News from the Iraq front line

I just got out of a College Republican meeting where Major John (?) Ward, a US Marine Major, spoke about his 2 terms of service in Iraq. I always enjoy the opportunity to hear about Iraq from people that have actually been there. In summary of his comments: 1) We're not close to being done in Iraq, but conditions are MUCH better than one or two years ago 2) a with drawl from Iraq before we fix the problems the war has caused would create a deadly power vacuum as well as undermine much of America's honor and also be morally wrong 3) There's a lot of good being done in Iraq in the life of the average Iraqi. It was really interesting hearing him speak. Major Ward is in his late 30's, and has served in the Marines and CIA his whole life.

enough is enough

So I like music, probably a little more than the next guy... and it's always been one of my indie rocker dreams to go to Cochella, the biggest indie rocker festival in the indie rocker world. What surprised me this year about their line up though wasn't the headliners or the big acts that were playing it, but mearly the sheer number of acts preforming: 125 different bands! Now if you are rockin' 24 hours a day for 3 solid days, that gives each band .57 hours each to set up preform and take down their gear. From my experience most bands can't even set up their gear in .57 hours, so that doesn't leave much time for rockin'! "But wait Dave," you say, "what about the double /triple /quadruple stage?!" that's true, by multiplying the number of stages, bookers have been able to cram massive numbers of bands on one bill and also insure that you'll only be able to see 1/8th of them by the time you get done shuffling from stage to stage. So assuming that there are 4 stages, and that each band takes about an hour to set up, that leaves each band one hour to play... assuming you got 24 hour a day rockin' going on. It's a good thing I only listen to 6 of the 125 bands playing.

Our Wedding Map!

Mexican or Mexican't?

Me and Jessica had an amazingly Mexican time over Christmas break and went to Mexico. Everything was so Mexican... it blew my mind, not at all what I was expecting. But Mexico even brought out the Mexican in us... we didn't want to pay $10each for Mexican horses so I pulled out all but $8 out of my wallet and Jess put $4 in hers so when we went ot bargain with the Mexicans I could say "hey look I only got $8!" and Jess said "hey I got $4 see!" so they gave us the 2 horses for $12 (not to be confused with Pesos)... we totally ripped them off. Turns out the joke was on us though, because when I got done riding all my other money had fallen out on the Mexican Beach. Too much Mexico.

The Honor Code is Keepin up with the Jones's ARE YOU?

So I've been going to college up here at BYU-Idaho since the summer of 2000, and I've seen my fare share of changes with the administration; a change to a 4 year school, a change in the school president, a change in the schools learning model. But it appears that things up here are changing so fast and the administration so forward thinking, that often they doen't even have the time or recources to tell the students about the changes, espessially with issues of the schools Legendary HONOR CODE. A few recent examples:

1) You can now acess Facebook on campus!

2) R.A.'s are no longer to check apartments nightly to make sure students are keeping curfew, and are not allowed to do suprise bed checks

3)The Testing Center no longer enforces the schools Dress and Grooming standards, and no longer reports infractions to the Dean.

These are just a few of the changes that have been made in the last year that most of the student body is still unaware of... I guess if you were a really hard working student the administration might let you still believe that only women had to keep curfew, and overalls and shorts were still forbidden.... oh wait they are.

Ps. I'm still looking forward to the day when the schools Learning Model makes it's obvious final metamorphosis from "Teachers Teaching Students" to "Students Teaching Students" (our current level) to it final level "Students Teaching Teachers"

McCain is a Blink-a-holic

So I've been a big supporter of Mitt Romney the last year, and even worked at some Romney events this summer when I was in New York, so of course I was saddened when he dropped out of the republican race. But I think his move to endorce McCain is a pretty smart move. It works to reinforce his "true conservative-heart of the republican party" image. And this might set him up very nicely for a 2012 election. The thing I can't understand is WHY IN THE WORLD DOES McCAIN BLINK SO MUCH? I tried counting in this video and he blinked over 100 times in less than a minute! How is that even possible? Don't tell me it because of all the camera flashes, if that were the case Romney would blink as much too.... any ideas as to the reason for the blinkin'?

Ghostland hearts Rexburg!

Random... so The Belafonte video I posted below was actually from this show we played with these guys! Listin to them give it up for rexburg!

Glory Days....

So I used to be in a sweet band called THE BELAFONTE... I miss it. The fame, the adoration, the sweaty freshman guys giving you awkward side hugs and say "dude, that was sooooooo sweet man!.... good show man, good show...". Those were the day.

I'm ENGAGED!

This may be old news for some of you dedicated readers, but for the rest of you... I'm getting married! To Jessica! Yay! Needless to say I'm extreamly excited, and as cliche as it sounds I really do honestly feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

Ok so for those of you who don't know, Jess and I have been friends for 3+ years, and been together for almost a year now... We'd been talking a little bit about marriage, but niether of us are the type to plan it all out before it's official. So all we'd said was that we loved each other and hoped that we'd get married some day. That was enough for me. So on MLK day I went ring shopping, picked out a ring, put in on hold, and later that week after Jess's room mate Annie approved of it, I bought the ring! Jess had no idea. I still didn't really have an idea of how I was going to do it... but I told her I wanted to take her out on a "just us" date on Friday.

So Friday came around and Jess had no idea what we were doing or what was going on... I came by and picked her up, she looked really beautiful, I brought her roses (a first in our year of dating), and we went to a symphony preformance on campus. Jessica and I both really like symphonies, and it ment that we had to dress up which is fun. After that I took Jessica out to her favorite resturaunt in IF, Snake Bite. This is another thing that we've never done together, even though Jess had told me before that "Snake Bite is where a boy takes a girl when he really likes her". After that we spent some time parked up by the Rexburg Temple talking about our relationship and everything.... Jessica had written me a really sweet letter that she read to me as well. After that we headed back to her place, and the date was over.. or so Jessica thought. After hanging out upstairs for about an hour, I told Jess I was tired and going to go home. Jess was a little sad, since it was still kind of early, and insisted on walking me out to my car... but thank goodness, Annie was able to distract Jessica and keep her in her room playing guitar for a while. A few min later I call jess and ask her if she could run me out my wallet that I had left in her room. So Jess comes downstairs, only to notice candles lining the stairs... she slowly proceeds only to find more and more candles downstairs, covering the tables, the counters, the couches, and all of the floor except for a small path through the kichen to the back door. In total there were about 300 candles.... "what the heck.... candles?" she kept saying... finally she gets to the back door and opens it, but no Dave. Then I came out of the down stairs bathroom where I'd been hiding with my guitar. This is pretty much when my nervousness reached it's all time peak. I'd written Jessica a song on guitar, and played it to a still very confused Jessica. After the song I put down the guitar, got down on my knee, Jessica started to cry, I pulled out the ring and asked her... and she said YES! :D it was awesome! Jessica cried and cried, and was sooooo cute. After hugging for a bit I asked her again just to be really sure, and then put the ring on her finger. It sounds cliche again, but it honestly was the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. Words can not describe... then after who knows how long, Annie and our friend James (who were both in on it) came in, and we made strawberry short cake and pretty much just had a super happy happy freak out overload for hours and called family. I'd called Jessica's dad earilier in the day to ask his permission (which was probably more nerve racking that asking her...) but he said he wouldn't tell Jess's mom.

So thats the story! I know lots of people say being engaged stinks... but It's been pretty amazing so far. We're going to be married April 12th at either the L.A. or NewPort Beach temple! More details TBA...

Here are lots of pics ... they make me happy.