Ok folks, it has been quite the long stint since I last posted here.  Every blogger says it on a regular basis, but life has just been totally crazy.  My last post was in May, before I went to camp, before I got married, and before the current season at the theatre.  It was almost before the summer really started and now winter is starting.  I have been kind of bad about lots of things in the digital world of communication though.  I have been very slow at responding to emails, I have been behind on processing and sorting photos, and apparantly I am behind on getting videos together from the summer to go online.  Then there are the actual things that I havent been doing, like going to the gym.  Great.

So, will this just be a feeble attempt to try to get things moving on the blog again? I have no idea, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

So, if you got through that first paragraph and didn’t have a “wait, what?!” moment, you probably either already knew that I got married this summer, or you just missed that part.  Yes, since August 25 I have been happily married to Ruth and life is pretty good.  The wedding was beautiful, and everything seemd to go smoothly despite being out of the state at camp for the two months leading up to it.  We held the ceremony and reception at the Alta Lodge and we were happy to celebrate with friends and family.  Good times were definately had by all.  The weather was beautiful, the montains were beautiful, and the over atmosphere was great.  With a ceremony that we wrote ourselves, we were married by a mutual friend in one of the most beautiful places I can think of.  Don’t believe me? Here, see for yourself:

Here we are standing under the canopy that was built by Ruth's father, with our friend Warren officiating our wedding.

Working backwards in time from the wedding, the summer at camp was not one of the best.  Maybe that is why I refrained from writing during it.  I don’t know that I will say too much, though there is plenty to say about it.  The camps were under new ownership as of this past summer, and for some that transition was not so easy.  Suffice it to say, I saw some good friends mistreated in a very public manner and it got dragged out for the better part of the summer.  While I managed to spend the summer flying under the radar, there were grumblings about me as well.  Camp can be strange like that, it is just unfortunate and really hard when friends get hurt.

So let’s not dwell on the ugly past.  The theatre season is in full swing so life has been very busy.  Getting Annie up and open was a killer, but now there is a little room to breathe.  So in the mean time I have been prepping a bunch of my photos for my first ever gallery display!  I will be showing photos at the JCC in SLC for the month of January.  This is pretty darn exciting.  I have the prints on order and should get them soon and I am really excited to see them.  I am having all the prints done on metal with float mounts.  The test prints I had made earlier look amazing, it is a really cool finished product.  It would be hard to show what the prints look like in a photo, so any of you who find yourself in the Salt Lake area during January should stop by and see the gallery!

With that, I think that I need to stop staring at this computer screen. I have spent a lot of time in front of it in the past couple days. Besides being warm in bed sound much nicer!

I don’t spend an exorbitant amount of time at home generally, but I spend enough.  Almost a year ago, Ruth and I moved into our current apartment and we have been very happy with it.  Around the time that we moved in, and within the next few months there was a fairly sizable turnover of residents in the complex (two, four unit, single floor buildings).  There were two empty units when we moved in, and I know that at least two others turned over.  The apartment next to us was vacated a couple months after we moved in and sat empty until right before Christmas.

Other than just saying “hi” in passing, I don’t really know our new next door neighbors.  I am pretty sure that they do some work for the landlord as I believe that they shovel the snow and do yard-work and such.  We had one run in with them when they hooked up their washer and dryer and proceeded to flood both of your apartments.  This was not their fault, but it sure was a bummer.  All the rest of what I know about them comes from what we hear through the walls, and boy let me tell you, sometimes it is a lot.

Either our walls are really thin or they are just really loud, or possibly a combination of both.  Sometimes I wonder how happily married this couple actually is because it seems like most mornings they are going at it.  I know that they have at least one young kid as well who gets yelled at a lot too.  It is nice that the shared wall is between our living rooms and not bedrooms!

I am not a parent, but I have to wonder when it seems like all these people are giving this kid is negative reinforcement.  The other day I heard what was probably a computer game or DVD and it seemed like the whole thing was “don’t do this” and “don’t do that.”  Is this really the way to teach kids?  I thought that just saying “No” was one of those things that is less effective.  I know from working at summer camp and for lifeguard training that you should not be completely negative if you want to get good results.  Sure, sometimes you have to lay down some rules with what is not allowed, but not all the time right?

In general I don’t think that the noisy neighbors bother me as much here at my current apartment as at the old apartment.  There I had people living above, below and on one side.  The person above me insisted on blasting loud music on sunday mornings.  It was odd, just one song, and generally they were not bad songs, it was just weird.  I don’t have have to put up with elephants upstairs now either.  I just really wonder about people who spend so much time in apparent competition with eachother.

If you have never played Apples to Apples you should give it a shot, it is a lot of fun.  I played tonight with Ruth and her family.  It has been quite a long time since I have had this kind of fun with a game, and it has certainly been quite a while since I have had such a good laugh.  Here is what I am tonight (in order by rounds):

1. Naïve
2. Loud
3. Classic
4. Sultry
5. Worldly
6. Industrious
7. Creative
8. Tame
9. Saintly
10. Exquisite
11. European
12. Hot
13. Unusual
14. Violent
15. Useless
16. Twisted
17. Fantastic
18. Sweet
19. Snappy
20. Stereotyped

If you really don’t know the game at all, they say that the cards you win describe you.  It is always fun to discover “new” aspects of your personality as dictated by a game!  I am not sure that all of my wins really describe me, but I think that many might.  I am not entirely sure what that says about me, but hey!

At some point I think that it is an inevitability (unless you are my parents) that there is a game of dish jenga going on in everyone’s kitchen. Sometimes it is probably two games, the one with the dirty dishes in the sink and the one with the clean dishes on the drying rack. I even have a dishwasher but I can’t seem to avoid a pile of dishes in the sink.

For me, one of the driving forces behind doing dishes is when I can’t fit the Brita pitcher under the faucet to fill it up. This of course is an issue! The good thing about this metric is that we drink a lot of water so it doesn’t take long to end up with an empty Brita the needs to be filled. Sometimes I cheat though and use some other container to get water from the tap to fill the Brita…

I don’t actually have anything against doing dishes, in fact most of the time I find it kind of relaxing. There are many a weekend morning where I will get up and do dishes before I think about making breakfast. The problem is just finding the motivation sometimes. When you have spent lots of time cooking, sometimes you just want to sit and relax after you eat. Or in the mornings when you eat and then run out to work, you just dump the dishes in the sink.

The problem is just that it is a never ending battle, just like a good game of Jenga (of which I have played a few). Stack up a nice pile of dishes and then finally get around to cleaning them. Then, as soon as you turn around there is just another new stack waiting for you. Is it possible to win the game?

If you are wondering what Zordak is, you are asking the wrong question.  You should be asking who Zordak is.  Zordak is the king of the universe, also known as Zordak KOTU.  Zordak is a character from a bunch of “stories” that my brother wrote while he was in elementary school.  I don’t remember any of the stories now and it wouldn’t surprise me if the originals were lost in the fire that my parents had back when I was in college.  We lost a lot of things like that and books and such.

The cool thing is that Zordak may be making a comeback in a corporeal form.  It has been almost six months since our dog Moka passed away and my parents seem to have decided that the time is right to get new puppies.  We are big Husky people, so of course my parents found a breeder with beautiful Husky puppies.  Personally I don’t know how it could be possible for a Husky puppy to not be cute.

Of course looking for new puppies means that we have had to start thinking of names, so what did think of first? Zordak!  It really is a cool isn’t it?  The question then was what do you name the second puppy (I probably should mention that my parents are probably going to get two)?  My suggestion was to name one Zordak and the other KOTU, but my mother thinks that one would be jealous of the other.  I think it is a great combination, but I offered a second option sticking with names of characters my brother created: Space Dolphin Do Do Do.  The real question with that one is who wants to call a dog with such a long silly name?!

Here is a photo of the puppies.  Do you see a Zordak there?  If nothing else, they are certainly cute!

Zordak?