Happy Days

Just as you could deduce from the title, I'm happy. In spite of work being hectic, classes being tough and Jarom being so far away I am really happy. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that I am really living my life the way I feel like I should, close to God. I read my scriptures every day and pray many times a day. I also look at everyone as a child of God. I honestly don't have any hard feelings toward anyone. I know there are some that might scoff but that's fine. I don't and won't force it on anyone to live like me.
Before I get to the second reason I'll go over my weekend for anyone interested in what I did.
This weekend there was a semi-formal dance that the Engineering Club was putting on. I know, I know a bunch of engineers in a little ballroom with rap, R&B, and Pop music playing, EXCITING!
Hey, I was just happy to have an excuse to go out and buy a new shirt and tie and take LaRee to a nice restaurant. We had a great time at dinner but it turned out that we found a down side to living outside of Utah or another area with a high concentration of LDS people; women dress like skanks and people dance WAAAAAY too provocatively for me to see on a Friday night. So, we left early. But we ended up playing games at my place and watching a movie until late. It was fun.
I also picked up the guitar and jammed with James for a while. He taught me a new little riff by Collective Soul so now I know 4 songs! I'm really liking this guitar thing, I'm learning pretty quickly too.
Oh yeah, I also learned another important piece of information that totally wrecks all thoughts I had about sales in the past. This tidbit is, "If it's on sale either buy it or find out when it's going off sale!" I got bit in the butt by this one. Khols had all of their men's shirts and ties on a great sale on Wed but I decided to wait a day to buy. Upon returning the sale was off and I had to pay full price for a shirt and tie combo!!! Boy, if Kara ever got wind of that I'd get an earful, but my next wife (should there be one) will only benefit.
Okay now, on to the second reason that I am so happy. It is LaRee. (WARNING: Following will be a graphic depiction of how I feel about my girlfriend. If you have any allergies to public expression of feelings, don't care about those types of things or you are just plain tuckered out from reading, please stop reading now.) She makes me so happy. I have been myself from day one and she still likes me. I can't believe it but I'm sure happy with it. It's really nice to know that no matter what, she cares for me. True, the reason I feel this way is mostly because I have a very long, documented history of inadvertently doing really, really dumb stuff that hurts people's feelings, that and the fact that I'm just an idiot sometimes. I digress, it's nice to know that she will still care for me even if I accidentally do that stuff (let's face it, it's bound to happen). I've never felt like she feels that she's dragging me along with her or I'm just good enough to be with her. We are both just figuring life out and accept that when we are with each other we are with each other's mistakes too. We both feel lucky to have each other.

Now, I'll be honest, I'm not ready for marriage or anything and we have not been dating long enough to know each other well enough to get married, but things are very positive and we are both very happy and even in extreme like. It's exciting. It's fun. It's unexpected.

It's been a long time, oh yeah ain't that right

You might recognize the title of this blog from a matchbox 20 song, or maybe you won't.
Okay, okay, so it has been a while since I posted anything, so sue me! I've been busy. In my business I have some venting that I must do.

I can't go on like this anymore! School is a joke. It is nothing more than a business. It is not a way to help broaden our intelligence as a society. I used to think it was just in textbooks and tuition that they got us but it seems more and more they are broadening the ways that students are asked to get screwed.
This all stems from the physics class I am taking this semester. I had anticipated spending about $100 for the book (which is paperback if you can believe it) and I was right on the money (pun intended). What I had not anticipated was the cost of a H-ITT clicker that would be used for quizzes and tests. This clicker is a couple notches down from a standard remote control but unlike a standard remote control this little baby cost $33 and that doesn't even include the battery!!! That's right folks, step right up and get some snake water while you're at it because at OU you can't have a remote without snake water, it just won't work!
This remote is a glorified SCANTRON but because our professors have gotten lazy and don't want to take all 30 minutes of their valuable research time (or rather 30 minutes of their TA's beer drinking time) to feed SCANTRON through a machine they decided students had to spend $33 to answer a question and have the answer recorded electronically immediately! More than that, there is no option to take a SCANTRON instead of purchasing the remote. If you don't get one of your own (because they are coded to match your student ID) you don't pass the class, period!
How ridiculous are we getting with our technology? Technology is great but it seems that in our drive to get immediate results we are neglecting at what cost we are getting those results not to mention personability! I guess the day is soon coming that in order to save classroom space, students will have to spend $350 for an iPod that is coded with their student number and broadcasts the professor’s voice during a scheduled time. The professor will give the lecture and homework assignments. The student then must upload the completed homework to the iPod. Automatically the answers will be given and the professors voice will tell if the answers were right and if not will explain what was done wrong. Oh yeah, Not to mention that there will be a required text that students will have to spend another $300 to buy. But instead of an actual book they will get a password to download an e-book onto the iPod. Seriously, where does it end? I'll tell you where it ends, right in the studends' collective END!

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

From the last post you all know that I was taking a trip to Utah to send Jarom off and to see my family. I'm back now and I just got some pictures from the trip.


Uncle Danegus


Jarom got me a Tabletop football game for Christmas


His new favorite shirt


Me and Mo


Mo and Uncle Cracker


Grandma Betty


Aspen

All-in-all it was a pretty good trip. There was a bit of snow but not too much. There was a lot of family and friends and it was great to get to see everyone.