'Till I Collapse

I will not fall, I will stand tall
Feels like no one could beat me down.

Herro! So my daily blog became a weekly blog is now an every other week blog. Oh how quickly some things can fade. A problem I have been facing all too much lately.

First things first, I am having a "painful" deja vu experience at the moment, which is probably why I can not fall asleep tonight. They say scent is the sense closest tied to memory, right now I would agree.

So I last left off the day before the big 2-4 birthday. One whole year away from having a quarter life crisis! It was surprisingly one of my more memorable birthdays, just had a few of my closest friends meet up with me at Red Robin and had a blast. Got the ever favorite Whiskey River BBQ burger which I will forever state is the greatest burger there, I don't care what anyone else says, its the king. I also got one of their specialty lemonade/limeade drinks and ended up making the rounds and trying all 4 flavors which were all incredibly delicious, the blueberry pomegranate one was the best though. My man J-Hep got my back and covered my bill for me, what are best friends for right? And to top it all off Sarah made me a BOMB homemade carrot cake! Like I said, what are best friends for. I know what you are all thinking, but Bracken! why carrot instead of your ever favorite funfetti cake? don't worry, there is always next year children. That was about all I did for the day of birth celebration but it was all I really wanted to do, get my friends together for a meal, can't beat that.

note: there will now be no logical order to the madness that will now spew from my brain...

So after working at Blockbuster for 9 months now I have as of late hit that point where I no longer desire to watch movies very often and have converted to watching TV shows. I have grown to like them more because they offer more than 2 hours of entertainment and they can develop characters and plots in much greater detail. Also I have seen just about every movie I want to see in our store... The shows I have recently been watching are 30 rock and Dexter. I have a new crush now from watching Dexter. Ever since I stopped watching the Office my love for Jenna Fischer has dwindled, only a little but my new love is Julie Benz! Oh yeah.


Look where she is at too! Comic Con ! What a woman.

I have also been trying to get into Supernatural because Sarah and Courtney have not stopped telling me how much they love it. Pretty sure they are just in love with the two main dudes. Anyway, I have had a desire to go back and re watch Band of Brothers sometime soon because it has been a long time since I watched it and its a really powerful series. Anyone in?

So a few weeks back my good friend Sarah Goff sent me a text early in the morning enlightening me to the fact that the greatest rock band EVER will be in Utah on May 10th, so as any sane people would do we counted down the hours until the tickets went on sale and GOT THEM!!! Ladies and gentlemen, I, Bracken Michael Rawlings, will finally be seeing Coheed and Cambira and Circa Survive. It will be glorious. I just hope Sarah and Courtney are as excited to go as I am. p.s. I pre-ordered the deluxe hardback version of their new cd, Year of the Black Rainbow and can not wait until April 13th to listen to it!

So jumping back to the topic of birthdays, February is a fantastic month to be born because J-Hep was also born this month, later then myself, but still in February thankfully. To celebrate this joyous occasion we shall be hitting up Brighton for some lovely night boarding that night. I havent been all season so I am SO ready to go.

Moment of silence now if you will...................a few nights ago some children in my elder's quorum asked to borrow our Rockband set for a little party they were throwing. We willing let them borrow it because we are nice people. Well unfortunately when it was returned to us the bass drum pedal was cracked in half so I have not been able to rock out for quite some time now. Sad day. R.I.P. little buddy, you were a great drum pedal.

On to the Olympics. So I have been watching quite a bit of the Olympics lately and it was been rather entertaining, well about 25% of it at least. Some of these "sports" are just too boring for me to watch BUT the 25% that I have enjoyed have been FAN-freaking-TASTIC! Watching Shaun White DESTROY the half pipe was unbelievable. Go USA! Defeat the WORLD! Glad he is riding for us because the man is unstoppable. But even more exciting than that was watching the US men's hockey team run head on into Canada in hockey. Holy cow! I have never been a big hockey fan because I just never had it in me to watch a game but after watching that match the other day against Canada I am hooked! We play again tomorrow at 1 against the Swiss I believe. So ready to cheer them on again.

Speaking of Hockey and awesome people Steve Nash had a hilarious interview discussing him and the Canadian Olympic hockey team. My favorite quote was, "You can not be this ugly and not at least be considered for the Olympic team." Oh Steve. Nash is my homeboy. Or at least the shirt I am wearing says so!


That's right everyone. I own that shirt. SO beautiful.

Well, I better at least get some sleep tonight so I can get to class, then do some Maakoa work from 2-5 with J-Hep at UVU then get to Blockbuster and work the rest of the night. Busy day for me tomorrow. Night!

~Bracken Rawlings

Koopuwa, its tasty. Drink it!

So two weeks have come and gone since I last threw out some random pieces of my life's new found brilliance! The weeks continue to get better and better and more and more fun. Let me keep this trend alive!

To start let me back it up 2 weeks and talk about a freakin' dope murder mystery party that Sarah, Brett and I did! Ok so maybe I just handed them the box and they did all the planning and such but those are just minor details... Anyway it was a seriously legit 90's themed mystery, however no murder was involved so you need not worry about that, we keep it classy. I was given the character of Spence DeMonet (spends the money, eh eh, get it?) I was the rich popular kid with the hottest girlfriend in school, what was her name you ask? Her name, Juanita Greenecard. Let that sink in for a minute... My boys J-hep and Riley also joined in the festivities. J-Hep was the local nerd, Duncan Flushwater, and Riley was Fletcher Bycepps. So here is the breakdown, I was pretty much Zack Morris, J-Hep was Screech and Riley was A.C. Slater. We are super cool. Turns out in the end I was the one who lit the school on fire and stole the test scores, and I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids... It was a fantastical night and we are actually planning another one for the near future, this time it will be 1920's themed and murder WILL be involved, muhahaha...

The night after the murder mystery J-Hep and I drove up to Salt Lake to see the Suns take on the stupid Utah Jazz, who likes the Jazz? No one, exactly. We got free tickets to a suite from the company we both work for now, Maakoa, it is a freaking sweet company so ask me about it sometime and I will hook you up. Anyway the game didn't turn out as I had wished, the Jazz ended up winning which was lame. But all the free food and drinks in the suite almost made up for it, haha. We ended up going back up to Salt Lake again the next week to watch the Mav's try their hand at beating the Jazz and again by some random fluke of nature the Jazz won, no comment.

So this last weekend has been more awesome than me drinking a whole carton of Simply Orange without pulp, and that is saying something because it literally just happened and was pretty awesome. I am not going to go back and fix that last statement because that is how I roll. So saturday was an extremely great use of my day. Woke up early to go to a test review for which the TA didn't show up so I just came home and cleaned the apartment then went over to Brett's to make a pizza with him and Sarah and kick it watching Food Network for 3 hours, one of my top 5 channels on t.v. Once Sarah left for work it was man time! Brett and I single handedly rid New Orleans of the Zombie infestation and then went on to save Las Vegas from the terrorist attack that was taking place. You are all welcome. Around 10:30 we were enticed to leave and get some left over cake from Megan's baby shower which was rather delicious cake. THEN we went to Denny's for our ritualistic midnight weekend meal. Let me just say that if you were at Denny's this last Saturday night then I apologize for being that "loud crazy table", ok, never mind, I am not sorry at all, it was hilarious. For the 2 hours that we were there they did not seat anyone near us and the people that were originally sitting by our table up and moved somewhere else, beware, we are heading back again this next weekend...

Time for SUPER BOWL SUNDAY! Although my Charger's were not in this Super Bowl I was really excited to watch it this year. The last few years has really been me just cheering against a team (i.e. Steelers, Patriots) instead of actually cheering for one, which I was able to do this year, Go Saints!!! I was pleased with the outcome of this rather quick Super Bowl. I still am upset that we traded away Drew Bree's a few years back, the man is amazing! What can you do though.

So last night, Monday, J-Hep invited me to join him and his ward at Nickel City for some quality good time. Yes, quality good time, you read that correct. So I am not sure if any of you have been to Nickel City before but if I were to average out my nickel spending I would say that anywhere from 2-4 dollars is plenty to last a good hour or two. Well an individual that will not be named, really just because I don't know her name, decided that 40, forty, 4 zero dollars would be the amount she would spend on the night, thats 800 nickels!!! And yes, she accomplished the feat in a little under 2 hours and amassed 3,202 tickets. That is right around the range of a Dora the Explorer Roller Backpack or an Airsoft Gun. Definitely worth 40 bucks...or not. So back to ME! I had an awesome time there, did a little racing, a little shooting, a little ticket winning but my most impressive feat of the night was dominating the Deal or No Deal game. And by dominate I mean failing miserably. I paid 8 nickels to play and walked away with 1 ticket! I don't think you can fully grasp just how bad that is unless you were there to see it happen.

p.s. James Taylor just started playing on my iTunes, I am a happy man.

So yeah, that was pretty great to get stomped at Deal or No Deal. The rest of the night was great. Got to hang with my man J-Hep, met some cute new girls and spent my tickets on a snow leopard snap bracelet.

Well kids, I should get back to studying for my Math test that I have to take, I mean fail, in the morning!

Until we meet again. (imaginary tip of the hat)

~Bracken Rawlings