Dear Daniel,

Boy I knew this song was yours the minute I heard it. 6:00 AM on Saturday.
Still groggy and trying to wake up, this song came on and I knew the tears were on their way.
Tears are usually only a few memories away. Still. 7 months and 6 days later.
I will always hate that you still mean so much to me. I wish I was over you.

This song-- it was written for me and my LB. And I hate every minute of that reality. 

And it only gets worse with every date I go on. 

They are nothing like you.
I'm so tired of comparing every other guy with you.
It's not fair to them.
It's not fair to me.
But the fact still remains.
They are nothing like you.



I will never forgive you for the choices you make that keep us apart. 

Socialism… Good or Bad?

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan.” All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A… (substituting grades for dollars- something closer to home and more readily understood by all.) After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. the students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little...

The second test average was a D. No one was happy. When the third test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased, as bickering, blame and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great.  But when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that.

Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are probably the best 5 sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.  

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. 

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  

4.You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. 

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

--- By Bill Essmann. 

This Kid.

You know what he said to me last night? He said: "I was just thinking about how making out with a girl at a Star Wars movie is every nerd's fantasy."

Well, I'm glad I could make at least one of your dreams come true. Cause heaven knows you've made one or two of mine come true. 

Doesn't his blue steel face just make you want to kill yourself? 

How did I ever get so lucky? 

30 Days of Photographs. Day 5

Some of you may remember, most of you will not remember that 100 years ago I started this 30 days of Photographs. {Back in April to be exact is when I have designated as 100 years ago. FYI, consult your calendars and make necessary adjustments.} Back in May was when I posted Day 4. I said it wouldn't be 30 consecutive days, but even this is embarrassing. Sorry to my millions of avid fans who hang onto my every word. :) I have been busy this summer. But now that the school year has started back up I have much more time to blog. And I am back with a fury vengeance. Ready to blog about hundreds of things that inspire me.

With that said, lets move right along to Day 5.  

Day 5: Most embarrassing photo. 

This may or may not be THE MOST embarrassing photo of me that I could find, but while the jury is still out on that, this picture is one that I found to be quite embarrassing and worthy of the Day 5 Spot. 

First of all, don't let the date fool you. I took a picture of a picture and my current camera put that date on this photo. It was really taken a LONG time ago. I am going to make an educated guess 1997. I think I am pretty darn close. That baby in the photo is 14 years old now. I may be off by a few months but you know... 

So, how hilarious is this look? Was I like trying to be borderline goth or something? I was 12 in 1997. You know those 12 year old phases… And scrunchy bracelets were SO in back then so get off my back. :)

This was at the airport, sending my Grandparents off on a mission to South Africa.
I am the one on the far right, in case you don't know what a goth is or what a scrunchy bracelet is. :)

What a dork. A dork with fabulous red hair, I must say.Oh, and a doggie tag.

I’m on a roll dude.

So, like 10 days ago I knocked another off my bucket list. I would have blogged about it sooner but I was too busy having probably one of the most precious experiences of my life {for the past 20 days} which I will be blogging about as soon as my tears dry up.

Ya’ll remember my list? Well, back on August 2, I was able to knock #88. To ride a mechanical bull for 8 seconds. I totally rode one for 14 seconds actually. 

Ya, while at first I was impressed with myself I quickly learned that 14 seconds ain't nothing. I was with some 13 year old boys and one of them stayed on for  

48 seconds. 

I about died. This kid cracked me up. His face was pure determination. His head slammed into the bull with every movement. His fingers were practically ripped off. He was in so much visible pain with every second on that bull but he would not give up. This kid is a rock. And he is one of my newest heroes. I met him through the precious experience I was able to have that I somewhat mentioned above. I will, as I said, go into that story much more when I don't feel like I will just sit here and sob when I try.

Bucket List #79 CHECK.

I made me a Bucket List a little ways back. And last Saturday I was able to knock off #79. 

To shoot at, and hit a clay pigeon.

My family was all vacationing in Bear Lake, as we often do, and we all decided to go shooting, as we have never before done. Both my brothers and their wives came, as well as my younger sister and my wonderful father. We had 8 guns, hundreds of clay pigeons and thousands of bullets.

Basically, in my lack of shooting experience I thought that hitting a clay pigeon would be disastrously difficult. That morning I was anticipating that I would have to practice in vein the whole time and not hit a darn thing. 

To my surprise it was actually a lot easier than I imagined. I hit one on my very first try! 

Rick, my older brother. Bryce, my younger brother, and my Dad. 

I loved yelling PULL. 

I loved playing cleanup and even cleaned up my brother a time or two! 

I loved unloading the bullets to find a large gust of smoke. 

It was one of the more pleasurable activities I've been able to do with my family. 

I'm for sure a fan. 

And with an accuracy of about 75% I gave everyone a surprised run for their money.  

Now, shooting the handgun... well that was another story. A much more difficult one. I'm afraid that my accuracy on that one was about 1%.

Maybe after I start working on #73 I will get a better accuracy percentage. 

Flash Back Fridays. First Computer Experience.

I don't know what prompted this memory but it just came into my head one day. Today I would like to document the first time I ever typed something on the computer. 

This is a pretty standard computer these days, in 2011. 

Sleek and proficient isn't it?

Aah, but t'was not always so. 

This was a pretty decent computer back in the early to mid 90’s. A model similar to the computer I was using in this story.

Onto the memory.

I was in 6^th grade typing a book report. The year was 1996. We of course didn’t have a computer at my home {my mother STILL does not have a computer but that is a completely different story} so I had to go to my aunt’s house to use hers. She had to leave to go run some errands so she was unavailable for consultation when I had a question. So, I began to type up my book report. I don’t remember the book I chose to do but I do remember the project I chose to complete. I chose to type up a fictional interview with the author. I was to be “conducting the interview” and I was to come up with questions that I'd like to ask her and I would imagine her responses. So, off I went.

Mind you all, this was my FIRST experience typing on a computer. The only time prior to this that I had even sat in front of a computer was probably in 2^nd grade (1992) when my class went to our brand new computer lab in the school and we were taught how to play some kind of pulley game with weights and math and stuff. The computers didn’t even have mice back then. And the screen was black with green letters. But it was a HUGE deal to have a computer lab with a classroom full of computers in our very own school! 

Wow. I get a silly fascination thinking back to those days.

So, I was typing along and I remember that I had no idea how to capitalize a letter except for pushing the “Caps Lock” button. So at the beginning of every sentence I would have to hit Caps Lock, the letter, then Caps Lock again. I remember it being a daunting task. That was also long before Word came out with the wonderful feature that capitalizes the words for you. I don't remember how long my book report was but I'm sure it couldn’t have been more than a page long. It took me about 2 ½ hours to write it… this was also a long time prior to me ever taking a typing class and I had no idea how the keys were organized on a keyboard. It was search and peck for a daunting amount of time.

“Why can't they just be in alphabetical order?” I remember thinking to myself.

The other problem that I remember having was quotation marks. I was typing up a “pretend” interview I was conducting with the author and I knew that everything needed to have quotation marks. There was just one problem. I had no clue of the existence of the shift key and I could not for the life of me figure out how the quotation marks were supposed to show up on the screen. All that was showing up when I pushed the button was an apostrophe. I was seriously stumped.

Too embarrassed to admit that I had no clue how to work the quotation button, and having no aunt around to ask anyways, I decided to just skip them. "Oh well" I thought. My teacher probably won't notice.

Well, book report time comes and I go to the front of the class to present. I hand her my paper to look over and start with my oral report. She asked a couple of quick questions about the paper. Then she asked me why there were no quotation marks on the conversation I was fictitiously having with the author. Of course I was way too embarrassed to admit that I tried but couldn’t figure out how to type them, and that each time I tried to get them to show up I just got an apostrophe, so I simply told her that I forgot about them. And that was embarrassing too. Followed by a lecture and a lesson on the proper uses of quotation marks (as if I didn’t know!) It was quite awkward for me.Cause the entire class knew I'd forgot about the quotations. "Duh Jerilyn, that is like English 101" I am sure they were all thinking.

What a disastrous first experience with typing on a computer.

I figured that would be quite a humorous story to share with my future kiddo’s, since I have a feeling they will be born from the womb ready to program computers and use fancy Ipads and other things that haven’t even been invented yet.

Well future kiddos, your mamma was born right about the same time as the computer was. It was years before a computer was a normal thing to have in a home and she had no idea how to use one until, well basically until she got to college and had to take a computer class.

Oh the memories.

I'm linking up to flash back Fridays. 

Flashback Friday is a weekly series on "Hopes and Dreams."  

Each Friday a different memory from Jessi's or John's past is posted.  You are invited to join the fun and record a memory of your own, too, whether it be on your blog, in your journal, in an audio file, etc.  The objective is to foster an appreciation and desire for personal record keeping as we are forming our personal histories.  Also, if you chose to blog your memory, you are invited to link up to our memory (but only if you wanna).