If it's broke, Vicks it!

Those that know my family know we have a total dependence on Vicks Vaporub.  I'm not sure how or why it originated, but Vicks is the cure-all for us, just like Windex is for that Greek family in that Big Fat Greek Movie called My Big Fat Greek Wedding. 

We use it for chapped lips.  We use it for colds, but not as directed.  We apply it on chafed skin.  I'm sure there are other uses.  My mom's favorite response to a child whining about health-related issues: "Put some Vicks on it and go to bed earlier."

Some of my siblings are more dependent on it than others.  The biggest user is Kurt.  I don't know if he still does this, but frequently the entire lower half of his face would be smothered in Vicks.  He's been known to go through an entire bottle in a month.  I think he just loved the smell.

I use it pretty regularly myself.  I put it on chapped lips, and love to feel the cool iciness on my burning skin.  I'll put it on any chafed body part, and it has never not worked to soothe it immediately.  When I worked at Friday's, I would get some serious chafing from all the walking I would do, so I'd go out to my car mid-shift and get Vicks out of my glove box and apply it to the affected areas.  By the end of my shift, there was no more rubbing or rash.

I also use it if any semblance of a symptom of a cold appears.  Slight scratch In the throat?  Vicks!  Sniffle?  Vicks!  Eyes watering?  Vicks it up, baby!  I put it on my lips and around my nostrils and let the eucalyptus goodness waft into my system.  I don't care if it heals me or not, it just feels so much better.

It says on the bottle "Do not apply to mouth or near the nose."  In fact, if you follow the directions, you're supposed to rub it on your chest.  I tried that once when I had a cold, and that was just nonsense.  I could barely even smell it and then I just had a greasy chest.  Plus, I like to sleep on my stomach, so that wouldn't work either.  

I've had some failed attempts at using Vicks to solve health issues.  Probably my worst idea was in 9th grade when I had a pretty fierce collection of tiny zits on my forehead that came out of nowhere.  For weeks I washed and washed my face and they were only multiplying.  

(My dear kind sister JoEllen liked to point this out, as if she were telling me I had some food on my face that I didn't know about, and she was doing me a huge favor: "Kent, did you know you have a ton of zits on your face?  Goodness me oh my, that is a LOT of zits!"  Really, Jo, do I?  Let me go look in the mirror, oh wow!  You're completely right!  As a super self-conscious 9th grader who only cares about his appearance, I am surprised that I never noticed this before!)

Anyway, I was desperate for a solution, and considered Vicks.  Bad idea.  Vicks, of course, only clogged up my pores worse and the tiny zits grew much larger, and I'm pretty sure my large zits started to get small zits on top of that.  Kids, don't use Vicks on your zits.

Another bad Vicks idea was after college.  I was in Boston, but flew home to Utah for a weekend.  I borrowed my brother Ralph's Axe spray-deodorant (Axe=scandalous!).  I developed a pretty bad rash under my pits and since Vicks had helped me through some touch chafings in the past, why wouldn't he help now?  Of course, I just made it worse.  I went to the doctor and the doctor said, "NO MORE MONKEYS JUMPING ON THE BED!"  And also to use this alcohol stuff and the rash disappeared immediately.

Still, I can't go without my Vicks.  Every trip I've forgotten my Vicks has been a trip full of regret and loathing.  Melanie has always scoffed at my dependence on this miracle elixir.  She refuses to use it ever.  Well, at least until a few weeks ago when her sinuses wouldn't clear.  She asked for some Vicks, and I was shell-shocked.  This was like Kobe deferring to his teammates, or Albert Pujols NOT launching a homer.  I gave her the Vicks with the warning that it probably wouldn't work on someone with so little faith in Vicks.  She tried anyway, and I was right: her faith in Vicks was not strong enough, and the healing did not occur.  A couple weeks later, still stuffed up, she tried it again.  Her faith was obviously stronger, and she started to feel better.  We all learned an important lesson that day.

Vicks will always be my friend.  I'm sure some of my kids will develop a dependence like me, and some of them will stray to the church of Chapstick and whatever else people use for colds (Leg of newt? Beef shank?).  But as for me, I will always trust in Vicks.

Annual BCS Bashing (not really, though)

Most of you (okay, really only Kurt) have been wondering where my annual BCS bashing post is.  Well, this year the BCS pretty much did its own bashing, admitting that the system could be improved and they were open to suggestions.  I predict that in a few years, we'll have a "plus-one" format (like a Final Four), and then once everyone sees how lucrative it is, teams will be added pretty regularly. 

It was pretty obvious that this year's championship was the worst game ever, made worse by the fact that it was the exact same game as 2 months ago.  The ratings for this game was 10% lower than last year's game, which is a pretty steep drop-off.  Alabama and LSU fans will contend that their teams were the best, and therefore, deserved to play.  What we are all forgetting here is that, despite whatever Lombardi said, sports is not about winning, it's about entertainment. 

Whether you're playing or watching, the reason why you do it is to be entertained.  Sure, there are side benefits, like exercising or the false sense of superiority you get from handing your opponent their own rump on a platter, but you play sports for fun, and you watch sports for fun.  The competition drives most of the fun, but there's no reason to take it so seriously that you can't sit back after a loss and admit that you had a great time watching/playing the game.

I learned this pretty early.  I'd much rather be a starter on a bad team than a benchwarmer on a great team.  I played AAA soccer (playing teams all over Utah) when I was 10 and 11.  When I was 10, I was pretty good and got lots of minutes and scored a few goals.  When I was 11, my teammates spent the offseason practicing, and I didn't, making them much better than me.  All of the sudden, I was riding the pine and watching our team win.  I didn't care that we won, I only cared that I spent 10 hours at practice every week, and played only 10 minutes in each game.  Not only that, when I did play in the game, I was so much worse than the competition that I didn't even WANT to go in the game.  So I demoted myself to AA (playing teams only in Utah County) and found the competition to be much weaker, but not so bad that it was unfair.  My favorite years of soccer were between ages of 12 and 16, but our team never did better than 2nd place, whereas we were winning Utah State championships at the AAA level.

When I was in 7th grade, I played on an awesome Jr Jazz basketball team.  Austin Berge, future Orem High star, was an 8th grader and the star of our team.  We won the Orem city championship.  I rode the pine and scored about 10 points the entire season.  I hated it.  The next year, I was the tallest kid on a crappy team, but I loved it because I played the entire game (until fouling out, since I had to guard the other team's tallest player) and scored about 10 points a game.  I think we won one game.

BYU intramurals does this perfectly.  You choose a division to play your regular season in, which lasts 5 games, and then the scorekeepers rank your team and you get assigned a division based on how good/crappy you are.  There were 4 divisions, and the best was Division 1.  The eventual winning teams in Division 1 usually featured ex-college players like Mark Bigelow and Nate Call.  Thank goodness I never played in that division.  One year we went to Division 3 and made it all the way to the Final 4.

Recently, I've done my best to not dwell on the outcome of the game.  In fact, for certain teams and sports, I will record the game and only watch if my team wins.  That way, I'm never in a bad mood because "we" lost.  Some may say that it takes the passion out of it, and in my case, that's the whole point.  I found I enjoy my team winning regardless of whether I watched it live or not.

I've also found that winning championships isn't that great.  I, personally, have never won anything major, like a high school state title or whatever.  But I've won my fair share of league and school intramural titles, and it's nice, but who really cares?  Even when my team wins the title, like the Colts or the Cardinals, I found that it was a fun ride, but it's not like my week improved substantially.  This last year's World Series was a lot of fun, and I watched all the post-game celebration and analysis for the next couple of days, but then pretty much stopped thinking about it after that.  It was fun, and now it's over.  Let's do it again next year.

I will admit that winning increases the enjoyment by tenfold.  I always play to win, and I get steamed when I lose, but I always need to remind myself after each meaningless pickup game that it's just  a game, and that turd on your team who never passes is actually a nice guy and you probably shouldn't have taken that cheap shot at his knees.  Those who know me know that I play hard, and I play to win, and there's nothing worse than someone ruining a perfectly good pickup game by horsing around.  But winning's not that important, especially after the fact.  There's been many times I've been embarrassed by my behavior in these games, so I need to focus on the fact that it's only just for fun.

That's what this year's championship game lacked: fun.  I wasn't opposed to the game from a "2 best teams" standpoint, although that certainly is debatable.  I was opposed from an entertainment perspective.  They played each other already that season in the 2nd worst game of the year, a snoozefest ending in 9-6.  Why on earth did we have to watch them battle each other again?!?!  BOOOOORING!  So I didn't even bother watching the rematch, and when I found out about the results, I was bored just reading about it and glad I didn't waste my time.

The only good thing about this year's game was the controversy, which will probably lead to a playoff that will make finally make the college football postseason entertaining.  And that's what it's all about.

Follow Your Dreams, Do What You Love, and other nonsense

Every day, I walk past a park on my way to work from the train station.  It's a 5-minute walk, through a chain of parks called the "Greenway".  The Greenway is new, replacing what was once an ugly interstate that cut right through downtown, obstructing harbor views and creating much noise.  The 8-lane highway has been moved underground in the "Big Dig", and I have watched them transform a hideous pile of rubble into beautiful parks.  I go out of my way to walk through them, so I can look at the flowers, shrubs, and trees as they blossom, grow, and beautify. 

Unfortunately, these parks are being run over by Occupy Boston (OB), one of the branches of Occupy Wall Street.  Dozens of tents are crammed into the park outside of South Station, displaying leftist signs and emitting a noxious odor.  I have never seen any active acts of protest by these people, only the passive signs that I read as I walk past:

"Make love not GREED"
"America wants to work"
"Finance is pure evil"
"9/11 was an inside job"
And my absolute favorite: "Boycott student debt"

I initially laughed at them, not really understanding their overall message and goal.  I figured they would be gone in a few days.  This was in late September, and they are still there, even marching up the street just yesterday as a "Free Speech Protest".  What baffles me most of all is the empathy they are getting not only from the media, but from everybody.  Everyone seems to relate to the plight of the "99%", and the top news story for the last year has been unemployment.  While it is unfortunate to be jobless, nobody seems willing to blame themselves:  "It's the economy"; "It's the government"; "It's Wall Street and corporate greed"; "It's the baby-boomer generation" (side-note: dumbest article ever).

Since when is it not your own responsibility to find, and then keep, your job?   Who's stopping you from starting your own business?  Why is a job, along with healthcare, a perceived "unalienable" right?

I personally think that my generation, and the generation coming up, has been coddled.  Look at the media we've been digesting for years: Most of the movies involve some youth trying to "find himself" or "follow his dreams", and features a bald, old, stern-looking white man who is holding him back, representing "The Man".  Not to burst everyone's bubble here, but unless your dreams include reviewing large legal documents, writing mounds of code, working long hours for "The Man", or researching stocks (aka what most people consider "boring" jobs), you're going to need to give up on your dream and pursue something more marketable. 

Case in point:  I happen to work in a field (Information Technology) that is very marketable.  This is not my dream.  Besides being a professional athlete, my dream was to be a City Planner (instead of an architect), as growing up I loved maps and the flow of traffic and other related items.  I even took a few geography classes at BYU.  However, I did some research and found that: 1.  Working for the government totally sucks; 2.  It's very competitive and probably not nearly as enjoyable as, say, playing Sim City.  So I decided to go into Information Systems, knowing that every business uses technology to run their business, therefore, there would always be a need.  My dreams would be accomplished via video games, where the sole purpose of video games is to live in a fantasy world where you're playing in the NBA, designing cities, or conquering the world.

Now?  I have a good job.  Guess what?  We're hiring.  In fact, we need people so badly that we opened up around 50 positions nationwide last March, just in my small group full of data specialists.  These spots have still not been filled.  I know for a fact that other companies are hiring aggressively, looking for accountants, lawyers, IT consultants, systems analysts, etc.  Jobs are out there for the hungry and qualified.

Let's look at a scenario where one of the unreasonable demands of OB were met:  Let's say the government decided to create jobs and take away some of the "greed" on Wall Street by offering the OB positions where they would be the personal assistant of some fund manager, for example, for a percentage of the salary?  They obviously wouldn't be qualified to research stocks, so being a personal assistant is the only thing they could do.  This wouldn't work, though. The people in Tent City wouldn't be satisfied as a "Personal Assistant", especially not for a greedy fund manager.  They are too principled for such nonsense.  It's not their "dream" to work in such a capacity.  They want to write songs, craft sculptures, discuss politics, or research history.  They wanted a first-class education that has taught them about the nuances of 17th-century French literature, but they don't want to work a boring job to pay for it.

Why are they so quick to blame everyone else when it was their poor decisions that got them there in the first place?  Information about salaries, job openings, tuition, and really ANYTHING has been at our fingertips for more than a decade.  What were the OB thinking when they decided to pursue a degree in Philosophy at Northeastern University?  I just googled "average tuition at northeastern" and clicked on the first link.  The answer?  51K annually, right on the university's site.  Then I googled "employment rate by major" and found that Philosophy was 9.6%, which was about average*, but noticed that "Architecture and Urban Planning" was a staggering 18.2%, so I'm glad I didn't pursue my City Planning dream.  Of course, I don't know the validity of the survey, this is merely an example of how easy it is to get information.  2 minutes of research would save them a lifetime of debt with iffy job prospects.  With this much information available, why is the government accountable for people's careers, student debt, or lack of a job?  The difference between the OB and potential actors is that the actors at least realize it's a long-shot, so they work crappy jobs until they make it (and they also don't have mounds of debt, unless they went to Julliard).

*If you look at the percent of "Still in field by Major", Philosophy is at 36%, which is the LOWEST of all the majors, meaning: you can get a job as a Philosophy major, but it's not because of your major.  It's probably because you went to Law school.  This particular chart is probably the best indicator of the real-world value of a degree.

At what point do we need to just be realistic with ourselves?  If I told you I still wanted to play in the NBA, you'd laugh me out of the room.  But what about people who want to be Broadcast journalists?  Their chances aren't much better.

Why must we do what we love, rather than learn to love what we do?  I wasn't crazy about working with data, but I learned to enjoy certain aspects of it.  I don't go home at night and work on data for fun, but I don't dread going to work.  I work because I get paid, and I use that money to follow my dreams, which makes my time and motivation at work much better.

I'm like most of America, and think that getting jobs is not about waiting for the government to hand you one, it's about working hard, sending out applications, following leads, taking temp jobs, and doing what it takes to get a career you can be satisfied with.  Melanie is a great example of this.  She got a first-rate education at Boston College and a mountain of student debt.  She graduated in Marketing, which is a "marketable" major (yuk-yuk), but also very competitive in the job market.  She couldn't find a full-time job, so she took temp jobs to pay her rent and her loans.  She did a great job at these places, and finally one of the temp positions turned into a full-time one.  It took her 2 years of working temp jobs to get a full-time position.  And you can ask her, those temp jobs weren't exactly thrilling.

A lot of the OB people think that firing an employee is a crime next to murder.  That's just ridiculous.  If someone doesn't see the value in me, I wouldn't want to work there.  If I'm not adding any value to the company, then why should they keep me around?  Companies should not be concerned about my self-esteem, only the overall morale of the work force.  At my current job, we are always under observation, having to get constant performance feedback.  Once a year, we get an annual rating, and if that rating is low, we need to look for a new job or be fired in a month or so.  I like that I have to constantly be earning my position, because then it makes me feel good about my role here.  If I lose my job, it's because they don't need me, or I don't deserve the job.

My theory on the high unemployment:  Computers and systems have made every business much more efficient and effective.  Data is available to make better decisions.  However, it took some time for businesses to realize this.  They didn't need Carol in Purchasing to file invoices since 2001, because they automated her job with computers and streamlined the process.  However, they didn't lay her off until 2008 because they were doing so well, and why would they lay someone off when they were doing well?  All of the sudden, the stock market took a dive, real estate crashed, etc., and businesses had to adapt.  It was the perfect time to trim the fat, so Carol from Purchasing, along with others with similar roles, was let go.  It was sad.  But necessary for the long-term.

Now there are thousands of Carols from Purchasing on the streets, looking for jobs.  "What are your skills, Carol?"  "I'm real good at putting papers from stacks into folders."  "I'm sorry, but that's not really a skill.  My monkey can do that."  Carol from Purchasing now realizes that she is obsolete, and she won't be able to get a job as high-paying as the one she held with the skills she has.  Is this the government's fault?  Maybe it's Wall Streets, after all, their greed caused the stock market crash!  Or maybe Carol from Purchasing should have realized at some point that she's easily replaced and should learn a more marketable skill?  The grim reality is that Carol from Purchasing will have to work in retail, restocking shelves or, if she's lucky, as a supervisor, probably making 30% of what she was before.  It turns out that Carol from Purchasing is a single mom of 3 small children, one of which has diabetes.  Seems unfair.

But look at it from this perspective:  Maybe Carol from Purchasing has been overpaid for 7 years by 70% (if not 100%), practically stealing from the company.  Has she never once thought to update her skillset?  Did she really think that filing paper invoices was a lasting career choice?  It sounds heartless in my made-up situation (even I'm starting to feel sorry for her), but how could she not try to protect herself?  How could she not think ahead?  Is the government responsible for every poor decision, whether active or passive, made by us?

I think most companies that survived the 2008 recession are in a decent place.  Unemployment will take years to go down, because it has to do it organically.  If companies aren't hiring, make your own company-necessity is the mother of invention.  Unemployed college grads that aren't too busy whining will find ways to make money/products/sell services.  Maybe they will start selling items on eBay, finding a niche and making some money.  Maybe they will make a revolutionary widget that changes the way you think about pomegranates.  Maybe they will start offering services on Craigslist, the epitome of the free market.  I called an out-of-work licensed electrician off of Craig's list and paid him $400 for a day's worth of services.  A few more days like that a month and he could be making enough to pay rent and feed his family.  He didn't realize this, but his quote was half of what the established businesses were quoting me.  Same with plumbers, plasterers, cleaning services, etc., that I've hired.  I find almost all of my services on Craig's list for a fraction of the price.  You're telling me that the OB can't clean a house?  Maybe if they did it well, they'd pick up more clients.  They'd charge more for doing such great work.  They'd hire people to do the cleaning for them, making sure the quality didn't suffer and the clients didn't have issues.  Pretty soon they have a well-run cleaning business and they don't even have to work anymore.  Isn't that the American Dream?

Most of the people in OB wouldn't agree with me.  That's fine, this is only one man's perspective.  You can certainly have success, financial and otherwise, in other ways, but you can't count it as success if someone does it for you.  Get your Liberal Arts degree.  Get your dream job if you can.  Pay off your student debt or default and kill your credit.  Go camp in the park either way.  But do it without the government's help.  Otherwise, let's just stop with this "99%" nonsense and call you what you really are: A bunch of commies.

Mathlete of the Year

There's no way to write this post without sounding like I'm bragging ("Kent, that's not true!  We all know you're the most humble guy in the world--you tell us all the time!"), so I'll just come right out and say it:  I was the Utah State Math Champion for my 8th and 9th grade years.

Bragging about winning math competitions is similar to bragging about your comic book collection.  Nobody's really that impressed, if anything, they think less of you.  Of course, if it was an athletic achievement, like winning State back in '82, everybody would be impressed, but also think less of you for bragging about it.  Nobody really thinks you're bragging if you admit to winning a math competition; it's more of a confession, like fessing up to owning all of the Star Trek seasons on DVD.  What a nerd!

You'd think that my dear, sweet, loving wife would appreciate my math abilities more.  She doesn't.  She brings up my math trophies when we're all trying to one-up each other in hilarious stories.  "Yeah, you should see Kent's math trophy collection!  It's just a bunch of triangles!!!"  "Bwaaaahahhahahahahahahahahah!!!"  Or, if I try to impress someone with my stories of mathematical prowess, Melanie just touches me on the shoulder and says, "Kent, dearie, no one wants to hear about your stupid math contests.  Now be a moose and freshen up my drink.  Please don't ever talk to our guests again."

Nobody appreciates my genius.  I shall now create a death ray and kill you all.  I feel like Megamind.

Okay, that's not true.  My brother Brian appreciates my genius.  He was, after all, my mentor.  It was 6th grade, and Brian was competing in something called "Mathcounts", a national association of math nerds who have contests to see who's the nerdiest.  He was doing well, in fact, he won State in '92, but it was in math, not football.  They flew him out to DC to compete at the national level.  He won the national title, a huge scholarship, and went on to found Microsoft.  You know him now as "William Gates".  

Okay, that's not true, but he did win State, and it was '92.  I was super jealous of him.  Not that he won State, but that he got to fly on an airplane and stay in a hotel.  I'd never flown on an airplane.  The closest I'd been was watching my brothers leave on their missions in an airplane.  I'd never stayed in a hotel.  The nicest place I'd stayed at was a Motel 6, that time in Cheyenne when I got the spot on the floor next to the TV.  I heard that at hotels you get your own bed!

I was super motivated to get that plane ride, so I asked Brian to show me the way of the math nerds.  Brian was naturally good at nerdiness, it was a skill he'd been working on his entire life.  He read encyclopedias for fun, had an obsession with statistics and whales (obvious correlation there), and was shrimpy and wore huge glasses, so he looked the part, too.  Being a jock like Homer Simpson, my natural enemies were the nerds, and so I'd spent the better part of elementary school making fun of them.  I had no idea that I would become one of them.

The first thing Brian did was to get me out of my 6th grade math class and into Pre-Algebra at the Jr High school.  This would allow me to start Algebra in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th grade, which is key to winning Mathcounts, a competition for 7th and 8th graders only.  Taking Algebra in 7th grade completely destroyed my social well-being.  7th graders had their lunch after 3rd period to reduce the beatings the 8th and 9th graders would dole out, since they had lunch after 4th period.  Since Algebra, a class for 8th graders, was in 4th period, I had to eat with them.  I knew absolutely no one in my lunch period except my brother Brian and my friend Baldwin.

Brian got me into the math club, I think it was called "ACE" or something nerdy.  They met after school and did practice tests.  This was disappointing.  Staying after school to do more school?  Jocks like me don't "do" school, we leave as soon as possible to play pick-up basketball and football games in the 'hood, and maybe even take off our shirts if some lovely ladies walk by. 

Nonetheless, I went to the club meetings.  I took the practice tests.  I learned new concepts and practiced faster ways of solving problems.  We did our first competition, which was some mail-in test.  I did surprisingly well in it and I remember Brian being especially surprised at my success.  "You're pretty smart for a dumb jock," he said.  "Maybe you don't need to rely on your specimen of a body to get into college after all."  I'm paraphrasing, it was a long time ago.

Later, it was time for the Mathcounts tryouts.  Each school could only have 1 team of 4 nerds, and an alternate.  I was hoping to make the team, but the nerds I was up against had awesome pedigrees:

1.  Bryon Clark - he'd been shunning sports since elementary and was the worst softball player ever, so you knew that kid was crazy smart.
2.  Bart Llewellyn - Mad uncoordinated and into all sorts of nerd stuff, like Star Trek and comics
3.  Chuck Wood - Really, that's his name.  Chuck "How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck if a Woodchuck Could Chuck" Wood.  Uberdork, plus he was in my ward so I had to endure a few campouts with him.
4.  Jason Maas - 8th grader, I didn't know him at all.  Seemed nerdy enough.
5.  Brett Gilbert - Only slightly nerdy.  No glasses and followed sports, so there was no way he was making the team.
6.  Michael Bateman - I'd been making fun of this kid my whole life, even beat him up once or twice in elementary.  Now he was looking for payback, nerd-style.
7.  A few other inconsequential nerds with thick glasses that were never heard from again.  Maybe a girl or 2, as well, but everyone knows that the female brain is smaller, so they didn't have a shot.  It's science.

I can't remember what I placed, but I made the team.  It was me, Jason, Brett, and I think Bryon.  As they called the members of the team, they deliberately called me last, as I was the controversial jock.  There was a lot of heresay about affirmative action and my qualifications, but all unsubstantiated.  I smiled smugly as I walked to the podium to take my place with the team.  "Take that, nerds!" I thought.

We went to the region competition, which was Utah County and some remote neighboring ones.  I took 2nd place to Jason, who turned out to be very smart, but of course he had a year on me.  All of the regional winners got to go to a banquet in SLC, which featured a 3-course meal.  The faculty advisory, Miss Price, must have thought my parents didn't feed me because I finished off everybody's leftovers at the table, including the salad and of course the dessert.  I thought it was the best meal ever and didn't even care if I went to DC, this banquet was reward enough.

State was in March, I think.  I was a nervous wreck.  It was up in Sandy somewhere and super early in the morning.  I took the tests and took 9th place, before the Countdown round.  In the countdown round, they take the top 10 and then 10 goes head to head against 9, and the winner then goes head to head against 8, etc.  The top 4 get to go to DC to represent Utah.  I beat the 10th place dude, but then lost to the 8th place dude, and that was that.  No State trophies for me.  Jason didn't make it to the top 10, I believe.

But it was only 7th grade!  I still had one more year.  Miss Price created a special class for us, called "Math Excel" and about 10 nerdbags were invited to be in it.  I was easily the coolest of the math nerds, which is like saying a restaurant is the healthiest of the fast-food chains, but nonetheless, still cool.

Math Excel was insane.  We took all sorts of tests and did practice problems, discussing the fastest way to solve problems.  It was all so nerdy, but I found it invigorating.  This led me to challenge the very core of who I was.  Was I really a nerd at heart?  I'd been playing sports since I could walk, does this mean I've been fooling myself this whole time?  Everyone knows you can't be smart AND athletic.

In the end, it paid off.  I took 2nd at Regions again, this time Brett Gilbert was my nemesis who beat me.  This was a surprise to me, as Brett's nerdiness was at limited capacity.  It turns out, however, that he was ridiculously smart and had taken great strides in the Math Excel class.  Bryon and Chuck made up the rest of our team that year, and we were hoping to take the school trophy, beating those douchebags from Butler Middle School who won it every year.

When State came around (after another delicious banquet), I was even more a nervous wreck.  This was it, I'd been training all year for this, and it all comes down to this.  We took the tests first off and I felt horrible about it.  When they announced the top 10, I was praying I was in the top 5.  Number 4 was called off: Some dude from Oak Canyon, Jeff Something, was 4th place.  I was stoked about that because I knew Jeff Something from soccer, and he was a fellow jock.  Us jocks were really breaking down barriers that year.

I was sure that I was in the top 10, and since I wasn't called yet, I figured I was in, but still was nervous.  3rd place:  Kent Hansen!  I was in!  I was going to DC!  I don't even care about the Countdown round, I'm in baby! 2nd place: Brett Gilbert.  1st place:  Ashley Warner!

WHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!?!

A girl!  No way!  She must've been cheating!  Or a Sederbergian nerd-bag.  She stood up and acknowledged her awesomeness.  It turns out that she was hot!  A hot girl that wins a math competition?  My world was turned upside-down.  I questioned everything.

I was determined to not lose to a girl.  Before, I didn't care about the Countdown round, but now, I had to beat Ashley.  The Countdown round began.  Darren Raggozine, the epitome of nerds, was 10th place, and he worked his way all the way down to a competition with Jeff Something.  I was rooting hard for Jeff; I'd much rather hang out with Jeff than this Darren loser.  But Darren won.  He seemed invincible.  Now I had to face him, or get the crappy 4th place, which doesn't even get a triangle trophy.  They put the questions on an overhead projector and had buzzers in front of us.  First one to answer correctly wins the point, best of 5 format.

I swept Darren, 3-0.  Take that, nerd.  I'll save the physical beatings for DC.

Then it was my good buddy Brett.  I'd been facing off against him all year.  I swept him, too.  Turns out I'm a ruthless assassin.

Finally, it was Ashley. Her long legs were tantalizing.  I'd been in the presence of such a beauty before, but never accompanied by any sign of intelligence.  It was quite intimidating.

I got the first one right.  She got the second one.  I got the third.  I got the fourth.

It was all over baby!  I won it!  HAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!  (crowd noises)  UTAH STATE MATH CHAMPION!

I was so happy, so proud of myself.  I went to church the next day and told my friends.  They laughed at me.  Nobody cared.  I cried in the corner.

As it turned out, we lost by only a few points to Butler Middle School, even though both me and Brett placed in the top 3.  Bryon placed 8th or something, I think.  It turned out that Chuck scored terribly and cost us the title, which meant we had to go with the Butler teacher, instead of cool Miss Price.  Stupid Butler!  Here's the original story.  It was obviously submitted by someone from Butler, because it failed to mention that while Ashley won the individual test score, I stomped her brains out in the Countdown round, which is like writing an article about the baseball season as if the Phillies won, because they had the best regular season record, instead of the Cardinals, which won the World Series. 

Miss Price did end up going to DC with us, although I think she paid for it.  The plane ride was everything I dreamed about.  I had no idea what to bring, so I packed my ghetto blaster and a bunch of my tapes in my duffel bag.  We stayed at a Sheraton somewhere near DC.  Me and Brett shared a room, but then because Ashley was a GIRL, she got her own room and they brought in a cot and Mr. Darren Raggozine.  He snored like a pig.  It was okay, though, because I stayed up late and watched rated R movies on HBO.  They kinda freaked me out, and I repented immediately.

Miss Price and the Butler doucher teacher pretended like we had a chance at nationals, so we got together a few times before to "practice".  I couldn't care less about it.  The prize for the top person was like a 20K scholarship or something, but that was so unlikely that I didn't even bother.  The kids that win national do math problems for fun.  I wasn't one of those kids.  So we took the tests and I took 112th out of 224 kids, right smack-dab in the middle.  The other Utahns, including that skank nice girl Ashley, did much worse than I, like they weren't even trying or something.  We took 42nd out of 56, because the territories (like Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands) were invited, too.

KSL-5 came out and did a news story on us.  They asked us a bunch of questions but I only remember one, since my answer showed up on the news.  The question was, "Do you think you'll win?"  I felt like a coach at NW Boondocks State, being asked if his team had a chance against Notre Dame.  "Uhh...no way in fetchin' heck."  What I actually said was "It's pretty darn tough, I don't think we'll win."  The news story then said, "It turned out to be tougher than that, as they took 42nd place!"  Then it cut away to the anchors talking.  "What a bunch of losers.  Disgrace to our state.  Isn't that right, Karen?"  "Yes, they certainly don't look very smart.  Only one of the kids had glasses, and that girl looked too pretty to be using her brain."

So, we lost.  Badly.  I didn't care at all.  The food was delicious, we got to tour the city, and ride a plane.  I even made friends with Ashley by the end, and we made out in her room (just kidding!).

You may recall that I said I was the Utah math champion in 9th grade, as well.  Well, there is an official Utah State Math Contest which is run by various universities every year.  The rewards weren't as cool, but there were nice banquets involved.  You can see the results here, and you can see that I won the Weighted Scores for the Junior Exam (grades 7-9), and took 2nd in the unweighted scores, which no one cares about.  You can also see that I won the 1994 unweighted score title, which counted more at the time.  You can also see my nemesis Darren (I've been spelling his name wrong on purpose), my buddy Brett, and my brother Kurt in the Junior Exam Results.  My mentor Brian, also showed up in the top 4 for the Senior Exam.  The state math competition wasn't as exciting as Mathcounts.

I gave up participating in most math contests in high school, mostly for the reason that I had nothing left to prove and the prizes weren't that great.  I had a Pre-Calculus class as a sophomore which really sucked all of my math enjoyment out.  I was pretty sure that I was going to be a DJ at that point.  However, finding myself as an IT consultant working with massive amounts of data, it turns out I was a nerd all along.  Time to embrace it, finally.

There is no charge for awesomeness...or attractiveness

It's been a while since I've proved my awesomeness, leading some to question it. How dare they!?!?! Anyway, our firepit area in the back was a big fat mess, usually muddy with weeds as tall as me. It was time for an upgrade, so I went to work.

Here are the before pictures:

As you can see, it's just a big area full of weeds.  If you look closely, there are some big logs and a pile of sticks in there where the fire pit is.

I decided to make the area 10x16. First, I dug 6 holes for posts. 1 in each corner, and 2 in the middle of the long side. Then I "planted" the 4x4 posts in the ground, and secured 2x10s to them. 

You can't see the posts here, but the 2x10s are attached to them.

 In most areas, I had to dig a trench to get the 2x10 across to the other post and keep it level. I tried to dig the holes about 20" deep, but some areas were really rocky so I only got them like 15". I wanted the top of the posts to be 2" below the top of the 2x10. 

When finished, I had a well-defined boundary that was level, which is key. This whole process was the hardest part. It took me 2 Saturdays of back-breaking shoveling. If you haven't noticed, I'm pretty out of shape and so this required a long recovery time for my body.

 Once the perimeter was level and secure, I dug up the center area, tossing dirt from the higher areas to the lower areas, and also digging a 4' hole in the middle for the fire pit.

Next, I built the ring, using old broken bricks from my brick-path days. Then I used whole bricks for the top row to make it pretty on top. I decided to not use any sort of mortar, because that would be way too much work.

The next step was to fill the area with sand. I got a cubic yard of coarse sand delivered and spread it in a couple of hours. 

 

Then, I got large stepping stones from a quarry in Hingham. 700 pounds' worth, which barely fit in the Jeep.  Melanie told me where to put the stones. We turned out to be a little short of stone, so we used large stones from our yard to fill in the gaps.

The final step was to put crushed stone in the gaps. That was pretty easy. I think it looks pretty good. The overall cost was a little under 400 bucks and about 30 man hours.

Now, for the final before/after:

Happy birthday to Melanie!

My wife is awesome. Have I told you this? It's true-she's awesome. How awesome is she? Let me count the ways:

1. She is a great mother. She always gets up in the middle of the night to comfort Hendrik, allowing me to get my VERY necessary beauty sleep.
2. She is an exceptional cook. Part of her being a great cook is her ability to take the "hard truth" about some of the things I don't like, which means she doesn't make that same meal in the future, which would mean I would pretend to like it again. I love her homemade pizza the most. She also tries new recipes regularly, which is great.
3. She is a diligent employee. Melanie's work situation isn't as good as it once was, with a lot of political battles with the higher-ups leading to discontent and other various dramatic situations. However, she plugs away, always making sure her work gets done, even if it means going to bed at 3:45 AM to get up the next morning at 5:30. Not really sure how she does it, actually. She will get promoted to BFO this year, pending the higher-ups getting their act together and finally putting the paperwork through. (Note: BFO stands for "Budget Fiscal Officer", not "Best Friend of the Organization", which is what it should be) If I ever become unemployable, which gets more and more likely with each day, she could easily carry the financial burden of our family, especially with my expensive habits like Laffy Taffy. As it stands right now, she makes more than double!
4. She is super attractive. People walk up to her all the time and ask, "Are you a supermodel? And why are you with this schmuck (pointing to me)?" To which she answers, "Yes, and he's my slave."
5. She is a great listener. I think. I just assume she's listening to my long, drawn-out soliloquies.
6. She makes up for my lack of _______. When we meet a nice couple, I usually say things that make the couple hate us, but then she cleans up the mess with her dynamic personality and we're all BFFs after that.
7. She's selfless. Mel never worries about her own comfort, just that everybody else is happy. She organized this fundraiser for MS and was able to raise over 5K this year, after around 3K last year.
8. She's very intelligent. She's only made one wrong decision, although it was a big one.
9. She's faithful. Most Sunday mornings involve a certain amount of kicking and screaming, but never from her.
10. She's athletic. Once, she beat me in a game of H-O-R-S-E, as well as in bowling. She can also kick my trash in any foot race longer than 10 ft.
11. She allows me to watch all sorts of sports. As long as her Nook is fully charged, she can sit through 10 hours of football next to me.
12. She is awesome at folding laundry. As much as I've tried to replicate her garment-folding methods, they still end up bulky and tilty. She folds them as if they were going on the shelf in the Gap.
13. She is the least judgmental person I have ever met. When I told her I murdered 23 people when I was in college, she just said, "We can work on that!"
14. She's always game for whatever. I drag her on all my little expeditions and she takes it like a champ, even if it involves camping in the mud.
15. She's a great writer. Just 3 years ago, she wrote a blog post!
16. She hates scary movies and all of that kind of trash. I also hate that trash, so we just stay away.
17. She doesn't spend hardly any money on clothes. We'll go shopping for her, and we'll end up spending more money on me than her. Most people reading this would assume it's because I'm such a cheapskate, but I swear it's not the case. She's very picky about what she buys, and never buys stuff that just sits in the closet.
18. She's hilarious. Her humor is very subtle but clever. Unless she's making fun of me, then it's pretty obvious and low-brow.
19. She doesn't follow the crowd. She likes what she likes, but not because someone told her to like it. She even likes the movie "No Reservations", which NOBODY likes.
20. She's sensitive, but not weepy. She's very stingy about her tears, she won't give them to just anybody.
21. She's selfless. She's not happy unless everybody else is happy. The past 2 years, she's put together a fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), as her good work friend Theresa has it. She spends months getting companies to donate items for her auction, including some Red Sox items that are signed by the players. This year, she even got David Ortiz to sign a game-worn jersey for the auction. Last year I believe she raised somewhere around $3,500 and this year it was something north of $5,000. I'm very proud of her generosity.

I wrote 21 items because it's her 21st birthday. So everybody wish Mel a happy 20th and let's hope the next 21 years are as productive as the first!

This is a true story. Pretty much.

We sat on the beach that day. It was sunny and the waves were monsters. All of the sudden, a man dressed in a black cloak and a three-cornered hat galloped by on his horse. "The hurricane cometh! Gather ye children! The hurricane cometh! Get ye hence!" After the horseman passed, the lifeguard raise his arms as if to gather us from both sides. We left our umbrellas, blankets, and sand castles and gathered round.

"Alas, 'tis true. Yarrrrr, there's a great storm a-brewin'," said the lifeguard. "Nary a soul shall survive! Pack up yer steeds and carriages 'fore Irene come! She will show no mercy, not to no one! Yarrrr!" The lifeguard paused, perhaps thinking of a former companion lost to such a storm. "Mandatory evacuation for all non-residents by Friday at 5. No dilly-dallyin', no procrasinatin', no general tomfoolery! This here's serious!" He looked us all in the eye, somehow simultaneously. His long, ragged, sun-bleached blonde hair flapped in the wind like a flag of surrender. "Now git, I say!"

We scattered. Umbrellas, blankets packed up with haste! Sand castles demolished with enthusiasm! Nothing left behind!

Back at the beach house, we turned on the television. The Important Newscaster forecasted our doom: "Irene is coming at a furrrrrrious rate! It is a Category 26 Billion! It will kill us all! Repent now before it's too late!"

We changed the channel, but it was no different: "You'll need 5,000 gallons of water. 36 days' supply of food. If you are in a coastal state, or bordering a state that borders a coastal state, or ANYWHERE EAST OF THE MISSISSIPP--you must dig yourself a shelter and eat prunes until October. That is the only way to stay alive!"

We were far from home, 8 hours in good traffic. First, we needed to evacuate Ocean City, then we needed to go home and evacuate our home. The dreaded double evacuation--we'll be packing for days!

We left Friday morning. Along the way, roadside preachers sang our doom. "The hurrrrrrrricane cometh! It's too late!" Cars pulled over along the way, the drivers too panic-stricken to go on. They lay in the ditches, in the medians, moaning and grumbling. "If only I would've saved more water…" said one of them. The air felt heavy with rain and desperation. It truly was Hurricarmageddon.

We arrived home. It was hot, muggy. The rains had not arrived. It was eerily quiet. The stores were all out of prunes and plywood-the 2 essentials. I started to dig a shelter, but it was no use: survival wasn't worth this much work! We filled up our biggest cup with water. "This will need to last a month," I calculated, "so everybody gets 17 drops a day. 5 for breakfast, 5 for lunch, 5 for dinner, and 2 for a special treat after you've done your chores." We all hesitantly agreed and waited for the apocalypse.

The rains came on Saturday. It poured furiously most of the day. I chopped up our living room couch to fashion a canoe before I realized there was very little wood in the couch. I did the same thing to the loveseat before deciding that modern-day furniture does not have nearly enough wood for a canoe. Frantic for a boat, I dragged the dining room table out to the yard for a raft and sat on it, waiting for the floods to come. By 5 PM, the table was very wet, but not afloat. By 9, it was still very wet, and still very not afloat. We decided to go inside and wait out the storm upstairs. Hendrik had first watch. That was a poor plan, as he didn't even wake up Melanie for her turn and we slept through the night.

When I woke up, I looked at my digital clock. 7 AM. How are we still alive?!?! How is this clock still working?! I looked outside, it was still raining, but no wind. The table outside was still very wet. I scolded Hendrik for not waking up Melanie and we went downstairs to watch TV and fret. Melanie had first Fret Watch, since Hendrik didn't wake her up. Church was cancelled, due to our impending doom. TV, thankfully, had not been cancelled. Perhaps they were all located in storm-free country, if that even exists.

The winds came right on schedule at 10 AM. They huffed and they puffed, and they blew some branches down. Small ones, medium ones, big ones. Our early afternoon viewing of "Tangled" was interrupted several times by flickers of power. This hurricarmageddon was very inconvenient! I went outside to yell at it, but it didn't listen, it only got stronger.

The rains stopped around 3 PM. There was no flooding in our area. Just a very wet table. It was just as well, since it had been my turn to clean the table for the past 2 months, and I led the league in Avoiding Duty. I deemed it sufficiently clean and dragged it back inside.
We all gathered in the living room and celebrated the successful weathering of the storm. There was no need for all of those precautions. What ridiculous weathercasters and newspeople! Their fear-mongering was all for ratings! It was all a conspiracy by the prune and plywood sales reps! We laughed and laughed at how superior we were. We thumped our chests and roared. We were very prideful then.

But then, tragedy struck. At precisely 3:34 PM, the power went out. For good. This time, there was no foolin' around. This was fine, we could manage a small outage. We barely use electricity anyway. We dusted off our books and relearned how to read.

"Gree…green…egg…eggs…an…and…h…ham" read Melanie. She was a very advanced reader for her age. I picked up a Richard Scarry book to look at the pictures. Hendrik practiced his animal sounds. It was all very 1913.

When it got too dark to look at the pictures, I went over to turn on the lamp. It didn't work! Well, the lightbulb may have burnt out, I'll try another light. No luck! I went through the entire house, and not one light worked. What a coincidence that the same day that the electricity goes out the lights all burn out! Mel found a flashlight and turned it on. Phew! At least that didn't burn out.

Our gas stove also worked. We cooked water and pasta. The water tasted funny, but the pasta was delicious. When it got completely dark, we went to bed. It was 7:30 according to my phone. When we wake up tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.

Just as I suspected, everything was back to normal. The house was completely lit up the next morning, and it didn't matter that our light bulbs were all burnt out. The TV still wouldn't turn on and there was no hot water, but other than that, it was back to normal. The fridge was warm and the meat in the freezer was bad, but everything else was the same. The dishwasher wouldn't turn on and I had to heat water on the stove to do the dishes, but besides that, things hadn't changed. I dropped Hendrik off at day care and went to work, as Mel had left an hour before. We knew that when we came home everything would work.

When we returned, the house was dark and nothing worked. Without light, there was nothing to do. All our frozen dinners were ruined, so there was nothing to eat. The microwave wouldn't even pop the corn, and the oven wouldn't heat the fish sticks.

We started to go crazy. Hendrik ran around in circles like a mad-man. Mel lay under the table, scratching at the tile and singing lullabies. I climbed on the roof and howled at the moon. This was the end. We had lost our minds. Irene had taken away our light, our food, our entertainment, and our sanity.

Our family was in disarray. Hendrik left to live with the wolves. Melanie became a recluse, living in a fort of empty chick-flick DVD cases. I couldn't string together a coherent sentence. We had become animals.

On the roof, I heard the growl of what must have been a great beast. It came from multiple directions. We were animals now, I thought, and we would have to defend our herd like wildebeests in the bush. I assumed these great beasts were coming for us, but the constant growls did not grow nearer. I crawled back inside and approached Melanie's fort.

"Who goes there?!" demanded she.

"Husband. Want. Talk," said I. It took a while, due to my diminishing linguistic abilities, but we planned our attack on these growling beasts across the road from us. Melanie had retained the ability to walk on her hind legs, while I was forced to use all fours. We crossed the dark street, into the neighboring human's automobile shelter. The growling was louder now, we were close. My heightened sense of smell picked up the stench of fuel. This beast possibly was feeding on lawn-mowers and other gas-driven equipment. He must have horrendous teeth, sharp as a Cutco knife! We stalked around the shelter and saw the beast. It had a metallic shell and wasn't as big as I imagined. It moaned and growled somethin' terrible and constant. That's when we noticed the human's shelter had light.

Melanie pointed to the window. "Look, Ken-wah!" She called me Ken-wah now, I wasn't sure why, but it felt right. "Light!"

"Light?" I stepped out of the shadows and into the rectangle of light on the grass. I saw inside the human shelter. There was indeed a light and I looked directly at it.

Mel tackled me. "Don't look directly into it! It will destroy your brain!" We put trash lids on our head to protect us from the brain-eating light. However, we couldn't resist watching how the humans inside the glass lived. Inside, there was a flat box with moving pictures. The male sat on a couch watching it with his mouth agape. The female sat under the light and read a collection of papers with writing on them. I got too close to the glass and the trash can hit it. The female saw us creeping outside and called to the male, who picked up a shotgun and headed to the door. We scattered, Melanie on her hind legs, me on all fours. Melanie was much faster than me and hid behind a tree. I was in the rectangle of light when the male human fired his gun at me. It struck me in the leg and I thought I was a goner. Melanie came back for me, pulling me back into the bush, licking my wound and comforting me.

We went back into our own shelter for the rest of the night. Melanie retreated to her fort, and I slept on the roof. The metallic beasts growled through the night, and it was truly a junglescape.

The next morning, I was back in human form. The daylight gave me strength and intelligence. Humans weren't meant to live in the dark. I told a cold shower, dressed, and went to work.

When we returned that evening, the electricity was back! We turned on all the lights, we cranked the A/C down to 50 degrees, we plugged in the space heaters. We turned on the TV and stereo, putting it to maximum volume. We ran the washer and dryer with no clothes, the dishwasher with no dishes. The generators around the neighborhood were all turned off. Our next-door neighbor's flood light that they never turn off and shines directly into our room was back on. After 2 solid days of no electricity, we were back in paradise. We slept soundly that night, with all the lights on. It was a relief to be back in modern society.