Please Help Me!

So about a month or two ago, my blog became one of the top million websites on the web, according to Alexa.com.  I think that's pretty cool, since there's somewhere between 200-350 million websites on earth (it varies widely based on who you ask).  Now that I've broken that barrier, I want to see how far I can go.  Perhaps someday I could overtake http://www.growwheatgrass.com/ as the  586,220 most visited website.

But there's one hitch with this vision:  I generally blog about my life, and I live a terribly boring life.

You see, I always have these great intentions.  I envisioned myself accomplishing quite a bit this summer--going camping, reading tons of new novels, learning how to cook something that isn't frozen, etc.  But now that summer has started and I'm free from classroom obligations that took up so much of my adventure time, I've been decidedly less productive.  Here's a chart breaking down my free time since the spring term ended at BYU:



Clearly, this isn't material that makes for an interesting read, so this is where you guys need to come in.   Please help me live a more exciting life!

"Your only supposed to highlight the parts you like!"

Haha. Yeah, doing that is for sissies.  Real men highlight their scriptures like this:

 

By the way,  this is a Book of Mormon that I read/highlighted towards the later part of the mission.  My mission president got the idea for this activity from Preach My Gospel.  I'd strongly recommend trying it out, because it was a really cool spiritual experience for me.

This wasn't on the Travel Itinerary.

So the Memorial Day weekend was coming to a close and it was about time to finish the road trip and start heading back to Provo for school and such.

The drive over was easy enough.  We loaded my friend's car with snacks and a cooler filled with Dr. Pepper, and I brought a giant list of 'what if' questions I found on the internet in case the conversation got boring, so we were well-prepared.  Best of all, the route we took was fairly easy.  It looked something like this:

"Drive for 800 miles, arrive at destination on left." -Google Maps

However, on the way back, we had to pick up my friend's little sister in Las Vegas, which severely complicated things.  See, unlike Provo to San Jose, there isn't a good interstate that has been built from San Jose to Vegas, so our route looked a little more like this:

"Betcha wished you had a smartphone now, sucka."

Yes, neither of us had smart phones with GPS's, so we were forced to navigate the great American West the same way our forefathers did: with Google Maps.

My laptop was acting up, so I couldn't get it to print off a map at the hotel, so we copied down the directions on a sheet of paper. The trip was going well, but Google Maps was taking us on some sketchy roads.  We were on one two lane road in the middle of nowhere followed by another two lane road going through a village of six people and then we turned at the shotgunned sign and headed west thirty furlongs. . .yeah, it was like that for two plus hours.

By the way, I should mention that I have an irrational fear of getting lost, and that I get very nervous when giving or taking directions.

Anyway, we eventually got to the point in the directions where it said "drive for 127 miles (2 hours and 15 minutes),"  the step after that was to take the exit for I-15 Northbound to Las Vegas.  I-15 is close to the only interstate I've ever driven on, so I knew that if we made it there, we'd be in the clear.  I was finally resting easy.

Two Hours and Thirty Minutes Later:

Yeah, I was flustered enough to say Mormon cuss words.

• There are 259 miles between Disneyland and Las Vegas, Nevada.  
• Google Maps estimates the trip should take 4 hours and 15 minutes.  
• Buying the gas needed to get to Vegas in Orange County costs approximately $12.49 per gallon.  
• The car still needs to make it back to Provo after that.
• And Jake does not have the time or the money to go to Disneyland. 

This was Jake's reaction to this turn of events:

And that is why you should never give directions to, or take them from me.

Endnotes: Our car did eventually make it back to Provo.  It was 2:15 AM when we rolled into the parking garage. It's a good thing I packed extra crackers and easy cheese for the trip.

Cosplay Bingo Makes Me Smile

I went on a road trip with a friend over the Memorial day weekend.  She sets up events, so she was headed off to FanimeCon in San Jose, California, and I was along for the ride.  Fanime is a convention dedicated to Anime, Japanese Pop Culture, and general nerd stuff.  Now, I'm what is called a "convention virgin" and not really an anime nerd, so I would like to tell you that I was out of my element. . . but that's not really true.  I was surrounded by loads of freakishly skinny Asians wearing glasses, so I pretty much blended in.

Something that was definitely eye catching was the vast amounts of cosplayers--convention goers wearing costumes.  Why?  I have no idea.  I knew there would be at least a few of them, but I was blown away by the sheer number of them.  Strangely, there didn't seem to be any etiquette on what is an appropriate costume to wear.  I almost immediately found a guy dressed as Lucius Malfoy, and then later found the Bananas in Pajamas.  I asked my friend if it was possible to wear an inappropriate costume here.  She said no.

You get super-nerd points if you can name more than three of the characters here.

Not one to miss the opportunity for a bit of fun, we decided to play some 'cosplayer bingo.'  I made some bingo cards and a we went through the convention hunting for various costumes.

It was a fun distraction.  Here is my artistic interpretation of some of the cosplayers we found while playing bingo.  All of these were real costumes.

Crappy costume with a cardboard sign.

Hipster Link's sign actually read "I was saving princesses before saving princesses was cool."

 Guy in a skirt who hasn't shaved his legs.

It was pretty disturbing how easy it was to find this one.

Set of five themed characters.

Other themed sets found included the cast of Avatar: the Last Airbender and Kill Bill

Costume requiring a handler.

It would have been really funny to push him down the stairs.

Guy with too many buttons.

He had dozens more in his pockets.

Person with giant key/sword.

I believe such a weapon would be inefficient in combat.

I ended up tying my friend for the first bingo.  I think I made the card too easy--we were able to find almost everyone on both our cards within an hour.

Also, I should note one of the bigger reasons I blended in with the crowd:

I unwittingly dressed up for it.

I wore a shirt that said "HATERS GONNA LOVE THIS" thinking that it was about as far away from the Asian cosplay swag as I could get (after all, Kanye references 'haters' in his songs).  But then people started approaching me and saying "Dude, I love your shirt," or "Where did you get your shirt?"  One vender with a bullhorn yelled at me from across the hall "I'm a hater, and I'm lovin' it!"  I asked my friend what the deal was, and she said that the saying comes from an internet meme (Epic Meal Time?).

So it turns out that in spite of my best efforts, I ended up being a spot on my own bingo card.  What. the. freak.