Blog Bullets

I have started writing a new blog a couple of times and have been overwhelmed by how much has happened over my last few blogs. You guys probably know what's going on anyway but I'm going to do a bulleted run-down for my own benefit.

1. I moved to Logan, mentioned that already.
2. I work with the guy that emloyed me as an undergrad, old news
3. Drove off the road on the way down here, was aided by two forest service employees
4. Worked all of my first week down here on the Great Salt Lake (here come some secondary bullets):
1. Froze my butt off
   
2. 3-4 ft. waves on the first day made me want to hurl but things got way better
3. Leaking waders 2 days in a row (2 different pairs) first made me wet then made me very wet and cold and ruined my phone, which was replaced
   
5. Moved into a basement aparment. How would I describe it? Well . . . its kind of like a basement apartment.
   
6. Moved out of another basement apartment, I like basements and moving.
   
7. Still need to finish writing my thesis, haven't done much on it lately, but I've had good excuses
8. Really excited to see most of the family over Christmas and visit Erin's family in Ye Far Northern Country of New York State
9. Pathfinder is hanging in there, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
   
10. Erin's living in Bozeman, finishing up classes for the semester and is generally burned out of class for the year, I miss her.
    
11. I have cable and there is an actual TV show about guys playing Madden Football, its on ESPN (and I thought televised paitball was bad)
12. The Broncos suck, I'm in the market for a new favorite football team, biding my time until college bowls start. By the way, what is up with 4 weeks between the end of the season and the beginning of bowls
13. I should go to bed.
    

Just an Update

Hi everyone and Happy Thanksgiving.

I just wanted to give everyone a quick update. I'm still busy chipping away at the enormous task of finishing this %$*&@ thesis. I had hoped to get things done yesterday in order to meet a deadline of November 27th to have everything approved and turned into the College of Graduate Studies. It is looking less likely that I will make that deadline with every minute that passes by with me not being finished, but I will probably take a 1 credit extension that will give me until January 14th to have things wrapped up. I would have preffered that this didn't happen because I have been off payroll for a couple months now, and would really like to move on with my life.

That brings me to my next update. I've accepted a temporary (~4 months) job with my old advisor at USU, Wayne Wurtsbaugh. He needs someone to finish some work up on a project he had funded last spring on the Great Salt Lake. It is a great project and I had a good experience working with him as an undergrad, and I think a positive work experience would be good for me right now. This means that I'll be moving to Logan on Monday (yeah, that's soon). I'm excited to earn money again, I will have to keep pushing myself to work on my thesis but I think I'm close enough that I should be able to stay motivated by the idea of wrapping it up. I'm not excited to leave Erin in Bozeman for these coming months, but she has a good job and some promising opportunities with school. I/we will be sure to make frequent trips between Utah and Montana, and I have a calm and reasuring feeling that this minor blip of separation will be challanging but no big deal in the grand scheme of things. I am quite committed to holding on to a very, very, good thing in my life. I'll be excited to be closer to Glen and Kendi and to see what this new adventure brings.

Love you all, Joel

Joel Reappears

Not really. This is Erin on behalf of Joel. When the thesis calls, the blog is quiet. Sad. Here's my attempt at channeling Joel...enjoy.

Hey everybody! Sorry it's been so long since I've written on this thing. I've been really busy with this stupid thesis, some days I just want to quit. Wait, I'm on a new "let's be positive about bad things" kick. Starting over.

Hey everybody! Sorry it's been so long since I've written on this thing. My thesis is so much fun, and I'm learning so much every minute of the 18-hour days I'm putting in, that I don't even think about blogging! Or anything else...like food, sleep, fun, or sports. In fact, I'm kind of sad that the Broncos game is on in 52 minutes and some of my focus will get diverted to less exciting events, like Sunday football.

Back to the topic of the blog. It's a sunny day and I was just sitting here, happily editing page 831 of my thesis that is really long enough to be a dissertation but my advisor doesn't care...oops, slipped up there...as I was saying, I was just thinking about the sun. Isn't it an amazing thing? It's always there, trying to brighten our day, and sometimes those clouds get in the way, but does the sun give up? No way, dudes, no way. It sticks it out, waiting for those pesky clouds to dissipate, ready to make us happy once again. I love that golden sun. Ah, life is good.

Well, better get back to my other computer...the big one with charts and graphs and tables and pages and pages (and pages!) of long scientific words that no one understands except me. I dread the day I don't get to be intellectually challenged by this thing. I guess I'll just try to make it last as long as I can.

Miss you all! Love, Joel

P.S. Erin is the coolest girl ever. She takes really good care of me and has already started buying Christmas presents for me and all my family. Gosh golly, she's swell. I'm a lucky guy!

October 16th

Yes, this picture is from today. I feel like an idiot taking timer pictures of myself, but that hasn't stopped me before. I thought it was cool that the first snow of the year (that stuck on the ground) was on my birthday. Mom made the long trip up to Bozeman, just staying overnight on Saturday. I don't know how good I am at doing the tour guide thing but I had a good time with her, as always, and that's not just because she spent money on me. Thanks for everything Mom! The jacket I'm wearing was her "main" b-day present, we picked it out at this outdoor store that I would choose as my 5-minute shopping spree location. I already know that Paul would choose Wal-Mart for his. HA! (One time I asked Paul what would be the very first thing he would do if he won $100 million. I was thinking "Drop everything and go straight to the airport for a vacation", Paul said "I'd go across the street to Wal-Mart." When I laughed he said "What? You can get pretty much anything there".) Wow, that was a long parenthetic statement. Where would you guys take a 5-minute shopping spree? I feel like a kindergarten teacher; "Now kids, tell me about your happy place".
I like this picture for many reasons. I like the colors and think Erin looks cute (as always, of course). But I really like it because these flowers were for me! It wasn't even for my birthday. I think I was just having a rough day in general with editing and getting a thesis draft to John. Erin brought over these flowers, two pints of Hagen-Daas ice creeeaam (no wonder I'm getting chubby again), and an english grammer book (to borrow, not keep). Erin treats me pretty good sometimes, I've never had flowers before.

Freddy Mikisms

Classics and not-so-classics

1) Nit Wit
2) Fleegel Flaggel Wally Romp Nincompoops (?)
3) For Cripes' Sake
4) Boys, look at the beautiful view
5) Doh! (said in the voice of Homer Simpson)
6) Follow me, it's ridiculous that we should have to wait in this line
7) Watch it, Sister!
8) I'm a good driver
9) -snore-
10) Oh, my back
11) What the scrud . . . .?
12) I though this was a movie about a boy and his dog.
13) It was only rated "R" for violence

You asked for it dad, it's all because I love you.

Like I needed this

In the process of backing up my daily work I erased everything that I had done yesterday. Yeah, big mistake. I'm not really writing this for sympathy or anything like that, I'm just getting kind of bored doing the same crap over again and wanted to distract myself for a minute. I'm not feeling particularly sharing of my feelings either. Just venting a little bit. Lesson for the day: don't erase anything until you check out what you actually copied.

My Armpits

Wierd, I don't think my armpits normally stink (go ahead and laugh, I know what you're thinking). I ran out of deoderant a couple of weeks ago but wasn't too worried about it because I don't wear deoderant very often. Of course my armpits have been mildly odorous pretty much every day since I ran out. I think we are not communicating very well, me and my armpits. I remember being in "Trial of the Big Bad Wolf", a made for Jr. High School musical, in 9th grade. I showered after PE and didn't have any deoderant to put on afterwards. It was one of those days when I was wearing a too-big-for-me t-shirt and my armpits soon took control. I was rank and getting worse by the minute through the whole rehearsal. It was pretty embarassing, I had a pretty serious crush on a certain Jr. High School cheerleader who was in the play; I think my complete internal terror around girls was the culprit in my pit-funk. I've never quite gotten over that fear of girls that I like. I can not recall going on a date in highschool when I didn't have at least a mild (sometimes not mild) urge to yak, "I'm fine it's just that I ate not long ago". I still NEVER make the "first move" without some seriously strong indications that there is mutual interest. Isn't it funny that someone who is so utterly manly in so many ways (I could have a completely separate blog detailing a new aspect of my manliness every day until I turn 30, er. . .) could be such a complete puffball with girls that he likes? I find it quite mysterious.

Day Off

I'm coming out of the equivalent of an all-night study session that lasted more than six weeks. I just overcame two major obstacles to my freedom from grad school, well, from school in general (I've only been a college student for 10 years). I have a lot of work to do before I finish at the end of next month but I took a much needed break today and went biking with a friend of mine, and Erin's dog, Kaya.

Not a dog door

I lost 20 pounds during the spring and summer and in my basement banishment have just about ten back on. I was riding so strong early in the summer that I actually enjoyed going up the hills as much as going down. Well. . . not quite. So this ride that I somehow convienced myself was a quick up and down ending up being 13-14 miles up a mountain and 3 miles down. I'm not in shape. I ended up having one of those legendary migranes (that's what I call them anyway) that I can't remember having for quite a while during the ride and thought I was going to throw up during the last 45 minutes of it. The ride that I imagined taking a couple of hours ended up being 31/2. Instead of writing a cover letter and preparing a resume with the rest of my day I slept, the only consolation was that Kaya was as pooped as I was.

This was another day, we had just got back from jogging in 90+ temps (dumb, I know)

I felt better in time to go to one of Erin's freshman sexual violence presentations. I know she doesn't like to hear it but I'm so impressed with her ability to tackle challanging tasks and go home and live a (relatively) normal life. There were 400 freshman in this room for a mandatory presentation and Erin had organized a program that approached a number of touchy subjects in a way that got all of their attention, and set a mood that made them respectful!

Anyway, sorry if I'm going on. I feel like someone hit the pressure relief valve and I gassing off. You all know how much I enjoy that (I'm thinking of a cabin in the sawtooth mountains).

Another Priceless Contribution

Sarah was another taker on the offer of self-liberation from some of our more embarassing photos. The first photo I looked at was the one on the left. It made me think of comments about how some of the pictures that I posted didn't look that bad. It seems that I'm an example of my own argument.

Then I opened this gem , I'm always a little self-conscious when I bust up laughing all by myself (I don't know why), but this one made me glad I wasn't drinking coke when I saw it. Congratulations Sarah, you are now free.
I just finished a presentation and am a little worn out from the whole thesis thing so I'll make this it for now. More to come.

I just read Paul's blog (I know I said I was leaving) but that pretty much sums up the feeling of life so far. I've talked to Erin about this, the feeling of being destined for being great and looking back and seeing how different your path is from how you expected it to be is pretty humbling. I don't have a point other commenting on how insightful Paul's comments were. Maybe I'll have some huge moment of reflection when I turn 30. I already can tell you its not as old as I thought it would be when I was 10. I'm for being close to family and friends, Mom and Glen (and family) are so close that it kills me my school has been so involved that I can't even take a weekend to get away and see them. OK, now I'm done.

Beauty and the Beast

So Erin bravely shared a photo with me without any prodding. I couldn't really get much detail out of her but the photo was named "Turkeyetc." so I'm guessing that Erin's motivation here is that feeling we all know to well (bloated, when is nap time?). The scarf around the head is anyone's guess. Maybe its to help keep the food down. I just realized that I made a whole story out of a picture that I have no idea about. Feel free to set the record straight, Erin.


Here are a couple of additions to the Joel photo blog of shame. How can a photo possibly go wrong when you haven't had a proper shower for a few weeks. As you can tell, I really like cornbread. It really satisfies my hunger.














Mmmmmm, that was some good cornbread! If you are all wondering what an attractive (despite the red devil eyes) person like Erin is doing with a slob like me, join the club, members: many.


In the news world of Joel, I want to first congratulate the Broncos and tell the booing bronco fans to eat poo. That was a pretty good game and made some of the heart burn I experience when I think of the first two games dissipate.

Second of all, Happy birthday to Paul. I agree with Glen (or was it Steve?). I haven't felt any "big brother, little brother stuff" for a while now and really appreciate that my family members are also important to me as friends.

I fininished and sent in a thesis draft to my advisor this weekend. I still have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks but it was a big step and makes me feel less under the oppressive stress, at least for a few days.

I've been impressed with everyone's efforts at stepping up to the challange of accepting our worst. My invitation stands to anyone that wants to send me photos for posting. That's it for now.

Being OK with myself

I want to go along with something Paul wrote a few days ago. It was the difference between the way we think we look and the way we actually look. Going back to see what kind of comment's people left on my own blog, I was repeatedly horrified to see my own image on the screen (I know, it wasn't the most flattering picture, read on), and to be honest I was already concocting the next blog that would push that picture down the page and out of my sight. But that got me thinking, why don't I just embrace my worst? That way when I see myself in a picture that actually looks like . . . well . . .me, I can be satisfied with the fact that no, I don't look like a sex-symbol like the picture in my mind (of my macho self, not Brad Pitt). So here goes my liberation from my ugliness.



Yeah, that was bad but could have been worse, BELIEVE ME. I wanted Erin to take a picture of me in the least flattering pose I could make (its a wonder I haven't been dumped yet) but I forgot. I figured double chin and chubby belly and love handles squeezed into tight biking cloths is hard to beat. The only drawback that I can see is that the helmet sort of hides my receding hairline, I'll do better in the future. I challenge anyone who is up to it to post the least flattering picture of themselves that they can find or create. No offense but I've seen some of a few of you (ahem! Joni and Paul faces, speedoey Glen, reflections of passing airplanes on Steve's head, the list goes on). Join me in liberating ourselves from a distorted perspective on our self-image of sexiness! I'm hoping in the end it will turn me into a self-actualized, sexy man, without the need for any illusions.

So, I've been pretty focused on my Thesis . . .

First off, I want to apologize the half of you I offended without even writing a single word. Second, I want to apologize to the rest of you that I will probably offend at some time in the future. I can't believe I'm doing this. I totally caved into pressure and sold my soul. I must say that I've become addicted to the whole thing and (before now) didn't even have my own blog. I'll keep this short today (and probably a lot of other days, too) because I really do have a lot to do tonight other than write my thoughts and feelings. My roomate is re-doing her bathroom and when I saw the toilet sitting on the back porch I just couldn't resist. Yes, I've put back on 10lbs. Sitting in front of a computer for 14+ hours a day is not a good weight-loss program.

Before signing off I'll put out some warnings and disclaimers:

1. I often annoy myself with how random my thinking is and how little control I often have of keeping random thoughts to myself. My posts will probably be filled with parenthesis, run on sentences, and incoherant comments. At the moment I'm not too excited about editing my writing, so you've been warned
2. I realize that some of my opinions are not shared by all but may just accidentally let some of them slip anyway. I hope I don't come off argumentative, but refer to my first point for my editing policy.
3. I don't have a #3 at the moment but making a numbered list with only two points didn't seem right.

People have been talking about the weather getting cold. This second picture is from my front yard, I live in a beautiful place and hope to get out in the great outdoors soon.

Die thesis, Die! (That was actually pretty long, huh? I'm a big fat liar)