Writing the Past...

Hello World!

It's me again, Sammy P. Back at you after a 4 month hiatus from the world of blogging.

It's funny how sometimes no matter how much you enjoy something, and no matter how good your intentions are of doing it, you somehow still find yourself one third of a year behind in your blog, even when you have experienced so many blog-worthy experiences.

And by "you" I actually mean me.

But one cool thing about writing a blog is that I can write whatever I want whenever I want... including the date. In other words, I can still write about all my adventures since February and just backdate the entry, and it's as if I had actually posted it months ago!

So in the end, I never actually got behind on my blog at all. When historians are analyzing the Chronicals of Sam centuries from now, they will never know that the dozen or so entries before this one were actually posted after it. Take that, history!

p.s. If you are a historian reading my blog centuries from now... please disregard this post. Thanks.

SOA

Well... it's official. Last night I just found out that I've been accepted into the BYU School of Accountancy.

I don't really know what to say or think. I guess an accounting degree is what I've decided to do with my life though.

Honestly, thinking back, I have never had a real "when I grow up I want to..." dream. I love life and I love most everything I do. I have always enjoyed school and tried to work hard and learn in every class I have taken. I love music and playing in the symphony, but I've always seen that as more of a great hobby and talent on the side. Math and science were always strong subjects for me, but as I thought harder about an engineering degree, it just didn't seem right. I'm not exactly sure who the first one was to suggest accounting, but I do remember the four words that immediately crossed my mind...

What? Why? No. Boring.

I'm sure that's the way most people feel about the subject. Yet somehow here I am on the path to making a career out of it.

I've always been good with numbers and had a penny-pincher mentality, so I feel like it's a good fit for me. I enjoyed the pre-req classes too. But honestly, I've barely scratched the surface of learning what exactly accountants even do. I guess I'll learn soon enough though. :)

Wish me luck these next few years. If you need me, I'll be in the Tanner building.

An object in uniform motion...

...will remain in uniform motion, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

It was Sir Isaac Newton who defined this important law and is now celebrated in Physics books everywhere. But really Ike... you became a hero for writing down what to everyone else was a no-brainer.

For example, anyone who has been hit by a car could explain the same phenomenon.

There I was, minding my own business on my way home from an afternoon of census work, when physics did its thing. The white man was glowing on the corner of 8th North and Freedom, so I mounted my bike and started in motion. The force of my legs on the pedals accelerated my mass in a Northerly direction, and I began to roll straight across the street.

Then all of a sudden, before I knew what was happenening, my forward motion was rudlely interrupted and I started moving East. "The laws of Physics are being broken!" was of course my instant thought. "I applied no force that would in any way make me and my bicycle travel sideways. My wheels don't even turn that way!"

Only after this quick and logical thought process did I realize that I was no longer on a bike at all. My dual suspension Next brand mountain bike from Wal Mart was now pinned beneath the nose of a dirty green sedan. I was sitting on the hood.

"What?" and "How the heck did this just happen?" were the questions that quickly replaced my concerns about physics.

I'm still not sure how the dude didn't see me in the crosswalk, but he at least appologised and gave me all his info and everything. Fortunately the only thing broken was my bike.

The moral of the story: Before you start panicing that a fundamental law of physics is being broken, always remember that traffic laws are much more easliy broken than Newton's laws. If you look down, you may just be sitting on the hood of a 2000 Plymoth Neon.

Life is good

"Oh, what a beautiful morning.
Oh, what a beautiful day!"

If anyone can name what those lines are from (without googling it-you cheaters!) you win 17 gold stars (see this post for further info in gold stars).

But anyways, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I just wanted write something happy. I could probably even continue the chorus...

"I've got a beautiful feeling,
Everything's going my way!"

School isn't so busy for me this semester, which is way nice. I'm only taking 13 credits, and most of my classes don't require a ton of time outside of class to do homework and stuff. I'm working about 12 hours a week and playing in two orchestras and a couple intramural sports, and I still don't really feel too stressed or pressed for time. It's a feeling I haven't had for months, and it's a nice relief.

One thing that's really gone my way recently is my viola playing. I never practice as much as I should, but somehow I ended up getting 5th chair in the Philharmonic. I think I was 11th before chair auditions last week, and I expected to stay in about the same spot. Of course I practiced and was prepared for my audition, and I felt like it went well, but I had no idea it apparently went that well. The only people in front of me are the 4 seniors. I'm not even a music major, and I know there are several people sitting behind me that practice a ton and are overall better players than me. But, on this one audition for Mahler's 5th symphony, everything seemed to go my way. I haven't sat so close to the conductor since high school! It's pretty sweet.

Well I was going to write about so many more happy things in life - my awesome ward and friends and so forth - but my laptop battery is dying and I forgot my cord.

Apparently not everything is going my way.

But overall, life is good.

Food To Go

I am an employee of BYU FoodToGo. It's basically the highlight of my life. My average shift (when I even get the hours I'm supposed to) consists of boxing rolls and cookies, washing pans and hot chocolate thermoses, counting and bagging paper goods and plastic utencils, checking and double-checking orders to make sure everything is ready to go, wandering around to make it look like I'm being productive, meandering in and out of our walk-in refridgerators just for kicks, and when I'm lucky, taking deliveries in the van to various locations on campus.

You see, I was hired as a driver. Going into this job, I thought I'd just be in and out of the kitchen, loading up my ride with food and delivering the goods to grateful recipiants all over BYU. I was pretty excited to cruise around in the pimp green service van and have carts of cookies to deliver or lunch buffets to set up. Little did I know I'd be spending much of my time twittling my thumbs or playing with the Kung Fu Panda McDonalds toy that someone left on the end of the dry-foods production table.

Tuesday morning I got a call from Chris: "Don't even bother coming in today, we are already way ahead with production and have no deliveries during your shift."

Lame. This job wasn't turning out to be as cool as I'd hoped. But since I'm an optimist and know that there's always hope for a better tomorrow (or in my case a better day-after tomorrow, since it was Tuesday and I wasn't scheduled to work again until Thursday), I put that hope to the test and hoped my little heart out. I hoped that my shift wouldn't be taken away, I hoped there would be work, I hoped that there would be many deliveries, and I even went so far as to hope that there'd be extra food I could eat (as is sometimes the case when working in the kitchen of a food service business).

My hopes and dreams were realized this morning as I experienced the fastest 4-hour shift of my entire FoodToGo career. I was out the door on two deliveries before I even knew what was going on. I got back in time to get the next deliveries ready and loaded and had just enough time to eat a couple extra rolls that were left out on the corner of the counter, which every employee knows is the fair-game food corner.

But the fact that I had 6 deliveries (more than all my previous deliveries this month combined) and free food isn't what made my day. It was the fact that I got to do what I was hired to do: drive the big green van.

I get a lot of satisfaction out of driving around Provo simply because I don't have a car of my own. But my delight in taking deliveries goes beyond simply driving AROUND campus. Even if I did have a car of my own, I couldn't drive it ON campus with the BYU Employee authority I have on the job.

Remember high school, when a football jock could strut straight through the halls as the lesser peons parted to either side? No one wanted to get in his way. The brave few who held their path - even when it crossed his - were reminded by bruised shoulders to bail out the next time a collision course was eminent.

Now, that image in mind, did you ever wonder what it must feel like to be that big man on campus like Joe Schmoe the linebacker? If you answered Yes, consider this your invitation to come along on my next delivery. As I navigate the walkways of BYU, students part before me. When I'm at work, I'm the big man on campus.

But if you're thinking to yourself "I was that big shot Joe Schmoe on campus...nay, I am him still!", you better step aside now because I guarantee you're not bigger than my van.

The Village People

GOOOOOOOAL!!!

The ref whistled the start of the game and after only four seconds had expired, we were up 1-nil.

What an exciting start to the season, and what a way for our outsider recruit Michael Richardson to prove his worth and solidify his spot on the team. The beautiful shot from 20 yards out gave me the feeling that this would be a great game to start off the season of my intramural coed soccer team. It was indeed great in many ways: great fun, great friendships with teammates, great workout, great times, but by no means did it end in a great victory.

In fact, I walked home Thursday evening in the bitter cold after possible the greatest defeat of my life. We notched up a second goal when Carlos converted on an early PK, but the 2 on our side of the scoreboard was put to shame by the 14 posted by the opposing squad.

I didn't even know it was possible to score 14 points in a soccer game. We only play for 40 minutes!

Leading up to the season, I was way stoked to put together a team. I don't consider myself a great soccer player, but I think playing soccer is great. So I started recruiting people in my University Villa ward who felt the same way. And thus, The Village People united and formed an awesome team of futbol-ers. Most of us have played on teams at some point in our lives - a few may have played high school varsity, while a few others may have been the stars of their 4th grade community team (but haven't played since). Our goalie actually isn't a soccer player at all - but he played goalie for his high school water polo team, which I felt was close enough. Maybe that explains the 14 goals...

I wasn't sure what to think after that game. Are we really that bad? Or did we just get unlucky and face a really tough team in our opening game of the season? Maybe we just need a couple games to mesh as a team. After all, most of us hadn't touched a soccer ball for months (or years) until the ref blew that whistle to start the game. We were tracking down shin guards the day of the game (a few guys made an emergency trip to Wal-mart so they'd be eligible to play that night), and a couple people on the team didn't even have cleats. Our goalie was using his snowboarding gloves and wearing my tennis shoes (because he figured they'd at least be a little better than his Vans). It's a good thing my little brother gave me a soccer ball for Christmas, or we wouldn't have even been able to contribute a game ball.

So after our humbling pummeling, I began to realize how unprepared our little make-shift soccer team was. I was forced to admit that we may just not be championship-winning material. Yet.

But now there's nowhere to go but up after our season opener. And we're going up fast. We know what the competition's like now, and we know what we have to do. All you Disney lovers just think "The Big Green" and you'll know how the rest of our season will play out. We're going to be locked and loaded and we'll hit the turf running next Friday for game two. Look out Team 71, because The Village People are ready to show what they're made of!