For the next month or so, what you can mainly expect to find here are random photos I take with my iPhone.

A couple of weeks ago, when I decided to post the Beehive book award nominees, I knew that move would bring some renewed traffic to this site. At that time I made a new commitment to post here regularly, tweet frequently, and generally engage in all those other good social media activities. I fully intended to commence writing and posting numerous reviews and commentary on literature, music and whatever else I might happen to be doing or thinking about. This wasn’t the first time I made such a commitment to myself, nor shall it be the last.

However, the sudden immediate necessity to enroll in an adolescent literature course, the need to study for a serious test in a month, my taking of a little second job as a software tester, and preparations to sell our house in Vivian Park have all combined to thwart my recreational writing. Believe me, I am going to be doing a lot writing for that literature course, but I will be sending it all to a teacher, rather than out here to bloggie land. (Watch out after my class is done, though; I may have a truckload of reviews and pieces that I can re-appropriate for the purposes of this site.)

So, enjoy the photos. I hope they bring you as much small satisfaction as they bring me. Happy springtime.

I guess I kind of forgot that posting to my blog isn’t a major literary event, and maybe something is better than nothing at all.  It’s been rather too quiet lately here at the Freez.  To my credit, I did finally improvise a rudimentary, homemade masthead (see above), which debuts today.

So, in lieu of the fabulous pieces of writing the FroztFreez has remained virtually unknown for, I’m passing along a little summertime musical treat for everyone.  It sounds like ice cream trucks and carnival rides.  (I actually heard an ice cream truck driving through Vivian Park today and it made me want to listen to this song some more.)  It’s a great jam called “Walkabout,” a new collaboration between Atlas Sound (the solo project of Bradford Cox, lead singer for Deerhunter) and Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear, a member of Animal Collective).  I predict it will make you smile and maybe bob your head.  I also predict it will eventually be used to sell Volkswagens and maybe mutual funds.  Since I like to say that Animal Collective are my favorite band, and I know that secretly Deerhunter are probably really my favorite band, it was certainly nice of these two guys from my two favorite bands to get together and make this track.  Just press play to hear it, and right click on the link below if you want to download the free track to have for yourself.

Walkabout – Atlas Sound with Noah Lennox

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Early yesterday morning as I looked out our window to peak at the morning weather, I realized that I half-expected and half-WANTED to see everything covered in snow, rather than the few rain puddles that greeted me. Looking at the situation “objectively,” I recognize that this is sickness and madness, but nonetheless it is a true feeling. We need one more good snowstorm to wrap up everything, right? Right? I’ve enjoyed the warmer spring weather of the past week, but I guess there is part of me that is just not ready to say goodbye to snow yet. And since I live in the mountains of Utah, I have the privilege of a long, drawn-out farewell. Some of the stuff is still slumping in the shadows of the north face just a block up the street from me. But that’s just not the same as the fat, fresh snowflakes floating around and piling up on everything.

Well, today I got my snow. Sort of. It’s not sticking to anything, and half the time it is masquerading as rain, but there have been moments of genuine snow today in Vivian Park. The pictures above document this phenomenon.  Right now there are little flecks darting about, but the ground is practically dry.  I guess I won’t get snowplows today (although they were forced to visit Vivian Park, and even that pleasant valley city of Orem, one night just two weeks ago). And there is the consolation that someone built us a snowman in the park just last week.

Perhaps the real reason I am reluctant to say goodbye to the snow is because I never finished publishing my increasingly irrelevant Spring Run-Off / Winter 08-09 Recap here at the Froz-T-Freez. It’s my vain hope that as long as there is still the occasional snowstorm, such content cannot be rendered entirely obsolete.

Also, if it stops snowing and raining all the time, I will have no excuse but to start doing yard work. The receding snowpack revealed all sorts of rocks, branches, debris and garbage on our lawn and driveways that need to be gathered up, swept and thrown away, and the lawn is already overdue for its first cutting. I’m also feeling the hurt now for not planting some new bushes and perennials last fall, but I’m trying not to dwell on that oversight.

As it turns out, I am asking the snow to cover up quite a few things, and not just mud and garbage. I’m not ready to come out of hibernation. I’m not ready for the change. I’m hoping to finish up two long overdue record reviews early this week, so that we can get on with the work of the present time. This is the Froz-T-Freez after all, so an obsession with all things frigid should not come as too much of a surprise. Nonetheless, nostalgia is just one of the items on the menu here; it’s not intended to be our specialty.

Mailing in our taxes today. That’s right, I still kick it old-school with the IRS. I love filling out forms.

P.S. This is also my excuse for not having anything new written and posted — I spent most of the day yesterday preparing said taxes, and earlier this week I was working 9-11 hour days. The prior post, a reprise of a little thing I wrote for our wedding one year ago, I had programmed to automatically post itself on the morning of our anniversary. Anyway, I will get to finishing up my favorite winter album reviews and posting some more pictures muy pronto. Thanks for watching.

We met at an art exhibit. We met in the comment section of my blog. We met in a snowstorm in a cottage in the mountains. We met at a symphony concert, sitting next to each other. We met at Family Home Evening and commiserated because we both hated Family Home Evening. We met at the library and traded poems. We met in the Provo temple. We met in empty parking lots and Mexican restaurants and our parents’ houses. We met at a movie theater where we were both making fun of the movie. We met at IKEA, buying bookshelves. We met at an art supply store. We met at a little Chinese place by the hospital. We met on the yellow BART line between San Francisco and Lafayette. We met hiking on a trail in Millcreek Canyon on the last nice autumn day before winter.  We met to shovel snow under the full moon.  We met because we both liked a painting by Brian Kershisnik.

Today is the first day of spring.

I was extremely reluctant to assert or admit any impending springness prior to today, but now I finally feel confidant in announcing the obvious fact of spring’s advent. This confidance comes not only from our calendar, which dictates the declaration, but more importantly from my personal observations of a transformation so universal underway that it reaches even our shadowy and recalcitrant location in Provo Canyon.  This afternoon I walked a bit of the way up the South Fork Road, and the sun was out from behind the mountain and actually warm enough I could have been wearing shorts.  The snow that had been everywhere just thirteen days ago is now mostly gone.  The creek is quick and full of water and there are large patches of moss and green grass below its surface.  There are birds twittering, there are insects in the air, and there are small creatures rustling in the undergrowth.

It’s safe to say that winter is now over without jinxing things.  However, I’m not foolish enough to confuse the end of winter with the end of snow, especially in a canyon.  We almost always get spring snowstorms on the Wasatch Front, even in the valleys.  I have numerous childhood memories of Eastertime snow in Utah.  Two years ago, if I recollect correctly, a respectable amount of snow dropped on the Salt Lake Valley one day in the middle of June.  You meteorology enthusiasts at home can go check the stats if you don’t trust my anecdotal evidence.

As I have thought about this coming termination of winter, I have realized something: the moment provides an ideal alternative resolution to my failure to publish grandiose and comprehensive 2008 end-of-the-year lists, synopses, and brag-fests here at the Froz-T-Freez.  Everyone else goes by the year; I’m going to go by the seasons, because it feels more natural to me, and it’s my blog so I can.  In the next few days I will finally get around to sharing more winter pictures, and I will be posting features on some of my favorite albums of this past winter.  The snow is melting and the creeks are filling up; the canyon has been overflowing with winter for months and it has to spill out somewhere.  What better place than here?  Think of it as one of those spring snowstorms: it may or may not make you slightly nostalgic for the winter, but it will all melt away in just an afternoon.  At most in a day or two.  Or maybe you’ll need to give it a good, patient week to totally disappear.

If I were a good conventional blogger, about two or three weeks ago I would have written a summary of the past year, filled with pictures, descriptions of wonderful happenings, and lots of exclamation points! I may have even sent this out as an email or even paper letter to my family and friends!

If I were a good and true nerd, I would have posted all sorts of best of 2008 lists on my blog.

If I were totally awesome (please don’t think of Dell Schanze when I say that.     Oh, crap.), I would have listed all of my goals for 2009 in this place for inspirational and accountability purposes.

Indeed, I intended to do all of these things, and many more! (except maybe the exclamation points). I may even still do these things, albeit in a several-weeks-belated attempt.  Maybe I could cover myself by claiming that I am observing the Chinese, or “Lunar,” New Year this year; I guess I should find out when that is. For your information, the Chinese New Year, which shall be known as the Year of the Ox,  begins on January 26, 2009 of the Gregorian calendar.

If you’re at all like me you may be wondering,  “Why didn’t I compile all these lists and write all these summaries and post all these wonderful ideas over my extensive twelve day break from work?”  I honestly can’t find a good answer to that question.  During this same period of time  I did manage to beat Gin three times at Metropolys.  So that’s at least something.

I will offer this, though.  Lately, I’ve been extremely self-conscious about writing reviews. I’ve tried and failed miserably on a couple of music reviews intended for this blog that I never completed and never posted. I’ve forced my way through some book reviews for work, but have felt extremely self-conscious about them.  I want to become better at reviewing. So, among other things, I am going to start posting many reviews on this blog as a practice.  Start to look for my book and music and other reviews, if I ever get around to writing things on a regular basis again. Perhaps I will highlight my favorite albums of 2008 by posting a brief review for each one, with a sample track. If I get really ambitious I may give voice to the wanna-be foodie part of me and start posting restaurant reviews of some sort. And, on a different front, I’ve been meaning to post some of my thoughts from my all-too-infrequent gospel/scripture studies. At any rate, these are type of things that readers of this blog can look forward to in The Year of the Ox, if I will properly yoke myself and push my way into writing things again, like a proper draft animal. The bad jokes will keep coming, folks.  Thanks for watching and have a nice day!

Question: Is spamming okay if you are spamming for Jesus?

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed I had a new person following me on Twitter. Her username was daretobelieve08. Her picture depicted her as a normal looking black woman. There wasn’t really anything suggestive or inappropriate about her name or appearance.  (There are occasionally spam users on Twitter — they go around following tons and tons of other users in an attempt to get attention to their own Twitter feed, which of course has some picture of a scantily clad woman and is of course full of links to their shady business.)  Because of the normalness of this name and picture, I decided to look at her recent comments, and they were rather regular, innocuous types of things. If I remember right, she said she was watching a movie with her family, taking her kids somewhere, thanking God for her blessed life despite having a bad day, stuff like that. Some of them had an inspirational Christian type of message. It was all very normal. As far as I could tell there were no links of any kind in her updates. There was nothing to indicate in any way that she was a spammer or had some nefarious motive, other than the fact that she was following over 700 different Twitter accounts.  Was she a spammer?  If so, she was taking her time to make a commercial connection.  Was her motive an attempt to spread the Good Word through Twitter?  To let her light so shine?  If not, and she was just a regular new user, which most appearances said that she was, I thought it was curious that she had added so many people.  Was it possible that, being new to Twitter, she was just ignorant of etiquette and thought that it would be normal or fun to start following a lot of random people and see what they said?  I can relate to this because sometimes I myself am ignorant, as a lot of people are; other times I’m not ignorant of etiquette, I just don’t like it and choose not to follow it.  When I first encountered blogging several years ago I mistakenly thought it was okay to find all sorts of random blogs of strangers and start following them and commenting on them.  If they published it on the Internet they must want everyone to read it, right?  Turns out I was wrong.  Oh well.

No matter what her motive was for following me and 700 other people, it didn’t really bother me. I didn’t start following her, but I didn’t block her from following me, either.  I totally forgot about her until today, when I was looking through my Twitter account and again saw her listed as one of my followers. I clicked on her account to see what she was twittering about these days and if she had turned out to be a spammer or a weirdo or missionary or something, and what I encountered was this. (You really should click on the word “this” in the last sentence; there’s a cute picture of an owl.)

I don’t know whether she turned to the dark side and revealed her twisted spamming motive in the week or two since I first looked at her account, or if she was simply suspended for following so many people: Twitter won’t let me read her updates now.  But it brought me to the question I posed at the beginning of this writing.  What if she really was “spamming” people on Twitter in an attempt to witness for Christ or inspire hope and faith?  Is that a problem?  Is this really any different than what many missionaries do in public, and what I did as a missionary for two years?  Is knocking on someone’s door or having a conversation with a random person in the street “spamming?”  I know as missionaries we certainly made some people as mad as people get when they get spam, just by standing on their doorstep, or by walking down the street or shopping in the grocery store, or by just existing.  On the other hand, some people changed their lives for the better in part because of our spamming, which in my mind makes it more than worth it.

Too often these days I am so afraid to bother people that I don’t say or do things that I really should be saying and doing.  I am afraid I will do something the wrong way, or at the wrong time.  I am afraid people will think that I have the wrong motives.  Sometimes I am afraid that I do have the wrong motives.  I get overwhelmed and frustrated and I give up or put it off.  I  think to myself that if it hasn’t been said or done yet it’s always still a possibility, but once it’s been tried, if it’s tried in the wrong way, that’s the end.  Account suspended for unusual activity.  But I realize that this is the wrong way to think.  Some people will take things negatively no matter what you do or how hard you try to do it in a good way.  On the other hand, no good can really come from doing nothing.  I am speaking of things both temporal and spiritual here.

Conclusion: Basically what I am saying is that spamming is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if you are spamming for Jesus.  I should probably start doing that.

To serve you better, and after much debate (some external, but mostly internal) I’ve decided to stop importing my twitter updates straight into this blog. They will still show up on the sidebar, under the heading Fresh from the Kitchen, but they won’t get their own posts. The fact that they always showed up as posts was starting to irritate even me.

Sometime soon I will get around to catching up on all the posts I’ve been wanting to catch up on. Photos and possibly a “mixtape” or two are also in the works.

p.s. I totally failed at that NaNoWriMo thing, but it wasn’t a complete failure because I came up with some new ideas and figured out some things about my own writing. Now I just need to put them into practice.

So long, and thanks for watching.

Also In This Issue: Why My Twitter Updates Show Up Here As Entries On My Blog

A couple of months ago I jumped into twitter, and I liked it so much that I soon began looking for a way to incorporate it into this blog, which at the time was still unknown and in the process of being built.  Unlike, um, now?  I’ve had a couple of friends and would-be readers of this blog tell me they didn’t know what the deal was with twitter and didn’t understand why I have twitter updates on my blog.  So here are my best answers.

For those who don’t know, twitter is a little web 2.0 service that lets users publish brief comments, often referred to as microblogs.  There are numerous other microblogging formats, but twitter is a nice clean and simple one that works well, and as far as I know it was also one of the first.  Ostensibly, every twitter update is supposed to answer the question “What am I doing?,” but most people, including me, do not slavishly answer that question with every update.  An update has a maximum limit of 140 characters, which usually works out to a couple of sentences if you push it. This forces a concise brevity.  It helps comedic timing.  It forces others to read between the lines.  It usually just enough to get you intrigued.

You can and would want, of course, to follow the twitter updates of others, and when you log in to your twitter page, your updates and their updates are all racked up there together, with the most recent updates on top.  So you can visit twitter once every day or two, or every week or two, and quickly see some of the things that your friends and family members have been doing and thinking in the past little while.  I like it because I feel like the friends I follow are around and I kind of know what’s going on with them, even if I don’t see them very often or talk to them on the phone every day.  All the time I am thinking of other friends and family members that I wish were on twitter because I want to know what’s going on with them and I know they would have funny and interesting little comments to make.  A random blog entry that I happened upon one time compared twitter updates (as well as chat, to which I’ve never really been converted) to the kind of quick, useful and/or fun interactions that happen in an office of cubicles (like where I work), in which people pop their heads up or around for a minute to say hi or ask a question or just spaz out for a minute, and then after a moment everyone gets back to work.  That’s twitter.  It’s brief and informal, yet somehow intimate.  It doesn’t take more than thirty seconds to write an update, and it doesn’t take more than a minute or two to catch up on all your friends’ updates.  Much easier than reading or writing massive blog entries, like this one.

I do admit that twitter is not entirely unlike Facebook’s status updates, but it is a more pure and direct service for making concise or pithy statements about your thoughts and doings in the world, and it is much easier to find out what is really truly up with your friends, rather than how many Ghostbusters II movie quizzes they took yesterday or who gave them a virtual Dwight Shrute bobblehead.  No one on twitter will invite you twenty times to become a vampire ninja and join them in the fight against the pirate werewolves.

So, I think I’ve shown why I feel that twitter is awesome; but why is twitter on my blog?  Well, I started to  address that in a prior entry, but basically it is here because I like my twitter updates and thought they would make nice little breaks between the longer, more essay-like blog entries here at the Froz-T-Freez.  I also thought I would use them as springboards for longer entries, but so far that has only happened once or twice.  I thought it would make for a more steady stream of content, as I’m really irregular with keeping up on things here.  I thought it would be fun to practice some verbal brevity, as twitter has reminded me that you don’t always need to write paragraphs to express something well.

And with that, I’m going to sleep now.  Goodnight.