Wednesday, April 24, 2013

My Favorite Songs

(Fork and Knife) - Brand New


Words in the Water - Thrice

Tony the Tiger - Manchester Orchestra

Ascension - O'Brother

Classic Cars - Bright Eyes

We Looked Like Giants - Death Cab for Cutie

Creepers - Kid Cudi

Swerve City - Deftones

Upward Over the Mountain - Iron & Wine


When the Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin

When I Met Death - Right Away, Great Captain!

The Night Starts Here - Stars

Favourite Colour - Tokyo Police Club

Either/Or - Aretha's Gold

Mattresses Underwater - Colour Revolt

It Never Stops - Bad Books


Carolina Drama - The Raconteurs

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel

Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart - Against Me!

The Good Life - Weezer

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Home Plate


There are prettier places in the world, but there’s no place like home. My family’s home has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a basement, and all the other amenities of a normal home. It’s in a large neighborhood, called the Meadows, in a town, called Castle Rock, in the suburbs of Denver. It was built in 1992, but we’ve only lived there since 1995. There are at least 100 other houses in that neighborhood that look the exact same. It’s a cookie-cutter house. This is our house on Google Maps:


It’s a very generic house with a basketball hoop in front. Nobody really shoots basketballs anymore, it’s mostly used as a post to tie up the dog when he’s in the front yard.

This is looking out our house during a blizzard:


 And at it, after:


There are wood floors throughout most of the house. Most of the wood is honey colored, very light. It's oak, I believe. Don't quote me on that though, I'm not a logger. They look like this:


The walls are subtle shades of grey, with one red wall in the dining room. The family room has blue walls. When you walk into the house, the first thing you see is a 6’x3’ picture of pineapples hanging in the living room. I think that sums up the feel of the whole house.  

There are a lot of stairs in the house. The family room is split from the rest of the first floor. The master bedroom is split from the rest of the second floor. All of our knees crack as we walk up the stairs. It’s a Kendall thing.

One bannister has Dustin’s name carved in it. He didn’t carve it though. I did, because I wanted to get him in trouble.

At different times, I’ve lived in each of the three non-master bedrooms, and in the basement. One room has green walls halfway up to resemble a baseball stadium. Another (which has mostly been my sisters’ room) has stars on the walls. The third has camouflage walls. The basement had curtains. The second story bathroom has a baseball theme with yellow and grey walls and some pin striping and old fashioned baseball logos.

The family room has a brick fireplace. Every Christmas, we have taken pictures of the family hanging stockings. My mom has taken all of those pictures and put them on a wall in the hallway between the living room and family room. On the opposite wall, there are the mission plaques for the four of us. Now that Jared is home, that is complete. There’s a few family pictures scattered around the house. We aren’t much of a family for family pictures. If you ever end up there, you can see the family picture with Dustin, Jared, and I and our bleached blonde hair. The 90s were weird. The favorite family picture is the one with me eating a grilled cheese sandwich, Jared blowing bubble gum, and Dustin’s foot in Jaimee’s face. That photo shoot took some time to get a normal picture.

The living room has vaulted ceilings, so every year we get a ridiculously huge Christmas tree. One year the tree fell on Dustin. I wish it did that every year.

The living room also has a big window that has incredible views. This is our view of Pikes Peak:


This is view of some of the other mountains around us:


We have wild rabbits everywhere. There's an owl that lives in the tree behind our house. You can hear coyotes at night. Sometimes there are foxes that run around our house.


The backyard is on a slope. We built a rock wall at the top for a garden. The dog usually walks around the wall and knocks some of the rocks off. The dog has also created these paths throughout the backyard, so there’s no grass where he always walks. Dogs are weird. 

I don’t know why, but as kids we thought the coolest thing was to be able to climb the fences. We would climb the fences and sit on them for hours. Kids are weird.

The backyard has a brick patio that is all sorts of not level. There’s a fire pit on the edge of the porch. One night my friends and I were having trouble starting a fire. So we used gasoline. There was a fireball that scorched the trees around it. Jaimee freaked out on me. I don’t know why. It started a fire.

The garage is supposed to hold 2 cars, but has only ever had one. The dog has a kennel in the corner where he should sleep every night (he sleeps inside because he’s spoiled). The other side has random things like tools, bikes, hockey gear, baseball gear, and other collected crap. During the summer, I would pull the car out of the driveway and shoot hockey pucks up the driveway into the garage. There was a table against the wall that I would use as a goal. The wall ended up looking like this:


One puck made it all the way through to the other side. Oops.

We used to play wiffle ball in the front yard and cul-de-sac all summer long. We'd pitch to each other in the backyard with real baseballs sometimes. Our neighbor hated how many fence panels we destroyed with errant pitches.

It’s not a mansion. It’s not fancy. It’s got nicks and dings and scratches and scars. It’s my home. 


"So you pulled my heart out
And I don't mind bleeding.
But I came to love you
Am I born to bleed?
Any old time you keep me waiting.
Waiting. Waiting."
-Lonely Boy- The Black Keys

Monday, April 1, 2013

My Thoughts as of Late Volume 2

I've been eating more vegetables lately. That doesn't mean that I’m a healthier eater. Just that it’s been there and I've eaten it. Asparagus, tomatoes, salad, etc. Things like beets, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli? Still going to make me gag. Did I enjoy them? Yeah, sure.

If I had to recommend reading one thing on the internet, at this point in my life, I would recommend Katie Baker’s weekly column on Grantland. She is as hyped by the Oilers’ young guns as I am. She “Nail”s it every Thursday. It helps that I am in Geotech lab, which is boring, and I sit in front of a computer for an hour while Andrew lectures on who knows what, so I can watch each week’s sickest snipes. This video she posted one week is my favorite celebration ever. 



Whenever I go on vacation I forget to bring music. I detest the radio, so I always buy one CD to listen to in the car. One trip was Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. My trip to DC was Brothers by The Black Keys. So now, every time I listen to them, I thinking of sweating like crazy and taking a million pictures of famous places. Also I think of driving along two lane highways of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania on my way from my cousins’ house to Gettysburg to Camden Yards. It was a good vacation. This was my favorite memorial on that trip. It is right outside of Arlington Cemetery. I like it because my Great Grandfather was a Seabee.



I don’t know how braggable this is, but I have become an excel wizard. Give me something to do on a spreadsheet and consider it done, sahn.

My favorite show is Shameless. It is about a family in South Chicago that has all odds stacked against them, and sometimes everything works out in their favor, but most times nothing works out in their favor. It is compelling. If it was easy, it wouldn't be hard.

Next week's season finale is going to be good.


I've been struggling with school the last few weeks. I bombed my last transportation test. I got a 58%. The first test I got a 92%. On the last Geotech lab report we got back, our grade was a 14/20. The first report we turned in, we got 20/20. I need to figure out how to focus right now, but it’s not clicking. I’d rather read Calvin and Hobbes.

I watched Star Wars Episode III by myself on Saturday night and it was excellent.

Jackson and I went to his parents’ house for Easter dinner tonight and his dog attacked me. I hate that dog. I want to kick it every time I see it. I held it down by the neck until someone grabbed him to take him in the other room.

I have been on here a lot lately. I haven’t really had that one person in my life to unload all my thoughts on, which is probably the cause. Whenever I do, I’m silent on here for months. When I don’t, I’m always typing up something useless. Look back at my summer in 2011. I was living at home and had a total of one friend – Koda. I like being alone. I hate being alone.

We hang out

I got a speeding ticket from a motorcycle cop a week ago. It was in Sacramento. I was going 88 in a 65. Motorcycle cops don’t care for chit chat. I've gotten two tickets from motorcycle cops, and they both said the same things to me:

“I pulled you over for speeding, can I have your license, registration, and proof of insurance?”

“Here’s your ticket. Slow down. Have a nice day.”

This last time I said, “Thank you.” For what? I felt like an idiot as I drove away. Thank you for making me abide by the law, I guess. Thank you for taking a chunk of change out of my wallet, I guess. Thank you for making me be paranoid about cops for the rest of my trip, I guess.

I can track where all of my page views are coming from. So to the Russian that looked at my blog 28 times last Wednesday, thank you. (That is a real sincere thank you, not a thank you like I gave that cop).

This happened:



Today, April Fools, is my little brother’s birthday. Every year I’m around for that, I give him an empty box, and every year I do that, I think it is the funniest thing ever. He hates it. He hates most things I do. Like the time he was ordained to the priesthood, he went around the room shaking hands. When he got to me, I said, “Brothers don’t shake hands, brothers kiss.” And I planted one on his cheek. He said, “You’re weird.”

I am excited to go home to my family in 2 weeks. Mostly I want a haircut. My hair is at the stage that I hate it every day, so I just wear a hat and hope for the best.

I went out to eat with a friend from school on Friday. We went to Flowing Tide Pub and I had some amazing fish and chips. If you live in Reno, go get some ASAP. Even the tartar sauce (which I usually detest) was delicious. The fish was nice and juicy. And their chips are real good, like the wild fries at Good Times.

SOMETIMES I LIKE TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE AS I SOUND IT OUT IN MY MIND ITS LIKE I’M YELLING, BUT REALLY I’M JUST TYPING IN ALL CAPS. NOT VERY DIFFERENT THAN NOT ALL CAPS. MANY HIPSTERS AKA KIESHA LIKE TYPING IN NO CAPS EVER. THAT GETS REAL ANNOYING REAL FAST. OH, YOU’RE COOL BECAUSE YOU THINK EVERYTHING SHOULD BE A WHISPER. ANNOYING.

My friend AdriAnne tagged me in her blog to write a follow up questionnaire that she had on her blog. I've sort of been wanting to do it, but really I don’t want my answers to sound so clever. And for that type of questionnaire, if they aren't clever, it’s boring. I would rather be clever all on my own. Sorry, AdriAnne, I know I’ll get around to it eventually. Really.

I have been leaving my phone at home during school so that I’ll focus more and not sit in class playing spider solitaire and refreshing twitter every 3 minutes. When I get home, I expect my phone to be blown up and have 18 messages to respond to. But usually I only have one or two messages from my brother. I’m not saying I don’t mind that. It kind of is convenient that I don’t have to respond to anyone. Just Rusty Dusty. And then it’s usually a stupid joke that is always hilarious. “Buggle up, it’s fun.”

My sleep schedule the last couple of weeks has been stupid. I never sleep at night anymore. I wish I did. The only days I get to sleep before midnight anymore are Friday and Saturday. That means that I really struggle making it to class on time and awake. I've been getting plenty of headaches the last couple of weeks, and I’m attributing those to my lack of sleep.

Sometimes, I try listening to the same music I listened to in high school, and I make it about 2 songs into an album and get sick of it.

"Oh, oh-oh I've got a love that keeps me waiting,
Oh, oh-oh I've got a love that keeps me waiting.
I'm a lonely boy.
I'm a lonely boy.
Oh, oh-oh I've got a love that keeps me waiting."
-Lonely Boy- The Black Keys