The end of Bachelordom ----- Is that even a word?

Well, if you follow either of my sisters and probably my mother as well, then you know I am getting married in less than a month. To be honest I am kind of freaked out about it, but really that's just nerves and I'm sure it will go away once we are married and settled. I mean I'm 28 years old, I think it's time I got married. I was so lucky to find the girl I did though. She is truly the best girl around. Let me tell you a bit about.....(drum roll)...... Korina.

This is her:


This pic is from one of our first dates, we went for sushi. She had never been and it turned out she liked it a lot.

So anyway, on to all the juicy details you all want to know. We met at FHE in the singles ward of all places to meet someone. Truth be told, if she hadn't talked to me then I probably wouldn't have talked to her. I was to absorbed in my iPhone to notice anyone. Plus, she was hanging with a bunch of weirdos anyway; that's just the kind of sweet, loving, all inclusive person she is. She told me later that she didn't even know who half those people were, she was just was talking to them. Then she reached forward and talked to me, she invited me to sit with her and the weirdos. I didn't really want to, but I thought that she must not want to sit with them either and so I went and sat with her. The strange girl next to her wouldn't move so we had a weird girl sitting between us. But we managed to make conversation anyway. One interesting tidbit about our meeting: neither of us wanted to go to FHE that night. I don't know why I went and she went because her mother booted her out the door. She had sworn that if she didn't meet anyone that night then she wasn't going to go anymore.

She will deny this probably to her dying day, but it came time to leave so we exchanged phone numbers and left for home. Then she started to text me and basically told me to ask her out. She said, "You seem really fun, we should hang out sometime." I responded with, "That would be great! I would like that." Then she said, "Yeah, we definitely should hang out sometime, I would like that a lot." So I asked her out for that night. We met up again and I followed her to her house and we went on our first date. All we did was drive around on the 101 until we got to the 202. Then we took that to the 10 and back to the 101 and on around to her house again. It was a good fun car ride and we really enjoyed each others company. After I dropped her off we texted until I got home and went to bed. Bright and early the next morning we were texting again. I love her so much now because she is so sweet and honest (sometimes honest to a fault, but can I really say that is a bad thing?). Because she is so honest she decided to tell me right up front the very next day that she had been married before and she has two kids from that previous marriage (I could say a lot about her previous marriage and her ex, but I won't because we need not taint this post with him). She has two kids, a boy and a girl named Kyle and Shyanne respectively. They really are wonderful kids, very smart and SOOOO much fun! She was afraid that I wouldn't want to have anything to do with her after she told me that, but what can I say? I love kids! And here I had just met this wonderful girl whose company was most pleasant and calming to my mostly rough demeanor, I couldn't let a couple of little gifts from God disrupt the possibilities here!

At first yes, they were quite standoffish from me, Shyanne I might even go so far as to say that she hated me at first. The first time she saw me she threw a fit, gave me the evil eye and knocked her little bike over. But like the cute little almost two year old that she is she quickly warmed up to me and now we are best buds! Sometimes she even gets into arguments with Korina over who I belong to! Usually she looks at Korina and says, "No, mine!" Then leans over and gives her a kiss, like it's some kind of consolation prize! And Kyle I think still doesn't know what to think of me. He's older, almost three, so maybe to him I seem more like an intruder than anything else. But he has warmed up to me enough that when I have to discipline him he will give me a hug and a kiss; yeah, we gotta work on that whole boys kissing boys thing, but for now I'll take it as a sign that he acknowledges me as some kind of father figure even if he doesn't want to call me dad due to bad association with that name. They are great. And Korina really is a good mommy, she loves her kids a lot and I couldn't ask for a better mother for anyone's children.

We got engaged back in April. I took her on a picnic to Saguaro Ranch Park, she had never even heard of the Peacock Park! We had some sandwiches that I had made us for lunch. And I brought cupcakes for desert. My mom had helped me make the cupcake for her. We stuck the ring inside the cupcake after it was baked. We tied a ribbon around it so that she would have to pull it out, to prevent her from accidentally eating it. At first when she pulled it out it kind of surprised her and she pushed it back in, but I started eating mine so she asked me why my ribbon was so easy to take off. I told her to take her ribbon off and she did. I took the ring and asked her to marry me and she was so happy she cried.

She really is the perfect girl for me. And I am so happy I found her. Had it not been for both of us going to a church activity against our wishes, we might never had met. I don't know what I would do if that were the case. She means so much to me and makes me so happy. Everyday I look forward to seeing her bright smiling, loving face and she looks forward to seeing my ugly one (I don't know why). I can't give her enough kisses and she can't seem to get enough of them! There is no one else in this world that I would rather be with and I can't say enough about her. She is my favorite and on August 7th of this year we will be married. I look forward to that day with the greatest of anticipation. I can't wait to begin our life together. I love you baby!

The Bahamas!

I know this is beyond late, but I've been very occupied with other things! Anyway, I won a trip to the Bahamas last August and scheduled it for the beginning of April. We (Tyler and I) went from April 11 - 16. And we stayed at the Wyndham Nassau Resort. It's a very nice place and I highly reccomend it. While there we spent a lot of time sitting on the beach. Especially our first night, my luggage got lost and I was extremely ticked off about it. It wasn't brought up to our room until after midnight. I was so excited to take a shower and have clean clothes to put on! But we went down to Cable Beach while we waited for my bag. It was really a nice night, and I enjoyed getting my feet wet. It was kinda funny that we were hungry but the only place we could find that was open to eat at was a Dominos Pizza. So we had American food our first night in the Bahamas. Oh well.

The flight to the Island was a trip in itself. From Miami to Nassau we took a Propellor driven plane! It felt kinda rickety and was sorta scary, but we made it ok! The next day we went down to the beach and went swimming. The tropical water was really warm. And it wasn't because I peed in it. I picked up some coral for Korina's fish tank. We also went into town and made our way around the souvenir shops. Didn't feel much like paying $50 for a T-Shirt, but I did buy some knick-knacks.

Before we went Tyler had been researching places to visit in the Bahamas and one of the places he really wanted to see was The Queens Staircase. We made our way to it while we were in town and it was there that we learned about "volunteer tour guides". This guy named John came out of nowhere and started telling us all about the stairs. It was really interesting information, so we didn't stop him, but after he was done thats when he started telling us about how he made his living off of tips. Fortunately we had $5 to give him, but after that we were wary of anyone that just started volunteering information. We didn't let it happen. We also learned that if we had been paying our way then it would be cheapest to stay at the hospital. For $30 you can stay 3 nights and get three square meals served to you. Sounds good to me! They said that people sometimes hurt themselves just so they can stay in the hospital.

Our third day in we went to the beach again and Tyler didn't use any sunscreen, he was glowing red by the time we got back into the hotel room! Fortunately the hotel provided us with lotion as part of our complimentary toiletries. But still, after this burn he didn't want to leave the hotel room ever. So I would go down to the beach, walk around town, play in the casino, eat the buffet, and he would lay on his bed watching TV. He described how much it hurt by saying that whenever he took a step the impact would make it feel burned in his bones. He could barely stand to have blankets on his bed. Those four days he spent inside were good healing time and by the time we had to leave he was able to walk again.

One of the great things we discovered was a place called The Fish Fry. It's a whole bunch of restaurants all gathered into one place so we as tourists could just pick what we wanted to eat. We had been reccomended to eat at the Twin Brothers by a local we had asked so that's where we went. We both had a Snapper plate, his was fried and mine was steamed. It was amazingly good. Neither of us had eaten fish like that since we were in Brasil. You eat it by just picking it off the bones. Your fingers get really greasy so you need a ton of napkins, but holy cow it's so good that way. We also tried a dish called Conch Fritters. They were so good that I have been meaning to go to cooks.com and find the recipe there (first thing's first though, gotta make Peixe de Coco).

It was a really good trip and we had a ton of fun. I'm sorry this was so late, and I know I have veered from my online trading themed blog. I will do better with my posting. I will be taking more pictures and posting them on here and on facebook. As soon as I figure out what I'm doing with online trading then I will get that going on here as well.

I really need to post something.

But I don't have much to say! I did go on a vacation a couple of weeks ago and I've been trying to find the time to post about that, no worries -- it's coming (complete with pictures)!!

Anyway, things are turning around and I just wanted to say that. My life will change drastically very soon.

I'm gonna post!!!

April fools.

The Federal Healthcare Bill: Steaming Pile of Dog Crap

Read my mom's blog on this thing. The voters of this country are mostly idiots.

Working the Streets!

Well it's been a long time... And so much has changed! I'm still working at ABC15, and it is becoming more and more apparent that they will not make me full-time as long as they can get away with it. This is obviously not going to work. And I am dating a new girl now. Her name is Korina, and she makes me happy!We met at an FHE activity that it turns out neither of us really wanted to go to, but we both did anyway. It MUST have been meant to be! Anyway, we've been going for more than a month now and things look really good.

I need a new job though, and I've been seriously considering joining the Air Force. I talked to a recruiter and he told me that I can go in straight as an officer, which would be fantastic! But I have to pass a test and get picked by a commission to be hired on as an officer, then I would spend 13 weeks in Alabama getting officer-basic-training and come out as a Second Lieutenant. He said that my base pay would be $2800 per month and I would be in upper management in whatever the Air Force decided to put me in. I think this is a good endeavor to pursue. I stay in 20 years and I can retire and pull in half my salary in retirement for the rest of my life. And I would still be young enough to have a career in something else. Also, once I am in it will be easier to transfer over to what I want to do. So I could already have 20 years in my career before I do it civilian style. The test is on April 2nd at 8 am over at Luke. I have looked at some samples of it online and I think that I will ace this thing. So all I need is for the commission to decide that they want me! And not a moment to soon. The commission is in June and I need to start paying my loans back in June. This will work.

Blowing off Steam

I don't have anything new to report, but I haven't posted in a while and I really need to vent a little bit.

Let's start with last night. I was working the audio booth for both shows yesterday, something that I enjoy more than anything. Because ABC was showing Harry Potter we were going to have two headline segments before the ten. Headlines are live cutins where we only tell you what will be in the show when it starts, like a live commercial. One was to be :15 sec at 9:47 the other would be :30 sec at 9:57. I had all the mic checks and everything set to go by 9:45, the first headline went without a hitch. Then I sat there and didn't touch anything until it was about time for the second. I got a nagging feeling about a minute from the second headline to do some quick mic checks again. So I did, and there was no audio. The cutin was coming and I had NO IDEA what was wrong. Unfortunately the entire 30 secs was spent with picture but no sound. I was trying to fix it but to no avail. And the Director just repeatedly screaming at me across headset to get the audio up was not helping AT ALL! Turns out the board had decided to arbitrarily activate the broken automated faders, which were down. And since they were down none of the audio would sound, regardless of where those faders were set. Of course everyone who knows nothing about audio suddenly has a couple cents to put in. And my explanation of what happened was not good enough to pass through the director's scrutiny. He held me late trying to get a better explanation, but the thing is I just don't know how it could have happened. It's a gremlin in the board. I didn't touch anything in between cutins.

Earlier this week, on Thursday I was out on the floor for the duration of the night. Our "crack" promo producer decided that he was going to change his promo around and not tell us about it. As production we look and see video-camera shot-video, and after he changed it it still went video-camera shot-video. But he had moved the camera shot further up in the script. So after two takes, of us looking at Katie reading from her script while on camera I was asked to tell her to read off the prompter, the explanation to give her was that the script had been changed. So she read through it real fast and pointed out that no, it was all the same script she had in her hand and she liked to read from her paper script if possible because she could read faster that way. So we tried again and again took her reading from paper on camera. Now she was getting ticked off at me. So I had the director yelling at me, Katie yelling at me, and I didn't know what to tell anyone because I had relayed everything that had been told to me! Then I heard the producer come across the directors microphone asking, "What's going on out there?" And he said it with a hint of annoyance in his voice. This was it. That straw broke this camel's back. I shot back across my microphone with, "What's going on in there?" That set everyone off... But we finally got the information that had not been told to us. And one take later we recorded the promo that was used on the air. Funny how things just work when all the information has been given. The annoying thing is that this promo-producer even works here, he unbelievably has no clue what he is doing, and he is getting a nicer paycheck than I am. Piece of crap.