Birthday number 26

I am officially 26 years old and I feel about the same as I did last year. I remember the days when I was a young child and magical things happened when you turned eight, or twelve, sixteen, etc. Now that I have reached and surpassed the mid-twenties life is kind of the same. I am the minimum age for most things now. Granted I cannot run for president yet or Congress, but I think I qualify for just about everything else.

I got to thinking about the differences between my birthday this year and my birthday last year. Granted I was in Taiwan last year and that automatically made it a little unique. This year has been unique too, though with quite a few similarities

It starts out with breakfast of course. In Taiwan Whitney and Tammy were kind enought to cook me a wonderful breakfast, really the best I had in Taiwan, since I usually ate chocolate muffins. But they made me this wonderful meal. This year my mother bought me a favorite cereal and I had the opportunity to eat alone. It was kind of depressing but since I had people sending me text wishing me a Happy Birthday every few seconds I got over it real fast.

Then I went to school, both this year and last, and had people sing the song to me. I was hoping that someone in America would magically figure how to sing the Taiwanese version of Happy Birthday but it didn't come until I forced my parents to sing it.. The Taiwanese version consists of four exact lines: "Happy Birthday to You!" There is no Steve, Mahonri Moriancumer, or Bob. I like it simple and to finally after my parents and Kristen tried the American version I made them sing it again.

Of course I got to go out to dinner too. I choose a Chinese restaurant last year, cause let's face it there weren't many other choices. This year I chose a Thai restaurant. I enjoyed my food, shrimp in a yellow curry among other various dishes chosen by family members. It tasted pretty good, but I miss my green Thai curry more than I ever expected to.

Then on to dessert. We had pie this year, as you have already seen in the video. Last year we went to McDonald's to celebrate and as ghetto as that sounds my roommates went all out. There were gifts inspired by Mary, a cake made by Joseph, fireworks after running home on the roof, and the list goes on. I also received notes from all of my roommates telling me how grateful they were that I liked shrimp so they did not have to eat it. I got notes this year too but I will spare you the details.

No birthday party would be complete without games. Last year we had a game of ultimate spoons, which I lost but still managed to record a great deal of it on my camera. This year the game of choice was 7-Up, a card game bought to the Adams family via the Irvine Family. My family was kind enough to let me win the game. As a minor sidenote they also let me win the previous four games we had played as an extra special treat.

Last year it was Joseph that had a girl to stare at. This year I had the girl and he had his textbooks.

For those of you who are interested in reviewing my past birthday check out the blog.

Anti-Social, a sorry attempt

When I was in Taiwan I was determined to not make any friends when I got home. I didn't want to spread myself as thinly as I had before moving over there. I was excited to tell people that I would not be coming to their parties when I got invited. I had been perfectly happy living with twelve strangers and I figured if I could be happy with twelve people in a foreign country there was no reason to make friends in my own country. So I set my course and started in on it.

I joined the auditioned choir at the institute and decided that I would be nice when people were nice to me and that would be the end of it. As you can see I was quite content being lonely and walking to the beat of my own drum. Everyone's attention is turned another direction and I'm happily stirring the alfredo sauce, an anti-social activity. If the story ended there then I would be accomplishing my goal but alas it does not.

I got sucked into the activities once again. I started to be kind to the people around me and my old choir friends wanted to get lunch during the week after class. Of course I consented and then more people joined and soon I was friends with half the class. I tried really hard to be unfriendly, well I guess that is a lie because if I was I would have no friends in class. Turns out I really do enjoy making new friends because of the new experiences they have to share with me. It is fun serving with new people. Somehow I thrive on the new experiences that come my way and people enjoy hanging out with me.

So my attempt at remaining friendless failed. Thanks to Kristen, J.R., Tesse, Laurie, Dave, Kendalee, Erik, and more I have remained a happy and social person, even if it has been against my will. Perhaps I should try being a little meaner to those around me, ignoring them or blowing them off. Or maybe I'll keep them around a little while longer so that I can feel loved. I'm destined to not be lonely though and I have had quite a bit of help along the way. Thanks, I think.

I left my body heat in Thailand

Ever since I returned from living in Taiwan and vacationing in Thailand I have not been warm. I can't figure out what my problem is, but it is not going away. I think it all started when we went to Thailand. We had eaten at a restaurant and purchased some Chinese food that my body did not take to very nicely. I was sick for the next couple of days. I won't go into detail, but I could not eat too much. But I wasn't allowed to just sit back and relax, of course not. We were required to take an overnight bus to Chiang Mai and then proceed to climb up a mountain. I was dead most of the trip up there cause I hadn't had much to eat.

I did make it up the mountain and slept pretty well on the mats they provided for us. They even had showers ready for us. Of course they were freezing cold and about the only thing you could do was wash the sweat off. So I did, and then I decided to just go to bed, knowing I would probably feel better in the morning. I did of course, but I think that is when the heat-producing bodies within me decided to rebel. You see, it is quite humid in Thailand, Taiwan and the rest of southern Asia. My body must have decided it was tired of working and so it shut down the warm stuff. The weather was super hot and humid as mentioned before, even the Indian Ocean was super warm. It was nice that my body decided to stop working, but it never got the memo when I moved back to the states.

This is in August, a relatively hot month historically, but not for the new Steve. I covered myself in blankets while at a campfire. I even had a jacket on, but apparently that didn't do much for me either. I figured that pretty soon the rest of the world would catch up with me but I would just have to wait until the winter season began.

So winter came and I continued to freeze. I went to Ohio as most of you should know and then drove on up to Canada. We went to Niagara Falls, as mentioned before, and let me tell you, that was freezing. Kristen was kind enough give us handwarmers, which I forget on the walk to Canada, so we froze. But I started to believe that this might in fact cure me. Because my body really had been frozen, perhaps this would wake it up. When I got home from my trip I was doing really good for a few days. I didn't have to wear two jackets for about three days after returning. Soon enough that went out the window. My body started malfunctioning once again and I found myself reaching for an extra jacket. It could have been due to the fact that someone continues to shove ice cubes down my shirt, or it could be that my body really is broken. I had made a pact though, to wear more long-sleeved shirts in an effort to stay warm. So if you care to find out if I am keeping my pact, check my other blog. If you don't care if I'm staying warm then don't check it out.

Horseshoe Falls

In an ideal world I would blog about my trip to Niagara Falls, but I don't know if that will ever happen. So this video of the falls in the middle of winter will work for now. This is the Canadian side. As you also notice, everything is white. It is not snow, rather frozen mist from the falls. It covers everything and it doesn't move. I tried kicking it with my shoe and it just kicks back. It was beautiful though. I am beginning to think that winter is a nice time to travel cause nobody else wants to and it looks pretty cool too.

"Go to the Ohio"

I decided that I needed to take a vacation at the end of school in order to celebrate finishing a bachelors degree. I weighed a bunch of options. I have family in Boston that I don't know very well, I could fly to Medford to visit an old friend and then drive back to Utah. I could have gone back to my mission. The option I chose was going to Columbus, Ohio. At the time it sounded like a grand idea. I could visit Joe, my roommate from Taiwan, and see a little of the Midwest. Somehow I missed the boat and did not realize that I would be going in winter and it is freezing in the winter time. It was probably a good thing that my mind wasn't working properly otherwise I would have settled on a place a little warmer. But alas I ended up in Ohio.

It was a wonderful trip, blah, blah, blah, no really it was wonderful but if I tried to blog about all of it I would get nowhere. So I have chosen to blog about my favorite part, or at least one of them. I loved Kirtland, well the historic part anyway. We drove through it on the way to Niagara Falls and got to see the most important parts minus the inside of the temple.

We first found the temple and walked up to the visitors center hoping to find someone there to help us out with the temple. Turns out the Community of Christ is only open on Saturdays and Sundays. We still had a good looking around and then went on the quest to find out where the LDS visitor center was.

We soon found it and then found ourselves in the loving care of Brother and Sister Stott from Holliday, Utah. They took the four of us on our own personal tour of historic downtown Kirtland. This above is the Whitney Store. Brother Stott told us it had won an award for the best restored site which is quite impressive given the store's history. Apparently it had been used as a bar among other things but some of the windows were still original. Then they took us up the stairs.

This is in the room used for the School of the Prophets. It was a small room and it was the same room that Emma Smith had to clean up after the Brethen had spit tobacco all over the floor. It was really neat being in the same place that so many amazing things had happened. As a side note, when the tobacco juice would fall through the floor it ended up in Emma's kitchen, kind of a nasty thought.

This is the front of the Whitney Store, which I'm sure you would have been able to figure out since the name is on the patio roof. This picture it slightly different than the one found in the scripture photographs because there use to be a main road going in front of the building with a stop sign in front of the house. It is a cute little place though.

This is the view from the old main street. On the left in the foreground is the rebuilt Johnson Hotel. The yellow house is the Whitney home and the store is in front of that. I don't quite remember what the white building in front of the Johnson Hotel is but apparently at one time it served as an ice cream shop.

And of course we had to come back on our return journey from Niagara to visit the Stotts once again. We wanted to take a few more photos and even got to go to church in Kirtland. And I think I even preferred the trip in the winter. It was nice to have just the four of us (Joseph, Sara, Jessica, and myself) on the tour and get to see whatever we wanted and not get rushed through it. Go to the Ohio, I think you might even enjoy it too.

Just Life

A lot has changed in my life recently and I'm not quite sure how excited I am about all of it. Somethings really are grand and others... not so much. I graduated from college of course and that is suppose to be a wonderful event in a person's life. I am finding however that that is not always the case. It seems that I have just reached the top of a mountain. I worked really hard to climb all the way to the top and now I'm coasting down to the bottom. There is not much stopping me before I reach the valley and I need to find out where the next mountain to climb is. What is this wonderful job that I am going to find someday? I have decided to take the Foreign Service Officer exam in June and should receive my study guide in the mail sometime this week. I will also be taking the GRE in the next little while too. However I wouldn't find out how I did for quite a while after taking these tests and sometimes when I read my blog I realize that spelling and comprehension is not always my strong point. I spelled surprise wrong and never noticed it, turns out that spell check is really not the greatest gift to mankind.

Still, I planned a trip to Ohio this coming week which I am thrilled about and also partly not overly excited about it. I can't wait to see Taiwan friends again and pretend like we are back in Taiwan. But things have changed, I'll miss Kristen, the warm weather, singing for the prophet and a member of the Presidency of the 70. But I do get to see Columbus, Kirtland, Niagara Falls, and Palmyra. Not exactly the best time of year, but cheaper than going in the peak Summer season. So really I am looking forward to the trip but not the fact that I have used up most of my minutes for the month and my month isn't half over yet. And I can't wait to call people on the nights or weekends, cause it ain't in my plan. But then again, people in the ancient days ( 1990's) did not have cell phones so I suppose I can make it a week, or a couple of weeks without texting or talking to the rest of the world.

But life is still great. I was planning on trying out for a show down at Rogers Memorial Theatre but I had missed the auditions last month. I got a call from a member of the stake music committee and she asked if I would be willing to take on the role of Doubting Thomas in the second half of "Savior of the World" for an Easter program. So I get my first gig at acting, kinda nervous, not going to lie, but also very excited. I'll give you more details and when you check out my My Face blog look on the Thursdays for pictures. So the Lord continues to bless me, even more than I sometimes feel I deserve. I am dating a wonderful girl, yes still dating her for those of you who might have been confused. Looking for a job, yet blessed to have one while I am looking. I have a family that loves me and let me live with them. The list could go on but I should stop. I get to start my first semester of only institute classes. It will be a little strange going up to Weber just to sing and learn about the Book of Mormon but hopefully I'll soon find a job that would create new opportunities for advancement in life. The Lord has always taken care of me though so I have stopped worrying and started wondering where the next step of life will lead me. I use to pretend like I knew what was coming next, but I have stopped because it usually doesn't happen the way I expect it to.

Hope this post worked out for you. It felt good to just write and not entertain with pictures like I usually might. But for want of consistency it add a few pictures just to keep my picture people happy.

Here Comes Santa Claus

This Sunday turned out to be quite the eventful day. It started off with me being blessed with the opportunity to play the piano for some of the girls in my ward to sing. I was proud of myself and the job I was able to accomplish, even though I did make a few mistakes. I survived though and turned out none worse for the wear. Following the sacrament meeting by Bishop McMullin of the presiding bishopric, Kristen decided to go just a little crazy with the icicles hanging outside of the church building.

I was pleased with the results of her work. There were no deaths from the smacking and no blood either. Something tell me that her father might not have been too excited had something happened to his daughter. So we survived the episode with the icicles and were commanded to move on to the next part of the evening.

We went to the Christmas party hosted by my father's cousin and her husband and played with children. One of my cousinish persons decided to smack me in the face with soft little slippers and then jump all over me. It wasn't the most relaxing feeling but it did feel good to just have fun and not worry about discipline, oh the joys of just being a buddy. When I couldn't handle the bundle of energy in the five year-old I moved my attention to Max. He was happy enough and did not even cry when I held him. Well this party was soon drawn to a close when 6:30 came around and we whisked ourselves off to Kristen's family annual Christmas party.

The parents were clever enough to encourage the young children to sing Christmas carols around the player piano and everyone was more than willing to join in the game. Of course it had been planned that Santa would appear at the end "Here Comes Santa Claus." This was the second time in one week that Santa appeared for me at the end of the song, the first being at the library when I was asked to dress up as an elf.

I did manage to learn something new and excitng about Santa this year though. It turns out that he can blow up and shape balloons into whatever you desire. My favorite was a dragon. This up here though is Michael and whatever his animal was it now escapes me. After Santa hopped back on his sleigh we were pretty much done with the evening. We talked a little longer and then decided that going to bed early that night wasn't such a bad idea. Turns out I shouldn't have been so hopeful. I got home about 11 and didn't go to bed til 1. Someday I have got to figure out a better sleeping schedule.