So, I feel like my 26 years on earth have taught me a couple things… I could probably list several things and soapbox my opinions, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just mention one today: Joy
At Merriam-Webster Online you get the following definition:
1 a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires b: the expression or exhibition of such emotion 2: a state of happiness or felicity
It’s interesting to see what types of things can bring us joy in life, but the one I continually think of is when we, as human beings, are a part of something unexpectedly positive (see: “good fortune” in 1a above). Those moments are the ones that stick with us and consistently bring a smile to our face.
Here’s an example, The Coca-Cola Happiness Machine:
I recently had a similar experience (and I apologize if this looks like I’m focusing way too much on getting “free” things, because that is not the point):
On December 30, 2009, I was talking to a romantic interest of mine… *embarrassed* She called and told me that her family wanted to fly me to where they were for New Year’s so I could meet them and spend some time with her before she went back to school. Within about 30 minutes we went from being excited at the idea, saddened that I felt I couldn’t afford the airfare, and then ecstatic when her parents offered to help with my travel expenses as a gift to their daughter! About 24 hours later I was on a flight to Milwaukee, WI. Excited? Ummm, YEAH! Was I joyous? OF COURSE!
This will likely be a story I remember forever (whether Nicole and I end up going the distance or not), NOT because someone else spent money on me, but because someone made a gesture to give of something they have in order to lighten my load and share of their good fortune. Not only did I get to spend a full weekend with someone who means so much to me, but I was overcome by the generosity of her family.
Think back on memories where someone else served you in a capacity beyond the expected.. When I was struggling with personal issues one night back in college, a quick call to my friends Jason and Erin ended up with me staying at their house until late into the evening just to talk. Jason had both school and work the next day, and Erin had classes of their own – but their sacrifice to be there for me when I struggled still gives me great joy to this day.
When I served an LDS mission, I remember the joy of seeing someone make life changes in order to become closer to God and Jesus Christ – and it was an even greater ecstasy when the most unexpected of people decided to make life changing commitments! That I could be a part of those experiences is incredibly rewarding to me, and those memories fill me with joy to this day.
One last example, and I’ll call it quits… Those who know me well know that I consider myself to have at least three families. My parents and sisters mean the world to me, and I certainly don’t mean to marginalize them by suggesting that there are other important people in my life, so I hope they don’t feel that way… But I’ve already mention Jason and Erin (with my little niece Aliya) who have been my family in Texas, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Travis and his family…
As I was heading into High School, Travis and I quickly became inseperable once we learned he would be moving into the same high school boundaries. Everything we did, for the most part, we did together – it was just more fun that way. His parents became Mom & Dad #2, and his brother and sisters quickly became family as well. It’s been 12+ years, and this is still the case. Where did I spend Thanksgiving this last year? With Travis, his wife Annie, Mom & Dad #2, and sister Becky with her husband and kids. You’d think I would feel the odd duck, but it was quite the contrary! It’s not quite the same as when I’m with my own parents and sisters, but that difference is almost indistinquishable (especially if you were to see how Becky and I chide each other)…
Families like Jason and Erin’s or Travis’s that have pulled me in and provided me with love and acceptance have given me more joy than I can express. Well, I could try expressing it, but it’d likely annoy y’all to death. As we move forward in our lives, there are so many ways in which we can bring a smile to another’s face or listen to those who need a listening ear. The Lord has put it into our hands to act in His name, so let’s go forth and bring joy to whomever we can.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had an over-the-top action movie with a killer (pun intended) cast and some serious action. Tropic Thunder doesn’t count.
With respect to the awesome action flicks of the 80’s and early 90’s, I present to you Sly Stallone’s latest project: The Expendables
UPDATE: Thanks Jason for pointing out that the older video wasn’t working. Hopefully this embed works for the time being…
UPDATE: Looks like the internets just can’t handle such a sweet movie trailer. Look for it yourself, somewhere else. I don’t know why it keeps getting pulled, but I know I’m not going to repost it every five minutes. Here’s a picture of a kitty that exemplifies how I feel:
Soooo, when I was a freshman at BYU I took a class to work on a film project that would rival something PBS was running called “The Real Jesus“. The documentary, rather than just a simple film, would be about Jesus Christ but without discrediting or ignoring His role as the Messiah and Savior. Apparently the project was put on the shelf for a while since it seemed like a fairly large undertaking, and there were already other documentaries in production (check out the Journey of Faith docs if you haven’t already).
Well, now it looks like some waiting and prayers have paid off! MY DOCUMENTARY IS HAPPENING!!!
More updates to come soon. I’m feeling a good blog post coming on…
I just turned a year older, and hopefully wiser too, on July 6th… I had a really fun and noteworthy adventure all day, so I’ll share a bit.
8:30am -wake up and harass Crystal for taking so long to wake up. (btw, my friend Crystal Gerber, from BYU, came out to celebrate and visit!)
9:15am -harass Crystal for STILL not waking up
9:45am -harass Crystal about getting off the couch, getting her swimsuit and such on, and getting in the car
10:00am - leave for Galveston Island! FYI – the drive is longer than I remember… Not a problem normally, but Crystal was STILL sleepy…
11:05am -realize I need money to park at the beach… Or at least that is what the high school age’d youngin’ told me when I got there. I asked if there was a birthday discount and he looked at me like I was speaking french… So, we went to Walgreens and bought suntan lotion (which I didn’t use) and lemonade and got $10 in cash back at the register.
11:15am - park at the beach! Note: swimming at said beach is fun, but realize you will end up a mile down the beach since the current runs diagonally rather than the way you’d expect.
12:30pm -Crystal says, “Ewww!!! I’ve got crabs!”
1:00pm -leave the beach and drive to Saltgrass Steakhouse on Seawall Blvd (still in Galveston). I got the half-rack of ribs off of the lunch menu and just about died… If you haven’t had the ribs at Saltgrass, do yourself a favor!
1:45pm -leave Galveston Island. This is when I realized that I was super sun burned… Actually, I realized when I got inside the 610 loop in Houston and noticed that my left arm was tingly. I was adding to my burn with some trucker tannage on the way home. ick
3:00pm -realize I don’t have a checkerboard cake pan set! Annie and Travis stole mine (though I guess I originally lent it to them for Travis’s birthday last year… Anyway, I love Williams & Sonoma because they had one for $25, thus saving the day.
4:00pm - go to Target to get supplies and argue with Crystal over a “It’s My Birthday” button that she insisted on buying and demanded that I wear the rest of the day.
6:00pm - leave for Buffalo Wild Wings and meet up with about 15+ of my awesome friends! I love BWW, and I was really happy to see everyone there to celebrate with me. I got to catch up with a few people I haven’t seen in a while, and I ate some of the most delicious food…
9:00pm - return to the house for cake & ice cream deliciousness! This is when everyone decided to embarrass me by going around and individually telling me why I am loved… It’s awesome in theory, and I certainly appreciated it, but holy cow was I embarrassed… Yikes!
10:00pm -did NOT get a kiss from Chera. I just want everyone to know – she’s been making a big deal about me “dreaming about a kiss” from her on my birthday, and I didn’t ask for one nor did she offer one. End of story.
11:30pm - got all kinds of phone calls from great friends in Utah, and made a couple call backs as well. I really do have a lot of quality friends in a lot of different places. I’ve seriously been blessed!
12:30am (the 7th) - End the night by watching The Fugitive w/ Crystal while we both fell asleep…
I really feel blessed to have such great friends and people who care about me. I didn’t include info about my family, but my parents and sisters were calling me all day long to share their love for me. I got one of the coolest gifts ever in the form of a Luau Murder Mystery Dinner set! I’m pretty excited to pull that one off someday! haha… Thanks again to everyone!
Here are some attached pictures of the festivities:
So, I’ve continued messing around with the blog because I love getting involved on mini-tech projects. This time I installed about a dozen plugins and went to town making sure they work exactly how I want them to. Most of them are “under the hood” type stuff, but there are a couple that you’ll notice and possibly take advantage of.
RosenBlog for Gamers
So, I don’t officially call my blog the RosenBlog, but I very well might in the near future… The point, however, is that you can now view my blog in an optimized format on the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation Portable (PSP), or the Apple iPhone. Each browser displays a tiny bit differently, and now I’m set to optimize for each of those browser configurations.
(Sorry, I don’t have screenshots…)
Greet Box
The Greet Box is kind of fun and new. Depending on how you get to the blog, you may find a semi-personalized message for you as you access a specific post. For Example, when coming from a Facebook.com link you might see the following:
These messages are pretty discreet and are easily closeable. I think it’s kind of a fun way to encourage spreading the word… This also works for those who come in from Digg, Reddit, or all by themselves (displays a recommendation to add an RSS feed). Nothing too huge, but kind of fun.
Sociable
Sociable is a simple sharing tool that gives a reader quick access to the correct link in order to share a specific post with the rest of the world. You should see the following buttons beneath every post if you visit the actual post page (not just the main page with multiple posts listed).
Facebook Connect
Now my readers can post comments with their Facebook ID which does a couple different things… One, it makes them a “user” more or less that can have their comments tracked on the site (I think – pretty sure). The other is that it allows users to post directly to their Facebook Feed that they have visited my site and commented on one of the posts.
You’ll notice below (if you’re on the single post page, not the main feed homepage) that you now see the Facebook Connect button:
(Note that I hate the way it is currently formatted and I will be modifying it as soon as I can find the right code… The padding and the text above the button are hidden away in some .php file within the plugin, and I’m not finding it.)
Once logged in, you’ll see this fun addition to the corner of your browser window:
Once you’re logged in and setup you just jump down to the comments box, input your text and it will post your information while your credentials come from Facebook.
You’ll have the standard Facebook stuff pop up and ask you a couple questions (like if you want to post a note in your profile feed or not) and then your comment will be up for moderation. Nothing super amazingly spectacular, but I’m all about providing options to people, and I think this one is kind of cool.
Statpress
Ok, so this one isn’t one that the rest of you can see, but I think it’s cool enough to share… I installed Statpress to do some simple analytics work for me. Nothing super spectacular (though I can install a couple other plugins that would work in coordination with this one to provide a LOT of info), but I think it is pretty cool to get some basic information from my users in terms of how they got to the blog and what they’re checking out. I don’t get tons of traffic, nor do I care all that much, but I like to feed my curiosity every once in a while.
(click on the image to embiggen and actually see the text)
That’s about it! Just thought I’d share some things. Nothing huge to update in the personal life other than that I’m enjoying the summer and my friends. Definitely looking forward to Travis and Annie visiting (likely) around Thanksgiving, and I’m pumped for Tony’s wedding in September. Also, I turn OLD on July 6th… Weird…
I'm a 26 yr./old guy living in Houston, TX. I'm just trying to live the dream and love every moment of it. This blog is where I drop my thoughts off for processing by the masses - enjoy!
