My Red Flower!!!

Since my Poi experiment was so successfull, I helped my friend Derik make a pair for himself. this was only our second time doing it... but it is a blast!!! It's like dancing, good. Fire, Awsome. Fire Dancing, FREAKIN AMAZING! haha or something to that effect. You can expect to see more of this on here, that is for certain.

Mans red flower

If you play with it... you might get covered in soot!

I experimented with some Fire Poi that I made for the first time today! I ended up hitting myself a number of times and singed a couple of patches of hair off my arms... and behind my ear!!! haha mother was kind enough to take some pictures while i was doing so.

My Freetime

Since I'm only taking night classes this semester I have almost all day to do whatever my heart desires... unfortunately thats usually just sit and stare at the TV for hours on end.

This is not ok.

Theres a place in town called Sticks & Stones that has a bouldering cave. for $40 I can get 15 all day passes to climb around there. I think I should go ahead and do that.

I havn't been completely slothful in my spare time. I also now have a guitar (thank you Aaron) and have been learning a couple songs (thank you youtube). you might say that I now "dabble" the guiter since I don't really know how to play it. haha



I actually dabble in alot of things. actually. thats pretty much all I do!!! start one things, kinda learn how to do it, then move on to something else. I should probably fix that, but at least I'm always keeping busy right?

My latest thing is fire dancing. I'm making some Poi, I ordered the wick yesterday, completely from scratch. except for the wick, and some washers. i'll probably put some pictures of them on here once their finished :)

The World Is Flat.

This is a video lecture that I watched for my developing world class. The Speaker is Thomas Friedman and he is the author of the book entitled "The World Is Flat". he goes through and explains the first three chapters of this book. I found it really interesting and think you might enjoy watching it as well. It's about an 1 1/4 hours long so get comfy, grab a notebook and pop some corn!



I plan on reading the entire book soon :)

Ok... I'll admit it.

I don't understand everything!!!

Note: save and print this document for future reference... this is the first and last time that statement will be made.

BUT!!! that doesn't mean I don't Know everything.


...There's a huge difference.

I know it's hard for some of you to believe that I really don't understand everything. So to convince you that it's true I've compiled a complete list of them.

THINGS I DON"T UNDERSTAND by: Alex Ashby

-Cheese pizza
-Soap operas
-People who make a career out of politics
-Europe
-Bottled water
-Anime
-Paying for Psychiatrists/Self-help books
-Toilet seat etiquette ( I have a rather long rant about this one... I'll have to explain it later)

What really got me thinking about what I don't understand is the cheese pizza. it seriously blows my mind away to think about why that would be considered delicious, or even worth making in the first place! some people are just silly!

Seinor basura... ummm...collectoro?

So I'm up here in Washington staying with dad and Aaron and Brielle and we're having a pretty good time :) the other day I went to the lake with Aaron and Brielle and of coure lil stitch!


















They're kinda silly sometimes. So I was in the canoe and they were floating around on an air mattress.



When Aaron took me to the lake last time I was here we went around the lake and collected all the floating garbage we could find, so I figured that I would follow my big/lil bros example and do it again! As you can see I found a... Plethora... of loathsome float-some!
Heres a list of a few things I found: a left shoe, an emergency whistle, some rope, a chunk of 2x4, like 7 popcans/beer bottles, a capri-sun, a stuffed kitty cat, a whisky bottle, a cool little water bottle, a plastic fork, several foam worm containers and fishing tackle; hook, line, sinker and bobber!

For washington supposedly full of liberals and granola crunchers there sure was alot of junk in that little lake! I even found a dirty Diaper! but there was no way I was touching that, so I left it in the lilly pads... I'm not that dedicated to helping the environment ;)

Ps. Brielle took most of these pictures!

STupid computer.

Im trying to post a music playlist on here. and I cant figure it out. it's making me highly aggrivated and angry to boot.

Turtle wax? mm... no thanks!

$35 hair clippers from walgreens + 6 minutes = best haircut ever

I have decided that I really enjoy having my head shaved bald! not shaved completely to the skin, I havn't done that yet. But I can't see any downsides to it other than people can see my funny shaped head, and... there is a high risk of getting sunburnt/cancer. but that's a minor detail...

Heres a list of good things about shaving your head:
-save $ on shampoo and conditioner
-save $ on a hair stylist
-low maintenance
-less wind resistance
-people like to rub the top of your head
-you could draw a smiley face on the back of your head in permanent marker
-if your going bald, and you shave your head bald, it makes you feel better to know that you could have hair if you wanted to... but you just don't want to :)
-It's like having a swamp cooler on your head.

"Not all who wander are lost" -J. R. R. Tolkien

Yesterday the summer semester (which I was attending) up at BYU-I ended and I am not on track again for 5 months.

As of tomorrow I will also no longer have a job at chuck-a-rama.
why? Becasue I quit.

This leaves me with an excelent opportunity to do something awsome... but I don't know what yet.

I should probably do something that will earn money for me so that I can pay for college without taking out any more loans.

But what I would rather do is spend my time fishing and canoing and palying around with my blacksmithing tools...

I feel like haveing a job deprives me of alot more meaningful opportunities. and for what? 7.50 an hour? rediculious!

I guess we'll jsut see what happens eh? but in the mean time, I'm going to enjoy my freedom :)

Mankind

Yesterday as I was sitting in one of my classes, religion I think, my teacher went off on a tangent about politics and, more specifically, about the health care plan that is probably going to be passed. He touched on the economic ramifications of the plan and then went on and talked about other nations that already have a similar health care systems in place and the problems that they face and blah blah blah...

Politics bore me. there's almost nothing that I could be less interested in... so somewhere near the beginning of my teachers tirade my mind began to wander. i don't remember what i was thinking about, and was probably drifting off to sleep...but suddenly i got the strangest mental image...

There was a room full of congressmen and women. they were all talking and waving papers around, talking loudly so each could be heard over everyone else. and the funny thing about them was nobody had hair... instead they had beautiful peacock plumage sticking up from behind their heads which they constantly fluffed and ran their hands through.

I had no clue why I thought that, and it wasn't until I was similarly drifting off in my science class today that I reasoned out why I created that bizarre image in my mind.

We, as a human race and as Americans, have lost almost all humility. we have lost our fear. the fear of God, the fear of Nature, the fear of the unknown. we have filled ourselves to bursting with self-importance and take the beautiful things we have for granted. We always need more, we keep adding to the simple and beautiful things until they become the opposite of simple and beautiful.

now what does that have to do with people who have peacock plumage instead of hair? well thats pretty much open to interpretation, but i hope this made sense to somebody else besides me! :)

and my friends, I also think we are in for a very rude awakening.

SMore? Yes please!!!

DISCLAIMER: No marshmellows were harmed in the making of this blog.(well... maybe just a couple)

Everyone in my family is a pretty dang good cook! and I think that cooking is our main form of bonding... Whenever theres a family get-together we inevitably spend the majority of the time either preparing meals or eating them. We like to share our secret ingredients and techniques but we like to give each other a hard time about them as well!





I'm not gonna lie... sometimes I'm afraid to ask Ambur what her secret ingredients are! ;)








This week, while Drew and Marci were up from Vernal, We had the smore cook off of the century after dinner. Each of us were trying to create "THE PERFECT MARSHMELLOW" and I think we all got pretty dang close! take a look at some of these babys! We can cook marshmellows like you wouldn't believe!!!

Marci is defiantly in heaven at this point!














Ewwey Gooey Goodness!!!!

...Thats right... Double crunchy goldies...

Lilly even turned out a couple nice one all by herself!















I of course have marshmellow rotisserie to a fine...fine art. Where do you think everyone else got their mad skills?!

MMMM.... you are just DElectable...

We went through a bag and a half of marshmellows and two packages of fudge striped cookies

and the little girls really enjoyed getting the chocolate everywhere, they are so cute.

I think that everyone had a really fun evening, because nothing says love like sharing your perfect roasted marshmellow with a friend or family member! Even if when It's all said and done... someone might forget to eat it! :)

Ye Ol Chuck a Rama

So tonight, like most Saturday nights, I spent my evening in the most magical place on earth... Chuck-a-rama, where you are teleported to a heavenly place full of good hardy food and old-fashioned desserts with all you can drink non-alcholic beverages! All for the low price of just 11.65 per person for ages 12 and over with a 10% discount for seniors 60 and over... consequently this is also where I work.
Some days I am a cashier, other days I'm a host and show people to their seats but most of the time I am a server. Servers get people thier drinks, clear away dirty plates, generally smile alot and bus the tables and booths after the people have left. They also keep an eye on the desserts and make sure that they are kept fresh and looking delectable... It's easy to get tired of dealing with the mess that's left behind and overwhelmed trying to keep people from seeing the bottom of their glasses.
I'm not gonna lie... I'm dang good at my job most days. I keep things clean, I'm efficient, I go out of my way to make things easier for my co-workers (including my managers) and am attentive to my customers. sometimes I don't do things jsut because I outright forget them, and by no means am I a chatty Cathy that sits there and learns everyones life story by the time their done eating, but I am friendly and do my best to create a good experience for those sitting in my section... so it dosn't make me smile when people (including my managers) don't appreciate how hard I work or the little things I do for them, espically if they just assume that I'm supposed to do it in the first place.

So I guess what I'm getting at is this: It's a dang good thing they have such good food or else I woulda been outta there a long time ago! :)

Fun in the 1850's

The fam all headed out to missori land last week, here's a couple pictures (mostly for our visit to missouri town! it was really a blast :)

Of Libraries and Group Study

Today I had to go to the campus library for my science group study. Which is pretty much pointless, all we do is fill out a little worksheet the the teacher assigns us and go on our merry little ways. It's usually not worth the walk because there arn't even any treats involved!!!

It dosn't make me smile.

Today as I was leaving the study rooms I decided to go meandering thourgh the bookshelves to see if there was anything interesting since i had about 45 min till cloggin class started... and had no desire to work on my english paper that's due tonight! so somehow I ended up in the sports and games section where i found a couple good books. 5 to be exact! all of which I checked out as I thought about hurrying to clogging since i would probably be late... but I'm much to lazy to hurry :)

So heres the books that I got:

Savate- I guess it's a french martial art alot like kickboxing... only without the boxing part! I rember seeing part of an old cowboy movie call "Savate" where the main character was involved in prizefighting or somthing. and he kicked the crap out of everybody.
The Art of Juggling- yes... this was in the sports section... I just figgured that I'd brush up on my already sweet skills.
The Traditional Boywers Bible- part 1 of a trilogy that explains how to make archery equipment, i actually have part 2 and 3 at home... why? because I am going to be an Indian some day.
An Introduction to Magic- also in the sports section... eventually I plan to be good enough to make anyuthing disappear. for example, things like. Ohhh... lets say... just of the top of my head... lazy roomates that don't clean up after themselves, daily quizes in religion class and oprah.
Electric Foil Fencing- As I skimmed through this one it has alot of stuff that I already know because, well, I'm a fencing master! But It has funny pictures of people getting stabbed :) so i couldn't resist.


The point of this story being... next time skip group study and just go read a book! you can learn alot more from them. and with all the rain we're getting I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to master them all!!!

HOlA! i have no clue how to work this yet... so bear with me till i get it kinda figured out! haha