go all out on the decorations and stuff. The day after Christmas we jumped on a plane and headed for the Islands.

Lodgings
We spent 9 days/8 nights at the Sheraton resort in Poipu on the south end of Kauai.

Weather
It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t 9 days of fun in the sun. It rained most of the time and was pretty windy. The rain came in bursts. It would be sunny and then out of know where, it would start to pour for about 10 - 15 minutes, then it would be sunny again for anywhere between 10 minutes to several hours. It was like that until these last two days of the trip. The lowest temperature I saw was a balmy 71 degrees and the highest was in the low 80’s. The water stayed around 74 (according to the locals).

Now to pick back up tonight, January 28th…

I can’t remember anymore the exact chronology, but here is basically what our trip consisted of:
We drove up to the north shore to walk around the Princeville resort and the Hanalei beach. Princeville is a huge luxury resort. It was ridiculous inside and out. Then, we drove past Princeville to the northern-most spot we could drive. This is where the road ends and the Na Pali coast begins. It was raining and muddy otherwise we would have hiked some of the trails up into the Na Pali coastal cliffs. The Na Pali coast is the northern coast of the island and is made up of some amazing cliffs. Some of these cliffs are as high as 1300 feet. The only way to reach most of the Na Pali coast is by helicopter or boat. We went zip-lining through a part of the jungle on the island. It was absolutely amazing. We put on these harnesses and attached ourselves to these zip-lines that spanned this canyon. We were suspended hundreds of feet above a rushing river just flying through the air. It was amazing and beautiful. Apparently the area on the island that we were zip-lining, Mt. Wai’ale’ale, is the “wettest spot on the planet“. Wikipedia validates that but whatever, all I need for proof is the word of the locals.

We spent a lot of time at the beach right next the pool at our resort. On one day, we went out to the beach to find that half of it had been roped off because a monk seal decided to take a sun nap on our beach. While the monk seal is on the endangered specie’s list, that is not the primary reason for roping them off. Apparently, even though they look all cute and fuzzy and cuddly, they are mean and vicious. I learned this first hand when my brother threw a football at me while I was looking the other way and I was forced to chase it to within approximately 1 foot of the seal. As I got closer to it, it started to rear up and show me its teeth and make some kind of “angry” noise. But I got the football and quickly retreated.

Right off this same beach on a different day we all got together to try our hand at surfing. This was a first for me, but it was awesome. Extremely tiring for someone who hasn’t exercised in over a year but still it was a blast. I was surprised how easy it was to stand on the gigantic board once you struggled to your feet. The hardest part was catching the wave. That was insanely difficult, especially after two hours paddling around in the water. My neck, back, shoulders, arms, chest, abs… you name it from the waste up and I can affirm that it was sore and unable to move. As I sat in the water on the board, I could see the waves coming and when I saw a good one, I couldn’t manage to do much with my jello arms so the wave would just pass on by. But hey, it was still amazing. I now know why every surfer you ever see on tv has ripped arms and a six pack. Its not cuz they hit the gym everyday…

Ah, New Year’s… Now, New Year’s Eve is also my father’s birthday so, by default, we had all pulled double celebration duty. To satiate the need to party, we had arranged to attend a Luau. It was supposedly the ONLY beach-side, outdoor, Luau on the island of Kauai, but because it rained and rained and rained, we had to move it indoors to this convention center area. It was still amazing though. The food… oh THE FOOD! Wow, I don’t even know what it all was but it was meat (Kalua Pig, steak, chicken). The open bar made it interesting as well because it was community seating and we had a few people with us at our table who grabbed two drinks everytime the waitress came around (and the waitress came around often…). It was fun though. You’ll just have to check out the pictures cuz man, there is just too much to describe. After the Luau, we all adjourned to the beach to watch fireworks light up the ocean and usher in the new year. Now, being that it is also my father’s birthday, I have spent my entire lifetime’s worth of New Year’s Eve’s at home with fam eating cake and watching the ball drop. It was pretty much the same thing this year only Hawaii, a luau, beach-side fireworks, and all the other things attached to the word “paradise”. We still watched the ball drop but it was weird cuz by the time we watched it, it was already 5 am in New York City!

Amongst all these activities, we explored the island and took a ton of pictures. Kauai is known as the “Garden Island” for good reason. Words like ‘breath-taking’, ‘beautiful’, ‘gorgeous’ do not even do a tiny bit of justice to what your eyes behold when you’re there. There are no words, you’ll just have to look at the pictures.

Now, the grand finale of our trip was the absolutely perfect ending to a wonderful 9 days in paradise. As we were getting ready to go to the airport, the phone rings to inform us that our flight has been delayed 6 hours.  Now, we are supposed to fly from Kauai to Honolulu, Oahu and then from Honolulu to Dallas and then Dallas to Salt Lake.  So it was the flight from Honolulu to Dallas that was delayed.  For most people who were on that flight it was horrible news.  I was lucky because my dad has all the perk packages cuz he travels so much.  We got to Honolulu around 5:30 pm went to the Admiral’s lounge and dropped off our bags and then jumped in a cab and hit Waikiki Beach in time to watch the sunset to the sounds of a beach-side Hukilau and then walk around and do some shopping in downtown Honolulu.  While we were out and about, the people in the Admiral’s lounge reconfigured all of our flights for us and made sure that we were all taken care of.  It was great.  We got back to the airport around 10 pm and sat in the lounge until they came and told us the plane was finally there and ready to board.  We got on the plane around 12:30 am and got to board in the first-class group cuz of dad’s frequent flier status.  I felt so bad cuz 90% of the people on our flight had been sitting at the gate since 6 pm and didn’t get on the plane until 12:45-1:00 am.

All in all, even the bad parts of the trip we great.  So kudos to my father for such a successful family vacation and also for all of the perks we get when travel with him! 

This concept is an eternal principal given to us by God in the scriptures. In Genesis chapters 2 and 3, God gave Adam and Eve a tree that contained the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil and furthermore He gave them the commandment to not eat the fruit. Enter temptation… The serpent (Satan) tempted them to eat the fruit and to disobey God. They chose the opposition and were punished by God and cast out of the garden. However, had they not had opposition to God’s commandment to not eat the fruit, they would never have considered it and thus they would have remained in the garden for eternity in an endless state of innocence. That means that they wouldn’t have had children and those children wouldn’t have had children and so forth… and we would not exist today, relegating the Great Plan of Happiness that was engineered by God to a tall bookshelf in God’s study to gather dust. Now, God, being God, foresaw this and allowed there to be opposition so that we could learn and grow by making choices. In my opinion, Lehi says it much better than I just did when he gave counsel to his son Jacob, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility” (2nd Nephi 2:11).

Ok so the point of all of that is this… I have loved, deeply loved, and lost. Coming to terms with this has been extremely difficult and doesn’t seem to get any easier. It has been over 1 year and 3 months since Lorna died and I still wear the ring I bought her when we went to Moab and the pictures of her and me are still all over my room and there are mementos and reminders everywhere I go. I have put them there because the hardest and scariest feeling of all to overcome is the fear that I might forget her if I don’t remind myself everyday. I have never been able to understand why this feeling of fear grips me so hard because I know, in the logical part of my brain, that I will never forget her and yet I’m scared to death that I will. Well I have come to realize that part of that fear is because I am holding on so tight by keeping all of these reminders around me all of the time.

Tonight I made a decision to, while I am strong enough in this moment, take everything I can find and put it in a box that I can keep forever. I will always know what is in that box and I know that I will never forget her even though I have to let her go. Letting go and forgetting aren’t the same thing. As I was doing this tonight, I could barely stand it and I started to think about a lot of things. Mostly about what is written above. I started to think about the relationship that Lorna and I had shared. I thought about the capacity I have gained for love and joy but also the equal and opposite capacity I have gained for hurt and pain. To quote another scripture from the Book of Mormon, Alma the Younger is teaching his son, Helaman about the pain of sin and the repentance process he had gone through as young man. He says, “Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, that on the other hand, there can be nothing so exquisite and sweet as was my joy”(Alma 36:21). It is my belief and feeling that God has designed us to only feel a measure of pain equal to the measure of joy we have the capacity to feel. These capacities come through our choices. With this measure I do not say that there is equality in duration, only equality in intensity. The length of time in which we feel joy or pain comes through our actions and choices.

Back to the phrase above that started all of this, it is my assertion that those who love and lose are better off because they have a greater capacity to feel love, joy and happiness, because of the pain they have suffered, than does a person who has never experienced the pain of losing someone they have loved. Whether that love has been a gradual fade out and the loss occurs because the love is gone or whether the person lost someone they have loved dearly in an unexpected way.

With all of this circling my brain and stirring up so many emotions and feelings, I decided to sit down with my mementos of Lorna and just write down all of my feelings. I did this in the hopes that all of the love and pain and anger and frustration and hate and happiness and good memories and bad memories would leave my heart and stay in the ink on the paper. I can only hope that this is the way to end the war inside me and give way to an environment in which my heart can finally begin to heal. I am so tired of fighting my anger and not being left with any energy to make new friends, to work, to study and excel in school, and so many other things.

This is what ended up on my paper…

I Remember

I remember you, the girl of my dreams,
You were smart, you were beautiful and you were so kind.
I didn’t know how or why way back then,
But when you entered that room, I Knew you’d be mine.

I remember that night, so cold and so clear,
Your eyes burning bright just like the stars in the sky.
It took so much nerve but I knew it was right,
I leaned in real slow and took you by suprise.

I remember you fell, your knees could not hold,
I grabbed you up in my arms and held you in tight.
I knew in that moment, standing there in the dark,
I would promise to hold you with all of my might.

I remember the feeling, so intense and so warm,
It filled all my body, my soul and my mind.
I had boarded the train and I wouldn’t look back,
At last I had found who I had come here to find.

I remember the ride, it was bumpy and rough,
But I had paid for the ticket and I had stood in the line.
No matter the twists and no matter the turns,
I would never have thought that you wouldn’t be mine.

I remember that morning, so cold and so clear,
I had sent you a message but you didn’t respond.
My mind feared the worst and it soon was confirmed,
Our train had derailed and now you were gone.

I remember you, the girl of my dreams,
You were smart, you were beautiful and you were so kind.
They say people like you aren’t meant for this world,
All that I know is you’re gone…
And now you’ll never be mine.

1. Good Family
2. Good Friends
3. Good Food
4. A Thankful Heart that acknowledges God for all of the blessings in your life.

Mix all those things up in a bowl then stuff them into a turkey. Bake at 450°F reducing heat after 20 minutes to 335°F, cook for 4-6 hours and then serve to the ones you love and care about.
If you got a recipe like that, then you can add into it a good football game or wrestling match or nascar race or a nice nap and everything will be gravy.

The reality of Thanksgiving begins back in the fall of 1621. The pilgrims struggled when they arrived in the “New World” and were blessed to have the Native Americans teach them how to use the land to their advantage. In commemoration of the first harvest, they celebrated with a day of feasting. The Native Americans were invited in order to acknowledge their important contribution to the harvest as well as to thank them for their help.

So today we celebrate by gathering together our family and friends for the purpose of praising and thanking God for our blessings and for a “good harvest” by giving into Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins. Fun isn’t it! :D. George Washington described this day when he signed the proclamation marking it a National Holiday on October 3, 1789 as a day “to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.” It is fitting that a holiday created and designed for the sole purpose of thanking Almighty God for our blessings is getting passed over as an afterthought to its more profitable sister-holiday, Christmas. Now don’t get me started on Christmas, I realize it has equal if not greater Christian significance. However, for the most part, that significance gets more and more faint every year due to the capitalistic efforts of the US Corporation. Since Thanksgiving doesn’t seem to have the potential to be nearly as profitable in this country as Christmas, companies are trying to play it down and get us to forget the importance of this holiday. Because of this, the light of Thanksgiving becomes more and more dim each year.

I walked into Walmart the day after Halloween, that’s right, November 1st and do you know what I saw? Right in the entry way, there was a giant Christmas tree. All decorated with wrapped gifts underneath. Immediately in front of me was a huge temporary holiday section filled with everything Christmas. I actually had to ask where to find the Thanksgiving section; which had been relegated to one little aisle in the back by the housewares. It saddens me that we the people of the United States of America are allowing this day set aside to thank God to be pushed aside by capitalism and commercialism. I guess it fits though, all we have left to do now is to force the Native Americans off of “our” land. That is assuming of course that we are able to break the grip of the almighty tryptophan comma and get off the couch.

I hope everyone had a HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY!

Now you must understand that few people are bigger cat freaks than I am (in reality this statement is probably far from true) but Alexandra is one of those who definately surpasses me in this regard. The week before she sent me this link, we spent a few hours talking online; I say talking but really I spent that time accepting downloads through msn messenger from her. Every one was a picture of a cat doing something crazy and/or ridiculous and most had “cute” and/or “witty” captions attached to them in various “cute” and/or “witty” fonts [FYI most of these now reside in an album in my Photo Gallery; Also visit http://www.lolcats.com/]. Go ahead and take a minute to check these pics out so that you will better understand the YouTube link below.

Ok, back? Good. I hope you enjoyed the pics. I certainly did. Anywho, I click on the link and what I saw was amazing. I mean really, it was amazing. However, I was perplexed; I mean who has the time to put something like that together? And what’s worse is that there are several companion pieces that go along with this one. But I guess that is what the internet has become, an unbounded, infinite world for the masses to waste their time looking at porn, illegally downloading anything and everything, buying trinkets we don’t need and can’t afford, trying to find “the one” or maybe a quickie from a stranger, playing games, showing off bizarre talents for video editing and above all… BLOGGING! [ADDITION: ok so another way to waste your time on the internet was just handed to me by the amazing Ryan Johnson... you apparently can spend your time to translate the ENTIRE bible into 'cute cat' english -> Cat Bible Translation]

Seriously though, I laughed, then watched it again and laughed harder… So without further ado, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu333ZX_IQs&feature=related

Enjoy.