Dateability Series 2: Date a Girl With A Passion

Whenever I kiss a girl for the first time, my family inevitably finds out within hours (sometimes minutes, if my brother's ESP is especially strong).  According to tradition, when Sunday rolls around, the family gathers around the dinner table, subjects me to a series of probing questions as to the nature of the relationship and the kiss, and then demands ice cream.  A couple weeks ago, I served my family a (past due) rocky-road-plus-blackberries... oh and did I tell you?  The ice cream must describe the nature of the kiss and the type of girl.  So here is my advice of the day:

Never kiss a vanilla.

Vanilla is safe.  It's sweet, delicious, classic, and you can't blame anybody for loving it.  But it's also pretty boring.  Who walks into Baskin Robbins (31 flavors!) and orders vanilla? Just because they carry it, doesn't mean you should eat it.  They have daiquiri ice, moose tracks, rocky road, white chocolate raspberry truffle, cake batter, bubblegum, pralines and cream, or for the less adventurous, strawberry, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, etc. etc. etc.  Everybody tries vanilla, sure, because you have to start somewhere, but nobody sticks with it forever - because you start to crave a little more flavor.

So it is with relationships.  More fun with flavor.

Enough cannot be said about the attractiveness of a girl pursuing her passions, who excels at something.  People who are learning, growing, changing all the time are those who bring an added excitement, vigor, and brightness to life.  Sing, hike, ski, snowshoe, act, travel, dance, play an instrument, or a sport.  Do all of them, or none - but be honest with yourself about whatever your talents are, and bring those to the table in your relationships.

These kind of things not only make you happy, but more interesting too.

Last year, one of my roommates dated a hot-little-southern-cajun-half-asian-spitfire who dreamed of working public relations for the New Orleans Saints.  Holy smokes was that girl a lot of fun.  Even in Provo, where it is so easy to blend in with the masses of other extremely talented, brilliant, righteous, active, fun-loving college co-eds, this girl stuck out like a magnolia in a mud patch.
One minute she'd be hollerin' about a recent Saint's loss, or how much she hates Scrubs, and the next she'd gush "well ain't you as cute as a speckled pup in a red wagon!"  And her love of football... well really it transcends all description.  Life with lil' Breesiana around was certainly never dull, and I think we could learn a real good lesson from her - Life, and relationships is more fun when you

Find what you love, then simply do it.

Dateability Series 1: Date a Girl With A Voice

One of my biggest fears is that I'll marry a girl, and sometime before we grow old, grey, and too deaf to hear each other anyways... the conversation will run out.

So to kick off the dateability series, I say date a girl with a voice.  I love a girl with a voice, and my friends agree!  Mostly, I mean that we boys love a girl with opinions, who thinks about the things she sees, and expresses her thoughts both freely and candidly.

Let's start with the dark side of this post.  Too often, I find myself in conversation with a girl and suddenly I can tell she's thinking "I hope this conversation is going well!"  And then BAM.  There we are, smiling stupidly at each other, and while I'm thinking of ways to keep that conversation going she's still really focused on hoping the conversation is going well instead of actually contributing to the conversation and so the conversation actually goes like this:

(Disclaimer:  All conversations and persons in this blog are fictitious.  Any representation of any specific people or persons, real or otherwise, is not intentional.)

Me: So how is school?
Her: (smiling) Good!
Me:  (thinking: oh boy. it's gonna be one of these conversations again.  Turn on blinker.  Drive cautiously through intersection.  Resume conversation.) Awesome! Are you loving your classes?  Any you're excited about this semester?
Her: School's good.  But, you know, it's school.
Me:  Indeed.  To be honest, I kind of miss school. (I can feel this conversation getting dangerously close to a dead end, but thankfully so is my car, as it pulls up to her house.)  Are you working as well?
Her:  Nope.
Me: ... (grasping at straws) So... home sweet home!
Her:  Yep!

...Well you get the idea.  Not one of those dates where you sit in the driveway and talk for an hour afterwards.

Date a girl with a voice.  Date a girl with opinions.  Because to do so is to sign up for at least one evening of stimulating conversation.  Maybe a lifetime if you're super lucky.  Even if you don't make it to date number two, you go home that night thinking about stuff.  You may even find yourself making up funny new words, like "skankapades" (a term for escapades of a dubious nature), and "snarkasm" (snarky sarcasm).  The laughs are even better than the kissing.  It's true.  Girls, if you're reading this, here is my (probably unwarranted) advice - don't be afraid to speak up!

Even if your vocalizations reveal that you are not the particular type or flavor of person that the boy is looking for, anything is better than a drab vanilla who mindlessly agrees with everything the boy says.  You are not meant to be walked on!  Disagree sometimes!  You may be surprised at how effectively this throws a boy off his balance.  Puts you back in control.  Makes him like you a little more.  Show off your brain - and the only way you can do it is by opening your mouth.

Breaking the Silence

Happy New Year!

Okay, I've been quite reticent as of late.  Honestly I don't know exactly why except that I've been having SO MUCH FUN playing with family and friends.  Though it is nearly halfway through January I haven't made ANY New Year's Resolutions, however, I will be soon.  One of which is to become more self-aware.

Which explains my next slew of blog posts - I'm going to write about things that boys look for in girls.  And I'm gonna be honest about it.  Buckle up, because I feel like those of you who read my blog with any regularity fall into the category of people who would be entertained by such a subject.  Of course, any thoughts or advice along the way is greatly appreciated.

A Craven Thanksgiving

1.  7th Annual Pie Night: friends, family, and undercover vegan bean pies.

2.  Impromptu Christmas jams with Steven and Co.

3.  Foregoing Black Friday shopping with an impulsive trip to Angel's Landing.

4.  Of course, lots and lots of family time!

Pixelmator: Headswapping, backgrounds, gloom effect, and more

I've been getting a lot better at photo editing.  Just wanted to show you some of what I've been working on for my mom's Tapestry website.

I'm most proud of this one, in which I swapped my mom's head.  The other stuff is fairly commonplace - removing background, smoothing skin tone, etc.

The group really liked this picture but as you can see it's a tad overexposed.  This was a lot of fun too because you can see that I removed the car on the left side of the picture.  I also think I did a fairly good job of fixing the exposure and the levels.  I got defeated by that lens glare in that lady's hair in the background... I'm still learning.

This stuff is a lot of fun, and I'm getting faster at it - learning all the shortcuts and such.  Recently, I've discovered that a lot of my photo edits are ending up on Facebook as profile pictures.  I wouldn't know, since I deleted my account months ago.

glad I saw this before I had a kid.

A Sabbatical

Guys, I really don't feel like blogging anymore.  I'll probably lapse into a long silence.  Not anybody (including myself) will really be broken up about it.  Just thought it would be the responsible thing to do, to warn you.  Happy Halloween!