way past due

well, you know what i realized? i realized that i used to keep up on this thing way better than i do. i would write at least once a month and post pics and everything. speaking of posting pics, i have some of meagan and i when we went to temple square to see the lights. we got some good picutres, not a lot though. we also saw the joseph smith movie in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. it was meagan's first time to see it and we both cried. i love that movie though. fantastic.

i just wanted to give another shout out to the google group that i started. you know, i never really realized what the governments rights were and what kind of power they were actually supposed to have until i actually sat down and read the constitution. we are being played for fools, the vast majority of americans, mostly because we just take it for granted that the government is doing what is in "our", meaning we the citizens, best interest, when in actuality it is in the best interest of those in power, politicians and businessmen alike. our situation is very similiar to, but not as obvious as, the russians during the cold war. after gorbachev resigned and the ussr was through, a more free government, democracy or a republic, which ever you choose, was trying to form. the only way that freedom was ever going to be had in russia, was with a tricky and rather unfortunate necessity of the government selling its many state controlled business to private owners. from the time that gorbachev left office until this happened, there were very few entrepreneurs who actually did well, due to the ever present pressure of communist forces still thriving in russia. it ended up turning their free market and economy into a gangster controller oligarcy, of which they are still suffering from today.

in our situation, the government has done a much better job of putting a pleasing facade ontop of what is actually going on, but it is essentially the same thing. our liberties and our control over our own country and economy is being syphoned slowly and very cleverly away by greedy politicians and big businessmen, who are creating laws to meet their own lusts and keep the entrepreneurs at bay. posted in that group are many articles written by modern day intellectuals who follow after the thoughts and ideas of the greats like von Mises and Hayek. check it out. maybe you will learn something.

...eBay...

so....surfing the internet and while looking for a PC for meagan and i for our house when we get married, i found this awesome eBay store site.

http://stores.ebay.com/The-Computer-Outlet-Group

if you or anyone you know of is interested in getting a computer, go here first. they seem to have fabulous PC's and laptops. New ones are so expensive and these are just like new. anyway. that is my two cents for the day.

engagement post

well, i just posted some of our engagement photos online on our blog. we weren't able to take a lot of them because we didn't have a big enough memory card in the camera, but we did get a lot of good ones. just thought that i should update ya. and i don't know if any of you have read my sisters blog and the paragraph she wrote about her feelings about our engagement, but i have heard some concerns from close freinds and some soon to be family, so i though i might address that.

it is true, my sister and i haven't been on the best terms for a while. things have improved a lot over the last few years though. we just don't see things eye to eye. i wouldn't post about some of the things that she has posted about, but that is her choice. and if i had something against her getting married to someone else like it sounds that she is(sorry kati, you tried to make it sound like you weren't upset, but it came out that way anyway and some people are concerned), i would have expressed my concerns in person and not hinted so over a blog. i love my sister and respect her opinion, just don't like how she expresses it sometimes.

having said that, all those that read this blog and the others that i have links to, please don't worry. no ones opinion about this marriage is going to affect my feelings or intentions to marry meagan. i am determined and resolved. i love her more than anything. august 16th is coming!! be happy!! i love you all.

!!! it's official !!!

well, it is finally official!! Meagan Duncan agreed to marry me on Saturday, 3 May 2008. We will be getting married on the 16th of August in the Timp(can't spell it) Temple in American Fork, UT. we are both very excited. the pic below isn't one of our engagement pictures though. this is one that we took at her oldest sisters wedding...which just happened to be on the same day. we wanted to wait until after she was married so that we wouldn't steal any of the attention that she was getting. we love you Amy and Dru. also, we have a blog of our own. (yes, we jumped on the bandwagon of every other mormon couple and have our own blog.) there isn't a post on it yet, but i hope to get one up by the end of the day today. it will have pictures of Amy and Dru's wedding. and eventually, we will get some engagement pictures up there and some of the ring as well. the address isn't so different from mine. it is www.smbudge.blogspot.com. kinda cliche, i know, but it works. we like it. announcements and more information will be out soon. ;)

This is Her...

Well, this is her. Her name is Meagan Duncan. This is the only pic we have so far of each other. We both have camera's but we just don't take pics very often. And it was taken on my phone and touched up the best I could with Picasa from Google. It isn't very sharp but it works. We will be taking more soon. Anyway. This is her.

...finally...

I finally brought my camera with me to Euless and I am finally going to upload some pics. Not particularly cool, but pics just the same. I have Picasa on my home computer and the rest of the cool pics are there, so I will be heading home in a few and will upload more then. And I will have edited some then, too, with Picasa. Anyway....enjoy. :)

These were just cool. It was perfect timing. I took these through my sun roof.

These were some pics that Meagan and I took for one of her Photography assignments. She needed to take the pics and I was just goofing off. I think that they turned out pretty good though.

These are from the one day of snow we had a couple of weeks ago. I was on my way home from work and I snapped a few pics on the way. Some of them are blurry because I was driving. :)

...still no pics...

well, i am here @ odyssey one source again, without my camera. i have quite a few pics i would like to post too. one of these days. i am posting right now because i got a comment asking for a new post and it is probably time i gave an update.

well, seeing as how it is now the end of march and my average is one post a month, it is time. as for the last month, things have been at their highest highs and their lowest lows. i think i remember posting something about Meagan Duncan, the girl i have been dating, so i will start with an update there. so meagan and i have been dating since the end of december, beginning of january. there wasn't an actual date that we called ourselves "boyfriend and girlfriend". (by the way, that sounds really high school to me, "boyfriend and girlfriend") either way, she is my girlfriend and i am her boyfriend and things have been going really well....really well. when i say really well, i mean REALLY well. don't worry, if we decide to take things to the next level (the M word), everyone who reads this blog will know long before i post anything about it. i would consider myself a loser if my friends had to find out from a post on a blog. but, to keep you on the edge of your seat, august is a really good month...keep all saturdays open... ;) not saying anything is happening during that month, but their might be one saturday that month that i might need to see all of you. ;)

school sucks...as usual. i am not interested at all in bookwork. i am taking a biology class and man does it suck. i like to apply science when i learn it. it is way more interesting to me than a lecture from mister rogers. no kidding, my biology professor dresses like mister rogers and talks like jed clampet. he is the goofiest guy and the most boring lecturer. no worries though. i make good use of the time. i read my scriptures or something and pay just enough attention to his lecture that if i think he is saying something important, i will jot it down and then get back to reading. the time goes so much faster too.

work is hard. i work in a huge warehouse moving boxes all day long...so i am way buff now....ok not really, but i am in much better shape than i was....and that isn't saying much because i was a twig then and i am still a twig. i am very much looking forward to moving back to utah though, because i get my desk job back and i get to work with devin again. let me rephrase that, i get to do the thing i love (problem solve) and work with devin. it isn't really a desk job...ok it is. but i like it. end of may or beginning of june. i was going to start again in may at first, but then i realized that my brother is graduating high school like the weekend after i move, so i might stay a little bit longer down here. we'll see. i still need to talk to the boss in utah.

other than that, nothing really new on my end....yet (shifty eyes) lindsey will understand that. :D life is good and i hope yours is too. until next month.

...late...

i think i like how i put the dots (...) in front of and behind all the titles on my posts. it is unique i think.... i hope... ;) anyway. it has been a long while since i posted on here so now is as good of a time as any. i am at a company called Odyssey One Source right now. they are located in Euless, Texas, about a half hour from my parents house down here. I have been doing so much for DirectPointe here at Odyssey over the last month. this week was rediculous especially. it took four days to finally figure out how to set up their windows mobile phones so that they could get emails from the server. four days too long in my opinion. i had to do another one of those today and now that i know how to do it, it took a couple of minutes. what a pain. currently, i am working on their liquidation pc's. that is why i am online at the same time. i liquidated a couple already and kept one plugged in so that i have a way to communicate electronically with the rest of the world while i am here. work and post at the same time...i like it. if i am not online posting or sending emails or trying to fix phones, i am reading a book, scriptures, writing in my journal...or something like that. anyway. so this post,

well, not much is different from the last time i posted. i am in school and taking biology at TCC because that is about the only class that will transfer to BYU. so i am going to finish that class, get the transcripts sent up so i won't have to take it again. i am not a science guy. not a fan really. not a math guy either, which is why i was terrible at chemistry. the best part of my biology class is that my professor dresses like mister rogers. he is a goofball, but he knows his biology. he is a really smart guy, just goofy.

i got a new calling in church recently as well. i am now the ward clerk. holy crap that is a job. This calling keeps me on my toes. we have such a high turnover rate in our ward that we are requesting records almost every week. and callings change all the time and finances are not fun. wow, it is busy. but i like it. i am learning a ton.

as for my dating life. i am dating someone pretty seriously. not as seriously as lindsey is ;) congrats by the way lindz if you read this. but fairly seriously. she is trying to get into UVSC, which will be UVU. her name is meagan duncan. she comes from a military family and has one older brother and three older sisters, two of which are currently engaged. she is the youngest and i think, of course, the most attractive, though they are all very attractive. :) she wants to go to school to be a dental hygenist. not what she loves but she think very logically. she wants to do that so that she can help suppliment her hubby's income when the kids are old enough to all be in school at the same time. that and they get to choose their own hours and make fairly decent money. she is a smart kid. and i like her.

i still have quite a few pics that i need to post. one of these days, maybe tomorrow, i will bring my camera in here and post them, seeing as how this is the only time i get on the computer anymore. ;)

...in my defense...

if anyone has read my sister's blog of jan 10 2008, i need to add my two cents, because i think that she still doesn't understand my reaction to her pregnancy. i don't completely understand why she would talk about that in a blog, but i haven't gone through it and i don't understand what it does to a person. if it helps her to talk about it, then more power to her.

i love my sister. and it is true, we don't see eye to eye on everything. our personalities are very different and tend to clash...alot. also, as she said, things are getting better. but i really do love my sister.

i remember the day that she told us that she was pregnant like it was yesterday. everyone who didn't know already thought that we were moving again. my family tends to movie quite a bit. it happened just as she said it did. she said it through sobs and she got the reactions from all of us like she said she did. i really did say that. and i am not ashamed of saying it either. my sister made a mistake. and she will admit that it was a mistake. she said that i was on a pedestal. i probably was, but how can you help someone you love improve if you are not better yourself. that sounds kind of selfcentered. i hope that made sense. an example of what i am trying to say is how can a drug addict help another drug addict from quitting. it doesn't work.

my intention in saying what i said was to help her understand that in order for her to become better and overcome this mistake the right way, she needed to feel everything and feel it to the fullest. she needed to be dragged through the mud, i guess, not by me or anyone else, but by herself. she needed to feel that guilt that prompts us to change. i guess i didn't get across that i was supportive of her and love her.

i don't understand how she felt or what she was going through. and i am learning that girls, especially when they are pregnant think with their emotions and not very logically, so alot of her choices have not made sense to me. i have been and will always be there for my sister though. sometimes, however, (and this pregnancy was not one of them) we have to go through some problems on our own in order to grow like heavenly father wants us to grow. so kati, if i don't help sometimes, it isn't because i don't love you or care about you, it is because i do love you and want to see you grow like i know you can. ;)

...finally...

so i finally added a dude to my friends list. well, he is married and has a son, so it is his family's blog, but he is still a dude. now i feel better. ;)

...uh...

i was just reading some of the comments that were made on my last post and found some new people to add to my "cool links" list. so i added them and noticed that they are all women. the only people, besides my dad who checks only occasionally, that check my blog with any kind of consistency are women. not that that is a bad thing but come on. guys. where are ya?!

...more pics...

i said that i was going to post pics of the fam last blog and now i have them. i told you also that i posed for my dad when he was figuring out the settings. so those are included because they are hilarious. and then some modified ones of the family. some of the ones that i fixed up and made to look better (i think).

...jan 3...

well, it is now 2008. holy cow, last year was long and short all at the same time. so much happened last year, for me at least. and for the world. it is amazing how much stuff you can pack into a day and how much history is taking place in a day. interesting to think about.

well, on new years eve, the singles dance (be jealous those of you that are married, not really, i wish i was married) was at our building. it was the entire region. for the entire region, not that many people showed up, sadly. singles dances down here have a tendancy to be terrible. mostly because of the music. the dj's think they are the ish and try and dj like they are in a club or something and play crappy techno the whole night. thank goodness our dj didn't, though he did try and show off his dj skill by running several songs together that were really bad. he did that a couple of times with techno songs and then latino songs. it was annoying. but he did play alot of popular music to. everyone likes to dance to popular music. much better. it was pretty good. decorating it was a beast though. rachel may and i figured out how to do a canopy of stars that actually worked out really well, if i do say so myself. it turned out a lot better than i thought it was going to. we had a bunch of stars left over too that i think would have made it look that much better, but we didn't really have time. oh well. all in all, it was a fun dance, even though i didn't dance a whole lot. i prefer to watch. i am not a huge dancer. and there were a bunch of pictures taken too, but not by me. i had a bunch of friends take pictures. i will have to get them from them.

and we took a family picture on christmas day. i will need to post some of those. some are pretty funny. my dad had me pose for the camera while he was trying to figure out the settings on the camera....yeah... it was interesting. so those of you who have been asking for an update, this is it for now. i will post the pics when i get them.

...christmas day...and nothing to do...

hey there. well, it's christmas day...and i have nothing to do. we opened presents at 630 this morning...and that's about all we have planned. when i was younger, we used to be able to play with presents all day...or use them, like gaming systems like the N64 and such. now that i am older, it is kinda hard to use a bunch of clothes all at the same time. and i as i get older(i say that like i have some years behind me), i realize more and more that i would love to spend this time with that special someone that i haven't found yet. someday though i am sure. i did get something i could use to pass the time, but i already watched it. i got the blue man group concert tour dvd. and we watched it already. and it is only 1145 in the morning. i am done watching tv though. i want to get out and do something. i am tired of being lazy. i guess i could go and finish my chores that i didn't do on saturday.
saturday was a good day. went and cleaned the church in the morning after shopping for kati, then watched football all day. first was the trinity game on tv, which they won!! and then it was the BYU game, which they barely won but should have won by alot more. they are such a much better team than they played that night. it was frustrating. but they won and that is all that matters.
anyway, back to christmas and boredom. on a lighter note, i did take some pics of christmas and found some pics that i said i was going to post from holloween. so here they are.

This is nick. he got this guitar for christmas. sweet.
this is mom. just hangin out.
even the dogs were tired from waking up so early...
rayo got a 30GB iPod. we don't even own 30GB of music anywhere in the house.
remi also got guitar strings for his guitar. that one that he has he got for free though. someone gave it to him...lucky, though i prefer the acoustic.

this is me and dum at halloween.
this is me, dum, and courtney at halloween.

and this is my bishop and his wife. this was before Dog got in trouble for being racist.

...christmas eve...and good friends

well, it's Christmas Eve, and i am here in texas with the family. just about to head to bed. it is kind of early for me to go to bed. i am normally in bed after 11 so 9:45 is pretty early. on christmas eve we always have pizza for dinner and always watch the movie white christmas with bing crosby and danny kaye. we also always get to open one present, which is always pajamas. i didn't want to get into my pj's this year, but i was kind of forced to. oh well. tradition is tradition.

i wanted to take a sec and just make a comment about friends and how awesome they are. before i had dinner, i was able to talk with a friend who is in utah right now. before i talked to her i was having a fairly rough christmas holiday. some things in my life have been worked out and some were and are having some difficulty being worked out. i know about school and work now, finally, but relationships and family life are a bit rough and were causing a lot of problems for me. all i had to do was just talk to her and everything was ok. without really realizing it, i think she made my day. it was really good to just be able to talk to her as just a friend. so, if she ever reads this, thanks and i am looking forward to seeing you again in the summer, you and all of my other friends up there. i miss you guys a lot. anyway, thanks and merry christmas!!

...happy 80th Pop...

hey ya'll. i said i was going to post pics from my grandpa's 80th and our thanksgiving in Cali. so here they are. they aren't really in any particular order. i wasn't the one taking the pics or there might be a lot more them and better ones maybe...not saying that i am good, but i am way better at taking pics than anyone in my immediate family. and i am way more humble than them about it too. ;) just kidding. happy 80th Pop. love ya.

this is my mom and our second cousin. her neice had a second baby.
this is three generations. sleeveless is my aunt anna, behind is my cousin heather, and then there is her daughter.
left to right is grandma, aunt natalie, matthew, patrick, kyle, and rayo. in the back in dad.
this is the actual 80th celebration for grandpa and his kids and grandkids. extended fam was the day after(which we missed because of a two day trip to texas).
this is a close up of the man.
this is probably the best pic of the whole trip. that is nick asleep on the couch. my mom got that one. i could not have done better myself.
we thought that we were going to give kati's dog away, so we took her with us. we ended up keeping her, which a lot of us are happy about, because she is such a sweet dog. she loved it at my grandparents house. the backyard and garden have been having squirrel problems. squirrels aren't problems for roxy, they are playthings, so my grandparents fell in love with her too because she chased away the squirrels. she could see them through the glass and just watch until she could be let out. it was so funny.
this is an interesting head shot of my cousing greg. i have no idea who took this one.
left to right, ali, kati, amy, and jessie.
every year for christmas, my grandpa hangs these ornaments from his ceiling by fishing line that runs to the door. it is taped to the door so that when it opens or closes, they come up and down. that is a fond memory from my childhood. i put them up this year. i am the tallest person on that side of the family. lucky me.

:) fun...

well, it has been a long time since i have written...or posted pics for that matter. i really need to get better at taking pics. i guess i could post the ones of my grandpa's 80th, i don't have the camera though. i think my parents have that one. i could get them i guess...someday. hopefully soon.

when i first started this blog, lindsey tried to convince me that i should try and write 100 things about myself and post it like she did on her blog. needlesstosay i was less than enthused about doing it. i didn't think i was interesting enough to have 100 interesting things about me. i still may do that someday, but now i want to do something similar but less time consuming and less brain racking.

Four things about me that you may or may not have known in no particular order.
Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Milker at a dairy in Rexburg, ID
2. Lawnmower....also in ID
3. Pipe mover....once again, also in ID
4. Wrangler in Park City

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. White Christmas
2. Indianan jones
3. emporer's new groove
4. Pride and Prejudice(the five hour one)

Four places I have lived:
1. SoCal
2. Aurora, CO
3. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hertzegovena
4. Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Four TV Shows that I watch:
1. The office That's actually all!

Four places I have been on holiday:
1. Sugar City, ID
2. Fort Worth, TX
3. Ventura, CA
4. Goblin Valley, UT

People who e-mail me the most: Personal, not counting lame work emails (:
1. Dina Bula
2. Dad
3. Brianna
4. Lindsey

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Lasagna
2. Adobo
3. Burgers
4. Chips

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Somewhere else
2. In Utah
3. At BYU
4. ...married...

Four Favorite Books (we could just take this section out and it wouldn't hurt my feelings any)
1. Tennisshoes Among the Nephite series
2. Miracle of Forgiveness
3. The Scriptures
4. The Lord of the Rings series

Things I am looking forward to next year:
1. School!!!
2. Moving back to Utah
3. Getting wiser
4. Making new friends

so that is that. i will try to write more often.

...life...

well, i guess if you had everything the way you wanted it, you would never learn about not getting what you want. it is really humbling. i was hoping to keep my job at directpointe for a bit longer, but i was doing no good and was a waste of money and effort. so i quit and just started a new job today. i am still in warehousing, cause i want to go into logistics and i would like the experience.

i was also hoping to get back up to utah this january, but that won't happen. job and other things are just making sense that i should stay here. it is cheaper to get my associates down here and then move up afterwards. yeah. i am having a hard time putting things into words right now, but that is basically what it is. here i am in texas and here i will stay for a while.

i took some pictures of our haloween party and my costume. it was fun. i will post them when i can.

the house

Well hello there!! It has been a while. In that short while my family decided to move houses. It was pretty much just up the road so it wasn't that far, but I had forgotten how much stuff we actually have and tend to collect. I am tired. I am done moving; though I think that I have much more of it ahead in my life. Well, I told Kristen that I would send her pics of the inside of the new house. She had already seen the outside...now that I think about it, I don't have any pics of the outside of the house. Oh well. I might post one later. It is red brick...just like just about everything else in this state. Please also remember that this is big for us. We have lived pretty modestly for most of our lives and now we have a chance to live fairly comfortabely. Anyway, here they are. There is a short narrative at the bottom of each of the pictures.

This is the entryway from the front door. We hardly ever use that door. We mostly come in through the garage. The door on the right is to the office and the hallway leads to the kitchen. If you turn to your left, you will walk right into the front room.

This is the office. I should have turned the light on.

Front room. Once again, I should have turned the light on. The opening you are seeing in the back by the boxes is the dining room.

...the dining room from the kitchen. Not much of a dining room right now...it will be someday...maybe.

The kitchen from the dining room. We spent most of a day painting this kitchen from a nasty green color to a mint green color. My mom loves the granite countertops. And we will be getting a new table too. In the back is the family room and the door that you see is to the three car garage. The garage isn't very long, but it is wide so it is easy to get in and out of cars. Yes!!!

The kitchen from the family room. We are probably someday going to take the paint off of the cupboards. My dad thinks that there is oak wood under there....more work. The door on the right is too the backyard and the opening by the fridge is too the dining room.

The family room. We also spent most of a day painting this from a very light blue color. My dad wanted it done before the new couches arrived. That was rough.

Backyard.

Backyard. It's pretty big.

Game room. Right at the top of the stairs. Ali's room is right on the right. Just a bit farther down on the right and you get her bathroom and then if you keep going, you get my parents door. Turn to the left down a little walkway and the boys room is on the right and Remi and I are at the end of the walkway.

Ali's room. The door in the back is a pretty decent sized walk-in closet. If you turn a little more to the left, there is a door to her bathroom. Yes, she has her own bathroom with TWO sinks. All the boys get is a jack and jill bathroom. Girls are spoiled.

Ali's bathroom from the game room. If you walk in and turn directly right, her room is there. If you turn left from where this was taken that is my parents door.

This is at the door looking left. The little door in the wall is a crawl space. And man is it a crawl space. There is not a lot of room in there at all.

Turn slightly to the right and you get the center of the room.

Turn to the right again and you get the rest of the room. The indent you see on the right is the door to the bathroom.

This is taken from their closet door which is opposite the bathroom door. The door you see there is the toilet. And yes, that jet bathtub does work and my mom loves it.

There is the bathroom door that leads to my parents bedroom. Aww, they even have an elevated sink for my dad.

This is at their closet door looking into their closet. This is the left side of the closet. All of my mom's stuff. Mind you, there is some hanging space over my head too that is up near the ceiling. Their closet ceiling is really high.

This is at the door looking at the middle of their closet. Lots of shoe space.

And this is to the right. My dad's side. It is huge. It is five to 8 paces (depending on how long your legs are) from my mom's side of the closet to my dad's side. It is very large. And don't forget the ceiling space. Very nice.

hmm. No this is not my room. This is Rayo and Nick. Messy as usual. The door in the back is their walk-in closet that isn't really that big.

This is a shot from inside their bedroom. You can see their sink, the bathroom through the door. Their closet is opposite of their sink.

This is room belongs to Remi and I. We have oak dressers, a light colored wood for a bookshelf, yellow pine for a bed frame, and a bright green wall on the left. You can't see it in this one, but you can in the next. My bed has nothing on it but the sheets and the pillows. The skateboard is Remi's. If you go around the dresser on the right, you will be looking at our side of the bathroom.

This is what I get to look at when I wake up in the morning. Door on the left is the linen closet, on the right is our walk-in closet. In the back is the shared bathroom with Rayo and Nick.

This one is taken from the entrance to our bathroom area. I tried to get all three of the wood colors in here, and the wall.