Celebrity names make the best pet names

One wintry morning I was given a betta fish by a student who for some reason thought I wanted a betta fish. My family never had much success with fish but maybe this time would be different.  It wasn't.  McKenna wanted to name her Tyra Banks.  That's cool, I guess.  We did great feeding her and cleaning her small tank.  Fittingly, she would go through bouts of bulimia and anorexia for days or weeks at a time and just when we thought she was getting better, she died.  But, if nothing else, we learned from this adventure that naming our pets after celebrities is really a good idea.  So...

One day a little bird couldn't get out of our window well.  We thought about helping him out, but we didn't want his mom to eat him or neglect him, so instead of helping, we decided he was our pet.  We saw the mother fly into the window well several times to feed poor little Jensen Ackles (yes, we've been watching a lot of "Supernatural" on Netflix).  After three or four days we came home and he was gone.  Since we didn't actually discover a dead body this time, we like to think that he learned to fly and found his way to safety.  And we're just going to assume that's what happened.

Best Birthday Ever...

Since I made a big deal about sharing stuff about my life and then started a blog that I thought would be brimming with posts throughout the summer I have so far averaged one post per month.  If I don't get this done in 43 minutes that average is going to drop significantly.  Not to worry, though, now that summer has ended and the stress of writing and re-writing marching band field show drill is over, we're gonna see if we can't blog just a little bit more.  But until then, let's move on, shall we?

I'm sure everyone's dying to know why it was the best birthday ever.  Well, once upon a time, my classroom looked like this:

As a band director, those tiers have been the bane of my existence.  We don't perform on risers, why rehearse on them?  It's a valid gripe, I promise.  And hauling large percussion instruments up and down the steps every day was making things fall apart. I kid you not, I watched with my own eyes as a xylophone fell apart like a jenga tower.

Plus, the carpet is the original carpet from when the school was built.  Bust out a petri dish and test some of the goodness that's been growing on that. That'll be a hoot and a half.

One week into the summer, the room looked like this:

Pretty scary, right?  But the tiers are gone!  Can I get a hallelujah?

....Thank you.

After the summer was mostly gone and following a great week of ten hour field show rehearsals (with no rain on Thursday, which had been a most unwelcome marching band tradition), I was able to celebrate my 30th birthday.  What did I do to celebrate?  Mostly I just wanted to sit and do nothing, so we ate some food and watched some movies, and my fantastic wife made me breakfast and gave me presents.  But lo and behold, what do I discover when I return to school the following Monday for more (but shorter) rehearsals?  Not quite Heaven on Earth, because I like to think that in Heaven we won't need to actually lock up our instruments to keep them safe from the riff-raff, or argue with colleagues about where I'm supposed to store the most expensive equipment in the building, but nevertheless, look what they did for my birthday:

Isn't that a thing of beauty?  I still don't know exactly how I feel about the checkerboard pattern for the lockers (real doors vs. cage doors), but that's a gripe I'll not share with the administration.  And with that style of carpet you won't be able to see the mess the trombones leave behind after they empty their spit valves.  At least not for a little while.

The two band directors before me begged and pleaded for this change, and as much as I'd like to think that I was the one who was convincing enough to finally make it happen after thirty-some-odd years, I owe this to the generous and assertive administration and custodial staff.  Our instruments can be secure and we can have the space to really rehearse the way that all Viewmont band members have deserved for decades.

All alumni are welcome to stop by and see the room any time, provided they let you in past the front desk.

It's 11:40, so I'm going to get this post in by the end of August.  Hooray for me.

Hawaii

Since McKenna's imminent graduated from Weber State was...imminent... we've been planning a trip to Hawaii as a big graduation present.  I've always been hesitant about vacations because I always need a vacation from my vacation.  Kenna was super excited from the get-go, and yes, of course I thought that Hawaii would be fantastic, but I walked with a bit of trepidation as we planned our trip.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

We got on a plane and then we were in Hawaii.  Moving right along.

We stayed on the island of Maui for 3 nights and then on Oahu for 3 more nights.





Tuesday was the "Road to Hana."  Sort of.  A wonderful way to see the island.  We got started a little bit later than is necessary to drive the entire road, and the hundreds of switchbacks were making McKenna carsick and me super cranky, so we decided we had gone far enough and turned around.

We did make a couple of quality stops along the way, though.  One in particular where where we had to hike in a mile or so to a nice little pool and waterfall.  It felt like something right out of "Lost".  Y'know, that one episode where Kate and Sawyer dive down to get the haliburton suitcase with the guns and.... nevermind.

Anyway, it was cool.  The water was wicked good.













Jungle.

Beach.

Well, rocks actually.  But cool rocks.  And a wife.

Wednesday we spent the morning with Hawaii Mike.  Now, Hawaii isn't populated entirely by hippies, but there are quite a few, and Mikey was the embodiment thereof.  Long hair, sandals, and about a dozen different terms for the special plants he told us he had growing in his backyard.  Why did we spend a day with Hawaii Mike?  He was our guide that drove us to the summit of Mt. Haleakala to watch the sunrise.  We had to get up at 2AM to get there on time, but it was totally worth it.

 After watching the sunrise we biked back down the volcano.

 Dole Whip from the pineapple plantation.

 Itty-bitty pineapple.

 Pearl harbor.

Big freaking gun at Pearl Harbor, complete with Kenna's sound effects.











 Maui wasn't as tropical and jungle-y looking as Oahu.  This was the view from the highway on Oahu.

Before going to the Polynesian Cultural Center we swung by the LDS temple just around the corner.  We packed so light we decided not to pack Sunday clothes, but once we were there we kind of wished we had so that we could go in.  It was still nice to walk around the grounds, though.  In the visitor's center the missionaries came over and talked to us and we met a Sister Li from Korea who knew my friend Tserennyam from his mission to Korea and also from right there in Laie.  He graduated from BYU-Hawaii and headed back to Mongolia only weeks before we got there.

Just a guy climbing a big freaking palm tree.  nbd












And there's a pretty wife looking very Hawaiian.












Easily the best vacation I've ever been on.  Sometimes we (as in people in general) just get so wrapped up in making sure that we enjoy every little thing we can when we go somewhere new, different, exciting, or expensive that we forget to actually enjoy where we are.  With all the cool things to do in Hawaii, we thought the coolest part was just being there.  So rather than scrambling to and fro trying to get our money's worth, Kenna and I decided to take a step back, plan a few fun things and then just enjoy the sun, the beach, and the time together.





Can you spot the beached whale in this picture?







Oh, and how could I forget?  Here are some quality shots of us surfing.  We actually got up almost every time.  And yes, I made that face in every gosh darn picture.

Here's us falling... 

and not falling.  Go us.

Looming loominess...

Those who know me well and some who don't probably know that I think sleep is an unnecessary silliness that plagues our society.  How much more could you get done with an extra 5, 6, 8, 12 hours in your day?  Althought, since I there is no living with me if I don't get my Sunday afternoon nap, allow me to amend that:  Sleep between the hours of 10PM and about 4AM is an unnecessary silliness etc., etc.  I'm already up (being productive I'm sure), so why should I go shut my eyes when it's likely going to take me another forty-five minutes to actually fall asleep anyway?

At that I see visions of not too many years ago when I was but a humble undergraduate student, easily pulling off two or three all-nighters a week writing papers on song cycles, making powerpoint presentations on Bronfenbrenner's behavioral theories, or arranging for Not Too Sharp.  Granted, there were many a nap taken on two chairs pushed together on the 2nd floor of the Dimond library or sometimes even during Rob Haskins Music History course, but sleep always seems so unnecessary when it's most... necessary.  The all-nighters don't work as well anymore, be it age or the rigorous schedule of a high school band director, but sleep is still little more than an annoyance (between the hours of 10PM and 4AM).

So now I sit here at my desk at 2:31 on a Monday morning with a little project I'm trying to finish up for a marching band rehearsal that starts in less than four and a half hours and counting.  The project isn't entirely beyond me per se, but it's just frustrating enough that I can't quite get myself motivated to finish it.  That was a few hours ago.  The project did force me to sit at the computer however, and looking at the latest pictures of my sweet, 1-year-old niece seemed like a lot more fun.  But how long would it take me to check out my sister-in-law's blog?  Five minutes?  Yeah, for each post I haven't read over the last month, so that's at least a solid half hour right there, but why stop?  There's got to be something entertaining on Facebook for sure.  What's that?  A former student's blog post?  And that blog can lead me to other blogs?  It already seems like a bloggy night, so why not?

About a dozen blogs and only 1 or 2 comments on said blogs later and here we are.  I have been entertained, inspired, confused, offended, hurt, enlightened, upset, and elated.  All of those emotions from the writings of friends, family, and strangers.  I have learned things I never knew and heard some things I'm sure I said first and all I can think about are all of the other people who have touched my life that I haven't heard from in months or years.  I could start naming off at least fifty names of people that I wish I knew where they were, what they were doing, and how their lives were turning out.  My beautiful wife sleeps but a few feet away from me and I realize that none of those fifty people I'm thinking of have met her or even seen a picture of her.  None of those fifty people know about the Dimond library, my cutie-pie niece, or my band directing.  On Saturday a good friend I see about once a week was shocked that I was driving a truck.  I've had that thing for six months.

What else have I not shared?  Who have I not shared it with?  Somewhere in all of the comic book movie nonsense that makes up a majority of my chosen topics of conversation there must exist something worthwhile, something that ought to be shared.  Something to entertain, inspire, confuse, offend, hurt, enlighten, upset and elate.

And so I blog.  I blog the bloggy night away while the project looms over me as the even more loomy rehearsal looms ever more loomingly with its looming loominess.  I hope this begins a tradition of sharing and isn't just yet another worthwhile activity that I step into but for a moment and immediately leave to be forgotten.  There is so much that I haven't shared, so much that I'm not sharing, and so much that I fear I won't share, and it has to stop.  However, it would be foolish of me to go and start from the beginning, so the sharing of my many adventures won't proceed in chronological order, and it will more seem like Marty and Doc Brown are drunk at the wheel of the DeLorean.  I will write about the events that have happened, are happening, and will happen in my life as I see fit (and yes, it's entirely possible and common, even, to write about the future ye naysayers).

I tried to stretch it out as far as I could, but it seems my ramblings are all rambled out for now.  Guess I should finish that project.

And so my blog begins.