Josh's Froz-T-Freez Internet Drive-Inn

I am typing these words on my brand new MacBook laptop. The reason I have a brand new MacBook laptop is not because I have a tendency to buy exciting electronic toys. I had a two year old entry level iBook which I had no intention of replacing, even though for the past six months or so I have not been entirely overjoyed by it. But three weeks ago my car got stolen. Okay, it was really Gin’s car, but I was the one using it that day, and all my stuff was inside it. And although the thief left the car in another area of Salt Lake City and it was found by the police that very night in no worse condition than it was before it was stolen, the thief did not leave behind all my stuff which I had inside the car. Namely, six cans of Mountain Dew, a North Face down parka, and my wonderful eight year old backpack (which contained my iPod, my digital camera, my scriptures, a library book about Utah’s national parks that I was going to return after work that day, a copy of The Wednesday Wars which I had just started reading the night before, and, as you might have guessed by this point, my laptop).

Strangely, I have not been super-bummed or angry about the whole experience. Mind you, I was not happy that it happened it by any means. But on the whole I think I’ve maintained a pretty decent attitude. We did get the car back, after all. And it turns out that we are getting a fair amount of reimbursement money from homeowners insurance, which makes it a possibility to replace a lot of the items now or in the near future without too much financial
strain. And, in the case of the iPod and digital camera, I did have an understanding with myself at the time that I bought those items that they could be lost or stolen or break at any time, and that was just my risk for having the convenience of carrying them around with me all the time.
So I was already prepared mentally that I could lose those items at any time and either need to replace them or do without. And please don’t fret about my music; because I have an old-school fetish for buying actual CDs and keeping them meticulously arranged on my shelves, I lost virtually no music.

However, up to this point, I have neglected to mention one fun fact: in what I thought was an act of efficiency and wisdom, I was using my iPod as the backup for all my photos and other files I wanted to save from my computer. I didn’t anticipate losing them both simultaneously. So, most of my digital-camera-era photos (2.5 years) are gone forever. Many of my writings and drafts are gone forever. Files, software, bookmarks, and probably a bunch of other things I haven’t thought of quite yet are all gone. Things such as my novel rough draft that I gave up on halfway through because I was sick of it (although I think I have all of it printed out somewhere).

I’m sad that I no longer have these writings and photos, and yet in a way it seems like an almost positive thing, a purging of some sort. I am forced to start over with everything, which is what I needed to do in the first place but couldn’t bring myself to do. So now, I start writing afresh, with no copying and pasting stale things from old drafts. I start taking pictures in a new way. I start computing with a brand new computer that is fast and has a big hard drive and I can organize it from scratch however I want to do it. It’s all really kind of exciting, when I think about it this way. Everything new. It is spring, after all, and I did just get married. In that context it’s very appropriate for everything else to reset, as well. Thanks so much for stealing my computer!

Hello to everyone out there in Bloggieland!

If you have been any sort of a follower of this blog, by now you will have probably noticed that early in December of last year, my posts (which admittedly had been quite intermittent before that) pretty much stopped.

So, what happened? Well, most of you kind of know what happened, but here’s a recap, month by month:

December – I moved with my parents and helped them move to their new house in Holladay, UT. This took up almost all of my time. Any time I could spare from the moving was spent with an awesome girl I started dating, or else driving to see her or waiting for her as she drove to see me, or shoveling snow.

January – Dating, driving and shoveling continued.

February – Dating, driving and shoveling continued. Went to the bay area for a couple of days with said girl, who by this point is engaged to me, but we hadn’t exactly written a press release about it yet. I think that month was when the specialness with our cars really started.

March – Getting ready for a wedding. A plethora of bizarre car “coincidences.” Not as much shoveling. Lots of pink and green things and paper sections of craft stores and going to parties. Belatedly discovered Vampire Weekend.

April – Married my dream girl. Went on a honeymoon in St. George and Zion NP. Moved to Vivian Park in Provo Canyon. One final car incident: Gin’s old, already-crunched-from-a-prior-accident Honda Civic stolen from the parking lot of the Hartvigsen School in South Salt Lake. We got the car back, but all my stuff inside it is gone.

May – Cleaning up the house, shopping, maybe starting to write again.

So there, now everyone is caught up. If it’s any consolation, I pretty much gave up TV at about the same time that I abandoned this blog. However, I miss and fully intend to resurrect the blog. The TV stays unplugged.

Yesterday I posted this big, goopy post on this blog, and then after a couple of hours I got nervous about it and decided to remove it. I can summarize that post in this way: I’ve been a little nervous about new people that I know coming to look at this blog. For a long time hardly anyone read it and I didn’t have to be nervous about what I said here or worry about whether anyone would like it or not. I am trying to be okay with this new change, and hopefully it will be a good change, but it still makes me nervous, because I’m used to being very shy and reserved, and this blog kind of blows that cover.

So, welcome to my blog, visitors both old and new. I hope you find something of interest, and if not, that’s okay, too. I was mainly writing for myself in the first place, anyway.

Earlier today, someone in Rzeszw, Poland googled the phrase “watch me crank that robocop,” and google directed this person to my blog. I’m not sure why, but everything about that just makes me really happy. Already established as one of America’s finest young poets, our boy soulja has now transcended all boundaries of language, time and space. He does indeed tell them, after all.

Here is a view of all our stuff after we threw it into the trough at the dump. At the time it was so liberating to just throw all this stuff away, but now I realize we were a little stupid about it. As I looked at this picture, I realized some of the stuff maybe we could have given to goodwill (although we had already taken two trucks full of stuff to goodwill before we went to the dump.) My dad had gone through most of this stuff, and I had forgotten that it existed. When I saw him throwing that ecto pack out there, for a second I was sad, and then I was thinking, I’m not going to play with that, and kids these days aren’t even going to know what it is, so of what use is it anywhere? I have since learned that these items sell for one hundred dollars or more on ebay. So if nothing else, I could have made one hundred dollars, or I could have kept them with all my other clutter as more irreplaceable items of memorabilia from my childhood. Maybe the dump is the best place for them anyway. Seriously, who spends $100 for an old “proton pack and ecto containment unit?”

Seriously, this beautiful vista can be seen from the Salt Lake County Dump. My dad and I have always affectionately referred to this area of the Salt Lake Valley as Mordor.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18).

I was just reading, and when I came to this scripture it floored me in about ten different ways. I felt I just had to share it.

The next verse does give some additional perspective, saying, “We loved him, because he first loved us.” He put it all out there for us to see, without any kind of commitment or trust from us. God has no fear. He will love us no matter what, because he already just does. It was never a secret, it was never a maybe, there was never a doubtful restraint. He’s already done it: the love is there no matter what we do with it. It’s constant and eternal and trustworthy, because God has the greatest integrity and will never change. In other words, perfect love. How can we have any fear about that?

And then, the next phase sets in: we are supposed to be like Him. Which means love no matter the consequence. A lot to think about, but it feels really good right now.