someday we'll find it

the lovers
the dreamers
and me

fan art by lookgreatbegood from Tumblr
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it gets better

there wasn't even digital color
correction back then...

 on Christmas morning, my mom unwrapped a small box labeled as a photo negative scanner.
"oh, well, we all know how much i love technology," she said wryly.
after all these years, we have learned that.
"no, that's not your present," i quickly said.
"oh! is there something different inside the box?"
being that my mom has employed many varied and creative methods of wrapping and disguising presents over the years, this was a very reasonable question.
"um, no," i began. "the scanner isn't exactly your present. your present is that i'm going to go through all of our old family photos and scan them so that we can have them digitally."
thankfully, she was actually quite happy about this being her present.

and so, each night after the nephews were tucked in, i sat at the kitchen table and scanned hundreds and hundreds of old strips of film while my brother-in-law and i went through the lord of the rings trilogy. by the time i had to come back to texas, i had done the bulk of 1978-1995 and seen a lot of pictures i hadn't seen in years, if ever.

no, a lot of the photos aren't that good, and when you're shooting on film, you can't check to make sure it was a good shot of someone, nor can you take a lot and just keep your favorite. most years would have a dozen pictures from Christmas, compared to this year where i think i took 87 on Christmas morning and then edited down to the best ones on my mac.

but looking back on me and my family in the 80s and 90s was interesting. as i've gotten burned out and tired of and even a little annoyed at my nephews after only a few hours, i've developed new respect for my sister and all mothers and parents who do that all the time. and so i looked at those family moments in a new perspective, since i am now probably closer to my parents' age in those pictures than i am to myself at that time.

it was hard sometimes. kids are annoying. obnoxious. ungrateful. i can say that because i know i was. me and my brother and sister fought with each other. me taking advantage of my little brother or bugged by my sister. things got broken or the dog ran off because no one was keeping an eye on her and huskies are born to explore. and life is just hard and unglamorous most of the time. in a very real sense, looking over these pictures left me very grateful that my parents didn't give up in any number of ways that they could have.


my family is now spread out in four part all over the united states, all with individual lives. but everyone was able to come home for Christmas this year, something i took for granted only a few years ago. there were ten different stockings hung by the fireplace and the house was a home, warm and full. there are no estranged siblings and there were no fights. i daresay that everyone would agree that this was one of the best Christmases we've had (in part because i didn't screw it up.)

and i wish i could step back into one of those kodak negatives and show that family a few of the pictures from last month. not only would they be amazed with digital photography, but i'd want them to know to not give up, because they will make it. the trials will pass, the stresses lighten, and the questions will be answered. it'll work out. really well, actually.

i can't do that. but i can remind myself of that. that as i'm fighting through grad school, wanting to do well in a competitive industry, and wondering if we'll ever have to make room for a new stocking next to mine on the fireplace, yes, things don't stay the same forever.
and if you stick with it, it does get better.

post script: in case anyone out there has been thinking that they should get around to scanning their old pictures, here's the one i used. it's $30 and i've done over 3,000 pictures without any problem.

33

there's a song called "thirty-three"
and another called "1979." that's
kind of my album right now, i guess

a few months ago i wrote about how i still act like i'm 25 and, for all intents and purposes, i may as well be.
the truth of it is that i am thirty-three years old. and my self-described "by the book" bishop felt it was time that i "transition" into a family ward. i smiled a little when he cited how the age gap gets bigger and it can make some of the younger girls feel a little uncomfortable, since cassidy is arguably my best friend at church and i think she'll be 20 this year. so i managed to talk myself in to amnesty until the end of the year. today, after twelve years, seven wards, and a whole lot of sunday school lessons, i went to a family ward.

i knew half a dozen couples from the ysa ward and after sacrament meeting i leaned forward and said hi to a couple.
"jeff! what are you doing here?"
"i'm in the ward now."
"DID YOU GET MARRIED??"
"not quite."
"you're engaged??"
"kicked out."

if getting married is referred to as "graduating" from a singles ward, i think of myself as having my g.e.d.

still, it's a friendly ward. in addition to the people i knew already, i had three or four people, generally in the borderline-overly-friendly-elderly-person group, introduce themselves to me before the service even started. that was nice and i think it'll be fine here. i did smile a little when one friend from church texted that she missed me and that i should still come to institute (which was my plan, anyway.) the sunday school president texted me also, saying that he missed me.

but, like i said, i'm 33 now. one of my friends that i grew up with in fargo was just called into the bishopric there and another is a high counsellor in the stake. time goes on, we grow up.

and while i'll always be me, i'm trying to grow up in some ways. elder christofferson's talk from last october's priesthood session was my favorite of the conference, a whole talk around the idea of "arise from the dust my sons, and be men." this line stuck with me:

In an observation that is too often accurate, one university professor remarked, “The men come into class with their backward baseball caps and [their lame] the ‘word processor ate my homework’ excuses. Meanwhile, the women are checking their day planners and asking for recommendations for law school.”

and it just prodded me to straighten up a bit and take my last (hopefully) year of school a little more seriously. i spent yesterday looking at my finances and am working to keep better track of where my money goes. i'm putting more thought into what i eat and going running every couple of nights (and loving my new ipod.)

there's a part of me that will always be 25 (or 17) at heart.
i like that about me.
but i'm growing up as well. and i like that part, too.

nauvoo

i originally intended to post this on Christmas eve.
i'm just now getting to it.

december 24, 2012 3:34 a.m. (so technically it's Christmas day)

everyone is home.

i used to find it a little odd when friends would talk about how their whole family would be coming home for Christmas that year. that's what you do at Christmas. why wouldn't your whole family come home?

but then life went on. my sister got married but brady came home and the family was a little bigger, not smaller (which was nice, since i remember the three of us getting home the year before and it seeming a little... stale?) then there was a little nephew to join the year after. but growing families mean stretching a young family budget and becky and brady weren't able to come home one year.

last year tim and lyndsie came home, but becky and her family celebrated out in seattle. me and tim and lynds had a good time and made the most of it, but still wasn't the same. it's how life goes. and soon it was a year and a half since i had seen my sister and her family. i used to see them every week.

but tonight becky and brady and caleb and isaac and annie flew into salt lake. i hadn't seen caleb for about a third of his life, yet my time with him for the first two years of his life imprinted me well, because he was thrilled to see uncle jeff again. and his younger brother, as with everything else, did the same.

a few hours later my dad and i were back at the small fargo airport, hugging my brother and his wife. and every room in the house was again full.

once the little kids were in bed, the big kids were up for a several more hours, talking and laughing and wrapping presents. i revealed that mom and i had bought four nerf(-like) dart guns for us to unwrap and  play with tomorrow morning and, in our own "gift the magi" way, becky said that she'd bought little dart guns for her boys. so that should be a good time.

now, everyone is asleep. i've wrapped my dad's present to my mom and helped my mom set out my her present to my dad. we've helped santa fill ten stocking hung by the fireplace and becky has promised that she'll hold the boys from waking me until 8:00 if she can.


this fall i took an institute class on the writings of isaiah. we spent a lot of time on chapters 52-53, probably the most well-known sections of the book. isaiah 52:7 begins with

how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace;

my teacher told us that the hebrew word for "beautiful" in that verse is the word nauvoo. it means not only "beautiful" but "suitable." the root connotes "properly to be at home, to be pleasant or suitable," and carries the idea of being at home, being satisfied.

tonight, with my whole family together for Christmas, that is how i feel.
at home.
satisfied.
nauvoo.

after hours

maxx is my mom's cat. he's long-haired and orange, making him look like hermione's cat, "crookshanks." and while he's not my favorite cat we've ever had (that would be moke,) he is certainly the friendliest and most social. at night, he seems to enjoy exploring the house when it's quiet and everyone else has gone to bed.
so do i.

i love this house.
i like sitting by the hutch in the dining room, where just a enough light spills from it to make the room visible, but everything i still in shadows. i like looking at the kitchen and rewinding back through time in my memory, remembering how it's looked and changed over the years and the adventures that have happened therein. while i was on my mission in japan, my mom remodeled the whole kitchen and dining room to the point that, when i was sent pictures from my sister's high school graduation party, i didn't know it was our house until i recognized the dishwasher.

i love looking out the sliding door window at the soccer fields behind our house, and how the snow-covered ground sparkles like gold under the orange sodium-vapor lights of the parking lot. i feel bad for my future wife, missing these quiet moments with me.

i like that i'm no longer scared of the utility room. growing up, just being in there seemed a little creepy; if monsters were going to live in our house (or, as i became a teenager, "aliens"), this is where they would be. i'm now confident in my physical skills enough that i no longer fear the supernatural in that room and like looking around. so much of my life history is still contained on those shelves, it's almost like being in the ministry of magic's department of mysteries.

just off from that room is "the corner", a spot under the stairs where we were sent to sit if we misbehaved. i hated sitting under there.

it's late now and i need to get to bed, but i do enjoy these quiet times with just me and my house.

rumours

yeah

lots of little notes for posts jotted down, but none that i really feel the need to write right now. and i usually write when i want to.
or, more correctly, have to.
i miss that passion.
but you can't really force it, sadly.

it comes and goes in waves, as they say.

diving into the wave

i'd been thinking about my talk all week and had mulled around some ideas but still didn't have anything written down by yesterday evening. and instead of writing a talk, i went to the rec center instead.

and so when i sat down two hours before church this morning, i still wasn't able to focus much and was not really in the mood to write a talk. but i kind of had to. i couldn't even polish it during sacrament meeting like i sometimes do with my lesson because, well, that was when i would be speaking.

having taught sunday school for more or less five years straight and being up in front of people every other week (or every week last summer), i'm rarely asked to give talks. i think i've given three in that time. one i would like to forget, one was my "farewell" when i moved from utah, and i can't remember a third, i'm just guessing there's another one in there. so i really don't know how to prepare a talk. and so i showed up with several pages of notes, not sure if i would only get through a fraction of them or if i would breeze through it all in four of my ten suggested minutes.

sitting on the stand in my Christmas green bow tie, the relief society president texted me a good luck and i confessed to her that i was feeling very nervous and was having difficulty focusing on anything.

i was given the suggested to speak on "Christ in our lives," which was broad enough to allow me to speak on just about anything i wanted. and that sort of vague liberty can be a little paralyzing, not knowing which direction to go in. so, i did the best i could think of: i gave the talk that i wanted to hear.

i had numerous people come up to make and thank me for my talk afterward and throughout the day, which was encouraging.
the thing is, i mostly just quoted the charlie brown Christmas special and read a lot of psalms.
as jaime noted right before i left utah, "it's all about the psalms."

little lion man

i guess everyone needs a nemesis, and i've finally found mine. this guy:

that little pony is a total punk. and every time we go riding, i have to spent 15-20 minutes locked in mind games with him before i can get the rope around his neck and lead him to the stables so that we can take the horses in the pasture. (the rope isn't visible because i'm holding him very close to make sure he doesn't get out.)

this morning i realized that i was out late last night with a group of friends at northgate (the place--and the only place--to spend a friday night at a&m) and was out riding horses this morning. it's official: i live in texas now.

and it's not that bad.

roses

God gave us memory that we might have roses in december.

j.m. barrie

boston in the fall

so it's been three weeks since i've posted here.
yeah.

anyway, i went to new hampshire last week for thanksgiving with some pretty great friends.
that was cool.

she didn't want to be with daddy or even mommy, but "father goose."

including a large stash of stephen's hot chocolate.

apparently they don't sell frosted animal crackers
in utah anymore, so this was a big deal.

i'd explain that this is kirk with a turkey on his arm,
but i think that's kind of redundant.

joe and his pregnant wife.
she turned out to be cool and fit in with our group.
and she slapped me.

so this is maine.

goose rocks.

boston. : )

this guy was absolutely amazing and a great
showman. we estimated that he brought in $100-200
on this show and he deserved every dollar.

me and sam adams: identical twins.

at the holocaust memorial. couldn't resist snapping the picture.

even the back alleys in boston are awesome.

my favorite picture of the trip.

we made it to harvard.
wish i'd taken more pictures there. or even just looked around longer.

girls who wear shirts of skeletons in skirts are ok by me

i still hope that we'll make movies one day.

wish you could've been there.

she gets it

the only song i know of hers is "we are never ever getting back together," which i think is completely manufactured to be a "hit" but has still ensnared me in its catchiness to the point that i now know all words. whether it's in spite of that or because of it, there's something about this that i really love, though i can't fully explain it:

to be a rock and not to roll

i'm really enjoying my dance class. we're onto our last dance of the semester, swing. i feel like i've learned "swing" at least three official times and i still don't know which is which. and the jitterbug that we learned in country dance last fall doesn't seem that different, either. the downside is that, if a girl asks me if i know how to "east-coast swing" i likely won't know which one that is. the upside is that a lot of the moves are pretty similar, so once i get the appropriate rhythm down, i'm good to go.

one of the biggest things i've learned about dancing the importance of your dance frame. as a guy, it's my job to lead. i need to choose the steps and moves to do but then also communicate that to the lucky girl as well. that requires a little bit of tension between the two of us. my hand on her back can give some indication, but a lot of it comes from where we hold hands.

if she's so stiff and unwilling to move, obviously that's a problem. it's just as much of a problem if the opposite is true; if there's no resistance in her arm and she passively lets me move our hands wherever, the whole thing is mushy and there's no way to communicate. no tension, no play, no fun.

but when there's a little bit of tension in her arm and also her posture, so that my pushing or pulling to the left or the right shows where we're doing, she doesn't just follow but keeps up with me. if you can find a partner like that, dancing is a dang lot of fun.

and i think i found a couple of girls who will be good partners for the swing test.

pangs of frustration

i suffer pangs of frustration, seeing there a wondrous array of books which i have spent many years preparing to read and gleefully collecting in dusty bookshelves... but now, just as i am able to handle the stuff, i must forego the temptation and delight because there is other work at hand. 

hugh nibley

psalm 22

i think that one of the most poignant moments in the final hours of the life of the Savior was His exclamation on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (matt 27:46) i've heard it said that that was the moment when His Father withdrew the comforting companionship of His Spirit, so that Jesus would actually know what it felt like to be totally alone, the equivalent of having sinned to the point of losing the spirit of God completely.

a few months ago i picked up an old issue of the ensign that was lying on a table next to me because an article featured on the cover sounded interesting. and it was. then i flipped around and read a brief thought that was on the final page of the january 2011 issue.

the article noted that those words that Jesus spoke--"My God, my God, why hast thou forsake me"--are scripture; the opening verse of psalm 22, to be precise. Jesus often quoted scripture throughout His life and, if He's anything like me and my friends (and i like to think so), His reference of the first verse alluded to the following verses as well:

1. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
 2. O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.
 3. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.
 4. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.
 5. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

psalms 22:1-5

the verses cry out for God, admitting that they feel they have been forgotten or ignored. but then they remember and acknowledge that God is God, and that includes His character that He will always be with us and watch over us and help us. the next few verses reaffirm this explicitly, citing that those before them trusted in God and things worked out. and so the same must be true now.

and that's good stuff to remember. but what really makes this interesting is that Jesus, in a time of extreme difficulty and struggle, was turning to the scriptures as a source of strength. in essence, He was re-reading some of His favorite verses to remind Himself of what He already knew.

i do that, too, sometimes.

the grey area

so i know that fewer and fewer of you are actually around the byu area anymore these days. 

life does that to sometimes, i guess.

but if you are, you should really go to my friend kristin's art show this weekend.

like, really.

if you like they way i write/think/am, you'll probably like this show:

it's thoughtful, ponderous, clever, and really beautiful.

i won't be able to be there,

but i've been able to see the projects grow and develop.

this is good stuff.

the show opens this saturday evening, with the reception at 7:45 in the hfac main gallery

and will be on display until nov. 12

busy weekend

we went to an art exhibit at the memorial student center, the ward halloween dance and supercult movie night at the viz lab. we had great success building a willy wonka costume at the thrift store, played mah-jong, watched a handful of good movies, went star-gazing, and baked chocolate chip cookies. we ate at the hullabaloo diner, kolache rolf's and layne's chicken (of course.) we stocked the drink fridge in the lab, did a photo shoot in the studio, rode rides at the carnival and toured the blue bell ice cream factory (the "gingerbread house" ice cream is AMAZING.)
not bad for a five day visit.

count wonka

last night after everyone left the office, i swapped out all of their office nameplates with black and orange halloween names ("andrew kilzer" became "andrew killer", etc... for my own door i just went with "count dracula")

this morning in my dance class a few lucky girls got to swing dance will willy wonka.

i took this picture with the camera in my imac at work and shared it on facebook. posting the picture then making it my new profile pic meant it appeared twice on my timeline. at last count, the combined "likes" from the two pictures is at 93. i'm sincerely flattered.

i listened to oingo boingo's dead man's party, the good songs from the rocky horror picture show, an pretty solid halloween playlist on spotify, and watched thriller while waiting for my boss to come and check out my newest edit on my cancer video.

while i never watch network television anymore, i happened to check the guide just as it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown was starting. it's not the same as the Christmas special, but i think there's still something really great that it's still showing on tv almost fifty years later.

and i even took time for a real, sit down scripture study this evening.

"we are the dreamers and we are the music makers"

blank inside

taking a break from working in the lab and listening to radiohead's "king of limbs."

Comedy Central

actually, i've been taking a lot of breaks. i think it might be time to call it a night.

portraits in studio a

i thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot while janelle was in town, so i reserved the studio and a few lights for this afternoon. it was fun to play around with different lighting styles and find what i liked best. i haven't had time to go through all of them yet, but here are a few that i've tweaked a little.

citizenship in the nation

thanks to getting my voter registration submitted six minutes before the 5:00 deadline two weeks ago, early voting, and no lines at the memorial student center on campus, i voted yesterday.

i really don't like the idea of voting "straight party," since i think that candidates should chosen on personal positions and not just whether they're "red" or "blue" or "green" or whatever libertarian is. (yellow? orange?) but i do think it's important to know for whom you are voting. (i figured i'd use proper grammar here for once.)

as soon as i got the ballot booth and cast my vote for the presidency of the united states, i realized that there were six pages of other people running for other offices this season, too. these ranged from u.s. senators and district representatives to railroad commissioners and, well, other kinds of railroad commissioners. at first i started just picking names and considered choosing candidates from parties other than the republicans and democrats, just to help the little guys get a leg up on the pile. but i thought back to one of the lessons from boy scouts that has stuck with me for twenty years.

one of the required merit badges for eagle scout is "citizenship in the nation," which helps us... learn about the nation. i honestly don't remember anything more specific than that except this one thing that stood out to me: when you are voting, be informed. if you just randomly cast your vote, you are, in essence, canceling out the vote of someone who took their time to decide which candidate best represented their views.

four years ago, utah sent out a small booklet outlining all of the candidates in all the races and briefly listed their positions, platforms, or principles. in a move that would be quite high on the dork scale, i read through everyone and made a small list of who i wanted to vote for. and when i went to vote, i took it with me.

i didn't have any list or any booklet with me today. so i cast my vote for the only candidates about which i was informed and put my "i voted" sticker on my shirt.