21 - Personal Narrative

A Lot to Do with Not a Lot of Time

            The day was not one of my greatest. Lawn mowers running, hot, humid air, mosquitoes, a large group of people staring at me, and wasps. I just wanted to get it over with. There was so much to do, but I was finally at the last stretch. If I pulled this off right, I would be able to impress the Eagle Scout Board of Review within the next week.

            I had been enlisted into the Boy Scouts of America by default as a Latter-Day Saint Church member in my younger years of age. At that time, I loved being a scout member! The first guy I met was named Daniel. This guy was hilarious! Every week at mutual, we would recite the Scout Oath and Scout Law, and every week, Daniel would act out every word in each as we recited it, beating his fist on his chest for loyal, waving for friendly, saluting for obedient, folding his arm for reverent; it was amazing how fast he would come up with new ways to act out the Oath every week on the spot! He was also very outgoing, smiling and asking everyone, including me, how we were doing.

About a year later, I met another great guy in my scouting unit. The Elmar family had just moved in, and William Elmar, a black boy my age, joined our silly unit. He laughed a lot, and when he did, it sounded so creepy, like he was quietly laughing at someone he was stalking or something, it’s hard to explain. Every time he did it in church or at scouts though, we all lost it and laughed so much! He also loved joking about pretty much anything. While driving to an arcade and games center for all of us guys to enjoy some time together, Will and I somehow started talking about crazy people driving golf carts, and we laughed almost nonstop from the back of Brother Elmar’s minivan!

            One time, we gathered as a unit to plan a campout. We had a scribe write all the food and activities we each wanted, and the places we each wanted to go. I typically wouldn’t contribute to such planning meetings due to being shy, but I had recently just learned to ride a bike at a late age, and loved the idea of us all biking together in the wilderness! After adding my idea to the board and further discussion about logistics and weather, we agreed on a plan to get all the bikes we could together, fix and prepare them for mutual next Wednesday, and go to Stephen F. Austin State Park in a little over a week. Bikes were in short supply, and I didn’t have my own at the time, so we brought Sister Elmar’s bike, a light blue bike not made for off-road use.

The day for the camping trip came, and we car pooled up together for the drive past Houston which lasted a little over an hour through stormy weather. We worried the camp would be too wet, but it turned out beautiful. The storms just barely missed the park, it was dry and ready for adventure! I had planned on using one bike that was made for off-roading, but Ethan, another one of Brother Elmar’s sons, wasn’t feeling too well that day, so we switched bikes and I got the light blue slow bike. Nonetheless, we all sped down hills and raced through leaves on the trail and around corners in the forest, and then raced through the streets back to our campout. If that bike had feelings, it would have hated me for its abuse. We got back to camp to be greeted by Brother Lambson, another scout leader relaxing in a chair by our table. He told us we’d just missed a bunch of pretty girls asking where we had gone, but he didn’t fool us for a second. Brother Lambson loves to joke, and we knew no girls would come looking for us. We were just a fun group of guys who loved to hang out together, not with girls.

            About a year after this fun experience and many others, several unfortunate events happened at once. Both Daniel’s family and the Elmar’s moved out, and a lot of new guys grew up into the age of our scouting unit. With my best friends gone and nobody to play with but a bunch of new kids who only liked to play rough sports, I ended up in a place where I wasn’t earning any more rank advancements. Whenever the Bishop would ask me why I wasn’t at mutual, I would just shrug and brush it off. When the unit would invite me during church to go on campouts, I would nod to affirm the fact that the trip was a nice idea, but then stay at home that day.

            It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I realized how far I was from reaching the Eagle Scout rank. As I entered High School and established a social life there, becoming an Eagle Scout got pushed to the end of my list of priorities. Once the urgency of the situation settled in my head, I established two goals: most importantly, to reach the Eagle Rank. Secondly, to impress Brother Holt, the local scout leader who happened to be in my ward, into helping me reach my first goal. Impressing Brother Holt was not easy. He is the type of person to only be impressed after the fact, that is, after boys earn their Eagle Scout ranks, so convincing him to help me required a lot of work, especially with how old I then was. To begin this mad dash to earn rank advancements, I began with the help of an old friend, Brother Lambson.

            At one meeting where I was meeting at Brother Lambson’s house to pass off swimming requirements, he acted very goofy. I brought my brother along at Brother Lambson’s request to be the guy I must rescue. My brother jumped in the six-foot-deep backyard pool, and brother Lambson jumped from his chair, waving his arms in the air, wide eyed, nervous facial gesture, and yelling my name several times, telling me that I had to throw a rope with great urgency. He acted his part so well, instead of being stern or boring about the situation like so many other leaders I’d met.

            Beginning the advancement process with Brother Lambson helped ease me into the immense amount of work ahead of me. After a little over a year of nagging from my Mom to call merit badge councilors and motivation from people like Brother Holt who told me that I should be working without my mother’s help, and meeting with people at all sorts of places, even active bars, to get through the badge requirements, I came near to the last stretch: The Eagle Scout Project. At Brother Holt’s suggestion, I visited Ally Hardick, the coordinator of a community garden designed to help the local poor. Ally was very kind and told me many project ideas to improve the garden, and after considering ideas and having email conversations, she and I agreed on an irrigation installing project. Now I had to secure donations from local stores.

            I hated making phone calls, and at first tried my best to have my mom do them for me. Each week, on large part due to my mom’s persistent reminding me of my duties, I called and visited local hardware stores to request project donations. One local store, Kilgore’s, seemed promising for obtaining PVC pipe donations. Turned out that when I talked to their manager, he was happy to help, telling me to go grab as much PVC supplies as I possibly needed. The same day, Home Depot had called and promised me a “$25 gift card.” The next day, I went in my uniform and found out they had meant six “$25 gift card[s].” In the span of two days, I had secured more than I needed for the project!

With all the supplies lined up, the actual project day soon came. It was a Wednesday evening, and many people I’d recently called and worked with came and were ready to help finish my project. The setting wasn’t the greatest though, as it was a hot, humid summer day in southeast Texas and a rainstorm had just come through earlier that afternoon. Mosquitos were beginning to come out and a lawn mowing team was finishing up their job in the garden, leaving sticky wet grass everywhere. The greenhouse housed many yellowjackets, which I had to advise people to avoid. Everyone gathered around me in the garden and awaited my safely lecture and instructions, which I had to give over the roar of lawn mowers. I tried my best, and was told several times by my audience to speak up. So, after struggling to remember and yell everything I wanted to say, we began. There were so many people in attendance that I could hardly keep even the majority of them busy, especially since the task of installing irrigation tubing is a step by step process, so there weren’t many jobs available at once. I tried my best to keep everyone busy, telling people to cut hoses, to run irrigation through PVC pipes, to bury the pipes, to screw in faucet connections, and spread out the tubing. Even so, I was still constantly being asked what could be worked on.

After a bit over an hour, as the sun set and mosquitos were becoming rampant, we finished my list of tasks to complete. My scout leader came up to me and told me I had done an excellent job, which surprised me, as he was the one continually bossing me around to keep people busy. It turned out he was only being bossy to test my patience and leadership abilities, and apparently, I impressed him. Afterward many of us had ice cold lemonade in water bottles and homemade brownies I had made and brought for everyone’s enjoyment, and people loved the refreshments. I felt so much relief; I had gone way out of my comfort zone and successfully led in carrying out a community project.

Soon later, I made a special appointment with the Eagle Scout Board of Review members in my area since my birthday was coming before the next planned Eagle Board of Review meeting. When I called them, they seemed quite unimpressed about this, expressing their discontent with my unit constantly having late appointments. At the final meeting, I sat somewhat confident at the end of a long meeting table, with all three of the Board members across from me, and my scoutmaster in a corner of the room behind me. They asked me a lot of questions, mainly ones like “what did you learn from your scouting experience” and “how will you use what you have learned to do good.” I answered that I would be a better leader with the social experiences I had gone through and would serve others and be a positive example the best I could in college. Eventually, I stepped out of the room for them to discuss their decision. I soon found out that I made it! They accepted me into the rank of Eagle Scout! I was beaming with a smile and ran to my mom and Brother Holt to tell them the great news. After countless hours of work and human interaction, I had finally made my goal; I had finally earned my Eagle Scout Award.

20 - Evaluation of Class

So I believe I'm supposed to evaluate my blog and the class in general? Alright, here it goes.

From writing my blog, I've discovered just how much YouTube videos have been affecting me. A lot of the videos I watch have people who are occasionally straight savage and say what they want to when they want to, and I've notably taken after them in my blog. I say things like "I have a lot of homework to do, so I spent all day playing Minecraft" and actually write my opinions about people or situations, especially when I didn't like them. That didn't used to be like me at all. I used to be very conserved about what I say and would be careful not to say anything that could offend anyone in any way. But I think this new way fits me better. I have more character, I feel like I have a more personal identity, even be it a savage. I still try my best to respect people in person though, I don't usually speak out in a crowd.

As for class, it's been a lot better than I had expected. My brother went through Writing 150 in the Winter and told me every day all about how awful his classmates are and how mean his teacher is. Sister Steadman is awesome and my class has been great! The only people who I could say are my new friends are those I've met in this class, it's almost like we're one big family.

Grades have been great too. Sister Steadman is very merciful when grading, unlike many English teachers I hear about who give you  an 85 on ever assignment no matter what you do. Learning about family history and writing down my story here on the blogs has been a great experience, and I'll be sure to record these all down and store them in a safe place for my family to read.

So overall, this class has been a great experience and I love you all. Thanks for a great time.

19 - Squaw Peak

So that's a picture of Squaw Peak from google. I've taken lots of pictures of it too, but I don' have my camera with me right now.

On May 26th, my oldest sister begged me to go with her on a hiking trip up rock canyon and to the top of Squaw Peak. I had been wanting to do some local hiking for a while, so I decided I'd go. She got really excited, because people rarely want to go on big hiking trips with her I guess. So I loaded my backpack with my camera and personal water bottle. My sister supplies additional water and lots of yummy snacks like protein bars and rice crispy treats. Some were yummier than others.

But just like the Grand Canyon experience,  had not exercised in around a year. I don't know why I keep doing this to myself. It wasn't even half as bad as the grand canyon though. The hike to squaw peak is not nearly as much of an elevation climb (or descent) and the weather is way cooler up there than in the Grand Canyon during the summer. The hike was actually pretty great. The mountains blocking the sum and other mountains with sun still on them, the distant snow melting, the river rushing through the canyon, it was all great.

One thing that surprised me about the hike is how you reach the quaking aspen level and think you're almost there, but somehow you keep climbing and climbing nearly the majority of the time up there. Then once you do reach the peak, you hardly realize it. That is, until you look over the edge. Yeah, then you know you're at the peak. Apparently there used to be an American Flag marking the top, my sister informed me, but it wasn't there anymore.

My sister and I saw a lot of rock climbers on the way up, and something funny that my sister pointed out is that there are literally rock climbing anchors on the steep side of squaw peak (the side in the picture). I'm afraid of heights. I would never ever ever ever do something like that, oh my goodness. So at the top we had other people up there take pictures for us while we stood a good distance from the edge.

Oddly enough, one of the hardest parts about the trip was going back down. Going up was tiring, but going down, especially trying to run down, hurts your toes, ankles, and knees so bad if you don't have proper footwear and foot placing! By the time we got to the bottom, it was nearly sunset and my sister pointed out that humming birds come out at this time. So we looked around, and sure enough the cricket sounding birds were flying everywhere and we even saw a baby calling from on top of a tree. They're so tiny, oh my goodness.

The hike was great, and afterward I took several days playing games to let m legs recover. They hurt when used... I really need to get in shape.

18 - Why did I do this?

In 2013, I went on a family vacation. As we usually always do, we visited national parks in the Midwestern United States (like Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Texas, mainly). While driving through Arizona, heading North toward the Grand Canyon, we noticed a lot of signs talking about  major highway closure along Highway 89. We never saw the scene in person, but this is what showed up on the news.

Yeah... out plans to visit the South end of the Grand Canyon pretty much crumbled from there. We didn't give up though! We decided that for the first time in our lives, we would go to the North end of the Grand canyon.

What an experience that turned out to be. The North rim of the Grand Canyon is so high in elevation (8300 ft versus 7000 ft) compared to the South, and it is far less visited by the public! The place is covered in quaking aspens, and is just as beautiful, if not more so, than the south end. One day while there, we as a family decided we should hike a good ways down the canyon. My mom and sister went a little ways down together, and my brother and I went a long ways down. I don't know the elevation details, but I do know I was not in shape. 

Unlike hiking up a mountain where it's pretty safe because once you turn around because it's all downhill, hiking down a canyon is just the opposite. As it turned out, we hiked down for about 1 and a half hours, which was fine, then hiked up for about 4 and a half hours, which was one of the worst physical experiences of my life. Thankfully, my brother and I brought a lot of water bottles and fruit granola bars, I probably would have needed a rescue team otherwise. 

So after hiking down for an hour and a half, we reached a nice spot with a river and picnic tables and a disgusting bathroom full of hundreds of flies. I found a rock down there with the name "Ben" scribbled into it, so I took a picture with that. What a funny coincidence.

But at the bottom, I began to feel tired. I knew I was in trouble, because looking up, it was hard to even see the height from which we began. A long and tough journey awaited me. I honestly think that I must have had divine help to make it. At several parts going up, there were shear drop offs without guard rails, and for some reason I looked down over one of them. Of my, I clung to the opposite wall from then on. I was crazy dizzy and could have fallen without expectation. I hit a wall as far as my energy went. The fruit granola bars were good, but what I really needed was fat and meat, not more carbs. My body was depleted of energy. For whatever reason though, I decided I did not want to take it slow and walk up, so I literally would run and collapse at the top of each switchback going up. 

To make matters worse, I somehow thought that I could claim some sort of pride from making it up, so I refused to let my brother take my backpack full of water bottles when he offered. Honestly, I must have been going insane. Well eventually, we reached our van, and I collapsed into the shotgun seat up front, and could not move. My muscles were torn as much as they physically could have been from that work out, leaving me with little to no strength. But I made it. Somehow. I've retold this story several times, emphasizing different parts for different people. It was an adventure, one which I don't want to repeat. If I do anything like that again, I'll definitely be bringing better food, like beef jerky or something. I love beef jerky.

17 - Genre

So I need to post about my own blog's genre. I'd say... realistic? I put the facts down for what they are, often with plenty of typos. They're everywhere. But it's informal writing, so that's okay with me. I'm a gamer, not a writer. I write what happens in my life, then I finally get around to playing again. Drop the mic.

Okay, so as far as what I've learned from genre in this class, it's pretty simple. Depending on your audience and the type of paper you're writing (research, personal narrative, whatever) you need to write with different levels of formality, and you need to be more or less factual. Research papers are painstakingly nonfictional. Narratives can have a bit more fiction in them, as they're stories. They're meant to show something in a drawing and entertaining way.

So ya, that's what I've learned about genre.

16 - EFY. Moo.

Hi. I was thinking I wanted to write about something positive to help lift up my day, so I thought about friends. Then I though about what I do around friends. Then I thought about how weird I am. Then I thought about when I was weirdest. Thus, I thought about EFY. I would hardly say I was myself. Or maybe this other self resides in me... somewhere? Let's just say, I was way too wild.

Okay, so as many of you can probably tell, I'm a total noob at social situations. References from movies? Common memes? Jokes about countries? Whatever else people say these days? I never get the reference or understand the point. I say this because how popular at EFY I became makes no sense to me, and I'm still trying to figure that one out!

EFY started rather normally I guess, I think? I woke up at 2 AM to ride with a family (the whole family - their kids were so annoying) on a 5 hour drive across East Texas to go to an EFY event in Denton. We arrived, and this was my first experience living away from home. I had already committed to being brave and trying to act cool about it, so I did. My roommate seemed to like me, he said he was worried he would be put with a dork, but I was apparently nothing new that to him. So I went to go east Subway after registration, and got back just in time to meet the guys in my company. They seemed cool. Especially out company leader, most chill guy I've ever seen. He liked sitting on tables and talking about Pokemon. Okay. So then we went outside to meet the girls in my company. I slightly withdrew myself from the social circle, because I didn't think I could ever be friends with such cool people. Of course, they pushed me back into the group. We got to know each other (sort of? I can't stick a name to a face to save my life) by playing a game where we all sit down if we match a person's description, it was a great time.

After several days of eating, playing, and studying together, I began to find my place in the company. I was the one guy who everyone was jealous of because the girls kept sitting by me at meals. What? I don't know either. Turns out the main girl involved was actually one I had a big crush on... I fully did not expect her to be the one to go for me! Well, I suppose that's what undid me. I finally felt comfortable in the setting and began talking to people and joking around with everyone. My energy got everyone around me excited as we walked to places, talked about our studies, but most especially, at dances.

We had two dances. The first one, oh my gosh could they please make it quieter!! I wanted to participate, but the room could literally have made my go deaf! So I hung out in the hallways and talked to just about every company leader out there on guard duty. It was a jolly time. Those guys and girls were just about as fun to get to know as my peers! And oh man, some of them could dance.

Well, to skip ahead to the highlight of it all, the last day. The last dance. There were countless testimony building experiences, some really touching that happened. Those are written in my personal journal. I filled many pages writing many hours after bedtime about everything that happened. Yet I still had energy each day... what a miracle. But the last dance. I had a great time walking and talking with my company as we headed over to the huge indoor basketball stadium. It was so big, the DJ couldn't make it too loud! So I partied. Even better, the floors were slick concrete, so I could moonwalk while I danced! So after a sequence of confidence builders from other girls in my company, I finally asked my crush to dance with me at a slow song toward the end. I can't believe what I did next. I was hoping her hands would be warm when we greeted, and they were. So I went for it. I said, "Wow you're hot!" She just talked about her hands being warm. The next time she looked up at me (I'm tall), I winked. She lost it. Oh my goodness, she laughed historically the the entire rest of the song (but didn't let go of me), it was amazing.

On our walk back to out dorms, I of course asked her if I could be her escort, so we walked and enjoyed the city night as we walked back. One of the other girls in the company told me to tell her that she was my "cow", but I had to idea what that meant. I told her it in a different way, less extreme that the term cow I later found out, but she got the message anyway. Later that night I talked to my company (after jumping from a high wall and landing in front of them all as we shared our feeling together for the last time) about how much I appreciated them and especially a paper the girls all wrote together where they wrote something on each note given each guy in the company. I early on in the week became known as the "lady slayer," and my crush and several other girls called me that on the note. Why am I writing about this? I guess I just need filler material for the blog.

So anyway, the next morning, we all parted ways, my roommate picked me up with the intense strength of his hug, and a couple girls, including my "cow," gave me big hugs as well. I like hugs sometimes, but not usually. I like to keep to myself.

And that's about it as far as I'll talk on this post. I doubt anyone will get this far. Possibly. Leave a comment down below if you did. Smash that like button. Subscribe. Sponsor. Have a great life.

15 - 1.12

It's already been a week exactly since Minecraft 1.12 came out, but I need something to write about. I'm behind on writing current events for sure. So last week, Minecraft 1.12 came out, in case you didn't know. I think it's actually one of the biggest updates that's happened in a while. Most people care about the fact that it added parrots, a new hostile mob, and colorful new clay blocks. That's cool and all, but adding new stuff it's what interests me. 1.12 is a really good update because it makes the game easier to play.

First and foremost, 1.12 added in the "recipe book" feature. This teaches you how to craft anything in the game in a step by step manner as you earn new ingredients for crafting. I already know how to craft everything, but I love this feature because it can be used to auto-fill your crafting menu to craft even faster! This helps with items like bows, which can be confusing to craft and take forever to get right. Nasty diagonal patterns.

Another feature they added, and probably one of my favorites, is that when you're crafting and close the inventory before pulling your items off the table, you don't drop the items anymore! I thought this was really funny when I found out about it, because my older brother's least favorite part about Minecraft is what you throw everything on the ground when you stop crafting. He has always thought it was ridicules, and apparently a lot of other people have too, because Mojang (Microsoft) actually patched it! Issue is, they didn't patch this for villager trading. Still drop your stuff on the ground if you don't pull it out of the villager trading menu. I don't know if they meant to fix this, but it sure seems like it! Fixing this would make my villager farms and Eggwars and even Bedwars easier to play... no more throwing stuff on the ground! Mojang pls. Get on it.

Anyway, I'm overall satisfied with the 1.12 update. As far as cosmetics go, wool is now way more brightly colored, it's pretty intense. Like, color intense. Here's a diagram from the wiki.

Such bright colors. I like the orange, yellow, and blue updates especially. They're so much more intense! And with that, insert a good conclusion here! Yeah... no idea.