The Epitome of My Existence

This literally just happened, and it was so perfect, so very much the story of my entire life that I couldn't help but write about it, even though it's being posted to a place where I imagine virtually no one ventures.  But that's ok, because someday when I'm older my kids will either find my random thoughts and happenings interesting, or I'll force them to read this.  Either way, one day, my story will be told.  So here's how it all went down.  On my last day of work at Solution Support I decide to leave a few hours early because it's dead, plus I really just don't want to be there anymore knowing that on its way is a job offer to a much more prestigious and better paying job.  I get home, have some lunch and watch some TV.  Not a super exciting day granted, but it certainly beat answering phone calls and trying to work with a computer that freezes every time it attempts to process a piece of information.  Carrying on, at about 4:40 I decide it would be nice to go swim around in the pool for a bit, get at least a little exercise for the day.  I'm only out about twenty when I decide that swimming is tiring and I'm going to go back to the fairly lazy day I had been leading.  When I get back I notice that there is a missed call and a message on my phone.  Lo and behold it was my soon to be employer calling to make a job offer.  Great, right!  One would generally think so, but what happened is this, the call came at about 4:45, just a few minutes after I left to go swimming, I got the message at about 5:05, just a few minutes after she had left work.  Not just for the day, not just for the weekend, but because we're in the glorious state of Utah, Monday, the 25th, is a holiday so she won't be in and she's taking Tuesday off.  Which, of course, means that I now have to wait until Wednesday to get the job offer instead of getting it today.  Had she called at pretty much any other point of the day I would have joyously answered the phone, but she managed to pick the only fifteen minute window during which I wouldn't answer my phone.  You really can't make this kind of stuff up!

The Desert Swamp

By reading the title of this blog one would most likely come to the conclusion that I was purposefully using a juxtaposition of two entirely different types of ecosystems as some sort of social commentary, one would be wrong in making this assumption.  I am in fact referring to the absolutely beautiful region of centralish Utah known as the Escalante.  Just a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to traverse terrains so diverse I couldn't have fathomed such a place existed.  We started out doing a little day hike through the lower calf creek to come to a gorgeous waterfall.  Then the real adventure began!  We started out backpacking from the car in search of a place known to our "all knowing" guide as the notch.  Unfortunately it turns out that this location is slightly difficult to find at night so we ended up sleeping on the side of a dirt road.  The next day we did some bushwhacking through thorned bushes, fun, to arrive at a little pool of water known as blue bodies.  Without really considering where such a name would come from I took the 15 foot jump into water and nearly froze death.  it turns out that the body of water is so named because if you spend any amount of time in it you will literally turn blue!  We then basically scaled the side of a cliff to climb down to the bottom of yet another waterfall.  But here's the catch, we were backpacking, and therefore had to climb down this cliff with backpacks on.  I for one love nothing more than scaling up and down rocks, but to add a 40 lb backpack gives you a whole new challenge to deal with, but have no fear, none of our group of 8 died.  Looking back it wasn't all that bad but I'd be lying to say it wasn't at least a bit nerve racking.  At the bottom of the waterfall our guide, Jamal, showed us a natural spring coming out of a rock through which we filled up a billy can and made some kool-aide.  It turns out that some subscribe to the idea that loads of sugar is a great idea during long hikes, but who am I to judge, I defer advice to those who are more experienced, and thus I partook of the deliciousness.  Others were not as enuthiasastic about the amount of sugar and were a little more reserved in the drinking of the kool-aide.  From there we hiked along the upper calf creek, or rather through the creek. Without a doubt my favorite part of the entire trip.  Absolutely beautiful scenery, natural cooling in that you are walking through water, and shade built in not only by trees but by cliff walls as well.  I kid you not I could have just gone all day in such conditions.  At one point we even stopped at a little beach for a little R & R as well as some lunch.  Unfortunately all good things must come to an end.  Eventually we climbed out of the glorious creek up into a freaking desert.  Also important to note at this point is that Jamal decided to give us a heads up that the odds of running into a rattle snake at this point was very likely.  It is also important to note that I have a ridiculous phobia of snakes.  Needless to say, yet I'll say it anyway, I spent the entire time across the desert in a paranoid state looking for snakes.  Then finally at the end we ascended up one of the most ridiculous hills ever.  By now the day was coming to a close and it was a quick trek over some rocky terrain to cowboy cave.  Cowbay cave, the camping location for the second night, was unfortunately already taken by some boy scouts with whom we crossed paths a number times throughout the trip.  After some aimless meandering we found another suitable spot to set up camp and call it a night.  At some point during this second day however I managed to pick up some sort of illness from one of the other guys on the trip.  Looking back I should have heading the warning and not have drunk out of the billy can after he did, unfortunately I decided that my immune system was impenetrable and suffered the consequences the final day.    This last day started off with a short hike to a little sandy area where we enjoyed a rousing game of backpacking volleyball.  This consists of a net made of two sticks stuck in the ground and help up by rocks with a rope tied between them and a foam ball.  The plan was to do guys vs girls but since the numbers were 5 and 3 I was sent over to help out the ladies, because lets be honest, I'm pretty much amazing and they needed all the help they can get.  Thanks to my amazing volleyball heroics we managed to put it in the win column and head on our way.  This is where the swamp part of the trip began.  I never would have imagined a swamp so close to where there was desert and rattlesnakes, but there it was, and through it we went.  Attempting at one point to bushwack our way through, but to no avail and were forced to turn around and found another way around to another little body of water, this one however with a 40 ft drop into the water.  After watching numerous boy scouts jump as well as almost everyone else in the group go for it I finally decided to man up and jump.  It was a pretty exhilarating feeling and it gives you just enough time to think, "when the heck am I gonna hit the water?" when BANG you plunge into the depths of the pool.  I must say that it was a ton of fun, but once was plenty.  In fact after jumping my friend Victoria aka Vicky T, told me that she hated me because she was the only one that hadn't gone at that point and figured that she now had to because every else head, chalk one up for peer pressure!  It was there at the 40 that we had some lunch, which turned out to be some of the best mac and cheese I've had in my life, and then continued on our way for the final stretch of the journey.  This stretch consisted of a bit more ridiculously hot desert and then hiking in and around sand creek.  I say in and around because you end up crossing the darn thing like 25 times, I believe we actually lost count after a while, 25 is of course a fairly high number.  Towards the end of sand creek you run into one last natural spring, by far my favorite, which envigorated me to finish the trek, because it should be remembered that I was at this point feeling like crap from being sick.  The final leg after the spring was along the Escalante river and ends by crossing it one last time.  The joy of seeing the car in the parking lot at the end of the trip is truly indescribable.  Since I've never had a child I can of course only speculate, but i would imagine that my joy in seeing the car could only be surpassed by the joy of having a child, and only maybe.  All in all the trip was a delight and I'm now sold on the idea of backpacking.  Thanks to all those who joined in the adventure and put up with me for 3 straight days.

Graduation and the inevitable unemployment that follows

Just a couple of weeks after my last post a glorious and momentous occasion occurred, I graduated from college with a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering.  For years and years I worked hard to achieve this goal which would instantly lead me on to a better and prosperous life.  In the future I'm sure that those things will follow, but the immediate impact has been more like nothing ever happened.  Why is that you may ask, well it turns out that despite having graduated, employment is in no way guaranteed.  It also happens to follow that if you don't have a job, the degree which you just earned doesn't actually make you any money!  Strange, I know, but still true.  Sure enough down the road I will start working a full time job and be rolling in cash as the eligible bachelor that I am, but until that moment I have one large problem staring me down day after day.  It's a simple enough problem, boredom.  For years and years I have always either had a job or was in school, and at many times, both.  However, I am now doing neither of those things and have discovered that I simply don't have enough hobbies to fill the time.  I had always been under the impression that while not having a job would be fairly terrible because of a lack of income, it would at least, if nothing else, be fun.  There's just one gaping hole in that philosophy, I'm the only unemployed one.  All of my other friends are working or taking classes during the summer, and many of them are doing both.  Which simply leads me to numerous days during which I'm home by myself for an overly long amount of time.  Fortunately there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel and I appear to be nearing a job offer for a company a few hours north of here.  That of course means that I'll be a few hours north of all of my current friends, but hey, if worst comes to worst, there's always the weekends.  Finally I guess the moral of the story here is that the grass isn't actually greener on the other side, it's just a different shade of green.  Being able to enjoy your own brand of green is what's going to make life awesome!

Physics and Chemistry

Being that I'm a Chemical Engineering major, and in a few short weeks will officially be a Chemical Engineer, I thought I had a pretty solid understanding of physics and chemistry.  However I recently discovered an anomaly in which mixing shredded potatoes and flour creates a very sticky and moist mixture.  I feel as though it is important to note that an important step in this process was drying the shredded potatoes.  So imagine my surprise when the fairly dry mixture of flour and potato slowly became thicker, liquidier, and stickier as I added more flour.  That's right, adding flour to a dry mixture made it liquidy and sticky.  I have absolutely no explanation as to why such a ridiculous thing would happen, yet there I was, may hands getting more and more covered in a gooey potato/flour mixture.  Absolutely fascinating.  It seems as though the lesson to glean from this, if there is in fact a lesson to be learned, is that sometimes our best understanding of things is inadequate to explain some of the little splendors of life.  However after eating the delicious potato dumplings that were made from this mixture I sure am glad that they exist.

Disappointment

Being a fairly large fan of BYU sports I was quite thoroughly excited for the big sweet 16 game tonight, the first one BYU has been in in the past 30 years.  Like any good sporting event the entire game was a gigantic roller coaster ride of emotions.  The sadness of being down 10 early, and the excitement of rallies making up the large deficit.  All of it was simply glorious with the high point probably being when regulation ended in a 68-68.  Unfortunately after this point it was all downhill as the overtime was not BYU's time of glory.  Rather we started to show fatigue and were pretty much dominated on both sides of the court.  Well this got me thinking about a philosophy about pessimism that I had recently heard.  Basically if your optimistic you'll either feel validated or disappointed, if your pessimistic then you'll either be validated or pleasantly surprised.  Logically then, it makes more sense to be pessimistic than optimistic.  While this is a hard argument to dispute, something in me just feels as though that can't really be the best way to go.  Had I been pessimistic the whole game I would have missed out on the wonderful roller coaster ride during the game, and lets be honest, since we lost the game the roller coaster of emotion was definitely the best part of the whole thing.  I think it has to do with the necessity of opposition in all things.  If we are pessimistic and the worst we feel is validated, then we never really have anything to make the good times seem that much better.  The opposition of being disappointed is what makes the highs so very high.  I don't know about other people, but I do know that when I'm on cloud nine I want to be as high up there as I can possibly be.  And the only way I see to be able to do that is by being optimistic and putting myself out there time and time again. Sure the lows will hurt, but the highs will make it worth it every time!

The Happiest Place on Earth

Well it's been a while since I've posted anything, and I thought that now would be as good a time as any.  Unfortunately I really don't have anything on my mind about which to ramble on for a while.  Therefore the idea that I'm running with is just writing and seeing where my mind takes me, a dangerous adventure for sure, but hopefully it turns out to be a fun ride.  In fact that itself made me wonder why it is that just starting to write with no plan in mind gives you ideas.  It happens every time without fail.  I could sit around thinking for hours and not come up with anything that I would ever really want to write about, or I can just start writing anything and like magic a fairly decent topic comes out.  It seems to work with anything, from blogging to writing essays for school, just start and the rest will come out.  So Disneyland, it's a pretty awesome place.  Just this last weekend I had the pleasure of taking my first trip there, and what an experience it was.  I do feel, however, that I may have missed out on opportunities to go at the right age.  To my parents credit, they did take me and the rest of the family to Disney world, but that was back in 93 when I was only 8 years old.  Honestly, that was probably a better time to go than at 25, except that the problem remains that I have an absolutely horrible memory.  So while I probably had more fun with all of the childish things involved with Disney World, I can honestly only remember a very small number of them.  And that raises the question in my mind, when is the ideal time to go to Disneyland/World.  I realized this last weekend that I was too old for the majority of rides and things happening there, a lot of them were simply slow and not very exciting.  Even a ride like space mountain doesn't really carry the pizazz that one is seeking at an amusement park.  However, if you go when you're too young, then years later you can't remember the experience that well, other than it occurred and it was a great time.  Well then, when was it that I stopped being into shows like Doug or the Rugrats, and started to focus on more mature entertainment?  To the best of my recollection, which may I remind you is not very good, it was right around the time of becoming a teenager, say 12 or 13.  I think that this would be the ideal age to go and visit such a Theme Park.  In this stage you will still be excited about meeting characters, or at least people dressed up like the characters, and all of the other childish happenings which are going on, and hopefully remember it a little better.  But then again, as I was walking around Disneyland there was one thought which I had repeatedly, that it would be so much more fun to have gone with my niece and nephews.  Perhaps, then, the best time to experience Disneyland is when you are there to enjoy the pleasure of seeing someone else love every second of it.  Maybe the best reason to go isn't a selfish one of having fun yourself, but seeing loved ones eyes light up as they get to say hi to Mickey and Buzz Lightyear.  Personally I thought Disneyland was a wonderful place but now that I've been there and can remember what it's like, I'm even more excited for the day when there are little Travises (or perhaps Travi) running around that I can bring with me and enjoy their enjoyment!

Nostalgia

As I got in my car after a full day of school something strange happened, a song from my childhood randomly came into my head.  This wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that I was doing absolutely nothing that should have made a mental connection with Air Supply's Here I Am (Just When I Thought I Was Over You).  Had I been thinking about a girl that would have been one thing, but I wasn't, I was thinking about an upcoming road trip to California with some friends of mine.  So here's what I think happened, I was extremely excited about all of the plans for the trip coming together, and it was that high level of excitement that put into my mind something old and nostalgic, which just so happened to be an Air Supply song.  However, the second that song came into my head the excitement quickly turned from being about California to being about an old song that I hadn't heard in years being all of the sudden in my head.  It was stuck in there so much that even as I played other music on the way home, I was still singing Air Supply, and loving every second of it.  So the real question is why in the world was I so darn happy about an old corny love song?  Of course the answer to that question is nostalgia, it reminds me of being in the back of my parents van with the whole family taking a trip to Long Island to visit relatives, of a simpler time when responsibilities didn't really exist.  Well, I started to think, does this mean that what I really want is to be a child again, living under my parents roof without any sort of a care in the world. While that does sound nice at first, the answer is a resounding NO!  Goodness I couldn't imagine how terrible it would be to be 12 again, to not be able to just leave to do what I needed to, to not be able to just drive to the store, or get home at whatever hour I please.  When I visit my parents house for a week I start to go crazy having to check in all the time and what not.  So it's not that it makes me think of a happier time, because I'm fairly certain that I'm much much happier now than I was back then.  So what is it that makes me giddy about feeling like a little kid again when I see robots fighting each other, or think of an old family favorite song?  It's probably just one of those mysteries that we may never really know the answer to, but as a scientifically minded person, that kind of crap just isn't going to cut it. So here's my hypothesis as to why such a thing happens.  It occurs because of a blending of present and past.  As the best things from the past come into the future we start to subconsciously imagine a world where childhood and adulthood blend together with all of their individual magnificences.  We briefly, but truly, live in a world where we don't have any responsibilities holding us down, but at the same time we have all of the freedom which we could ever hope to have.  The nostalgic effect is merely the mind blending all of the good it has ever known into one temporary reality, and it's absolutely awesome!