NEW!

Hello everyone, sorry it's been such a long time. A lot has happened since I last posted anything. My trip to DC with Winters was a success. After 2 days of trying to get a flight I finally made it. Sweaty, Winters, and I watched the Red Sox destroy the Orioles in Baltimore, toured the monuments, and looked around at the Smithsonian. DC is such a cool city. I wish I could have spent more time there. I'll just have to go back sometime. Soon after that trip, we headed to Las Vegas to see Green Day. The day of the concert we went to the buffet at Mandalay Bay. I was more full than I have ever been in my entire life. I didn't ever want to look at, smell, or think about food for at least a week. It was delicious though. Then, that night we went to the concert. It rocked. Green Day is comprised of some seriously talented people. The next monday was the first day of school. Yay for the U of U! That first week of school was a blur. As a person, I am very resistant to change so it was stressful to try and get into the flow of things. I did have one nasty surprise...I found out that my fees were going to be almost 600 dollars. I was expecting something more along the lines of 300 to 400 since that's what all of the letters I got said to expect. Because of this, my hopes of spending my free winter days snowboarding were dashed. I was super bummed. However, a few weeks later my parents and grandpa surprised me with an unexpected early Christmas present. A season pass to Brighton! I have never been so happy. I have the best family in the world. Thanks Mom and Dad and Grandpa! Anyway, I started getting into the routine of school. On labor day I went with my sister Carli and saw Blink-182 in Orem. We were in the second row the whole time. It was really really awesome. I've wanted to see Blink since I was in middle school so it was super cool. After that, all I've really done is go to school and do homework. I'm starting to go a little bit crazy with nothing to do but schoolwork so I'm really excited for fall break next week. Only 5 more days to survive until a whole week of freedom! I can't wait.

Nonrev

This morning my friend Winters and I embarked on our journey to Washington DC.  Lucky for us, we get to fly for free.  However, we have to fly nonrev.  Nonrev is short for "nonrevenue".  This means that since we fly for free, we can only fly on flights that have empty seats.  Unfortunately, the first flight we tried to get on was completely full so, you guessed it, we were left to try to get seats on the next one.  Now we are sitting here waiting for a flight to St. Louis where we will change planes and head to Baltimore, and then ride the bus to DC.  The flight to St. Louis has about 20 other nonrev passengers all fighting for only 12 open seats.  Hopefully we have checked in early enough that we will get 2 of those 12.  Needless to say, even though traveling like this is free, it is extremely stressful.  More to come soon....

Update

Wow, it has been a while since I've posted anything on here so I thought I'd leave a little update.  The summer has been going well so far.  I took a maymester statistics class and that is good to have over.  I've been working at the pool teaching swimming lessons and lifeguarding almost every day so that keeps me nice and busy.  I lucked out and somehow got the 4th of July off of work!  This 4th of July was a blast.  I've decided that it's my new favorite holiday.  Every year for the 4th of July all of my little cousins from my mom's side of the family come and visit.  It is the only time of the year that we have everyone together.  My cousins are hilarious and I got to play with them all day.  We went to the park, hung out at my grandparents' house, did some fireworks, and watched the big fireworks together.  Another fun thing this week was my birthday yesterday.  We didn't do anything huge, we just had a little BBQ with the fam.  It was really fun.  Now that all that excitement is over, I've got to find a place to live in Salt Lake so I can move there and start school next month.  I'm really excited for school.  I'm taking a chemistry class and a bunch of classes for my exercise physiology major.  I'm excited to just have classes that are directly applicable to what I'm doing and not have to take dumb classes that I don't need and I'm not interested in.  Anyway, that's just about everything that's going on with me.  Have fun with the rest of your summer everyone!

Jacoby's Steal

Here's that video of Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home. It was so awesome! Look how wild the fans are going. Also, look how fudging mad Pettite and Joe Girardi are. This just fills my heart with happiness. Enjoy.

Just Some Thoughts

I just thought I'd get on here and write a few of my thoughts from the past little while. First off, baseball's back! I went to a Salt Lake Bees game with my family a few weeks ago and man, it felt good to be back at the ballpark. I can't wait to go to some more games. Also, this weekend I got to watch a couple of Red Sox games on TV, even though I probably should have been studying for finals. This series against the Yankees was awesome! Game one on Friday night was incredible. Jason Bay hit a two-run homer off of Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the 9th to send the game into extra innings and Kevin Youkilis ended it with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the 12th. It doesn't get much better than that. Then yesterday, the Sox were down 6 to nothing and I thought it was over. Jason Varitek hit a grand slam, and everyone just started hitting like crazy. The Sox ended up winning 16-11. 16 runs is a lot of runs. Tonight's game was awesome too. The Sox ended up winning 4-1. The highlight of the game was when Jacoby Ellsbury stole home with the bases loaded to put the Sox ahead 3-1. He's the first Red Sox player to steal home in like 15 years. Anyway, it's just super nice to have baseball season back.

In other news, it is dreaded finals week. I really should be studying right now instead of writing this blog but I needed a little break. I just finished a six page paper on the history of Punk Rock and it was harder to write than you would think. Now I've got a sack full of 20 stacks of physiology flash cards that need to be reviewed before my final on Tuesday. Also, I've got half a semester's worth of History of Rock notes to memorize. On the bright side, I don't have to take my Math final because I got a good enough grade that my teacher isn't making me take it and I'll be completely done with all of my finals by Tuesday night. That will give me about 5 days of freedom before my nose is back to the grindstone with a maymester statistics class and a summer calculus class. I really am not looking forward to those classes, especially calculus, but it will be super nice to have them over with.

Well, I hope everyone is doing well. Good luck to everyone who still has finals, and have fun.

Bayside

I realize that lately I have been blogging about music a lot. This is probably because my life consists of hours upon hours of studying in the library whilst listening to tunes. On Friday I had the good fortune of seeing one of my favorite bands live in concert: Bayside. It sure felt good to get out of Manti and see some live music. I have liked Bayside for a long time. They are not well known and I have not been able to figure out why because they freakin' rock. Friday was my second time seeing them in concert. They were one of the opening bands for New Found Glory. New Found Glory was ok but I would've much rather seen Bayside as the headlining band. Their most recent album is called "Shudder." If you are a fan of good rock 'n roll, I would definitely recommend giving these guys a listen. Frontman Anthony Raneri has a really unique voice and guitarist Jack O'Shea has some real face-melting guitar solos. I know because I was about 5 feet away from one of them on Friday night. Bayside has released 4 albums, one live album, and one acoustic album. I would definitely recommend their acoustic album as well as "The Walking Wounded" and "Shudder." As a matter of fact, I would recommend any of their stuff. Just give them a try and tell me what you think.

Angels & Airwaves

Lately I have been thinking a lot about one of my favorite bands, Angels & Airwaves. Wednesday, March 4th marked the one year anniversary of my first time seeing them in concert. I also saw them in October with Weezer, which was great, but the show they did in March where they were the headlining band was nothing short of mind-blowingly awesome.
For those of you who may not know anything about AVA, it was formed by Tom DeLonge shortly after his band Blink-182 announced their hiatus. Other members of the band are guitarist David Kennedy (who was a part of DeLonge's side project Box Car Racer), drummer Atom Willard (formerly of Rocket From the Crypt and The Offspring), and bassist Matt Wachter (formerly of 30 Seconds to Mars). They have released two albums: "We Don't Need to Whisper" and "I-Empire."
When Blink-182 announced that they were getting back together I was super happy, but I was also a little worried about what would happen with AVA. My fears were soon quieted though. DeLonge announced that nothing would happen to Angels & Airwaves and they're working on a new album right now.
If you haven't ever listened to AVA, I would highly recommend it. The best way to listen to them is to listen to one or both of the CDs all the way through without doing anything else at the same time. I love to listen to them when I'm driving by myself at night. Their lyrics are really cool to listen to and their sound is kind of outer-spacey, without sounding weird or like techno.
Their new album should be coming out this year as well as a feature film which is sounding pretty awesome. However, I've heard that they won't be touring this year because of DeLonge's commitment to tour with Blink-182 this summer.
Anyway, I hope this gave you a little insight into one of my favorite bands, maybe even my most favorite. I would highly recommend listening to them, I mean really listening to them, preferably in the way I described earlier. So go do it, and tell me what you think.