Fashion: Epic Fail

After running out of Axe bodyspray recently, I was toying with the idea of getting some real cologne to use instead of Axe, which bothers me in part because it usually lasts all of two hours.  Yesterday, I drove over to Kohls and after wandering around the clearance section, I went to the entire one shelf of mens fragrances and realized that I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.

Fashion and fragrances have never been much of a strength of mine (as demonstrated by 90% of my wardrobe being from www.bustedtees.com) and I realized last night how painfully obvious that little point really is.  Despite there being very few potential women in my life, I do realize that there are certain social advantages to being well dressed and smelling like you know what you’re doing with your life, so this is part of what spurred me to wander aimlessly around the clothes racks and stare with raised eyebrows at the various colognes.  I think that a  large part of the problem is that I know so little about what looks good and what doesn’t, that if I do manage to buy something that I think would work out perfectly in social situations such as dates or being around large numbers of strangers (i.e. FHE), it usually doesn’t, and alternately if I am in an outfit that works well, I’ve  usually found that I get self conscious in strange clothes that aren’t normal, and my internal out-of-place panic destroys the evening for me. (the only exception to this rule is when I was in a tuxedo- I look awesome in a tuxedo.)

I commented about this little problem on Facebook, and one of my friends offered to help out, so hopefully that will pan out and I can get  some much needed help with this problem.

So our store officially opened yesterday, I was glad to have customers to help in order to pass the time.  I was put in toys though, and it took me most of the night to finish all the pallets and get everything on the shelf and into overstock.  For the last hour, everyone was sent over to help finish softlines, and four of us worked on stocking all the bras in the women’s section, and that was… interesting.  Audrey summarized it well when she said that I’m the only man on the face of the planet whose secret goal isn’t to stock bras, and she was probably right.  I’m just glad none of the models were doing sexy poses or faces, or I probably would have had to hurt someone.

The Attack of the Women From out of Nowhere

I’m starting to suspect that fate has a sense of humor when it comes to the women in my life. I never get to work with just one girl in my life- anytime I start to hit it off with one girl, at least two others appear from out of nowhere and start vying for my attention.  The twist lately is that Aubree (my unofficial girlfriend from about 5 years ago) started texting me out of the blue over the weekend.

The trick about Aubree is that it didn’t end very well.  The reoccuring situation that transpired everytime we hung out began with her IMing me and complaining about how alone and miserable she was, and how she would be so much better if only someone would hang out with her (it was always “someone”, this girl was incapable of using anything but pronouns).  After that I would grow weary of the complaining and let her come over to my house because I was a pushover and could never say no.  After a while, I turned into the only person on the face of the planet who could seem to brighten her mood, and I got tired of being “the only one,” because I had better things to do with my time than hold up an insecure teenager who did nothing but dream of a knight in shining armor to come whisk her away without her having to lift a finger to change anything about her life.  With about 4 adults rooting and advising behind me, my pushover teenage self managed to tell her that I couldn’t continue with the way things were and that I had to stop.

Anyway, so in texting her back, I did sense some improvement in her maturity, but after the “my life sucks because my battery is dying and I want to keep talking to you or have you come over” comment, I concluded that she’s still holding out for that knight, and I’m definitely not going there.  Either way, she reminds me too much of Emalee and Heather anyway, and they happen to be the physical manifestations of everything I regret and hate about myself.

On a lighter note, I had a good night at work.  I got to train a new girl all night on how to bin our overstock, and that was nice to be able to pass on what I know about the system and be able to provide some much needed authentic training for the store, which there seems to be a serious lack of here.  Everyone having to teach themselves everything with no formal training is half the reason why we’ve been having to redo everything three times.

I also have the next two days off, which means that I don’t have to go back to work until after the store is open.  Yay for an emptier overstock!  Other than tomorrow’s date, I don’t have much planned other than the weekly FHE with the single’s ward tonight, which should be interesting.

I pulled a Peter

So I’ve started going to the gym in the mornings after work, setting the gym into  a set schedule has worked wonders for me.  I could have chosen to go to the local rec center, but I decided that I’d rather pay a little bit more for Gold’s Gym where they have HDTVs every couple treadmills so I can catch the morning news on MSNBC.  It’s working pretty well so far,  I talked to one of the personal trainers there who gave me some tips on working the muscles I don’t manage to use while stocking boxes and boxes of freight every night.

Speaking of work, the store opens this Wednesday, so I’ll be glad to finally  be able to actually buy stuff for my breaks and lunch.  Supposedly they’re going to have some vendors operating booths or something along those lines celebrating the grand opening.  I know there’s a sign up sheet for people to dress up in M&Ms costumes, at least.

For those of you who have seen the movie Office Space, you’ll understand what I mean by saying that I pulled a total Peter last night.  One of my friends from back in High School (well, we haven’t hung out much, it’s really more like a “friend of a friend” dynamic) started talking to me on Facebook, starting with a “why don’t you ever talk to me” dialogue.  The interesting thing about this girl is that I can never really tell when she’s joking or when she’s being serious.  Admittedly, I am pretty bad at picking that sort of thing up, but this girl is on an entirely different level from women I’ve ever dealt with.  Anyway, we somehow got onto the topic of how both of us happen to be single, and I mentioned that I’m not really looking for any relationships since I have really weird opinions about that sort of thing, and she responded by demanding I find a girlfriend.  After sarcastically conceding to her and saying I would, I continued by jokingly asked her out.

She said yes, and that she’d be able to go on Tuesday.  After realizing what I had just done and knowing I had absolutely no idea what in the world I could do for a date, I told her that I’d text her and let her know what the plan would be for the date.  *shoots self in foot*  When I was telling Audrey about this at work last night, at first she laughed and said I’m a tactless nerd for asking someone out over Facebook chat, which for the most part is true, and then getting mad at me for dating women when Lauren back at SUU apparently still has a humongous crush on me.

Let’s see… Three hours away, no way to see each other on a regular basis, a lack of interest, me having PTSD when it comes to long term relationships…  I don’t think it’d fly.

At any rate, I’m still stuck with no plans for Tuesday.  The first thing that pops into my head is dinner and a movie, but that’s kinda cliche, plus I need to have something that promotes conversation, but is quick enough that I can stick to the getting-to-know-you conversations and then be done for the evening (especially with her, since she’s not much of a talker).

Any ideas?

New computer and a microwaved laptop

A few weeks ago, our Dell desktop in the front room decided that it was no longer happy with its existance as an outdated machine, and decided to take its own life to join all of its old friends in Computer Heaven.

After its sudden and quiet death, we decided that it was time for a new computer.  I talked with Dru and his IT genius roommate, and they suggested we go over and get computers from the school surplus warehouse.  So a couple of days ago, we took my car over  to Lindon and and got two HP computers with 2.6 Ghz processors and 512 MB of RAM for $200, and they threw in their monitors for free.  After setting the one computer up in the front room in the Dell’s old place and the other in my room, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the RAM from Old Faithful was compatible with the new HPs, and I modded my HP accordingly.  I have yet to install the drivers from Old Faithful’s graphics card.

Work is slowing down considerably, it turns out we’re way too fast for management to keep up.  After we finish what little stocking there is to do, the majority of most nights lately has been spent mopping under endcaps and various other busywork cleaning.

We microwaved one of the old dead laptops that were lying around yesterday.  We got video of it with Rune’s mini camera that he recently bought, and it turned out not to be quite as dramatic and explosive as we hoped.  It just caught on fire and sparked occasionally.

The last thing that we managed to do lately was fix that part in mom’s Nissan 300ZX, so now she has her car back and we won’t be using my car for quite so many errands anymore.  Yay!

Update o’ Power

Wow, it’s been a long time since I last blogged.

So I guess the biggest update to my life is that I’m not at SUU anymore because I ran out of money.  I could have stayed there and got a huge student loan, but I decided that it would be better to wait until next fall to go back to school, considering I can use my mom’s 2008 taxes to get an amazing FAFSA.  The second big thing is that Cory, my meth smoking step-father who we’ve been working to get put in prison since June, killed himself on Christmas Eve two weeks before his trial, so mom gets to keep everything that the divorce would have taken now, so no worries about having no money and not being able to sell the house.

Now that things have settled down, I bought an old junker car to get around in and I’m working at a nearby Wal-Mart as a graveyard stocker, and I don’t hate it nearly as much as I thought I would.  The other night was a drag, though, because I got stuck binning overstock with the permafried kid, whose reflexes and processing capacity make me convinced that he’s high every single night he comes into work, but for the most part I enjoy unloading freight and stocking shelves.

My hometeaching companion gave me a call last week, and he turned out to be awesome.  He’s in Army intelligence, and he has all sorts of awesome stories from when he was over in Afghanistan.  He knows most of the few active members in the ward, so he was a great resource for getting to know a bunch of the people at FHE.  I met with the Bishop on Sunday, and I think that he’s one of my favorite Bishops I’ve ever had.  We talked about the possibility of me getting to be an Elder, and he figured I could get my Patriarchal blessing as early as April.

So that’s pretty much all the big things that I’ve had in my life recently.  It’s an interesting experience on my days off to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at 4:00 in the morning.  I like being able to go get groceries and know for a fact that there will be absolutely no line.

Insomnia and a million thoughts

2:30 in the morning. I think mom eloquently described insomnia on one occasion when she said that you feel tired when you’re upright, but then you lay down in bed and your head explodes with millions of thoughts.

At least that’s how it is for me.

So math never actually did speed up and get complicated. I was talking to my professor after class and he said that Math 1010 is roughly equivalent to Algebra 2 in High School, which I surpassed and went into Precalculus. In about five minutes after class, he showed me and another guy the sum of tomorrow’s lesson- that you can find the y-intercept of a line if you have a point by plugging in the x and y into y=mx+b and solving for b. I’m planning on just getting the homework online for over the weekend and not worrying about math tomorrow.

Along the lines of the ML, it turns out there was a big miscommunication when we got hired. We were told that we’d get 20 hours and get to work on homework in the downtime, but that wasn’t the case. It turns out that the idea behind work study isn’t that we’re able to work study our other classwork, management considers work study to be us getting paid to study various skills to become more effective workers, which roughly translates to on-the-job training, and considering that this training is all computer software that I could use in the real world, I’m certainly fine with it.

I still haven’t worked out the Hannah thing. I have no idea how she feels about me or even if she’s interested, so in the mean time I’ll wait to see if she shows she’s interested at church or something.

The thing about Allie is very odd though, and I can’t figure out what in the world she’s thinking. When we first met, we were walking around the block with Lauren and Adrianna, and she and I seemed to hit off incredibly well. Within a few days Lauren told me that she was interested in me, which was great, and then suddenly it was like I became a walking Allie repellent stick. Lauren told me that Allie didn’t want me around in the room when she was there, and whenever we walked by, she would leave and go somewhere else. Around the middle of the repellent phase, she texted me once to say that she felt nauseated and had a doctor’s appointment, and she didn’t want to be around anyone in general when she felt sick. Now the past few days, she’s been texting me and saying that we should totally go on another walk around the block like we all did the other night. My confusion comes from the fact that it seemed to be targeted at me specifically, not everyone. Oh well, I’ll have to wait and see how that pans out.

I went on a date this evening, that was fun. I went over to Alayna’s apartment where we and her roommates ate dinner and watched the movie I helped her capture clips from while I was at work for a powerpoint she had in class. It was pretty awesome.

[rant]

So I came to a solid definition as to my stance on love and relationships in general. I consider myself a cynical romantic- I think that love is certainly a nice idea and it works for some people, but as a general rule it’s doomed to fail.

[/rant]

In which I realize I’m a moron, and other thoughts

So I was puttering around this morning getting ready for church, and after glancing at the clock, I realized I had about ten minutes to be dressed, presentable, and a block away from the other end of campus.

With scriptures in hand, I was getting ready to dart over to church when Matt came in asking whether this week was Stake Conference. After we checked the ward and stake calendars, there was no sign of stake conference, and with a satisfied tone he said that we didn’t have to go for another two hours.

That would explain why no one walked back to the dorms last week at the same time I did. I thought we were in the 17th singles ward. *sigh*

So after church, I came back, read some MegaTokyo, and went to eat dinner with Audrey and Kasey. I then got to the evening’s fireside twenty mintues late, but enjoyed what I did catch. After it was done, we had ward prayer upstairs in the church building, and they gave us doughnuts. (Woot! Free food!) After we finished, I ran into Hannah and walked with her and a couple other girls back to the dorm.

Speaking of Hannah… I sat next to her in Sunday School, and while we were walking, she flirted with me a bit, but I didn’t really do much back.

Here’s the thing- I don’t know quite what to think there. The best way I can describe Hannah is having the social spark of Colten with the inner LDS happiness of Hailey. As a general rule, I consider girls like that to be out of my league- they’d be much happier in life with some nice RM that they can go get married and live happily (or at least relatively happy) ever after. I’m certainly flattered that she’s interested in me, but I’m running on a year worth of internalizing that a long-term happy relationship with any woman, let alone a beautiful happy mormon woman, is unrealistic and doomed to fail. Whenever Hannah flirts with me, my instincts instantly pop up and say “no LDS girl with half a brain would ever consider someone with a history like you, especially when there’s so many spiritual RMs running around.” So in my head I’m dumbfounded as to what she sees in me, and my body just smiles and wishes I could tell her how genuinely proud and impressed I am that she made it through puberty with full spirituality still intact. She’s the kind of person that makes me want to go read scriptures and pray just because I see a bit of Christ in her eyes.

Gaa I’m pathetic. *sigh* Anyhoo, I’m hoping to catch Leesa and go with her tomorrow when she rolls some heads up in management. The best way I can describe Tom’s actions over the weekend is something akin to a tantrum, considering how he didn’t say anything to us before he cut everyone’s hours in half and dropped off a contract that was printed for the librarians and not us, threatening over email that if we don’t sign by Wednesday, we’re fired. The wisdom of this whole thing completely eludes me. It’s as if he’s trying to kill the ML before it ever gets off the ground.

Work complications

According to Tom, our boss, this 8.5×11 piece of paper took a year’s worth of red tape to be put in the front lobby of the library. I’m starting to worry that the bureaucracy in the SUU Library may in fact rival the red tape of the American Fork Police Department.

I learned this little fact at our first ML staff meeting last night. The problem with our situation in the ML is not that we are unable to help students, it is the fact that no one knows that we are here. I’ve had multiple people hesitantly walk in, and be stunned to find that the ML is open to ALL faculty and students. Our greatest need right now is advertising, and I get the feeling that Tom is afraid to let us put up an “All Students and Faculty Welcome” sign, for fear that it would go against some vague “Don’t advertise the ML” committee.

Instead, he’s talked around and managed to secure for us to be privileged to update the old site (-scheduled to be done in two to three weeks), which is obscurely placed in the Library page. The theory behind this site is that we will finally be able to advertise the ML through approved red-taped methods. The problem with this theory, though, is that students would have to search for the site whose purpose is to get them interested in learning more about the ML in the first place. This is oxymoronic.

We finished the meeting with everyone getting the message, “Produce an eye catching, awesome website that demonstrates we’re competent multimedia gurus in three weeks, so that the people who already know about us can come see our advertisement. Oh- and no one should be allowed to do homework until it’s done.”

Everyone is kinda mad at Tom because he seems to believe that a red-tape, amazing site is feasible in three weeks when it isn’t, and fundamentally oxymoronic either way. I keep suggesting that we put up the “everyone is welcome” sign. It’s not like anyone would do anything about it, they’d have to wade through a web of red tape to get permission first. -_-

The fast update o’power

Since I got the HP camera for my birthday, I’ve been taking lots of pictures. Here’s a quick update of some of the stuff I’ve been up to and people I’ve met.

Matt

Squirrel

B300 is definitely not a brain trust.

Ah, the touchdown cannon.

Me and Allie

Lauren

Adrianna

Showing off his muscles! Whoo!

Ah, my bedroom, in all its glory.

Hanging out at work in the MML

Audrey found a boyfriend! I was stunned. The guy’s an RM, too.

Lying in the dorms and hanging out

Beginning of an adventure…

I’m officially a college student now!  Last week I got a ride from my grandparents down to Silver Reef, leaving a bunch of my non essential stuff behind because they couln’t fit it in their Buick.  I moved in yesterday, so I am now good to go.

I got up this morning and took my first shower in the dorm bathroom, which was an experience.  I hung my stuff carefully on the hook outside my stall, took a shower, and then proceeded to lift my clothes into the stall…  That’ll take some getting used to.

Anyway, so then Heather, one of the techies came to install my internet for me, and a little bit before she was done, my roommate came and moved in.  He’s pretty quiet, a bit shy, so not really what I was expecting in a roommate, but then again he could have been some punk with an addiction to heavy metal and hard rap, so I’m not complaining.

After that was all taken care of, I met some people down in the main foyer who were sitting around talking, and after introducing ourselves, we went to go watch Legally Blonde, which I suppose was relevant for the college atmosphere.  By the end of the movie, there was about a dozen of us all sitting around, and we went outside to play games.  When we got tired, we somehow packed all of us into Trent’s dorm and watched Disturbia.  Then we took Guitar Hero up into the Loft, a room on the third floor with a huge flatscreen TV, surround sound, and couches to boot to play Guitar Hero.

Around 9:00, I was getting really hungry, so Hannah, one of the girls we were with, and I went to get Panda Express, which was really yummy.  …that and Hannah’s really cute, too.  I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would meet a sweet mormon girl with straight long brown hair on the second day of being here.  It’s okay though, I haven’t been on a mission, so therefore I don’t have to worry about getting really involved with any mormon girls or anything.  They’re not interested if I haven’t been on a mission.

Phew, I’m still a bachelor.