Thanksgiving 2006

For Thanksgiving Benj and I went up to Salt Lake and stayed with Hyrum's family. I was responsible for olives and jello, but I didn't remember to bring any along, so Kim picked em up for me. This might have been the first time I ever made jello. I'm not sure. But I made a fun multi-colored version, with mandarin oranges and pears included. Too bad I forgot my camera, or I could show off some pics of my extreme jello skeelz.

On Thanksgiving we had me, Benj, Hyrum's family, Mark and Sarah, Matthew, and all of Amy's family, all at Hyrum's house. So it was pretty full, I think 18 people total. But there was plenty of food, and lots of fun.

Friday morning Mark, Sarah, and I went jogging and we took Caz in the stroller. I think she enjoyed it, but by the time we got back she was asleep. Little sleeping beauty. Friday night we headed to Provo and Springville to visit the grandparents. At Grandma B's, Benj played some stuff on the guitar, and Sarah played a couple things on the violin, so I think Grandma enjoyed that. Then we headed over to the Tanners' and played our usual game of progressive rummy. Matthew was victorious, so as Mark would say, he must have cheated.

We stayed at Mark and Sarah's Friday night, and then Mark, Benj, and I infiltrated BYU and played racquetball for a bit before the big game -- BYU v. Utah. We all went over to Matthew's to watch the rivalry football game. Mark, Sarah, Matthew, Benj, and I were there along with some of Matthew's friends and roommates.

BYU dominated the 1st quarter, then didn't do much of anything in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. We were down by 10 before we decided to start playing again. In the 4th quarter we scored two touchdowns to take the lead 27-24. Then Utah came back and scored to go up 31-27 with 1:19 left in the game. Quarterback John Beck took over and made an amazingly poised drive down the field, including a nice pass into tight coverage on 4th down to keep the drive alive. We were on the 11 or 12 yard line with three seconds on the clock, and one more play to go.

The video below doesn't do justice to what an amazing final play it was. Beck was running right, all the defenders were rolling right also, and as he was being tackled, he managed to throw across his body the entire width of the field to a wide open Johnny Harline, for the win! Pandemonium ensued in the apartment, and probably in much of Provo and Cougar Nation.

Update: The video originally posted here has apparently been removed from Google Video. I'm not sure if it was for copyright infringement or something. Too bad, it was a cool montage of the game.

The Dallas Mafia

I was in Dallas this last week from Thursday till Saturday for a real estate seminar, about how to wholesale property. To "wholesale" property means to buy and then sell quickly for a small profit, as opposed to keeping and fixing up and then selling for a bigger profit, or keeping and renting out.

I didn't get to experience much of Dallas, since I was in the hotel 95% of the time I was there. I stayed at the same hotel where the seminar was being held, so I didn't have to rent a car. The hotel was the Crowne Plaza, which was a pretty nice hotel, except they don't have the capability to schedule wakeup calls more than one day in advance, and someone set off the fire alarm our first night there by smoking in their room, and there were no restaurants within 100 miles besides Jack in the Box. Actually 100 miles is an exaggeration, but there were no other restaurants within walking distance. Although technically I could walk 100 miles, but probably not in one day, and definitely not in time to be back for the seminar. Unless I just walked on the treadmill in the hotel workout room. Which was not the nicest workout room I've ever seen, but having somewhere to work out in the same building where I was sleeping did motivate me enough to get up and work out every morning, which was good.

But anyway, we did go to Jack in the Box a lot. At least once a day in fact. For lunch on the first day, and for breakfast also on the other days, since we didn't want to pay $16 for the hotel breakfast buffet again like we did the first day, even though it was pretty good. But at night we got the hotel shuttle guys to take us to another restaurant for dinner. The first night we went to Jason's Deli, which I used to go to a lot when I worked in Scottsdale. I didn't realize it was a national chain, but apparently it is. The next night we went to Pappa's BBQ. It was quite excellent. So good, in fact, that we went back the next night as well. But there was one little problem: Every restaurant in the area started with "Pappa." There was Pappa's BBQ, Pappacito's, Pappadeaux, Papa John's, Pappa Bros, and Pappa's Cowboy Pickins! (OK I made that last one up, but all the rest were real, and I think I left out a few.) Apparently the Dallas mafia Dons go by "Pappa." Or something. So when the shuttle came to pick us up, of course he went to Pappa Bros instead of Pappa's BBQ. So we got stuck waiting for hours, or at least 45 minutes. But it was worth the wait, that mafia can really cook BBQ!

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Totally unrelated note: On the Snide Remarks website that I commented on recently, I ran across this column that I found pretty hilarious. You should check it out (if you're bored and have nothing better to do than read random Internet posts, which you just proved to be true by reading this one).

Nathaniel is currently the 65th most popular baby name

I ran across this fun little site, where you can view the history of your name popularity across the last 100 years.

And then there's this one, where you can find out where you rank in salary.

Want to crash on the couch?

I spent most of last week in San Diego, California, for a real estate seminar. The seminar was at the Marriot in Del Mar, which runs about $300 per night. So I didn't want to stay there. I checked the other hotels close by, and they were all in the $150-300 range. I figured it would be no problem to find someone through friends or social networking sites that would let me sleep on their couch for a few nights. But surprisingly, no one I contacted was up for a stranger in their home, except for this one guy on LDS Linkup who said, "I would love to help but I just got transferred to Fallujah, Iraq." Dah!

So I ended up booking a hotel on Hotwire. I got it for about $60 per night, and it was only about 15 minutes away from Del Mar, so I was pretty happy with it. But then I showed up Monday night to the hotel, and they had no record of my reservation, AND they were sold out! I showed the printout to the lady on duty, but that didn't help, so we called up Hotwire, and they said, "Hmm... they have no record of it, well sorry, there's nothing we can do. Why don't you try calling hotels.com?" Losers! Hotwire is LAME! So I called hotels.com, I called other hotels in the area, and finally about 1 AM I ended up at a Holiday Inn about 5 miles down the road, for $120.

Then today I was on cnn.com and I noticed an article entitled Need a place to crash? Try a stranger's couch. Since I had just spent some time fruitlessly trying to find a couch to crash on, I clicked on the link. The article was about several networks of low budget travelers who crash on each other's couches! If only I'd known a few days before. The article profiles a guy who's been traveling for 1000 straight days sleeping on other people's couches!

I went ahead and created an account on couchsurfing.com and hospitalityclub.org, both of which look pretty legit. Of course there are possibly safety issues, etc., but it looks like a great way to save money while traveling. I've got another seminar coming up soon, so I'll have to try it out and see what happens.

The Sponge Bob II

To commemorate Kim's masterpiece, Benj has contributed the first annual replica of The Sponge Bob:

The Sponge Bob II