This post is principally for Robin. I hope he finds it helpful.

  So, how to never miss anything ever? Be omniscient. Alternatively, use RSS feeds. I’m not going to discuss anything technical about RSS feeds, but they normally look like this:

  Sometimes they appear in the URL bar of your browser too. RSS is extremely prevalent, so you have probably already seen these icons about. At WaterBlogged!, you can find our RSS feed at the very bottom of the page. In our case we have two of these things, one for comments and one for entries.

  Congratulations, you can now identify RSS feeds. Last step: there are many ways to “subscribe” to an RSS feed. Many browsers have built in “readers” that are quite convenient and there are a number of standalone readers as well. I’m only going to talk about one reader, it’s free and accessible anywhere, it’s called Google Reader. After you get a Google account, and login to the Google Reader page I just linked to, click the “add subscription” link.

  Now just copy and paste the WB comments RSS feed link in, http://www.waterblogged.net/comments/feed:

  Click “add.” Done. It should look something like this, check it out:

  Do the same thing for the entries link, http://waterblogged.net/feed/ and you’ll be a fully subscribed citizen of WaterBlogged!. I’m not sure which is the best part, being able to subscribe to Hailey and Joie’s 20 other blogs or being able to keep scrolling down to older and older posts and comments. That means if you’re too busy for WB for a month, you can just keep scrolling through until you’re completely up to date.

so i started my regular shift at wsfa today. i have been training for weeks in the evenings, but today i made my first attempt at the 1:30-7:30 am shift.

it is 8 right now. i am at job number two. pretty sure i am going to fall asleep-just face plow into my keyboard and never miss a snore.

i stayed up late saturday-till almost three, and made myself get up early so that i would be tired yesterday afternoon. danny covered the window in the bedroom with some towels and stuff to block out the daylight so i could trick myself into thinking it was bed time. i went to bed at 6:30 pm, and all was bliss..until 9:30 when i woke up.

yeah..pretty much been up ever since. i figure though, after a long day today, my body will quit fighting and will stay asleep tonight. if it doesnt, i dont know what i will do..cause i have only slept 7 hours in the past 2 nights combined, and i will start getting seriously out there if i have another night of failed z’s. not to mention i actually have to think for my job. staring at the computer screen like a zombie only works at the secretary job (where i am now).

and speaking of the producer job..its great. just thought you should all know. my coworkers are lovely. work is lovely.even though i was tired, the hours flew by like nothing this morning. i can not believe how much i have learned in a matter of weeks over there. its insane. i really like this job, and i am trying to not become jaded about it. i am trying to maintain an ultra-positive attitude, and i am gonna pull it off.

still haven’t seen a paycheck, but it will be a beautiful day when i do. shoes for all! and by all, i mean a lot of shoes for me and maybe danny if he lucks out.

gonna see john prine friday, but this is probably all that you will ever hear about it. should be good.

Attention, Waterbloggers:

I’m leaving for the next three weeks. My schedule in Egypt borders on ridiculous: Lectures/field trips/ labs every day, starting at 8 and ending at 8 with a few hour breaks in between. I will be back June the 1.

For the record:
1. Sarah, Chancellor’s scholar for the AUM’s School of Sciences (highest honor awarded at AUM BTW) earned this trip more than anyone I have ever known, and I with all my heart resent that she was blackballed out of it on a technicality–having already participated in a study abroad program, she was disqualified (fine print that didn’t even exist, and a completely arbitrary ruling). Sarah: I love you and will miss you as though you were my right and left foot and hand. I feel totally immobile when you aren’t around, and to be frank I don’t know how I am going to manage.

2. I being of sound mind do hereby bequeath all of my earthly possessions to J. Brandon Preston and Family in the event of my untimely demise while on this trip. This is hardly a legal, binding document; yet, my desires are now known and I hope are respected. I know Brandon will dole it out properly.

3. I will probably be able to access the internet for most of my stay. I’m not going to be giving daily updates, but I won’t disappear from the map, either.

4. People throw the word love around; I never intend to if I can help it. I love and will miss you guys fiercely (with bear claws).

5. I’m going to exploit this fucking opportunity to the fullest.

6. Sorry for the pretention.

recap informal
verb |rēˈkap| ( -capped , -capping ) [ trans. ]
state again as a summary; recapitulate : a way of recapping the story so far | [ intrans. ] to recap, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, he lost control of the northern third of his country.
noun |ˈrēˌkap| |ˈriˈkøp|
a summary of what has been said; a recapitulation : a quick recap of the idea and its main advantages.
ORIGIN 1950s: abbreviation.

If that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what does

The following events happened between 5:00pm 11 Apr 2008 and 1:00am 12 Apr 2008.

Work was the same as always. I got off early for my big EMT class.

The following events happened between 5:30am 12 Apr 2008 and 3:24pm 12 Apr 2008

I woke up extremely early so that I could get ready for my EMT test. The funny thing is that I woke up like a minute before my alarm did. I guess that I was just really anxious. Usually it takes more than just my alarm clock to wake me up after just three and a half hours of sleep. I got up, took a shower, made some pancakes and waited for my ride. The test was in a town called Murray, a good 45 minute drive from where I was at in Provo. I started to tense up a little bit as 7:00am rolled on by. That was supposed to be the time we met up, or I guess more correctly put, she was supposed to pick me up. I was rusty, I don’t even know what I was thinking, this dame was supposed to be picking me up and here I was without even her number. She had a least two others in the car, but I didn’t have their numbers either. I guess if push came to shove I could always take the car. It wasn’t my car, but it could have been my car to take. That would have left me with some unhappy roommates though and unhappy roommates are the worst roommates. Before I could even picture anything more, the phone rang. You know the scene where the guy just stares at the phone after it starts ringing? A little hesitant to pick it up? That was not me, that phone was loud and like I said unhappy roommates are the worst roommates. She had just showed up so I walked outside to get in the car. It was a blue car. I think a hybrid, but I’m not sure. I have never been one for the details. I guess I missed the memo, but there was a little bit of segregation going on. Girls in the front and guys in the back. I guess looking back on it now the girl riding shotgun was pregnant. That is excusable. The chump in the back (I say chump in such a way that displays nothing but kindness to what he really is) is munching away on some Wendy’s while the girls in the front argue over directions. This was going to be a great ride I thought to myself. I had half the mind to ask if the Wendy’s was the reason for the lateness in departure, but I decided that would go nowhere fast. Deciding that the only way to drown out the mindless chomping of food and the bickering squeals of our pilots was to listen to the sound of my own voice I pulled out my EMT binder. The binder is basically our Bible. Contained within it’s wonderful pages were the answers to any basic medical problem. It was like a cliff note version of our 700 page textbook. I decided that I could get everyone else to stop making such useless noise by quizzing them. It was going great, getting the 6 rights down, contraindications for nitro and where to administer occlusive bandages. It was going great at least until my comrade next to me decided to answer a question with a mouth full of hash browns.

*RANT*ALERT*RANT*ALERT*RANT*ALERT*RANT*ALERT*RANT*ALERT*

I can’t stand it when people talk with their mouths full or chew with their mouths open. I think that it is just one of the grossest things that you can possible do.

*And now, back to the story*

That made me quickly stop the question asking and start the silent note taking. We finally arrived at the center after some confusing turn taking. Outside was a guy from our class. He was sitting there squatting down with an orange, peeling it. I guess it wasn’t that weird now that I think of it, it would have been really weird if he ate the orange without peeling it. He was all by himself though and was just kind of like…Gollum. Kind of weird. I sat down next to a man that I had sat down next to many times during the course of the past year. We began to talk and I filled out my little survey thing. There were a lot more people there than I thought there would be. There was this group of hooligans sitting in front of me and I have not heard so much swearing for quite a long time actually. It was kind of strange. We got our numbers and I was number 92. I practiced for quite some time and then it hit me. They called for the first class to start their practical test. they were from Richfield, Utah! I spent six weeks of my mission there. It was really a nice lovely place. The nervous craps. I really dislike those guys and they always come out at the worst moments. I mean, there is pretty much no defense against those guys. I ran to the bathroom with this tremendous fear that I would miss my turn, the incident at dance sport still vivid in my mind. It turns out that I did not miss my number. I began to go slowly crazy as I crammed my mind with all of the last minute facts that I could. I was all prepped for a trauma. In my class final I easily handled the medical but, the trauma didn’t go as well. I think that I finally got it down though as I was practicing on everyone that would let me. I actually talked to some of the people in my class for the first time as well. It was kind of an interesting experience. I wish that I had stopped to talk with them more during the class. Someone brought out a frisbee and we played outside for a while. It was really windy and cold and one guy was really good… too good. It really hurt to catch his frisbee throws. When we went back inside the first person from out group had entered the testing area. I thought to myself,

“Oh crap! Were we out there for that long?”

It turns out that the group before us, their teacher was one of the test givers so they couldn’t test with him. So they had to grab one person from our group every time. We took this huge group photo because it was basically just our group left in the waiting area. Then someone had a stroke of genius. Pictionary. Of course we played pictionary with EMS terms and that got really funny. Every so often one of us would be called in to take the test and we would all cheer and yell. I think that we got the other group jealous because they were not into the whole camaraderie thing. The funniest picture drawn was my a guy that we pretty much had to force to get up there. He drew a really angry woman on the board and just pointed to it. Of course the first guesses were pregnancy related. I was just joking and yelled out PMS. I was right, but it isn’t that kind of PMS. In EMS it stands for Pulse and Motor Senses. Anyways, it was funny. My time finally came, or so I thought. I am really glad for that pictionary game, it really loosened me up. Calm-age. I was placed in front of a door that had two pieces of paper taped to the side of it. The way the practical testing worked was that they gave us a scenario where we had to find out what the problem was and treat it using a full patient assessment. We were given a 9 minute time limit on that. We had a 4 minute timed skill test afterwards where we had to demonstrate one skill. The skill could range from putting on a pulse oximeter (that was the one we were all hoping to get) to treating for hypothermia. After reading my scenario I knew that I was going to be dealing with an allergic reaction. My skill test it said was on administering nitroglycerine. I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I realized that this test was going to be a piece of cake. I still had quite a bit of waiting in the hallway before it was finally my turn. I walked into the room, looked at my equipment (they gave me two minutes to do so) and started with those infamous last words,

“BSI, is my scene safe?”

After that it was like clock work. No need for c-spine precautions, no major bleeding, put him on oxygen, made the transport decision, called for ALS backup, allergic to peanuts, guy ate peanuts, SAMPLE history,
had an epi-pen, administered the epi-pen, put it in the sharps container and there we were. I did forget to document the time that I administered the epi-pen though. My bad. The skill test went just as easily. I did forget the sixth right, but it was right medication and I had the right medication, so technically speaking I had that one covered as well. All the way home we talked about the tests, and I think that I did really well in comparison. It made me really happy especially since the driver was a jerk and tried to rub it in my face constantly that she knew more than me and that I was never doing anything right. I got home and collapsed.

Our teacher told us that we should expect a response in about 2 weeks or we would get it a lot sooner if we failed. I got my response within 4 days. Yeah, I know. It said that I passed my practical and my skill test though. That made my day. I was one happy dude. I scheduled my written test and took it the following Wednesday. I had to pay 8 dollars in cash, but I didn’t have that because (this is a really random at funny story) I was at work that Tuesday night, right before my test and I was talking to this new girl that worked there. I was just asking about her last name to see if it was spanish (it was italian actually)
when this mexican dude just popped his head over the western style swinging doors that we have leading into the back and exlaimed,

“Que onda vato!”

This took me completely by surprise. I didn’t know what to say, but I started to talk with him anyways. He said that he was selling tamales and that he was wondering if I wanted to buy some. I said OK, so I gave him all of my cash (about $8) and bought some tamales. It was really random and I think that I weirded out the new girl by just taking off into the parking lot with this short mexican dude. Anyways, I didn’t have any cash for my test. I had to scrummage up all of my change and I barely had enough. The guy at the testing center was not too happy with me. It was on a computer, so I guess that it wasn’t really written. The test was going really well when disaster struck. I unplugged my mouse. It was just in such an awkward position so I kept pulling it and eventually it unplugged. Oops. I used my highly useful technical support training and plugged it back in though. This test gave instant feedback. I clicked the submit button and found out that I passed. I am officially an EMT-B now. Hooray. I want to take my national registry but, I am still trying to figure it out. It is weird.

I flew home and things happened. Yay! Another post coming soon!

I will save your life
When your out and down
I will clear all the lights
To comfort your eyes
You will do the same
You will do it all for me
Anytime lifeline
You saved my life
When you tied me down
And if I cry
Tell me that I would do the same
If ever it were you
The next time lifeline

- Kent

my gravatar doesn’t have boobies. i inspected the picture closely. it is of theda bara, a silent film star whose face scares the shit out of me. wait-can i say shit on waterblogged?

i am reeeeeeal tired.
i take my last final tomorrow.
that is all.

Hello everyone, this is Sean M. Uranga,
How are all of you doing? I hope that you are all well. I ran into Jeremiah this evening at Wal*Mart and we sparked a neat idea. We talked about how we should all get together for bowling Wednesday night. I think that would be cool. Just like it used to be. Other things are options I guess. Let us know, eh?
None of these I’m working business or I’m in Japan or Washington excuses either.

“How do I feel by the end of the day
(Are you sad because you’re on your own)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I get [to feeling pretty awesome] with a little help from my friends,
Mmm I’m gonna to try with a little help from my friends”
-Lennon/McCartney

It’s time for something real. Let me start with some acronyms.

FYI

1. I have probably already mentioned that I have now in my possession a viable DVD burner thanks to Sarah’s laptop. My own DVD drive has completely burned out on my desktop. Have I, sometime in the distant past, ever promised you a copy of a deustch_bag production? If I have, I can assure you that I don’t remember making the promise and if you will but remind me, I’d be thrilled to really burn you some of the goodies. Joie, in particular, comes to mind–and not just sexually.

(I have often though that if I were to make a short film on my own, it would be quite funny of me to merely call it a _bag production. But Xack, the deustch half, uses the whole thing when he works independently and ruins my fun.)

2. I’m getting more and more accustomed to the adultiness of life. Wearing nice clothes, in particular.

REO

REO stands for Real-estate owned. Principally I used the heading because I promised more than one acronym, and I always deliver–just ask Sarah. Secondly, I used it because it was a useful segue into my REORPG. Kind of like Tibia, but with real-life consequences and infinitely more interesting.

i.e. I’m going to talk about my housing shit now.

Things are ambiguous at best. It’s very difficult to find a house in a particular area, but on the flip side the housing situation is terrible and people are foreclosing at astronomical rates. Something literally opens up everyday. The trouble is, foreclosures are being snapped up like crumpets at tea time, and with Sarah and I leaving the cuntry–it might be late summer before we can find and close on a house.

Further in boring financial news, I have $2400 in $100 savings bonds. Don’t get excited, only two of them are matured so I have to wait years before I cash them. But that money’s going to help me out one day.

I Hate to Break It to You News Break:

1. John Dies at the End (johndiesattheend.com) by David Wong didn’t interest me terribly. Sorry, Billy.

2. I’ve set you up, Niedzielski: I put you as my “Favorite Music” on my facebook.com profile and urged everyone to google the shit out of you. Hope you brought your pooh-colored umbrella and galoshes: get ready for a shitstorm.

3. Brandon: I can’t sleep with you anymore.

4. Hailey: Brandon can’t sleep with you anymore.

5. It seems like you pretty much fucked up, Cody. If you had seen MSI abroad, we could have had a cool little MSI update center as they wound their way towards the main group. Consider: they were in Japan, where in a perfect world you would have seen them and delivered a highly detailed picto-textual post. Billy then is treated to a subsequent concert in Maryland, whereupon he gives a similar post. Finally, MSI makes it to Atlanta where the main contingent of the group sees and evaluates their performance. It would have been neat, is all I’m saying.

6. Xachary Christian Simms: I’m pretty sure you’re that “soybomb” douchebag. And I use the term loosely. And, admittedly, without having anything to back it up with. Also, you look like the Aryan version of Matt Le Blanc. Maybe change your icon?

7. Marc Berg. . .Ah, what the hell. You don’t read this website anymore than Sarah Ann Pool shaves her armpits. That’s a euphemism for “Sarah Ann Pool never shaves her armpits.”

Meritorious, or The Poetic Shitsterpiece

I had a very nice meeting with one of my all-time favorite professors, Dr. Aaij. We talked about me and my future for about 15 minutes, but the purpose of the meeting was to give me some certificates and a check. “A check?” You might be saying. Why, what a coincidence: That’s exactly what I said.

Dr. Aaij nominated an essay of mine ( a 14 page analytical doozy on Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus) for AUM’s prestigious Collections. The short version of the story is that I won first place, where previously (in 2005) I had only received an honorable mention. I won fifty dollars, but more importantly I have won my first real essay competition, an important one at that, and besides cleansing my shit from any smell for the next year, the win is going to look great on a resume. Especially as I pursue editing. I cannot express in this short paragraph the joy I felt I had finally having been validated. It’s all I’ve been talking about. Perhaps. . .Yes. A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it? Let me just show you the sheer joy:

Our friendly talk proceeded, and Dr. Aaij made me feel like a million bucks in a ten pound bag. He also mentioned that, while talking with another professor, he discovered that said professor has held on to an essay I wrote back when I was a sophomore because he was so impressed with it. And I’m just sitting there trying not to ejaculate prematurely.

People like my writing? Really? People keep my writing?

There’s lots of naughty imagery in this post, which makes me want to password protect it, but I might just leave it open because it is a very nice day outside, the wind’s a-blowing and it’s not too hot. And to just be validated over and over and over and over and over in work, school, life, relationships is something that needs to be reveled in because of the hard times to come. The dark loneliness and ugly solitude. Death, Cancer, bad haircuts (not listed in order of importance).

Le Cine

This section is less informative than it is a warning: When I’m filming this summer I’m pulling out all the stops. I’m going to be asking for a lot of favors; favors that will help me get some serious props/ settings dilemmas under control. This production is going to be big, it’s also going to be very filmic. You aren’t going to see the seams on this one, baby. But be ready! I will be calling you.

Perfunctory Cheesy Romantic Ending

Sarah Burnham, lovingly pictured below, remains foremost on my mind. Indeed, I blame her for my achievements and without her I’d come up short. In everything. I’m exceedingly fond of this woman.