No More Hangaburgers!

Sometimes life rolls ya a series of events that while happening aren't so funny but when you near the end and the final culminating happenstance is brought to light...its funny!

That was a rather serious prologue to a story about hamburgers and my new found dislike for them. Which only means that I will eat them every other week instead of every other day.

See it all start with the chili chili cheese burger from Red Robbins I had a week and a half ago. I know what your thinking if I started with the chili chili cheese burger, how much worse could it get. well this is more of a quantity story then it is a flatulent one. Anyways, that was hamburger number one. (which even though this story isn't about that, hamburger number one didn't like me so much).

Then my friends from Cali show up during the week. Hooray, I thought being my naive self, rejoicing before I heard the news, yep dinner at Red Robbins the excitement dwindled but for the sake of my friends and now with prior knowledge of staying away from the chili chili cheese burger, I was in!

mmmm...how can you go wrong with a mushroom burger.. YOU CAN'T. but this is not a story of liking hamburgers so lets move on...that was only hamburger number two and I was thinking I like cows and fungi, put em' together with endless steak fries and that's a treat.

eww eww! I forgot my friends have an IN and OUT complex so inevitably every hangaburger must be rated, sized, compared, measured up and all other synonyms that fall into that category against the all mighty, pedastooled, godly double double (these opinions do not necessarily reflect the view of the author). So can anyone guess what the conversation was about at Red Robbins...that's right, you guessed it.. Cars. oh yeah and that hamburger thing I just mention. Burger number dwo(in french accent) down like china town!

The next day brought rain and a decision to continue the divine quest of finding the Holy Grail of burgers. You might be saying to yourself about now well why didn't she just refuse to go along to another place that only serves burgers. In my defense we were on a holy quest see, and silly little me being the optimist that I am assumed there would be holy hand grenades involved somewhere along the line. As the events of the night played out however to my bitter disappointment I was only given hangaburger number three. It was a garlic burger, maybe classified as a stink bomb but falls very short of the holy hand grenade tier of coolness I perceived was to be apart of the jovial night at cotton bottom. On that note a word to the wise a restaurant with a name like cotton bottom should be avoided at all costs. An establishment doesn't get a name like that for no reason.

By this time as you can imagine I was thinking hmm...I have had a lot of hamburgers, need a change!

The saga continues however unfortunately for all you poor souls that actually are reading this because hamburger number 4 happened. and the very next day no less. I was helping a completely unrelated friend and he offered to buy me lunch. I thought wow that's high class. I could do lunch. Pulling in to the Alberston's parking lot complexy thing. I assumed (see where assuming has gotten me in this story, NO WHERE) we were going to subway(his usual restaurant of choice) but no on this fateful day he chose Carl's Jr. It was fate..he had a coupon!...(you can't say no to the coupon, it makes the coupon gods unhappy) and thus I was trapped. Hamburger number 4 was a Kentucky bourbon burger, now wishing that
alcohol was actually part of the burger deal I was dropped off at home.

"Did you get something to eat?" queried my mother. With a down trodden face and stomach my explanatory diatribe ended with a firm declaration, No More Hamburgers.....mothers response. "I bought hamburgers for dinner tonight!!" obviously her conquest and victory over the meat department earlier that day had clouded her ability to listen and had made this statement much more exciting to her then to me. (side note) sometimes I think people don't listen when I talk but then I think harder and.....wait what was I talking about.... Oh well, fortunately my mother stricken with guilt because of her cruel sense of humor said she would fix me something else.

If only I had gotten to eat that something else....SIGH!

but Alas, Kerry had to drag me on her date...blah. dating that's enough to give you a stomach ache right there! So being the kind of friend that I am, like afore mentioned above. I went to Kerri's house to wait for the guys. And what do you do while waiting, tell stories! Mine was about hamburgers...mahahaha! which prompted Kerri to call her date and ask where we were headed for dinner. Only hearing one side of the conversation but using my super duper high faluting deductive skills (they were mail order). I deduced very deductively that hamburger number 5 was on its way...oh the humanity! Of course now that I think about it the maniacal laughing on Kerri's part was kind of a give away.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

I wonder if they have ever just gotten an order for a baked potato. Sigh..again! The whole prospect of eating another hamburger interfered with my reasoning capabilities and I ordered it, ( the word Hamburger will be replaced with this " and is now not to be mentioned from this point forward) with everything on it. UGGHhh! mustard does not like mushrooms and mushrooms are very belligerent to pickles. My thoughts at this point, " nervous break down.

And so it was with the new found disliking of hamburgers, woops "...........at least for a couple of weeks!

acknowledgements
crazy in N out fedishers
crazy Clark who uses coupons
crazy Kerri for her maniacal laughing
crazy me for spending time writing this

The End.

Stimulus

Today reading the New York Times and shaking my head at every page turn due to the constant reminders that America's new President Barack Obama has a "grand strategy" for America's ever decreasing fiscal stability.

There have been mentions of another address to congress by the President about this fantastic stimulus plan. But I just can't help, no matter how socially unacceptable it may be picture President Obama when addressing the nation not as political icon. but as a proverbial Santa Claus, The tune, "here comes Santa Claus", inevitablely follows. The lyrics that find there way to my stimulus carol go something like this, " here comes socialism, here comes socialism, right down Pennsylvania Avenue." I was never much of a rhymer, I think poetry is the only class I failed in high school but I felt the content grasped the emotion of the situation. The humming of Christmas carols in February attracts the looks of many as I walk down the hollowed halls of higher education. And with the Obama stickers I see plastered all over the backs of laptops. I doubt this is the audience in which I should make my vocal debue. I guess I will just have to be satisfied with side glances for my intrusive humming and blogger fame.

That's it for the rock stylings of peri-peri

Come what may and love it!

In church today one of the men that spoke in sacrament talked about a conference talk given by Elder Wirthlin.

This talk fit so well with the feelings or lack there of that I had been having over the last couple of weeks. And it also tied in nicely to a comment my friend made on the phone last night. Sister Svendsen, I guess I can call her by her first name now, Brooke told me last night on the phone; After I explained that I was still having a hard time adjusting to real life again, said "I had the same problem until one of my friends told me that I was the one complicating my life". She went on to tell me that life is simple. At the moment she told me that I was doing one of those eye rolls and thinking to myself, yeah right life is just complicated. However, that night on my knees in prayer I was impressed upon to reconsider. But of anyone that knows me I am pretty persistent when decided upon a course of action. So I wasn't fully convinced. ( I am kind of embarrassed to admit that but hey we all make mistakes, mine are just a little more frequently occurring than others) But what really convinced me was today in church. When this person was speaking about not getting caught up in adversity but understanding Gods divine purpose and moving forward. I have been so focused on not letting myself and others down, I forgot to dance in the rain. I am not referring to the music scene that includes Fred Austere. But I got that idea from my mother when I was on my mission. She wrote me a story about how a man traveled alot to this certain town. When he was in the town it always seemed to rain. but on one occasion when he had brought his son along his son asked why do the people golf in the rain, work in the rain, travel in the rain. And the man noticed that his son was right even though it was raining this was an active community and he realized if they didn't do it in the rain they wouldn't do it at all. The man in Sacrament also told the story of a professional baseball player that was only Born with one arm, but instead of giving up he pursued his dream of playing baseball. And it became a fairy tale. He danced in the rain. Our rain clouds might be different then his but that doesn't matter as long as we choose not to let the rain push us inside. We gotta Dance! Speaking of fairy tales my friend Brooke also informs me that life is a fairy tale and we are the authors. It's all what you make it to be. It's nice to have friends who believe in fairies. and Who encourage you to dream big.

My new goals
1.DREAM BIG
2.Instead of groaning, laugh
3.write my own fairy tale, one life experience at a time.
4.Come what may I am going to love it.

If someone doesn't understand what I mean by church, sacrament, conference, mission or God. Let me know and we will talk.

Delayed Culture Shock

I have finally realized after almost 3 months of being home; that returning from a year and a half over seas is not as easy as I once believed. It could have possibly been denial or a suppression of the changes that I had made over the last year and a half but the facade is over. The culture shock of being back in the US has set in with tragic deepness this last week. To understand I will back up a little. Almost two years ago I decided to serve an LDS mission, at the time it was more of a decision to escape from looming decisions about my future than a search for spirituality. Ironically I found the latter and only prolonged the first. So in this desperate escape I found myself with a paper that told me I was called to serve in the Singapore Mission(which turned out to be the Malaysian mission for me) and a one way ticket to South East Asia. Understandably frightened about the huge change I had just made in my life the first couple of weeks were a nightmare and I found myself wishing I was home. Then I fell in Love!....(not with a boy, that's against the rules) I fell in love with the people and the food with crazy unfamiliar customs and traditions; with traditional music and with the land that I now called home. Now it was the thought of leaving this amazing and awesome place that frightened me. Unfortunately, countries don't make a habit of giving residence to persons that fall in love with there country. So at the end of my service I was given another one way ticket that scared me more than the first one did. I was headed for America. A scary place of well spoken English and lots of white people and blan food. You might think my fears are silly as to being able to speak English and seeing lots of white people but anyone that has lived in a foreign country like Malaysia for an extended period of time will agree that those fears are horribly justified. And yet the acceptance of returning was not over powered by the since of panic I felt when reaching America. At least not until last week when I hit a brick wall and realized that my running was finished and that I had to face and over come the culture shock of being a real person again in the country I was born.

In Malaysia I could be who ever I wanted to be a fantastically liberating feeling. No one there had preconceived notions of my personality or my flaws. I was free to grow and become anyone I chose to become. This provided me with a unique situation in which I could develop with out the hindrance of presumption. Coming home I wanted to naively continue that dimension of my life but that was impossible because when I returned I was seen not in the eyes of those who had witnessed me change but in the eyes of those who expected an ideal of the same person that had left a year and a half before. I went from being completely free to being confined helplessly in the views of others. Have you ever heard of the saying that a river will always run the path of least resistance. Well so does human behavior, unless motivation and determination are released to push us in a different direction. So I was trapped in the flow, sure I put up a fight at the beginning. I tryed to prove, by my superior demeanor and example all that I had learned and changed in myself over the last year and a half but 21 years of conditioning people to think of me in a certain way was not easily over come. So instead of fighting I hid my new enlightenment to keep it safe, hoping someday I would use it again. In the next few weeks with out even a second thought I started to drift into what I remembered as comfortable. It was the path of least resistance. It was easier to act the way people perceived me then to let my new and more brilliant self show through. An interesting concept, that the way we treat others could be directly correlated with the way they act. It was true in my case and all the things that I disliked and that I had mended on my mission crept back into my life with a vengeance. Those tumultuous habits of behavior became my life again. It was not a direct decision but rather a slippery slope of unconscious acts.

Sometimes we find ourselves far from our destination because we inadvertently took the path of least resistance and when we finally realize we are not were we are supposed to be, that's the definition of an epiphany. We have all had those epiphany moments when life comes crashing down around us and we realize that what we have been doing is completely irrational. Well mine happened last week. I had an experience that opened my eyes to the fact that I had been running from my problems instead of facing them. Funny thing was, I was running at the time. I realized as my feet slushed through the snow and looking up into the darkening sky that blanketed the mountains. I wasn't in Kansas any more. That's when it hit me, the wall came down and two worlds clashed. In two words I believe we could call that, "culture shock". Integrating back into life here in the US has been a struggle. but, Now it is apparently clear to me why the word shock is associated with earthquakes, the aftermaths of tragic accidents and cultural changes. It's not as pleasant as one would guess, it's not even amusing but it is a mechanism to show that the worst is over and it helps us prioritize for the next event.

Don't worry, I don't have everything solved. I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with all the really tall white people and blan food.