Blast from the Past!!!

Whaddup playas

Someone told me the other day that's how non-missionaries talk. They weren't just messing with me, were they? Well now that I have jumped back into the worldy world, back into BYU, back into a selfish, mostly-about-me lifestyle, I figured as long as I'm jumping, I might as well jump onto the blogging bandwagon, 2008-style. I will say this website has a pretty sweet set-up.

Honestly I have been a litte hesitant and intimidated to post anything on here thus far. I have felt like the things I have mostly blogged about pre-mish and the things I would say these days don't seem to fit with the themes which have prevailed on here recently. I don't have the wit of a newspaper columnist, I haven't made any 97s in recent history, and I definitely don't have any cuteness, whether in me or any offspring.

However, I did stumble across a gem of sorts yesterday as I took an outside chance that my old hotmail account was still in existance. I was in overly-ambitious-ten-years-in-advance-career-planning-mode, into which I have been known to occasionally fall, and I decided to dig through pre-mish emails to try to find the resume an MD/PhD student at UC San Diego sent me. In the process I came across the following evidence that the Thurber kids never fell under the "privileged upper-middle class" umbrella. I mean there's no way Christine learned the following moves any further than one hundred yards from the projects.

Yall think I'm kidding. We couldn't even afford our own bubbling statues.

Here Austin gets a little ghet-to himself and then after that it's just ridiculous...

I appear to have found a beach bum to sing with me in this ancient Youth Conference (Un)talent show.

Along with those blackmail-worthy pieces of Thurber family history, I also found some old school pictures which I haven't seen pretty much since they were taken.

If I'm not mistaken this was the very first time any of us ever set foot on a surfboard. Must have been at least four years ago by now. Check out Austin's sweet 'do. (more on that if you scroll down...

One of our shave-Austin's-head escapades. You can tell by that smile that Mom hasn't come home yet. I think we had told him he looked like the turtle from Robin Hood so we put glasses on him to complete the clever disguise. "Yay Dad!"

This looks like the homecoming game my freshman year at school. I can't believe I started here three-and-a-half years ago. A wise older missionary once told me "Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana." Cool kids here.

Same YC as above. Jen will remember Megan Bishop. The two kids on the far left are non-members, brought separately. That's right, we had non-members at youth conference. (Go on brush ya shoulda' off)

And lastly, this is from my tag-along trip with Dad to San Diego, when I fell in love with the city, summer 2004. You are looking at the beach at Del Mar right along PCH 101.

So maybe part of the reason that every picture/video on here is at least three-to-four years old is that I don't have any current ones yet? But I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty excited to come across this forgotten stash.

In all seriousness, I am doing great. I couldn't ask for nicer guys as roommates (even the one who hangs swords on his wall and reads fantasy books.) I went to church today for the first time and met a lot of great people. I rode with a guy named Jeff, who was telling me a lot about what the ward is like relative to others of the off-campus nature here at the zoo. He said it's typically a very old ward, that right now it's younger than usual, but there are always a good number of returned sister missionaries, BYU graduates who stick around for whatever reason (kind of - we all know the reason) and generally more mature people. He spent the first year off his mission at one of those very large "extension of the dorms" places just south of campus and said coming here was a breath of fresh air. So thanks to all involved in my housing selection process - this is exactly what I wanted. Especially the returned sister missionaries. (I wish I could say that with confidence. In actuality I am terrified of anything female.)

The classes are a'ight. Nothing is too hard yet, but there is a lot of work and a lot of reading. I am going to be doing more hour-eating, non-academic things this semester than I have in those past, so balance will be a key to success.

Thus far I have spent a good amount of time chillin' with faces from my freshman year. All those from my sophomore year are still out on their missions. I have also hooked it up with Elder Martin once or twice. He is unexpectedly still single. Shouldn't be long though. Oh and lastly I watched Pirates 2 and 3 with Alex the other night, both of which premiered in theaters while I was wearing a very special name tag.

I have missed my mission here and there. I was walking home behind some girl talking to her dad over the phone about putting her papers in, and as I gazed past her head and into the muggy Provo sky I missed sunny Las Vegas pretty badly. I am still figuring out my niche here, and hoping I start to feel more like I belong as time goes...