Not too long ago I came across an article about adjusting your sleep schedule, quickly. Rather than reset your internal clock with a few weeks of personal discipline by waking up to an alarm and going to bed earlier than you really wanted to, this article presented a method that was much faster. It needs to be faster because it is targeted towards people who travel regularly and have a general distaste for jet-lag.

The theory is as follows: Your brain knows when it should be getting food so it sets your sleeping habits accordingly. If you haven’t consumed enough calories in a day it won’t want to go to sleep because it wants you to put more food in your belly. Because of this food/sleep relationship (according to the article) you can use your brain’s selfish motivations for your own good.

If you refrain from food for 16 hours and end those 16 hours of fasting with sleep, when you wake up and eat breakfast your brain will say to itself, “Hey, this is when I get food. I need to remember this time so I can wake up and eat more the next day.” When I read this I thought it was an interesting theory, but didn’t put it to the test.

I’m a man who enjoys sleep. Maybe too much. I also enjoy just being in bed and bundled in blankets. I’ve also never been a morning person. I have much preferred going to bed late and waking up late. And by late I mean about 2 or 3 in the morning and not waking up until 11. That’s not a schedule very conducive to my current classes, though.

Along comes a couple weekends ago. I spent the Saturday night at some friend’s place before making the return trip to Logan Sunday morning. I had some pretty odd dreams that night so I kept waking up (one such time I woke up while Alex was playing a game and what I saw was so strange it broke my brain) so all in all my sleep was fairly lousy.

I’m not sure why, but I also didn’t eat a whole lot that day. I think a pack of ramen was the bulk of my intake. After some reading I was talking to my roommate and decided I was too tired to do anything else but sleep, this was at 8 PM. After plopping down onto my bed (futon) I pulled my blanket over me and zonked out.

When I opened my eyes I looked around and thought, “It’s still dark outside. I don’t see any indication of the sun. My alarm hasn’t gone off. I wonder what time it is. (grab phone) It’s not even 5 AM!? What am I doing up?” I plopped my head back onto my pillow because I clearly had more time to sleep, but sleep would not come.

Rather than waste the time, I grabbed a book and started reading. At 7 I made some cereal and watched a video on my computer. Waking up so early was just a fluke, right? Nope. It wasn’t. Since then I have unintentionally been waking up in the 5 o’clock hour as naturally as if I was camping in the desert and the tent became to hot to support human life (though the relative discomfort of the tent is not in my apartment).

One Friday night I didn’t go to bed until 11:30. Then on Saturday, when I have no reason to wake up early, I still woke at 5. I ate a bowl of cereal and some OJ, watched a couple episodes of My Name is Earl, and fell back asleep.

The point is this: if you need to readjust your sleep schedule, this is something you might want to give a try.

I love peanut butter. I’m a Whitlock after all, and one thing you’ll pick up on quickly when you spend time with Whitlocks is that we love peanut butter. (Olives too. And cheeses of all varieties.) I enjoy all peanut butters from the heavily processed and smooth jar of JIF to the all natural, oil-separating Adam’s.

Recently, however, I’ve become more and more interested in various other nut butters (yes, peanuts are not actually nuts, but stay with me). I was at the grocery store with Wong last week and ended up in the natural foods section where before my eyes I beheld jars of almond and cashew butters.

I knew such things existed but had never before sought them out. They turned out to be quite expensive. About 8 bucks for a small jar. Too rich for my wallet, so I returned home a sad and lonely man (in terms of nut butter varieties).

Then the oddest thing popped into my head. I was sitting on my futon looking at my shelves of food-stuffs when I noticed the container of high grade mixed nuts from Costco and my mortar and pestle.

Years ago I was in a self-rewarding mood at the same time I was in an Asian marketplace (which no longer exists) and ended up purchasing a fairly nice and fairly cheap granite mortar and pestle. I’ve used it here and there but had never fully taken advantage of its potential.

As I sat on the futon the gears began turning and the light turned on. Silently (though it just as easily could have been out loud) I proclaimed “I can crush nuts in that mortar until they turn into butter!”

Without further thinking I grabbed the items, sat back on the futon, poured a handful of nuts into the mortar, and started smashing them with the pestle. It was so easy I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me before. Not only was it easy, though, it was delicious.

After tasting it I wanted to yell “I have made mixed-nut butter!” ala Tom Hanks in Cast Away. “Mixed-nut butter” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily as fire, nor is it as dramatic of a discovery in regards to humanity as a whole. However, it was quite the accomplishment.

No longer will I be purchasing prepackaged peanut butter. Instead, I will purchase nuts and force them to submit to my mighty forearms! Then I will consume them on sandwiches or whatever else I fancy. The possibilities are endless! I plan to make mixed nut butter cookies soon.

This change in my life has made me a new man. I see the world differently. I see it covered in a delicious blanket of nut butters as far as the eye can see.

And it is beautiful.

For almost the past month, hardly anyone posted anything on the blogs that I regularly enjoy reading. In the past couple of days that has since been remedied by a couple of the blog owners. It was just a little downer when I would check to see if anything new was up and nothing was. Little Neal would climb into bed, pull up the covers, and shed a tear. Poor little Neal…

I want to catch you up on the stuff that’s been going on with me. If any of you were unaware, I have transferred to Utah State. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this in a post and I don’t care to check. I changed majors a couple times while at BYU and the major I decided I wanted to get my hands on has a better program at USU.

It’s fairly odd adjusting to the little differences between the two campuses, though. I love all the large trees up here. Both on campus and throughout the Logan. I’m not a tree climbing guy, but I’ve seen a few which made me want to become one.

Another difference I like is that the student body feels a little older. Explanation: I don’t mean older in years, but there were times at BYU when it felt like high school. Not all the time. But sometimes. That got to me. Along with that, there’s a bell in most of the buildings to indicate when class starts and ends, just like high school. That sort of threw me for a loop when I’d be reading somewhere, a bell would sound, the halls would fill with people, a bell would ring again, and the halls would be empty once more. I would think to myself “Aren’t we supposed to be adults responsible for being somewhere by a certain time? Do people really need a bell to indicate class has begun instead of a professor beginning to talk?”

Those things aside, there are differences which I miss about the BYU. Parts of the honor code. Not the whole thing, mind you, just bits here and there. When I get lost in the beauty of the trees I catch the distinct scent of something that snaps me right back to reality with a frown. I really don’t like cigarette smoke. I know people that don’t smoke and say they like the smell. Really? I want to smack those people when they then tell me it’s because they think cigarette smoke smells like a campfire. Again, really? What campfires do you make? They smell nothing alike.

I also miss religion classes. Sure, I’m taking an institute class, but it’s not the same. I’m not being graded on anything so I sometimes phase out of the discussion without a real urge to come back to it since I don’t need to remember anything for an exam. I haven’t taken any tests this semester yet, but when I do I can promise I will miss the BYU testing center. Being able to go in and take a test anytime was terrific.

This post is beginning to get a little long. I’ll stop now.

So.. uhhh… bye.

The time has come for a mass update. Let’s dive right in.

I solved the headphones problem from my prior posting. I picked up a cheapo $10 pair of headphones at Wal Mart. They are the kind that cradle the ear. The advantage of these? The cradle keeps them in place even when the actual piece is not inside the ear, allowing me to listen to quiet music without blocking ambient sounds. It’s an interesting situation since it feels like I just have a soundtrack to my life. A soundtrack that never syncs up. That’s probably a good thing, though.

I’ve recently begun listening to the Harry Potter books on my Ipod. Yes, it’s finally happened. After years and years of being bugged about not reading them, I’m now listening to them. I finished The Philosopher’s Stone (I got the U.K. audio books) and am onto Chamber of Secrets. It makes for some rather funny moments when I fall asleep while listening.

I spent this past Wednesday night at Wong’s. I only had a few chapters left of the first book and started listening, but zonked out. I woke up in the middle of Harry’s confrontation with Voldemort (should I not even be typing the name?). The reader really goes all out with some character’s voices and for Voldemort, he uses a high pitched sort of nasal voice. In a groggy, confused state my eyes slowly open and I hear “Kill him!” scream loudly in my ears. I started looking around in the dark room thinking “What? Kill Who? What’s going on here?” It took about five seconds for me to catch onto what was going on. It wasn’t fun during those seconds, but after it was.  Oh Voldemort, don’t tell me my business.

This past weekend was my ward’s annual river rafting trip. We go up to Alpine Junction and ride down the Snake River multiple times in two days. There were six total runs with three rafts in each run. I was able to work my way into four of the trips. We usually go later in the year, late July or early August, so this year was a totally different river with the Spring runoff still pouring in. The water level had to have been at least seven feet higher than usual since some familiar areas were completely submerged. The current was also running about twice as fast it seemed.

Aside from a couple precarious moments, including one of the rafts hitting a class five whirlpool dead on which knocked two people out of the raft (one week earlier a scout leader died in that very spot link ) the trip was a blast. I thought the river was far more exhilarating because of the speed and danger, but for those very reasons the ward won’t be going this early in the season in coming years.

And finally, the end of the world is approaching. I made a Facebook account. There are a couple reasons I made the leap. I still think the concept of Facebook is silly, but I’ve also come to accept it’s little quirks for what they are. After all, what’s the difference between someone posting small thoughts very frequently and that same person posting larger thoughts less frequently on a blog? I’ll tell you the difference, generally less passion appears in the blogs. Oh, it happens. I’m guilty of it. But when someone writes out a couple of paragraphs they tend to calm down and think about what’s going on.That happens a lot less when someone writes out a single sentence and posts it.

This could very well be the most specific post I’ve written. I’ll keep it short, too, in case you have places to be.

I’ll begin with some information. I have a nice bike. It’s a bike that I really enjoy riding around. While at BYU during the fall semester I would ride to school probably twice a week on average. Then winter rolled in and by the time the temperature warmed up to the point I felt comfortable riding long distances in it, I was burned out and biking to school didn’t sound like fun.

It’s summer and I want to spend a lot of time outdoors in the thick of it, hence my desire to go camping with friends. I also want to ride my bike around for fun to nowhere in particular.

Information over. Now for dilemma.

With so much time spent out riding a bike, I would like to multitask. Namely, by listening to music, books on tape, or general authority talks. The problem with this is that it’s not safe to ride around with headphones in my ears. There are expensive headphones (in excess of $150) I could get rest outside of the ear and send vibrations to the earbones without obstructing the ears, so you still hear everything going on around you.

For any bikers out there, what do you do? Not take an ipod? Only listen to one earpiece, or even both? Any advice would be appreciated.

Recently I’ve been very much in the mood to go camping. I used to go camping all the time when I was a Boy Scout. When I was a Blazer Scout (what 11 year old hopeful Scouts are called) my dad was the assistant scout leader. He helped to organize our ward scouts in such a way that the troop would go camping at least once a month (except for December since it is such a busy month). That tradition lasted until I was 17 and decided I was too old for the scout program (mostly because all they did was play basketball).

During those 6 years, though, I got in a great deal of camping and I loved each and every day of it. Certain individual hours were among the worst of my life, but as a whole, each camp was awesome. Quick aside, some of those miserable hours were on a Klondike (winter camp with the entire scout district) up at Rockport Reservoir. The reason for my misery is that I was one of the younger scouts and my place in the tent got pushed to the back corner, where a giant hole was. I think the longest streak of sleep I had that night was 15 minutes. It was horribly cold and I was going out of my mind. The night was made even worse when everyone woke up in the morning and started complaining about how warm they had been. Guffah!

One of the camps we went on, the week long summer camp when I was 16 was to a place in southern/central Utah outside of Boulder. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember how to get there because I want to go again. Yesterday at church I asked one of my fellow scouts from back then and he provided me with the name; Horseshoe Lake. Yay. I looked it up and checked out Google Maps to figure out how to get there. Now I am far more prepared to sell the idea to some friends that are also in the mood for camping this summer. Let me show you some details and pictures. This is the picture from Google Maps (I added the numbers)

The labeled areas for 1 and 1b are the lakes that I think we camped by. I’m pretty sure we camped at 1, but it might be 1b. The label for 2 is the edge of a cliff. All that gray is ridge a few hundred feet tall. We dropped boulders off the cliffside and watched them crush the trees in their way. Pretty dangerous if you ask me. Here’s a picture looking over the edge:

A couple members and leaders of the troop took a trip down to that clearing. The path down is marked by the number three. It’s a water run off bed, so there’s lots of rocks to climb over. This is a view from that clearing looking up:

And of course, my favorite part of this camp is the part which cannot be easily reproduced. It was a single evening, as the sun set dark clouds rolled in and only red light was able to pass through them. That night was one of the most terrifying nights of my life as a truly amazing thunderstorm blasted the sky. It. was. awesome. This was the night sky before the storm began:

The quality isn’t so great because it’s an old photo and was scanned in, but you probably get the idea.

As I was Google Mapping my way around the region I noticed that this place is very close (relatively speaking) to Goblin Valley. I started exploring the area and decided to show an ariel view and a couple more pictures from my recent camping trip. This is Goblin Valley:

I should have picked a better color to show off the locations. In the top right, the parking lot is marked by 1. All those little divot looking things are the goblins themselves. At the bottom of the image, marked by 4, is about where we found our little scorpion friend.

The little gray circle next to the number 2 in the top right is a large mound of dirt. It’s a really distinct pile in all the red and very large. Number 3 is also a large pile of gray. Here are views from them looking back towards the parking lot in order:

Fun stuff. Now for the looped canyons:

I’m not entirely sure about this, I spent some time trying to remember certain turns and the way it would have looked, but this is my best approximation. Number 1 is the parking lot. There is a slight hike along a flash flood riverbed until the two different canyons become available. Number 2 is Bell Canyon. Number 3 is Wild Horse. The entire highlighted trail is just shy of 9 miles. If you look through some of the highlighted canyon just to the left of the number 3, you can see how the canyon becomes very narrow comparitively to the rest.

There’s almost a loop just south of that line, while there is amazing canyon north of that loop, if I remember correctly, it was after we had passed that loop (on our way south) that all of the best of the best features occurred. So if you are wary of venturing into this canyon to see what I’m talking about, the best stuff is early on.

No, this post is not about Alex’s new love affair with the Castlevania-esque music group Goblin. This past weekend I went camping with some friends. It was the third time I had made the journey to central Utah and spent a day running amid the rocks of Goblin Valley.

For those of you unaware of the wackiness of this place, here is a panoramic picture. Keep in mind that this is compiled photos from nearly a 180 degree turn.

All of these giant rocks sit atop eroding columns of sandstone. This is the front valley and there are more, smaller valleys behind it that you need to climb to. The first two times I traversed these lands I went to these valleys, but not this time. This weekend was more exploring of the north (left) side of the formations.

While exploring, James uncovered this little friend:

Don’t worry. We talked to a park ranger and she told us these types of scorpions are fairly harmless. If you were ever stung by one of these, it would be similar to a bee sting. Just a little painful, unless you’re allergic. Then it’s no fun at all.

If you’ve never been to Goblin Valley, you need to go. I plan on returning later this year in autumn, probably late September if you want to come with. The beating of the ht sun will be less intense then and the nights are not unbearably cold. In fact, the first two times I went were in September and I slept out under the stars both times. Comfortably, I might add.

The best part of this trip was not the goblins, though. Friday afternoon was spent amid the rocks. But Saturday we went to the nearby Bell and Wild Horse canyons. These are two canyons a few miles away from Goblin Valley. There is a trail that runs through them and connects for a total hike of 9 miles. Ross had heard that Wild Horse was the better canyon, so naturally we started our hike through Bell (to end the day in the best area possible).

This is a general idea of what Bell canyon is like:

The canyons are formed by flash floods eroding at the edges. For the most part, the canyons were 6 to 8 feet across and anywhere from 10 to 50 feet tall. There are a few places which require climbing up some rocks to move on, but never any spots that are impassable without a push from below or a pull from above by someone else.

Unfortunately, the battery in my camera died in the part of the hike between Bell and Wild Horse. I say “unfortunately” because Wild Horse really was the better of the two canyons. By a long shot. In fact, there were places in the canyon that were truly amazing. Points of the canyon were no more than 3 feet across and at least 100 feet tall. The closed in feeling was much more intense, but the different erosion was really what struck me.

I also want to go back to this canyon later this year, if only to get pictures. Let me state my amazement of this canyon by saying this: parts of Wild Horse canyon were easily some of the most remarkable things I have ever seen with my own two eyes. I’ve seen some truly amazing things on TV or in pictures, but not in person, so they do not count.

So, come this September, anyone that wants to join me for a day in Goblin Valley and Wild Horse canyon, feel free to come along. It’ll be a grand time!

It’s nigh upon midnight as I begin writing this. Unless I’m really fast, it’ll be after once I finally post it. I’m quite tired. Tired enough that I doubt I will need the TV on to fall asleep (more on this in another post).

This’ll be a quick post anyway. I did some grocery shopping on the way home from spending some time with the Alex and Sheree. While at Supra Wal-Marte, the thought came into my head that has come into my head for years while sitting at home but NEVER when I was actually at a grocery store or making a list of groceries to buy.

That thought centered around an item of pure genius. Pure delight. That item was a flavored syrup, the kind that people put in coffee. But I don’t drink coffee.

So what? Why would I get such a thing? Because those flavored syrups go into more than coffee. For example, they can be used in a chilled Coke Zero. A chilled Coke Zero just like the one I had in a glass in front of me not moments ago (before emptying that glass into my mouth).

I’m not much of a carbonated beverage drinker. It just doesn’t appeal to me, except for the more exotic carbonated beverages such as apple beer, or a finely aged ginger ale/beer. A real vanilla Coke also counts. When my friends and I used to go to Denny’s all the time and spend hours on end there, we’d get real vanilla Cokes.

It’s been years since we did that regularly and I’ve had a mad craving for such goodness. Now I have the ingredients to make them whenever I want. If you come over, I’ll make you one too. So cheers everyone.

Now I’m going to bed.

No, this is not my 156th post. I’m far from that.

I don’t weigh 156 pounds. I’m far from that too.

So, what is 156? Aside from the integer following 155 and preceding 157, that is.

It’s how many shirts I own.

Let that sink in.

156. I’m also not factoring in my dress shirts or any shirts I have which are awaiting me to sew a button back on or something like that. These are shirts ready to wear and which I would be willing to wear to school tomorrow.

156. That’s a lot. A freaking lot. The overwhelming majority of these are also not ones I bought. Most are hand-me-downs from siblings or my dad, gifts from people, or shirts that my mom and Wendee would get me when I was in high school (when I never bought my own shirts and rarely went shopping for any).

The funny thing is, while I was going through these shirts, I could remember exactly where and at what point in my life I aquired these shirts. Talk about useless memories.

Let me show you what these shirts look like in photo format. First, the pile of hangers on which these hung until recently:

That’s a lot of hangers. It wasn’t until all were thrown into this pile that I realized it wouldn’t be the most fun hour of my life to untangle them all. Alas, that’s what comes from poor planning.

I separated the shirts into two piles. The first pile, containing the majority of them, is the pile which I will need to sort out and decide what I want to get rid of for good and what I want to pack up for future use. The second pile is the shirts which I want to keep around me so I can wear them whenever. Here’s the first pile, consisting of 123 shirts:

Now for the second pile of 32 shirts:

Those two numbers of 123 and 32 only add up to 155, so let me show you the elite of the elite, the shirt which is in a pile of its own and of which I will keep in as excellent condition as I can:

This shirt was a preorder bonus from Software Etc when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was coming out. I have never seen another of these shirts in my life. I love it. It was this game that put the concept into my head that indeed, I was a gamer. This shirt has a special place in my heart. Yes, a shirt. Link is just so bad-A.

This shirt is from my “club” phase, when I thought flashier = better. I refer to it as my Mithral Mail +4 shirt:

Just a note about this shirt. Because I was such a nerd and compare this shirt to magical enchanted armor, when I would wear my Link shirt I felt I needed some extra protection. As that protection I would wear my Mithral Mail. .. +4.

This shirt I won the night I went to see Mission: Impossible 2. One of the managers of the theater came in before the showing and was asking questions and handing out prizes. The last question he asked was “What is the best seat in town?” I was sitting at the very top of the theater and raised my hand before he was even done, and at the same time as Steve Hansen who was sitting next to me. Being the two quickest hands in the theater, the manager saw us and pointed up and yelled “Fro!” I answered “Cinemark!” and got the shirt. That was the very first afro I grew and it won me a shirt. Win.

This next shirt was one of my prizes for spending 10 days of my life outside the Megaplex 12 at the Gateway while awaiting the release of Star Wars Episode II:

This shirt is a remnant of my days at Bingham High. In my junior year, my friends and I attended the football games at home. We got WAY into rooting for Bingham. Not because we had school spirit, but because we liked making fun of the opposing teams. I have a couple funny stories to tell about that, another time though. I made this shirt out of the school shirts for my junior and sophmore years. The jocks and cheerleaders all loved it when I wore it.

Well, those are some of my shirts. It’s sort of fun to be downsizing my wardrobe. Oh, and this is what those shirts look like in a pile and not stacked on top of one another nicely:

So many shirts!