Random Thought 20: WALL-E

Picture season at Bell hasn't picked up quite yet so I'm not really working right now and have some serious cabin fever so I've been watching quite a few movies while I try and not get carpal tunnel from writing thank you notes.

I'm a little pissed at Smith's Food stores right now because they somehow link mine and my parents accounts and I used their accumulated gas points, and their pumps suck harder than one of those over priced vacuums. Needless to say I was already pissed at Smiths from filling up their a few nights ago and this just made it even worse.

I needed to calm down, and I wanted to watch a movie anyway, so I went for my standby favorite, WALL-E. I freaking love this movie and here's why.

One: THe cinematography is amazing. So many beautiful shots, superb animation and attention to detail.

Two: The soundtrack is second to none for an animated film. Go ahead fight me about. Put 'em up!

Three: They tell so much with so little. There isn't even substantial human dialog for over half the movie. The first half depends on WALL-E's personality and his adorable quest to get "Eevah" to notice him. The human characteristics and mannerisms are just amazing. Which brings me to my next point.

Four: The story. Every Pixar movie has a great storyline right? Toy Story had the pains of growing up, Finding Nemo was the pain of losing a loved one and fighting to get them back. Well I think the reason I love WALL-E, especially is the storyline that develops.

WALL-E is some hobo garbage collecting robot and this random, new and sleek robot comes into his life. She shuts down after getting this plant, but does WALL-E leave her side? Nope. He sits in the rain with her, through dust storms, and tries everything he can to get her to "wake up" again because of this crazy undying love he has for this other robot.

When Eve's ship comes back to pick her up, WALL-E, he runs for his life to go save her and goes on this wild goose chase through the ship to find her, re-find her, and finally saving the day against the Autopilot.

You see, I'm a hobo robot. I went through life doing the same old thing every day. Life was good, I had good roommates and family and everything.

But then this smokin' hot robot came along and I realized that there was more to life. It took a while to win her over, but now she's made me a happy little WALL-E. When WALL-E and Eve first "kiss" with that little spark, it was about like that for me. Most the time when she talks to me I have to focus really hard because I have to stop myself from just zoning out looking at her cute face. WALL-E and I are whipped fo sho.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Random Thought 19 The Last Year In Summary

You know, if you asked me a year ago how my 7 week break between semesters was going, I would have said it was the most boring time of my life and that I needed to find a job (good luck finding one for that short of a time) to be honest, I don't even remember what I was doing this time last year. Facebook photos say we had a family reunion about this time last year.... I broke my foot last September, so that's cool.

Between Fall and Spring Semester I got a job working at Bell Photography, which is brutal to wake up to at 5:30 in the morning and sometimes earlier, but it was money and I got to sit down most all day.

December also brought some nice change in the family, getting rid of the Yukon XL in favor of "Super Ram" the big little brother to Super Dodge. So yeah, holy crap my dad bought a new truck.

The Spring semester was fun, I only had a couple of classes on campus, which was weird, but I kinda liked hardly leaving the apartment. I don't want to say I'm a hermit, because I did get cabin fever sometimes. Technically there were four of us in the apartment, but it was mainly just me, Mitch and Steven. I saw my former roommate Bryce more than I saw my actual roommate Nathan.

The strangest change was this chick kept hanging out at my apartment more and more this semester. Like literally she was over there every day. It was the weirdest thing. She'd just come over and hang out, we did game nights ever Sunday and she made these intoxicating cookies. Like... seriously they're better than hydrocodone.

So one day, we started cuddling watching a movie a few days before the Fourth of July.  I was like "Well alright, I haven't had non-relative female contact in for freaking ever... Why not?"

And then we started watching The Office, which Steven hates, by the way. Sitting on that couch with Emily watching the greatest TV show of our generation just felt right. I say Michael Scott brought us together, but Emily doesn't quite like that.

So after cuddling some more watching The Office, going to the drive-in and cuddling watching Jurrasic World, and some disc golfing in between, we made it official. Being the pansy I am, it took me forever to get up the guts. You'd think the annoyingly outgoing person I can be would jump at the chance, but I'm a pansy in all reality. I'd literally told myself the day before I did it that I rather break my foot than do this.

But then she said yes. I knew she was going to say yes, but seriously... it was killing me.

And then Mitch left like hours later... and I left for home a few days later. Looking back, it was something I should have done about a month earlier. Like... a month and a half really.

So now I'm spending my time between here and Rexburg. Steven is still up there, we still have game night every Sunday there or at my house, and I seriously couldn't be happier right now.

This year, this year is a lot better. I only have a few semesters of school left, I have a solid job in my off-track semester, my roommates are freaking awesome, and my girlfriend is even better. She makes me cookies. These things are seriously better than hydrocodone.

So yeah. This summer is pretty awesome. Spending my time between here and Rexburg is giving me a good excuse to ride "Thumper" around and "save gas", and we're planning on a trip up to Red Lodge, MT on the bikes the weekend before school starts, so I'm pretty pumped about that. But most of all, I'm ready to be back there and see my girlfriend every day.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but bring on Fall 2015.

Random Thought 18 Lots and Lots of Rocks

In the world of dirt bikes, there are a lot of obstacles. Some of them are bigger than others, most are easily overcome with the right technique and a bit of luck. And then there are those that just jump out at you and break your 3rd and 4th metatarsus.

If you couldn't tell, I experienced the latter a few weeks ago.

My dad, brother and I all went for a ride the first weekend of my semester at school. After driving in a general direction of Swan Valley, we decided to ride a trail that I professed to never go back on a few years prior, but I was a weakling back then on a tiny bike. Things could change, right?

Wrong. It still sucked, but for even more reasons now.

You see, Pritchett Creek is a nice ride for the majority. It's a loop, so you never see the same terrain twice, unless you go backwards through it once you're out the other side, but the first few miles going in and the last few miles going out are pretty torturous. Rocks everywhere, and it was kinda muddy as well.

I can handle that most days. It was this one little rock that really ruined the ride... and a is still ruining me as we speak.

You see, between these gnarly patches, Prichet Creek is nice. It's a single track trail, winding through a canyon with a (usually) small creek in the bottom. You get some nice flow going through a lot of it, and it's enjoyable. That is until there that one rock I was talking about.

This friggin rock pops out of nowhere on me, my front tire catches it and my left side foot peg decides to make a straight line right for my left foot. No prob. I got motocross boots. Plastic and composite will save me. The guys at Fly Racing did there homework right? Yeah.

But that's not going to help. This foot peg nails me right in the top of the foot going about mach five.

I get the bike picked off of me and put some weight on the foot. Feels bad, but I've been through that before. Whatever. Pain ain't no thang.

So I ride another like... 20 miles with what I figured was just a sore foot. Get back to the truck and pull the boot off. Still nothing. No bruising, no bones sticking out of my foot. It's all good. I'll be better in the morning.

Well, fact of the matter was that I couldn't walk straight... well I can't walk straight normally.... I really couldn't walk at all. I hopped around my house. So I went back up to lovely ol' BYU-Idaho with crutches. I got through that Sunday and that night bruises started to show up as well as some swelling.

"Cool. Well. I think things might be broken at this point." I thought to myself after I posted a photo to Instagram of my nasty foot.

The next day I rode my bike to the Smith Building with crutches bungee'd to my backpack and went on with my day. Tuesday, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland came to speak at devotional, and my mom came to see. I figured that day was a good day to get X-rays.

Yup. Them broken toes. Normal toes don't have a 40 degree bend to them at the end.

Well, technically it's my metatarsal bones. #3 and #4, so it's my foot. Foot sounds cooler than toes anyway.

So a week after the X-rays, I was sitting in my good buddy Dr. Huntsman's office. 4 weeks in a boot keeping all weight off unless not moving. Yay. Not only do I have to keep off the foot, but I have to reduce myself to crutching around campus instead of speeding around on a bike. My arms were hurting just thinking about it.

The weeks went by faster than I thought. Now, I'm sitting here with no boot and a prescription for knee braces to keep me from killing any more of my legs will riding. So I guess it's not all bad.

BUT WAIT! There's more! With the effort my left foot had to put forth, it now hurts arguably more than actually breaking the other foot because of being constantly worked for the price of two feet. But, things are slowly getting better.


Watch out for rocks folks. They'll screw up your riding season.

Random Thought 17 Our Brains Aren't Hard Drives

So, summer is upon us and that means one thing for gamers. The Steam Summer Sale. Can you say 75% off Mirrors Edge? Cause I can. And I did. And a few other games.

But that's not what this is about. This is about a very important thing in our lives. Memories. How does this relate to buying dirt cheap video games? It's because I had to tweak my hard drive partitioning to fit some of the games because I have quite a lot. Again, that's a little beside the point, but we're getting closer.

I have a 500GB hard drive in my laptop, which for most college students would be plenty. But I'm not the average college student. For one, I take CIT classes that require storage intensive programs, and for another I'm a GoPro fanatic that has a good chunk of that hard drive dedicated to those videos along with pictures, documents and music.

A few nights ago, my external hard drive decided to crap out on me, and I started freaking out. I had my life backed up on there. I had my Windows Disk image, school projects since high school and tons of GoPro memories. After a minute I calmed down because I remembered that all those files were backed up multiple times over.
-My Windows disk image was on a USB drive and (now) another CD
-My documents were backed up in Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive
-My pictures and videos were on primary internal, back up internal and backup external hard drive in a fireproof safe at my parents house.

I would have to really have to try to destroy things in order to get rid of everything. So I'm not too torn up about things. Which brings me to a point of this

BACK UP YOUR CRAP.

Seriously. If you have one hard drive that contains your life on it, you're asking for trouble. For $50 you can have a Terabyte hard drive that will keep most everything you could want on it.

Which brings me to another point, my family is not in that category. There's a reason my dad has 6 Terabytes of storage in his computer. We use a good chunk of it. A while ago my dad recorded off all of our old analog home videos to digital. After that was said and done and counted along side our existing digital video, we had over 2 Terabytes of video. With HD video getting bigger and bigger, it's only using up more space.

On top of the videos, we have all our pictures converted to digital. The summer before college I scanned in over 25,000 pictures spanning a 30 year time period. In total, we now have close to 35,000 photos on our hard drive. To further put that in perspective, in 2008, my mom got a DSLR camera for Christmas. Since that time till now, we've shot over 7,000 photos. So we've shot 20% of our photos on our hard drive in the last 6 years. To add to the hard drive strain, those photos are an average of 6 Megabytes in size. Your standard camera will take about 100 Kilobytes. They're a lot bigger.

But now I'm rambling. The really cool part about all of this is the fact that these photos and videos are instantly accessible. I can go home, get on my laptop and in a few clicks, access these photos on my dad's computer and start a slide show of our Disneyland trip in 1996 because they're there and they're organized by year and month, usually with a tag about what's happening in the album. This is all awesome because our brains are not hard drives. Memories come in fragmented and fuzzy for most. Heck, most my memories are actually just replays of home videos. with the digital age, it's easier than ever to have those memories back.
Want them printed? Click. Done.
Upload a cute photo of us cousins to Facebook? Click. Done.
It's that easy once all is said and done.

I know so many people that all they have is a photo album or two to flip through, or they're photos are still titled "DS10000232" or whatever on there hard drive. That would be maddening to me.

So my plea to you is two fold.
First is to back up those memories you have. Put them in a safe, take a copy to grandma's house or a safety deposit box, because two is one and one is none when things go wrong.

The second is to start copying those photos to digital. Most scanners will have trays to do negatives, or you can scan in the prints. Both work. Videos need some special software and equipment, but it's fairly easy. Because the fact is that right now those prints are sitting in that dusty old cardboard box in your basement storage. That one solitary copy is encased in cardboard inside a wood frame house.

And those two things are flammable.

Random Thought 16 My Blog is Better Than My Sister's Blog

Okay, so it's not. But I figured it would catch the attention of my sister, so that's the title. My blog is terrible and boring. My sister on the other hand has a baby. I have a truck. One of these things is a lot more adorable and it's not the thing with four wheels.

To be honest, I have no idea what I was going to blog about tonight until I read my sisters blog.
Enter shameless plug for family member: sansfamily.wordpress.com

I remember the first time I met my now brother-in-law Riley was at a Bill Cosby show. I think. That's my first concious memory at least. Anyway, this Riley kid was a total dork. He had these big old thick rimmed glasses, some t-shirt from Deseret Industries and I had to sit next to him while watching Bill Cosby. I thought, "Oh great, they actually like each other. I'm going to have to deal with another goober until she pulls her head out of this one."

That didn't happen. Nope. Not at all. I saw this get pretty freakin' serious pretty freaking fast. Next thing I know, this kid is stealing my sister away for weekends in some Podunk town called Inkom. (I thought some rednecks from Pocatello named the water tower next to I-15 for the longest time.

So in this short amount of time, I kinda start to get to know Riley. We do stuff. Memory escapes me, but it was fun stuff. And then freaking pow, this kid proposes. What the crap? I never thought my sister would be getting married. Savanna and I were just going to be the perpetual bachelorette and bachelor of the family and we were going to always be the ones stuck together in coupled out family photos.

And then I turned into the single one of the family. The 11th wheel. the awkward kid on the end of the family photo's while all the rest of the siblings are huddled around their kids and spouces and I'm just over in the corner internally crying.

True story.

But when that wedding day rolled around and everyone but Savanna was dressed in brown (I still think it's the lamest pun on a last name ever, I'm sorry. It's a dad joke at it's finest) I realized that I was getting an older brother I never really had.

Sure, I had Nicolas. But we were ten years apart. I wanted to emulate him when I was a kid, but we never really "hung out" like we would have if we were closer in age. Nyk was just as old as Nicolas and had much less (seat time) with me, Pauline was 7 years ahead of me and a little closer, but she was a girl, and never appreciated a good fart joke. Tiffany was pretty dang tough for a girl, but again, not the one you want to try your latest fart joke on.  Savanna was the closest thing I had to a slightly older brother, but again, she was a girl, but a weird one at that. Like, there's a reason we cal her the Sanimal. She also was a little more up to date on "what the kids are into these days".

And then Riley came along and I thought that I was going to lose that. The one sibling that I truly totally, completely comfortable with sitting around at 3 in the morning watching Netflix and making those 3am jokes. You know the ones.

Then I realized that Riley was the missing link. He was the same age as Savanna, he liked all the best video games, Harry Potter, computers and obscure YouTube references. He started wakeboarding, dirt biking and snowmobiling. I realized that not only was he perfect for my sister, but he was perfect for our family. He didn't take away anything. He added to it. When I have a fart joke to try out, I send it to two people. My dad, and Riley.....and sometimes Savanna.

So now, as we approach 9 grand children in the family, and me eventually getting married, I realize that there's no taking away in my family. We just keep getting bigger and closer with every passing year. And we just keep getting dorkier.

Welcome to the Woolstenhulme Home for Excellence in Dorkiness. We can't come to the phone right now, but leave a message and we'll get back to you. Right after we clean the spit up off the couches, turn off the N64 and put away the princess clothes and dump the Hot Wheels back in the bin.... so that might be a while.

Random Thought 15 The Simpsons

So, one of my favorite shows is the Simpsons. I remember when I was younger, my grandma shaking her head at me, my brother and cousins for watching it, but she really didn't get the underlying message to almost any episode. That's the message of making up for your mistakes. All she saw was a drunken father who had married up, a dysfunctional son, over achieving daughter, and a surprisingly normal baby. I feel she was getting Family Guy and The Simpsons mixed up. Family Guy wishes it was The Simpsons, plain and simple.

In almost every episode of the Simpsons, excluding the Tree House of Horror episodes, someone screws up, usually Homer or Bart. Then, they face the consequences of those actions and try as hard as they can to make up for it. The thing that makes this series great is that it follows the classic Rising Action, Climax, falling action and resolution. It's a time honored formula and it really works for the Simpsons.

This Plot setup, unlike Family Guy that usually stakes the farm on crude jokes and a talking dog and baby, the Simpsons can be analyzed as an actually well written piece. All the while, it's still hilarious without a talking dog.

The prime example for me, and one of the biggest and most in your face examples, is The Simpsons Movie. Homer doesn't listen to anyone, dumps pig waste in the lake, and gets his family essentially kicked out of Springfield. After moving to Alaska at Homers request with a struggling and reluctant Marge and family in tow, they try to live a normal life, but eventually his family abandons him to try and save Springfield. Homer, belligerent and unwilling to help the very people that kicked him out of his own city, stays in Alaska.

In time, Home realizes the error of his ways. His family was his everything and without them, he's just a lump of fat with no real purpose in life. Eventually, he finds his way back to Springfield in time to help save the city from being blown up. Homer earns the trust and love back of his family and friends and they all live happily ever after.

My point in all this, is that the Simpsons family is far from perfect. They screw up quite regularly in fact. But they eventually try to fix their mistakes. They learn a lesson from whatever they did, and make up for it by any (sometimes hilarious means) possible. He's not the best father or husband, but he really sincerely tries at what he does. He improves upon himself and almost never does life get him knocked down for long.

In short, I want to be like Homer Simpson when I start a family (Minus the alcoholism, fat gut and baldness)
because Homer is one of the best examples of a man who tries his best despite what the world thinks of him, that I can think of.

Random Thought 14 What The Crap Is Wrong With Me?

This question comes up pretty much every week for me as I try to explain to people why I'm part of Monty Python's Ministry of the Silly Walks. It's one that I can't really explain in depth without really boring people, or telling them in a concise manner. You see, I was a pretty screwed up baby.

To start, I was born 12 weeks early. So that's like 28 weeks along... or something like that. Mom got sick in the middle of the pregnancy.... or something like that, and a little while later, SURPRISE. Mom goes to the hospital, and through divine intervention (EIRMC in Idaho Falls had a good NICU, but not good enough) my mom was sent on a helicopter down to Primary Children's Medical Center, one of the leading hospitals in the west when it comes to child care. I was "technically" born at University of Utah Medical Center, but both facilities are actually interconnected. More importantly, I'm technically a Utahn. Yuck. My cousins enjoy reminding me of that one.

In a perfect world, I would have come into this life like any other premature baby. I would have been a little weak for a baby and a little small, but would have spent a few weeks in the hospital and gone home. But I didn't. Completely unrelated to any of the prematurity was my diagnosis of VACTERL Association (vac-ter-ul). This is an acronym for a wide array of not necessarily, but usually paired together birth defects. Basically, the doctors say, "Screw it, this kid jacked up, yo!" Doctors speak like that, too.

To break it down:

V is for vertebral- Anything that has to do with your spine. Usually a partially formed vertebrae, or can develop scoliosis. I have some curvature to my spine, but it isn't progressive. I also had a "tethered spinal cord" which basically meant that the end of my spinal cord is supposed to just kinda... float there. But it attached to the wall of my vertebrae.

A is for anal- Well that sounded awkward. This also includes general intestinal problems. Luckily I have very limited problems with the anal portion and more with the intestines. My anus works fine thank you, but my stomach hates me usually. Just ask my roommates.

C is for cardiac- Heart problems, in a nutshell. These were the least of my worries though. I had what's called a patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). This wasn't necessarily lumped into VACTERL's. It's cause is more because of my prematurity. Essentially, there is a valve between your pulmonary artery and your aorta that regulates pressure between the two, which is supposed to close off after a while, but I wasn't "cooked" long enough to get it closed up so the doctors had to do it for me. This was my second surgery and was hours after my first. Now my heart pumps just fine and is one of the best

TE if for Tracheoesophageal Fistula- Try saying that five times fast. I'll wait........... This was my first surgery that was performed just a few hours after I was born.
Okay. So your trachea is your wind pipe. It goes from your throat and forks into both sides of your lungs. What happened, is my esophagus came down along side my trachea, like it was supposed to, but then it just stopped. So If I ate, the food would have just dumped into my body cavity. The end that came up from my stomach that was supposed to attach to the other end, came into my esophagus, which is also not good. If there had been food in there and I had barfed, it would have gone into my lungs. Now, because of this surgery, I have occasional acid reflux and scar tissue in my lungs that makes it hard to breath. Once upon my a time my lungs were "underdeveloped" for my age, which was the reason I huffed and puffed, but now it's just the scar tissue that kills me. So if see me get winded going up stairs, that's why. I'm as fit as an ox, guys. My lungs just hate me.

R is for renal, which is your kidneys in a nut shell. This can also mean urinary problems. 98% of the time, I have no problem with this. That other two percent of the time, your bladder shuts down the day before your oldest sister gets married and you end up in the ER with your mom making frantic phone calls making sure all the last minute things are in order. I wouldn't recommend it.

L is for Limb defects. This is really the most noticeable aspect of my VACTERL craziness. I gots jacked up legs folks. If you haven't noticed, you obviously have either never seen me walk, or you haven't seen me in shorts. Now, in long pants, it just kinda looks like I limp. At least that's what people tell me. But it's a whole heck of a lot more than that. There are three basic parts to my jacked up legs.

-One- I had Clubbed Feet. basically, my feet were turned in and looked golf club like in their angle. There can be some pretty severe forms. I had it good compared to many.
-Two- I'm hypertension in my hamstrings. Usually hypertension is a heart condition, but if you break it down, it's hyper(over) tension. My hammies were super tight, causing me to walk with a crouch, which I still tend to have thanks to years of muscle memory. The tightness is almost nonexistent any more.
-Three- Joints. My leg joints are jacked up... like all of them. My hips are alright, but not great. My knees look over inflated and are stiff, and my ankles have almost no range of motion.. That's why it took me two years to find the right wakeboard bindings and why it takes me 5 minutes to get motocross boots on.

Oh yeah. I had an extra thumb too.

So on top of the VACTERL, I had what's called Hydrocephalus, also called water on the brain. This is usually caused by brain aneurysms, commonly called a stroke. This caused excess cerebrospinal fluid on my brain which build up pressure, which isn't really good at all. So they put in what's called a VP shunt to hook up to the top of my head and drain that fluid down into my stomach. The first one was put in a month after I was born, then it failed and they had to put a second one in when I was 3 and another was placed a year later.

I can also stick my tongue in my nasal cavity, but I don't think that has to do with any of this. Not sure though.

Soooo..... that pretty much sums me up. twenty-one years and twenty some-odd surgeries later, I am pretty much as healthy as I'll ever be and I thank God that I'm at this point. Because at first, we were just hoping I wouldn't be a vegetable. Though sometimes I'm a couch potato. But that's technically a tuber. Not a veggie.