Love At Third Sight

October 19, 2010 (about a year ago): I attend a banquet for the Masters of Social Work program. I wasn’t really interested in the program, but they invited the top GPAs of each college and I wanted free food. There were maybe 40 students in attendance. Sitting at my table was a Jeff Whitlock. We became friends, eventually were accepted into the Strategy program together, and also see each other in the BYUSA office. After the banquet, Jeff and I walked to campus together. There was also a girl with us, but I didn’t remember very much about her, just that we talked about one of our mutual friends Emily. I remembered she had done folk dance as well.

Fast forward to November 2, 2011. I am now dating an awesome, beautiful girl named Kelli. We are talking and eventually find out that she was also in attendance at the banquet. We find out that she also knows Jeff Whitlock. We also find out that she walked with Jeff to campus after the banquet. She talked to a boy that she didn’t remember very well about a mutual friend named Emily. And about the fact that he was in folk dance.

WE TALKED!!! A year before we started dating, we talked, sort of met each other, and didn’t think anything of it! We barely remembered each other! Not til a year later did Kelli try out for murder mystery and we got to know each other and got to really start liking each other. I learned three things from this:

1. Love at first sight is probably over-rated.

Kelli and I are really liking/leading to loving each other. And we’re both extremely attracted to each other (or so she tells me ☺). But obviously, there wasn’t a magical rushing of the wind when we first met. Heck, we hardly remember the other person at all! Same thing when she walked into the audition room. I thought she was cute, but I didn’t right away envision it going as far as it has. It wasn't until our third encounter (in the taco bell line, haha) that I really started feeling major attraction/interest in her.

2. Who knows who you’re running into?

I have always loved thinking about who you’ve run into in your life without realizing it. Or finding your friend from kindergarten in your college business class. Stuff like that. I really hope that after we die we can see a video of all the funny coincidences and circumstances of running into people. It’s just so fun having a real-life example with my girlfriend!

3. Our lives are being guided.

Kelli and I started dating pretty quick; because we were ready and because it felt right. I don’t think a year ago we would have been ready. At that time she was in a pretty up and down relationship and I was about to start the longest relationship of my life. From both we learned a ton. We learned lessons and had experiences that really shaped who we are and how we view relationships. What IF Kelli and I had clicked a year ago and started dating? Maybe it would have worked out. But maybe we weren’t supposed to date yet, and were being taught and prepared for something to happen when it was supposed to. I’m a big believer in timing, and I know that God is as well. It’s awesome to see him orchestrate things.

So today as you go out, look around at those strangers walking by. You might be dating one of them in a year!

Jamie Rose

The other day my car Jamie Rose was in a dark parking lot and she was nudged by a dark pole. It got her tire axel just right to warrant a $400 repair (you’ll see below why it wasn’t financially worth it to repair). And somehow I knew right away, this was goodbye.

Jamie Rose has been the perfect first car. Red and sparkly black and too cool to believe. There’s something so liberating and exciting about buying getting the first one. I’ve always felt that your first car has got to be quirky out the wazoo, and Jamie certainly fit the bill. She:

-Doesn’t start with the key. I had to get it hotwired and push a switch by my knee to start it.
-Sometimes turns completely off when I turned left. Added a bit of excitement to the driving experience.
-Clicks whenever the steering wheel is turned.
-Leaks air out of her tires pretty bad, but never got a flat!
-Has a trunk that slams, and sometimes breaks the taillights when she does.
-Doesn’t lock. At all. Well, that’s not true. She locks, but doesn’t unlock. So, I never locked her ☺.
-Has a right windshield wiper that stopped working.
-Sometimes scrapes the road when going over bumps.
-Floods the floor of the back seat if the AC goes too long. That is, when the AC worked.

Jamie Rose was also full of stories. I remember when:
-I had 24 hours to make a 22 hour drive from Ogden, Utah to San Antonio, Texas. Jamie and I did a great job and made it! We got a ticket in New Mexico (it was a cheap-shot), and she flooded (see AC issue above), but we had quite a time.
-Her muffler went out in Arkansas. That was a loud journey ☺.
-At 3 in the morning in the middle of Illinois I opened her door after getting gas and her ALARM started going off. My first thought, “this thing has an ALARM SYSTEM?!” Eventually the police came, the alarm stopped, I slept in Jamie since she wouldn’t start, and I got her fixed in the morning.
-She sputtered to a stop right off an exit to American Fork with Eliza on my birthday. We tried jumping her and we set the cables on fire!
-One winter day the driver door stopped opening. So I had to climb out the passenger side. Then the next day it worked again. Silly Jamie playing tricks.

Yesterday I called several junkyards and used car places to find the best deal. Eventually I landed on a nice guy from Orem who fixes up cars. He offered me $300, which is a lot more than I was expecting, considering I bought it for $1000, had put almost two years in it, and it had some major replacements to be done. The Orem man was a really solid gent, and the thing I like most about it is that he’s going to try to fix Jamie up and re-sell her. Most of the other places were just going to use her for parts. I’m glad that Jamie is maybe going to get another chance and give some other young college guy the time of his life.

After the man buying the car told me he would pick it up in the morning and I pulled my stuff out of the trunk and the CDs out of the front, I had a few minutes alone with Jamie. It was sad. It felt very similar to the time I buried one of my good friends Xela, our parakeet. I told Jamie how much I loved her, and I ended up crying pretty bad. I know that cars are inanimate objects, but with how much we had seen together, I really felt like I was saying goodbye to a friend. A friend who had defied the odds and the laughter and shaped a big part of my college experience.

I’ll miss you Jamie Rose. Thanks for the memories!

Power Outage

Power Outages are the best. They make me want to play murder in the dark, eat vanilla pudding, tell scary stories with flashlights, and talk to everyone in the room.

Power Outages are great/unifying because all of a sudden you can't really do anything productive. You have the perfect excuse to do nothing! And to eat pudding and yadda yadda. I think it's also great because everyone has something in common all at once. Today when it happened I was in the bathroom and struck up a great conversation with a complete stranger, simply because we felt the common bond of the outage. It's like how big disasters unite countries, just that this one is a fun/harmless one.

So bring on the snow days, the AC failures, and the power outages. They're great!

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Time Thought

My friend Eliza mentioned a great point the other day. Time is man-made. The fact that there are 24 hours in a day is not an eternal principle. Time was invented by mankind. Minutes, Seconds, Clocks, Weeks, Years, and Days are just made-up measurements. I know that the sun goes up and down and that seasons come and go, but time really is a stress that we’ve placed upon ourselves.

This “week”, with starting school, time seemed to slow way way down. Like, if time didn’t exist I would almost swear to the fact that the past “168 hour week” felt almost twice as long as the “168 hours” before that. Could it be that it really was longer? My time has been more busy and full and somehow it’s just felt different. Would a man in a log cabin without a watch or a calendar view each “day” so much differently? Probably. Things would happen when they happened without a schedule or a stressed forced time or a day and minute assignment.

The ASDF Miracle

Something that has always amazed me is the ability that our brain-finger connection has to type. Without thinking about where the letters on the keyboard are, we’re able to think of a word and then have it come up on the screen at almost talking speed. The interesting thing about this is that this is not an inborn skill. Our brain is not pre-wired to know that on the middle line of the keyboard will be the letters ASDFGHJKL. That’s not even consistent with the ABC’s order that we learned when we were little. Through practice, most people who have access to a computer are able to pick up this learned, incredible skill.

So what’s the limit then? If we can teach our body to move our fingers and produce words without even looking, what else could we teach our bodies to do? Professional balancers, artists, athletes, and musicians do this all the time by picking up new skills and teaching their body to react in the right ways. It will be interesting to see what small and large tasks the future will produce (such as the T9 texting method or new ways to drive a car or new interactive video games) that the body will be able to learn and perform.

The 4th Verse of the Star-Spangled Banner

Few people realize, or choose to not realize, that the national anthem was written to have 4 verses. The first 3 verses ask questions. Can you see the flag? Does the banner yet wave? What is that breeze? Where is the band of soldiers? Take the first verse for example. As I’m sure you know, it reads:

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The verse ends in a question mark. OUR "national anthem" ENDS IN A QUESTION MARK. That's because it's not the anthem. It's 1/4th of it. The verse consists of two questions asking about if the flag is still high. It doesn’t answer anything. And yet, this is the verse we sing. I bet that 98% of people in the United States don’t even know the lyrics to any of the other verses.

It is the FINAL verse that ANSWERS the questions. It proclaims things! It’s bold. It’s awesome. It reads:

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust;”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Do you see that? It ends in an exclamation! Freeman shall stand! War’s desolation, VICTORY, PEACE, Conquer we must, In God is our trust. The banner SHALL wave, and this is the land of the free and brave. The 4th verse is amazing. It answers all the questions of the first 3 verses.

Please, please can we sing the 4th verse at baseball games or in church or at all the events that we sing it? Francis Scott Key MEANT to put the best verse last. It is the verse that says what we are. It’s amazing. I sing it with pride. The first verse asks two questions and says nothing.

Sorry to be controversial, but please, let’s sing the 4th. It’s part of the anthem just as much as the 1st verse. And it’s epic.

Grandpa Jay

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to talk with my Grandpa Richardson one final time. I called up Grandma and she put me on speaker so that I could just talk with Grandpa one on one. He wasn’t able to speak back but I really felt like he could hear and understand what I was saying. I thanked him for some of the good memories I had had in Arizona in the dentist chair or at reunions or of him visiting Ohio. I thanked him for his great example. I felt most impressed though to thank him for the great posterity that he has raised. He gave me my wonderful mother. He had sons and daughters who became very influential and wonderful examples as my aunts and uncles. And the grandchildren that he has influenced have become some of my very best allies and friends. His influence will continually be felt for generations.

Thanks Grandpa for your humble example of goodness and for keeping your priorities in the right place for your whole life. I'll love and miss you!