It's summer, what to do...

Well, looks like it's about that time of year: The birds are (not) chirping, the sun is (not) out, and all the hot girls are (not) chillin around. Looks like another great summer in Logan.

Okay, it's not that bad here, I'm just hoping that maybe once it warms up, I'll be able to get my summer tan on. Get some good hikes, mountain bike rides and maybe go swimming again.

I'm sure anybody who reads this, the few, if any of you that are out there have noticed it's been months since I last posted on either this or my motorsports blog. To address that, I finally stopped caring about what other people were doing and decided that school was going to take a bigger priority than my blogs; particularly Off The Apex. Now that summer is over, I've got a few projects that I want to accomplish as well as a few things that I want to let loose via the internetz.

A lot has happened since I last posted anything anywhere: I've successfully completed another semester of college and I think I've managed to change a lot of the things about myself which had prior gone unaddressed.

For example, I managed to do better in school the last two semester than I have ever. To be honest, it's a great feeling: probably one of the best I've ever had. The feeling of a reward that is no greater than a simple alphabet character on some arbitrary piece of digital paper has far too much power when you have invested nothing but countless months of hard work, tears, and sleepless nights to the cause. It's far too mundane that it is all equivalent to a piece of paper that in ten, maybe even five years from now, will have practically no value. The thought that once I get my first job and prove my worth via work ethic and intelligence, these four, or five or six, or however many year I have devoted will be nothing but a smudge in my personal history.

Still, I can't say that I have ever felt better. Even more so because there have been certain classes which have been huge obstacles to me in the past which I have finally hurdled over. I'm not sure why it was: that I have performed so much better here than I ever did when I went to school down in Arizona. Perhaps it is because here, I share so much more in school pride? Maybe that I feel more comfortable here knowing that I'm not surrounded by rich, spoiled, pampered kids? Or even that I just don't feel like a dumbass here. In any case, the feeling that it is to be part of something huge, part of a awesome school which people have actually heard of and respect is something I took for granted before. The bottom is, I love this place. It's an interesting contrast going from a school where I didn't really care about who I was and what I was doing to beyond incredibly proud and confident of my school and who I am and what I'm doing. When people ask me where I go, I don't think I could get more satisfaction than from saying "Utah State Engineering". It's one of the best things ever.

Now it's summer though. So they say at least. When I look outside and it's 50 degrees, snow on the mountain outside of my window, and cloudy and overcast, I'm not exactly convinced. Seriously: it's effing June tomorrow.

Obviously I've been spending quite a bit of time now submerged in the Utah culture and the LDS religion. Nearly all of my friends are LDS, and are even strict followers. Prior to living here though, I held little respect for Mormons, this is mostly partly because of the way the Mormons I grew up around acted, partly because of my own personal beliefs, and fully due to my personal ignorance.

One thing I've always truly believed is the thought that you cannot judge a book by it's cover.I earnestly believe you can't judge or believe in something until you have good reason to via experience or research and so forth. Along those same lines, you can't claim knowledge without knowing the subject. Sadly though, I've realized that thats how I have lived when it comes to the Mormons.

With that, I've been spending a lot of time speaking with Mormons and non-Mormons alike and I've decided that I'm going to go through and read various religious testaments including but not limited to the Book of Mormon. With that, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get an "outside looking in" view without other influences: neither negative nor positive, this purely my own personal quest of understanding. Don't take this as me signing up to a different church, it's just a journey of knowledge. I'm hoping to read a little bit every night, and write about it on here. That's my daily devotion and I hope it works out. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the summer.

So buckle up and get ready, this should be fun.

Post-valentines day venting

Well it's that day, or perhaps the day after; another Valentines Day has come and gone and I'm still single and could really care  less.

Okay, in honesty, maybe it's just that I'm bitter that such an arbitrary holiday even exists. Yeah that's probably it. I mean come on, lets think about this, why does a holiday celebrating a benign human emotion even exist. It's an excuse to indulge in red, heart-shaped paraphernalia and ultimately, it's purely an excuse for the gutless and spineless to grow a pair of balls once a year and do something.

Granted, I'm single, I was yesterday, I was the day before yesterday and I am today. To be honest with you though, I'm quite okay with that. I don't need to wait till February 14th to change that; I can do that any day I want to its just a matter of personal preference.

Perhaps the worst thing about V-day is going to school and seeing all the girls getting flowers from Mr. who-the-fuck-cares, and seeing all the guys at the store scratching their heads like dumb apes trying to figure out what to buy who Ms. bitchy-shit. Why are they doing it Monday? Why do they need a reason? Why not do it  on Thursday because you felt like buying flowers for someone you sincerely cared about, or taking someone to dinner on any given Saturday because you felt like it was a nice thing to do? Grow a pair of balls and ask someone on a date for no real reason aside from the fact you felt like it would be nice and fun.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there probably are very few things worse then Valentines Day in Utah. The fact that relationshits and marriage are forced on us on a daily basis isn't bad enough, no we have to have a day where it's not just forced, it't expected. For example I opened the school paper yesterday to see if there was anything worth reading (which there never is btw) only to see sixteen articles and advertisements for Valentines Day. Sixteen! Cresus Jhist! One is too many. To be honest I don't really give a rats ass about 'Seven Dates in Seven Days" or online dating or the fact that "Some students have better grades after they're married" I don't care about any of those things 364 days out of the year and I certainly don't care about they on certain day of the year.

Maybe it doesn't help that Ryan+relationships in Utah=nill. That just coincides with the fact that I don't care too much for Utah girls. It's so clickie here. Everyone meets all their friends/relationship potentials in church and go from there. We'll here's some news for you. I'm not Mormon and I don't go to church which means I am not going to meet people like that. Girl's here are weird, thats just a fact, I can't even have a normals college-aged conversation with anyone here. It's gotta be all clean and PG-13: yawn. It's so bad that the second I find out someone isn't from Utah I am instantly interested.

Kinda along the same lines, Brandon and myself have been planning kinda a group date thing for this Saturday which I was completely thrilled about in almost every aspect, the exception being finding someone to go with.I had to flip through my contacts, my Facebook friends, my brain and I came up with, about 4 possibilities, and even all of those fell through. What gives? Okay, I may not be the hottest, most athletic, funniest guy around but I know I'm not the guy people would want to avoid for a date. It's just the Logan really sucks that much.

I mean in all honesty, I'm only a human and a young-adult (barely), male. It's in my programming to desire the company of someone of the opposite gender. Basically, I miss loving someone, I never thought I would say that out loud on a public forum but to be honest, it's a great feeling; being cared for by someone other then family, and thinking about someone all that fun stuff. I think that's really my only regret about coming here to Utah. Any other time I've been in, as Brandon would call it "Not Utah", I've been far more content in my social endeavors, but now that I'm here, man does this place suck or what?

So basically what I'm getting at here is Valentines Day sucks, Logan sucks; the two combined: living hell for a guy like me who isn't Mormon and isn't disillusioned by stupid arbitrary feelings and holidays. If theres a girl out there in Logan who isn't any of these things call me; in the meantime, I'll be studying and doing something useful in my life.