It Was Mine in 2009

And here, for everyone's reading enjoyment, is the obligatory Top of 2009 List:

Top Guilty Pleasure(s):

This one was a three-way tie. Sorry for the cop-out, but I think you'll understand.

1. Looking at my wife's Bridal Pictures. I can't believe how lucky I am some days. That Erin chose me over a hundred other better-looking, funnier, wittier, nicer, pleasanter, more athletic, less arthritic, genetically superior men to me still blows me away some days. She is a gem, and easily makes this the Best Year Ever for me. I gush, I gush. I know. But still... a guy deserves to revel in the awesomeness of his life sometimes.



2. Nodding my head like Yeah; Shaking my hips like Yeah.  This totally makes up for the pole dancing incident. I just hope it doesn't become, as good friend Cody has labeled it, the "Achy Breaky Heart" of the 2000s. And just because it's heavily featured on Seriously So Blessed doesn't make me nod my head or shake my hips any less. :P

3. The BCS anti-Playoff Propaganda. I still can't believe the BCS pays money to Ari Fleischer for stuff like this: http://playoffproblem.com/. As Andy Staples from SI.com told me when I asked him how he felt about being misrepresented on the site as being pro-BCS and whether it was all some kind of big Joke, the playoffproblem website is, "a site designed by a DC public relations firm to insult your intelligence." Well said, Andy. Well said.

If it's so awful, why is it a top guilty pleasure, then? It's like watching your greatest enemy slowly--and bluntly--impale himself on his own sword.

Top Song





More to come.

Well done, Cougars

Well done, indeed.

Now if the Utes can slaughter the Golden Bears in similar fashion, I wonder what it means for the PAC-10?

I love and will miss College Football for the next few months...

Seriously?

http://www.playoffproblem.com/ Just go there. If you're a sports fan, a politics fan, a Public Relations fan, or just one of those people who slows down for car wrecks and can't look away, you NEED to see this. I can't decide if it's a joke or the worst example of PR work I've ever seen. It makes me wonder if Ari Fleischer is actually just taking his cleints' money and subverting their own cause by being so...well, BAD. Try the site's blog, and then check out some of the comments. I've never seen a website be so bad at doing what it purports to do. It's almost as if someone is parodying the BCS... hmmm.... makes me wonder if this is a maddening website or someone's mad genius website. No folks. IT'S LEGIT!!! Oh, SNL would KILL for this kind of material. For a deeper look into this, check out this great article by Dan Wetzel from Yahoo! Sports. He's been a big defender of a College Football Playoff for years, and a huge fan of Utah/BYU football. In short, he's my hero. SIDE NOTE: I would like to one day celebrate my birthday by going to a College Football Playoff game. For now, though, I will happily spend it with my wife. Thus, my perfect birthday will be a College Football Playoff game with my wife. Future reference, honey. ;) I think I just caught a glimpse of Nirvana

Bigotes and Bigotry: A Mish-Mash of Mashuppery

If that title isn't pretentious enough, I don't know what it is. Well, I've decided to come fully out of marriage-induced blog hibernation. Erin looked at me the other night and confessed "I just don't have anything to blog about anymore"... until she got sick, and I got her addicted to LOST. And--voila--she had something to write. [NOTE: The Final Season of Lost begins February 2, 2009. Groundhog Day. For you Losties out there, that may or may not be a significant day. If you're not a Lostie, there's still time...] In that vein, I probably don't have much to say, except for some random warbles. Random Warble 1: I do really dumb things sometimes. Like cutting up two jalapeno peppers for a delicious lime cilantro ranch dip, rolling my fingers around in the pepper oil, superficially washing my hands and then, of course, attempting to take out my contacts. Let it sink in. Pepper oil on fingers, direct contact with eyeballs from fingers. Yeah. I went there. I did that. For those who have ever been sprayed in the face with mace, you can empathize with my pain. Imagine your eyes melting in a really stingy, ouchy way, and you're right there. Ok. That's dumb. Yes. But here's why I'm really dumb: after taking out the right contact made me squeal like a six-year-old and cry with the pain, I washed my hands again and tried to take out the left one. Yeah. I roll like that. Teary-eyed and full of pain. Idiot. Random Warble 2 Why do some people intentionally refrain from enjoying something solely because "too many people like it?" I can't tell you how many people refused to get Coldplay's Viva la Vida (Grammy winner and all) simply because it got "too much play" on the radio, or because Coldplay was "too overhyped." Fine, they got a lot of play on the radio, they got a lot of hype. So what? Just because something's popular, doesn't mean it's bad. Or good. It just means lots of people like it. If you want to argue the merits of something, I'm all for it. Heck, I crushed the garlic out of Twilight. I just think it's silly to avoid something solely because a lot of people enjoy it. Where did this warble come from? Well, I recently saw a facebook group dedicated to predicting the downfall of James Cameron's new movie Avatar. Yep. The new movie that comes out NEXT WEEK. Not yet released, but already people are backlashing against it because ... well ... it's getting hype. Really guys? Are you afraid that this unreleased movie won't live up to the expectations they've built up in their minds? Has Star Wars Episode 1 really made us all so paranoid that we lash out at any similar hype machine? Just from the trailer, see below, I don't know if you can draw any conclusions about this movie. It could suck. Or it could be awesome. But at least just let it be until it comes out. Or you try it out. Try it and didn't like it? Blast away on the interwebs. Try it and liked it? You won't have to hang your head in shame for having hated on its 2 minute trailer. No matter how it plays out, I'm pretty stoked about this one. Imax, 3D, Sci-Fi, Big Gear, guy who made Terminator and Aliens... it's right up any 12-year-old boy's alley. Being the smart girl that she is, Erin's taking me for my birthday. :D Random Warble 3 Glee is awesome. Sue Sylvester is magic. 'Nuff said. Random Warble 4 This inspired me to grow a real mustache. And to laugh out loud. In my office. (Thanks to brother, Mikee for the clip). For the record, it IS like the color blue. Random Warble 5 The BCS STILL sucks. Four years later, and nothing's changed. Makes a usually :D guy want to :'{ . At least we still have the Jazz to look forward to... erm... Yeah.

The Little Hilarities of Predictive Text

Ok, so everyone knows that predictive text is a little bit... asynchronous. Like when you think you're putting in a word with a series of three or four button pushes, but forget to cycle through the choice your program predicted for you in order to get to the real one, sometimes the consequences can be unintentionally hilarious. Or alternatively horrifying. I think I'll share some of the long list I've compiled over the years in little snippets. The first that comes readily to mind is "Cafe Rio." We all love their delicious Tex-Mex cuisine, picked-fresh pico de gallo, hand-stretched tortillas, and delicious cilantro-lime cream dressing. You almost feel naughty eating it. Thus, when you try to text your friends, it's only appropriate that the first option that pops up is... Cafe SIN. Imagine what their Key Lime Pie or Sweet Pulled Pork would be like if the grim reaper or the cherubim were making it... I imagine it would still be pretty darn good. Have you guys noticed any? Send over the best, funniest, or most damning you can think of. Cnt w8 4 m.

Back and Ready for Action

Well, the wedding went wonderfully, the honeymoon was a dream, and the wifey and I are settling into the first weeks of marital bliss. Erin has been cataloging some of it, and wrote a fantastic post about the honeymoon here. The best part about our trip to Cozumel? Erin loved it. Who knew I would so enjoy spoiling mi amor? :D But now, back to reality. Which can be rough sometimes. Don't get me wrong, it's SOOOOO much nicer having my best friend around all the time, and suddenly the little stressful things seem to melt away when I get to wake up next to my wife, but reality has a tendency to hit hard when you're coming back from a vacation. And in that reality I have observed some things. Here are a few of those nuggets I have observed about the immediate post-honeymoon. People LOVE us. And People LOVE Pyrex. Why not combine those loves? We feel so blessed and loved and appreciated by all those people who came to wish us well, send their love, and help us as we start our new lives. We will never be able to thank everyone adequately for what they have done for us, both in terms of gifts and financial support, but also for their friendships and their relationships with us. That said... enough mushy stuff. That's not why you people read this blog, I think. So, the love often came in the form of Pyrex. That magical glassware you can bake with. Think I'm kidding? Let me put it this way: we got a lot of Pyrex. To the tune of 40+ pieces. We could open an industrial kitchen in our apartment with the cookware we've received. Again, we're extremely grateful for it. We've already used it. And a lot of it. It's amazing to walk into the apartment and see our piles of gifts occupying their own corners of the living room: We have the "To Use" pile, filled with useful, creative, fun, and unique gifts. We have the "To Return" pile, filled with useful, creative, fun, but unfortunately not unique gifts (THREE sandwich makers. Someone was obviously receiving my Christmas Wish Lists as a teenager). And we have the mighty "Pyrex" pile. I'm going to try to stack the Pyrex to the ceiling tonight. Just for fun. Midnight's not so bad. It's 6:45 am that is the real "Witching Hour", a time of the day invented by Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself in order to torment the souls of men. That's why my alarm goes off at 6:40. And only later does it go off at 6:45. And then again at 6:50. And 6:55. But at 7:00, I'm definitely up and out of the sheets. And by 7:05 I'm climbing out of bed. Who invented the work day that started at 8? "Grumble, mumble... sleepy tumble, bed is comfy, and in the mornings, I bumble." Budgeting Software is AMAZING YNAB has been, already two days in, a very impressive piece of software. And very helpful in getting us on track towards getting out of debt (bless BYU for keeping us too far out of debt) and on the road to saving. Geeze. I think I just became my father. NETFLIX is AMAZING And now I'm back to me. I think NetFlix is totally cool. Even more so now that you can stream instantly to your computer. This is especially convenient when your sole tv/movie media access point is your desktop computer placed conveniently in front of the couch. For a few bucks a month, we can really save by foregoing a cable bill. And now I'm back to my father again. I'm just waiting to start saying stuff like "When something's worth doing, it's worth doing well." Which is true... Gift Cards are Kind of Awesome And by kind of, I mean EXTREMELY. There's nothing quite like the thrill of taking a pile of gift cards to your local super store and having the sweet (but somehow slightly cantankerous) old woman put their individual amounts onto one uber-gift card. It's like having Excalibur bestowed upon you. The purchasing power in your hands has gone from middling or mundane to super-human. You feel as though you've been chosen. That you have realized your calling. And your purpose on earth, at least for the next two hours, is to buy stuff. Don't believe me? Try it. Just remember to follow this advice: when walking through said super store, you are required to hold out the new uber-card and allow it to guide you to the items you need/want/desperately-must-have-or-you're-going-to-die-in-the-store-right-now-so-we-have-to-get-it-now-no-ands-ors-or-buts-about-it-Mr. If you follow the urgings and nudgings of the Card, you will find yourself in consumerism nirvana. And then you'll have to unload all the stuff you got when you get home. And wonder how the stuff you just bought makes it into the "To Return" pile...

Today

I marry my sweetheart. I met her 600 days ago today. I can't wait for the next 600... and the next. And the next. I believe it was the Bard who said "Love is a many-splendored thing." Or a 1950s Hollywood movie. Either way, they're both right. I. Am. Splendored.