Wedding? I love weddings!

No. I don't love weddings. I'm all into the forever family part to marriage but I have yet to go to a wedding where I've actually enjoyed myself. At least at Mormon ones anyways. Every time, I get to play sheep dog and herd the little children all over the temple grounds. As you can imagine, I like playing sheep dog about as much as I like stepping in cow poop.
I attended Rob Skankey's wedding to Melanie Smith. It was nice to see my good friends the Skankeys, however, Bryce is in the MTC so it was really weird for me to be around the Skankeys and not have Bryce present. I was a loner for all the wedding festivities because Bryce is my main man and without him, I resorted to sitting with my brother Cameron while he read a book or played his gameboy.

But lets backtrack a little!
I took my finals and finished up the Summer term like a college pro. Since my finals were done, the next item on the to-do list was the clean up/pack out. My cleaning list was pretty simple but I had to move all my junk from my room in Felt Hall over to Snow Hall. It wasn't far but considering I only have two hands, it took me many trips to get all my stuff from point A to point B. While moving my mini-fridge, which is about as mini as a baby rhino, I had to take a few breaks to allow my arms to stop shaking. At one break point, I mentally picked out a tree or a line in the sidewalk and told myself "just make it to that point", I was resting when a couple of attractive woman walked around the corner and started walking in my direction. Instinctively, I pretended that I was NOT taking a break, and whipped out my cell phone as if I put the fridge down, not because I was tired, but because I was answering my phone. It appeared to work because they exchanged a "how do you do?" smile and continued walking. Once they were out of sight, I attempted to get all the way to point B, but I didn't make it very far. The normally 2 minute walk turned into an exodus across desert. I saw two guys from my ward and both offered to help me carry the fridge, but because of my success with the fake phone call I figured I would try it again. I replied: "*huff no *puff I was just *huff taking a phone call *puff." Finally, the fridge was successfully transported from point A to point B! I really should have planned out my moving schedule better and moved the fridge last. After the fridge, I just wanted to crawl into my bed.

Eventually, I got all my stuff, which actually wasn't much, into my cage.

The rest of my time has been spent with my family and with the Skankeys. Like I previously stated, I got to attend Rob's wedding festivities. At the family dinner, the Hunts and Skankeys are basically family, Mr. Robert presented a photo slide show he put together for the families. The slide show featured pictures of Rob and Mel growing up, so naturally, I was on the look out to see which pictures I was in. Finally, after three whole songs, that's like, 9-10 minutes, a picture of me was displayed on the screen! Excellent, a picture of me! only, it was of the back of my head. But I think the back of my head really stole the show!

A random moment just popped into my head that I feel is worth sharing. I was walking to my class in the JFSB a few weeks ago and on my travel I was fortunate enough to see a pretty lady who was very easy upon the eyes. Comparable to a male peacock strutting his stuff and showing off his beautiful feathers, I straitened up and walked a little taller, spreading my shoulders out and attempted to walk with a dramatic increase of "swag" in my step. As I strutted along with my swag, with the opening lines to the song "Stayin' alive" in my head, we were just about to exchange deep and longing looks into each others eyes, when suddenly, my right flip-flop got caught on a crack in the sidewalk and I tripped and stumbled for about 5 feet, my arms flailing about in a desperate attempt to regain balance while causing me to look like a landing albatross. I heard this pretty woman laugh out loud pretty hard, "at least I can make her laugh" I thought. I couldn't bring myself to turn around and face her, so I got right back up, straightened my shoulders, re-channeled my swag and continued walking to class while whistling the chorus of "stayin
alive". I might have lost this instance, but there is always next time!

A nagging question in the back of my mind for the longest time is: where the heck am I going to go on a mission!? Ever since i started filling out the paper work I have thought about it at least 3 times a day! At lunch today with the Skankeys we were talking about it some more. Apparently, Sam Skankey is just like the octopus oracle and can accurately predict where guys will go on their missions! I have yet to ask him where he thinks I will go, but I sure hope Same sends me somewhere good! Hah, if only it was that easy! I guess since I will probably be getting my call sometime next month, it would be alright if you, the reader, wanted to send me, or just comment on my blog, where you think I'm headed! Don't do it now though, finish reading this post and then save that thought for when it gets closer for me to turn in all the paperwork!

I am headed back to Virginia tomorrow and I'm sure it will be interesting. My family is flying back tomorrow morning and I really hate airplanes. I'm not scared of flights and I've never had a traumatic experience, it's just that every time I've gone on an airplane, the seats appear to get smaller! I've been on airplanes millions of times and they really are no big deal to me, but the seats and the limited leg room look like they belong at a torture chamber with the intention to keep the inmates awake for hours on end! It is impossible to get comfortable or let alone rest in those "seats"!

Well in conclusion, I missed my buddy Bryce thorough the wedding and it makes me even more eager to go on a mission. My friends are all going and finishing and I'm feeling a little left out!

War, oiled bodies, bruised kness and JOHN!

Well its been quite the week! The last day of class is actually today but all we are doing is reviewing for the final. This term has gone by like a blink of an eye. I feel that just yesterday I arrived and made my bed with orange sheets and a camouflage comforter! I have gotten to know my ward really well in these past few weeks and I am so bummed that we are all splitting up. I love the girls of Fox hall; they are the best and I'm so sad to see them go!

Be ready for a lot of words and little pictures, sorry, but I haven't been very good at taking pictures! I mean, this one is really long! So get a snack or something to hold you over.

This past week some pranks have been going down. None were harmful, but they were really annoying. For example, my roommate Curtis got 600 post it notes stuck up all over his room, another guy in my hall got seran(spl?) wrap all over his bed, and they hacked into my facebook account and changed all my settings. I retaliated to those that "got" me and I booby trapped their hall so that once they opened the door a whole ton of crap would fall on their heads, i.e. pots and pans. All of us were paranoid about who the next victim would be but I decided that I had enough of it! On Friday I wrote a declaration to promote peace within the walls of my hall. I thought about how I could accomplish this; Timmy Blood, one of the residence in my Hall, was the prime instigator to all the pranks and actually headed all of them. In 1984 by George Orwell, The Party states that "War is Peace", which means, the easiest way to achieve peace, or unite, is to have a common enemy. I declared war on Timmy Blood! We all suffered at his hand and were tired of it! I modeled the Declaration of Independence for my peace treaty. I followed the same format of the DoI. It is basically 3 parts. The first part, Jefferson basically stated what was going on and what they wanted. The second part was filled with all the crimes the King had committed against them. In order to make the declaration credible, Jefferson couldn't just say that the crimes of the King were against British law, but that they were against natural laws and the laws of God. So in my declaration, I couldn't just leave it that Timmy had disturbed the peace, but that he broke the highest law at BYU: the Honor Code. The Third part is their justification for war.
So here it is!
"When in the course of Human events, it becomes necessary for one people, residing together within the same living boundaries; to dissolve any contentious policies which have connected them with one another.
We hold this truth to be self-evident, that each resident is responsible for the betterment of the hall, that his duty is to maintain peace within the walls of Felt 33, and is entitled to certain inalienable rights: these being, security, trust, and the pursuit of relaxation. The security to leave one’s room while leaving his facebook logged in, the trust to use one’s toothbrush without the fear of his toothpaste containing hot sauce, and pursuing the relaxation of living in a ‘prank free’ zone, are the rights that every man residing in Felt 33 rightfully deserves. It is our duty to insure that no infringements of these rights are ever repeated.
Timmy Blood, the bringer of contention, has violated these rights and through his devilish work inspired conflict within the sanctuary we call Felt 33. Not only have his actions broken the unwritten laws of Felt 33, but by breaking these unwritten laws he has broken the highest law, the Honor Code.
He has obstructed the ways of justice.
He initiates unlawful treatises
He has erected a corrupt form a “teams” within even our FHE group
And most gravely, he refuses to apologize
We, therefore, the residents of Felt 33, appeal to the highest law, the Honor Code to establish a new treaty, one to insure the inalienable rights and to establish peace for the remainder of the semester. In order for this to be sanctioned by the Honor Code, it is necessary for the residence of the new, peaceful, Felt 33, to declare war on Timmy Blood and all his abuse in order to achieve the justice every man, woman, and child deserves."
Then we all signed it! In our mini-revolution, I am the acting Thomas Jefferson(because I drafted the declaration) and my roommate Curtis is Benjamin Franklin(He made a propaganda poster for us. It was the "join or die" poster but instead of the states next to the pieces of the snake, it had our names!) We aren't exactly sure how we are going to get Timmy, but don't worry, he will be "got"!

We had an Elders Quorum activity this past week and it was a load of fun! We went to a park here in Provo that resembled a crater and had a giant slip n' slide! The plastic wrap or what ever it was was like 60 feet long and 5-6 feet wide. We also had vegetable oil and soap that some chose to lather their bodies with. I did no such thing. But we had a ton of 5-gallon buckets of water and we would send some water down and then a person would slide down! For not having a constant stream of water, there weren't any hoses or anything that we could use, it worked out really well! I flew down that bad boy and it was just a ton of fun! We had 400 otter pops (The native Popsicles to Utah) and a big group of people were having a picnic thing at the pavilion next to us and they had extra rolls and bags of peanuts that they gave to us. There was cinnamon butter for the rolls and it tasted amazing! It was sweet and creamy! But the water slid was excellent! Here is a picture of us after wards. Once a person slid of the plastic they would continue sliding for like, 10-20 more feet so most of us were covered in grass!


The slide was on Thursday. On Friday we had a big Ward activity and it was really "cool". Hah, we went Ice Skating! We all car-pooled to the ice rink, (I really hate getting rides with people cause they freak me out with their bad driving!) We got there but evidently we got there too early because of bad communication we though our reserved time was at 9, it was at 9:45. We got there at about 8:45 and just hung out for an hour while we waited for our reserved time on the ice. It was fun to just sit around and talk. We finally get on the ice and it was a blast! I love ice skating, it's so fun! After an hour of skating, the real fun began. Our refreshment was donuts and hot chocolate. KRISPY KREME DONUTS! AHHHH! I was in heaven! I haven't tasted anything so succulent and soul warming as these krispy kreme donuts. The hot chocolate was really good too, it was mint flavored. After the snacks we played the greatest game ever, BROOM HOCKEY! Boy, was it fun! Since we had so many people, they sectioned the rink into thirds and you just picked a section and started up a game! It was INSANE! I was slipping all over the place, I fell on my knees about a million times and my butt 2 million times. You play broom hockey in your shoes and you have to run around so you slip like non-other! I had a couple of sweet shots but I didn't score any! My team beat the other team 2-0! Overall, it was a great activity and a good ward bonding experience!

Whew, don't worry, my post is almost done!
My Uncle Michael called me earlier in the week and asked me if I would watch his kids on Saturday morning so he and Marie could go to a temple sealing. I said yes but man was it difficult! After the Ice skating activity a bunch of us played card games and I didn't get to bed until 3 a.m! That's my new record for staying up. I don't plan on ever breaking it. I was miserably tired! But Uncle Michael picked me up at 9 a.m. (do the math, less than 6 hours of sleep cause I still had to get ready, so really, 5 hours and 50 minutes of sleep) The sealing was in Manti, so we had a little bit of a drive ahead of us. The entire ride down my little cousin Lincoln kept calling me "John" and couldn't seen to understand that my names is, in fact, not John! but it was pretty funny nonetheless! After I got home from being with my extended family I tried to take a nap but I was so exhausted that I somehow couldn't sleep and I felt restless. I got up and went to the Creamery on 9th where I got a grilled cheese with ranch kids meal. Ashley recommended it to me and as strange as it sounds, it was delicious! After my little meal I went back home and saw that a bunch of people were gathering up to play a game of soccer. I couldn't say no so I got my cleats and headed over to the fields with them to play! It was a lot of fun and I scored a decent number of goals! I love playing soccer! I had a SICK header and it was totally going in but one of my teammates got in the way so that made time for the goalie to grab the ball. The ball was coming at me pretty quick when I headed it and since then my neck has felt kinda out of place. Hah.

The rest of my Saturday was as follows. I went to an hour of the campus dance, just to get the free food! then I walked over to Divine comedy with some friends only to find out that they were sold out. Then we headed back over to the dance where I ate a huge plate of fruit and we sat in the Karaoke room and just watched people sing.
This is incredibly long so maybe I'll try to do mini-posts throughout the week so I don't have one MASSIVE post every week!

THE PANEL OF DOOM!

Today is Sunday. Every Sunday here in the dorms at BYU we have a thing called a "hall meeting." Everyone is supposed to gather to the main level lobby and the hall RA gives information for the upcoming week or if there is no information the RA will do a spiritual thought or something. But today, oh today was very different for me. The girls dorm decided to do a guest panel of guys from the ward so they could ask them questions concerning boys and dating and all that fun stuff! So I was on that panel, oh that fateful panel. There were five of us guys against a seemingly endless number of females. They were like wolves encircling their weak prey, waiting for the ideal moment to give the final strike, just preparing themselves to feast upon the exposed flesh of the dying animal. They pounded us with questions unfathomable to a man's mind. "How can a girl know if a guy likes her?" Came the first blow. "They took out the engines capt'n! we're going down" was in the minds of all of us guys on that panel. Although our arms were free to move at our own will, we all felt as though we had been tied down to our chair. We were helpless for the next strike. "what are the different qualities of a girl who is a friend or a girlfriend?" "AHHH! The shields are down? we're totally exposed! AHHHHHHH!" We were done for, all dignity striped from our very souls, there was no coming back from this one. The utter confusion elicited from their bombardment of questions left us defenseless! Ok so this is a little exaggerated and we didn't lose the fight that easily! I would even say that it was a draw!

So this is what actually happened, what you just read happened in my mind during the battl- I mean hall meeting. Like i said earlier, I was on a guest panel of five guys that was invited to attend the girl's dorm hall meeting. They wrote down a bunch of questions they wanted answered from guys and we did our best to answer them. I don't remember all the questions but at the beginning it was really rough! They were seriously eating us alive and didn't give us any chance to justify our answers and they all just had to comment! Of the five of us, there was one guy who was a TOTAL ham. Now, if you know me, which I hope you do if you are reading MY blog, should know that I too, have the potential to be a ham. However, with my experience with other hams I have learned how to deal with them and re-direct the attention back to myself. So the Total Ham guy, we'll call him Ham, was answering all the questions, very passionately I might add, and did what ever it took to make these ladies laugh. He wasn't giving honest answers and started up the "EFY persona". One of the questions was along the lines of what do guys look for first in a girl. Ham barked up with an EFY boy answer and said Modesty and all this other stuff that isn't necissarily the truth! yes Modesty is VERY important, but we all know he was being stupid and just trying to get brownie points, trust me on this one. So my tactics worked wonderfully. I was somehow able show that Ham was just attention crazy through small comments and quickly he lost all credibility with the questions. I did my best to be honest and actually give an answer for that matter. Most of those questions I had NO IDEA how to vocalize! Hah, one of the questions went like this: "Jason, you answer this next one, *some question about what guys think that I forgot*" and I just said "uhhhhhhhh....(probably with my mouth hanging open)" and my right gunma- I mean, the guy to my right said "What Jason is trying to say is..." And he totally saved my butt on that one! Toward the end of this meeting it started to get better, less comments were made by ALL the girls so we, the guys, were actually able to think about our answers and surprisingly give some pretty good advice on how girls could deal with guys. Really, only Ham and I answered questions. The other three guys did minimal effort, but I don't blame them, its probably better to be quiet than look like a fool giving some crazy answer to a "boy question." I would always wait for Ham to finish his spiel and then give my answer. Ham had an answer for EVERY single question! I think there were like 20 questions, I answered maybe 6, Ham: all 20 the other three guys combined: 2. So it really was the Ham show. However! After the panel we had a ward break the fast and I got to talk to a lot of the girls about what they thought of the panel. And SCORE! most said that I was their favorite panel member because I was funny with my answers, wasn't crazy about the spot light and that I actually gave honest answers! YES! Favorite Panel Member award goes to Jason!

Whew, it was quite the adventure. On one of my answers I could tell that my voice was getting shaky and i was "sweating like a sinner at church!" It was pretty terrifying being in front of so many girls, all expecting me to tell them what they should do about guys, and at the same time not offending any of them by saying something stupid like, "guys like hot girls" like some of my other(Ham) panel members did! Every word had to be very carefully chosen so as to not upset any girl or to make an insecure girl even more insecure! Overall, I think it was pretty fun, and I did get quite a few laughs from the audience and I was successfully able to get more attention and a bigger following than Ham because I was subtly hilarious and I gave good thought out answers! YES!

In the end, us five brave souls who braved the woman army, were able to convince them NOT to sacrifice us to their heathen gods, and, from the information I gathered after the event, were actually able to give some (not much, but some) good advice!

The rest of my Sunday was spent at the ward break the fast and then later my roommates and I went to our FHE girls' room for dinner(but that is a story for another time, I don't feel like getting agitated right now). At 10pm I went to Tunnel Singing and that is always an uplifting experience. Well its time to get ready for another week of American Heritage papers (I've only got 3 left! but my next one will be done tomorrow! So, after tomorrow, I'll only have 2! WOOHOO!) and lots of reading for Sociology. I can't believe this is the last week of class. Finals aren't this week, but next. This semester has gone by so fast but I can see how much I have changed for the better while I've been here at BYU. The atmosphere is indescribable. I really can't put to words how this place makes me feel other than happy or peaceful. I could have a million things to do in a day, but somehow I feel at ease and I am miraculously able to get all my work done. I get stressed pretty easily but I really haven't felt all that stressed out since arriving here(other than with math, but that doesn't count). I absolutely love how the spirit of God is here and that really makes all the difference. I am so grateful for my first semester here at BYU, even though its not even over yet, and I look foreword to more in the future!