Look what I can do!!!! ... kinda

Bonnie the Great taught me how to do it.
With a bit of background from Tony the Tiger.

I have a physical itch to shoot more

What happened to Eureka?



Oh yeah. I got busy with summer and my partner in crime went traveling the world without me.

I just want to be in Cory Strange's 2D design class again, all the time. I should have failed it, for my own long term sanity.




Who's getting married? Engaged? I need some adorable, gross, couples to photograph. Or families, everyone has a family. Most photographers HATE shooting family portraits, say that its a necessary evil in order to shoot what they really want. But guess what, I kind of enjoy shooting portraits; there, I said it.



But mostly, I just need to leave this country. I have fifteen thousand sky miles that expire at the end of July. Someone help me figure out how to use them. By the time I leave the country in December, it will have been a year since I left the country last. This is painful. I hate money. I need to fix my camera and START SHOOTING.

I Went To Mars Last Night

I Went To Mars Last Night
An excerpt, inspired by a true story, from The Adventures of Bing and Tron

I went to Mars last night. It wasn’t just a short trip there and back, we went all over, we spent more time on the journey than we did in the destination. We went to The Moon, Venus, Jupiter and even around the asteroid belt. Sadly, we didn’t make it all the way out to Pluto or Saturn. But still, I went to Mars last night.
“Tron, let’s walk home, pleeease.” Bing sometimes gets really passionate about things. This was one of those times, there was no arguing, and I had no excuses to argue. It was a warm, summer night, the grass was misty and dewy, and the crickets were louder than ever.
“Oh, Bing… Okay,” I gave in and submitted myself to her passions.
So we set off homeward bound. It didn’t take long for my slow, late evening pace to transform into a faster, happy, Bing-like jaunt. It was a beautiful night; the pavement was warm beneath our naked feet and soon the stars shone brightly. We came upon a large building, a church maybe. We walked over to a big pine tree and silently admired the grandeur. Ingrid’s eyes wandered away from the tree and over to the building. Without warning, a happy gasp sprang from Bing's mouth.
“Eeep! Oh my gosh.” With that she took off skipping through the empty parking lot toward the doors, which were letting out the luminescent orange light.
"Bing, what are you...?” I gave an exasperated sigh and walked toward the light. As I reached the edge of the light and as I searched it with my eyes, I could not find her. Just like that she skipped off into being lost.
“Tron! This is so cool.” Came her voice from nowhere.
“Bing?” Then I saw it. Right outside the door sat a huge cardboard box. I walked towards it and peered inside. I saw the ecstatic face of Bing looking up at me with big, happy, hopeful eyes.
“Tronnnn, can we keeeeep it!?” The happy eyes turned into pleading, begging eyes.
“Bing…” There was no way I was going to haul that huge box all the way home. “We can’t just take it. What if it belongs to someone?” Yeah right, the box was clearly being thrown away.
“Okay!” she shot from the box. “We’ll go ask if we can have it.” With that she reached for the door handle and opened the door.
The cool air from the cranked up air conditioning stung our sweaty bodies as we entered the building. I entered cautiously, but Bing strolled in, confident, and took off prancing down the large hallway. I followed. We came to a door with two important looking people inside. We continued passed the door to the water fountain to discuss our tactics. We re-hydrated ourselves and looked at each other for ideas on how to approach the important people. Our approach was plopped right into our laps. Right then the two people prepared to go their separate ways. They came to the doorway, and said their goodbyes. One of them left and the other turned his attention to us.
“Good evening girls, what can I do for you?” Important, and he seemed fairly nice; I could possibly deal with this.
I thought of what to say, when “Well, there’s this beautiful box outside, and it is out there all alone. We were wondering if we could take it in. We will give it a good home.” Bing knows how to reel in any fish, even the important ones.
With a chuckle from the man, and the pleading eyes from Bing, we got our box.
“You girls take the box, it’s been sitting there for days, take good care of it. And get home soon, it’s getting late.”
“Thank you, we will,” Bing said with a huge Ingrid smile plastered to her face and even more prance in her frolic.
“Thanks,” I said as I followed Bing down the hall and to the door.
We exited the building through the same door and found the box again. Bing stood by the box and started naming things we could use it for.
“We can bring it home, and put it in our backyard, and draw on it, and paint it a really cool color, and we’ll make it look really nice, and it can be our club house, yeah, a club house, I’ve always wanted a club house, I’ve always wanted to be in a club…”
“Bing, how are we going to get this home, it is huge.” It was huge. Think refrigerator box, now times that by like ten. I circled the box and analyzed the quandary I had on my hands.
“…And we can sleep in it, it’ll be kind of like a tree house, except without the wood, and without the heights, and without the tree. But a house, like a ground house, like a tree house, except on the ground…”
“Bing, we are no where near home, carrying this box will be almost impossible.” I didn’t like my cynicism, but someone has to think logically in this relationship.
“And… Oooo! Tron, we can drive the box, we can go where ever we want, Tron we can finally go to Mars!” She stopped talking, waiting for my response with enormous, eager eyes.
I might have looked at her like she was crazy, except for the fact that I’d known her for such a long time. I don’t know how long we’d officially been best friends, but it was a long time. I did not look at her like she was crazy; she was actually being fairly sane, comparatively speaking. I just smiled, chuckled and walked over and put my arm around her shoulder.
“Alright Bing, let’s go on a journey, show me how to drive a cardboard box.” We walked toward the box and prepared ourselves for the long journey.
I never knew you could drive a box, and I bet you didn’t know how to, or that it was even possible, either. First you have to find a friend, without a friend you can’t find a box. Second you have to find a box, because without a box, well, you don’t have a box. Then you have to tell yourself that you can drive a box, and after those three easy steps you are ready to drive your box.
We went all over. First we visited our planet, but had a lifetime to visit the Earth. So we set off into deeper and wider journeys. We left our atmosphere. Don’t ask me how we breathe out there; cause I don’t know, Ingrid forgot to mention that to me. Our first stop was the moon. We didn’t spend too much time there because a moon monkey chased us off his lawn. We made a few stops at Mercury, Jupiter, and in the asteroid belt. We spent quite sometime on Venus, where we found it was totally habitable for women, but all the men in life had kept the perfection a secret from the women. We thought of heading over to Saturn, Neptune and out to Pluto, but the path was long and dark and we didn’t know what kind of creepy space crawlers would be lurking. Se we went to Mars. Here we hung out for quite a while and even got out of the box, I mean space ship, to hang around.
That’s when mission control called. We had a problem with our box.
“But Mom, I really want to keep it, look how pretty it is.”
“Bingrid, you cannot keep this box on our lawn. And why do you have a box anyway? Bingrid, get in here, it is past midnight.” Our call with mission control was cut short with a slam.
“Tron, it’s late.” Bing looked defeated as she started to climb out of the box.
“Bing, we’re on mars, be careful, don’t let the alien life form suck your brains out!” I smiled as I pointed to the neighbor on the next lawn as he and his dog retreated to their home.
She turned and looked at me, now it was her turn to look at me like I was crazy.
“Bing, let me drive you home, in our box, we can stop at the moon on our way back.” She looked down at me, turned toward the front door of her home, and returned her gaze to me. The smile reappeared on her face as she sat back down in the box.
“Okay, but we gotta put it on warp speed, I’m late.”
“Brrkkk, T-mama to Bing-pop, clearance for lift off.”
“Brrkkk, Bing-pop to T-mana, all systems a go.”
We finished out flight home and said our see-ya-laters. I peered out of the box as I watched her skip back to her home, turn around right before entering, wave her hand high above her head and shout, “where are we going tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, where ever you want.” She bounced inside and let the door swing close. I sat back down in the box and tilted my head back until I was gazing at the stars.
I thought about Bing and how she is always getting me to do things like carry a box around my neighborhood, get chased by a dog and fly around my solar system in a box. I thought about our relationship and how we’d ever become friends in the first place. We are complete opposites. She is young, and I am old. She is jolly, and I think that jolly is a stupid word. She is willing to pull me away from reality by putting me in a box and I am willing to pull her back again by giving her a ride home in that box. She gets lost; I let myself get lost with her. She cries over stolen bobby pins, I whine about her over productive tear ducts. I thought about how much she needs me to keep her from getting left in the Antigua or Dallas airport. How she needs me to offer guiding support while we work on late Spanish homework, the work I finished weeks before. How she needs to call me late at night after I’ve already gone to bed and we don’t hang up for hours.
I also thought about how much I need her. How I need her to tell me to stop whining about everything. How much I need her to call me late at night, and wake me up, to tell me she’s bored and just thought to call me. I thought how I need her to get lost so as to cause excitement in my life. How I need her to pull me from my depressed attitude, tell me we are going to walk home, then make me spend the rest of the evening sitting in a box. But most of all I thought of how much I need her to need me. That’s why we make such good friends. Not because we are exactly the same and like all the same things, because that is surely not true. We are friends because she needs me and I need her. We need each other to pull the other up to Mars. We need each other to pull us back home to Earth. And mostly we just need each other to have someone to need.

best chocolate cake ever, according to caleb

Perfect Chocolate Cake, as long as you don't over flow it and burn it

• 2 cups sugar
• 1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup room temp. butter
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup boiling water

Mix it all up, in the order it says above. Put it in some greased and floured pans (9 inch rounds, preferably). Then bake at 350 for like half an hour, maybe (set a timer, or else you'll forget it). Remove from over, when its done. Cool it. Remove from the pans and cool further, if you have the patience. Frost it with plenty of delicious frosting.


Oh wait, here's a delicious frosting recipe!

1/2 cup beyond room temp. butter
2/3 cup cocoa or more
3 cups powdered sugar or more
1/3 cup milk
a bit of lime juice (I don't know how much, just follow your heart)

The most important ingredient is love. Serve it with plenty of lovely people to eat it and it will always taste better.

a tribute to bningrid marizzle, my best friend

Ingrid Marie Asplund is my best friend on this entire planet.

One time I left the country for one week without her when I was in tenth grade. That was the worse decision, ever. I ended up getting attacked by a Portuguese man'o'war (better known as the man whore). I remember running up to her, at our reuniting, in sheer excitement where we embraced like long lost lovers. I don't know how it happened, but I totally broke down into tsunami tears, which she gladly absorbed into her shoulder. She muttered, "Me and Jenni are like peas and carrots again." Then added, "oh and never leave me again."


I first met Ingrid when I was eleven. The first time I saw her she was merely a shy little girl, timidly peering into our Sunday school classroom, searching for her older sister. She stayed Eva's little sister for quite some time. At one point, at Eva's birthday party (mere months after meeting them) I sat on the couch, watching the party happen, and Ingrid sat next to me. We sat watching A Walk To Remember and I had the best epiphany of my life. Although, I was a guest at Eva's birthday party, for some reason, the fact that I would someday be Ingrid's best friend would not leave my mind. Turns out that I was correct.


I like to tell people that the biggest fight that I have ever been in with my best friend was over chap stick. I like to say this to make it seem miniscule and inconsequential... when in reality we still don't discuss it. We have definitely forgiven the other for whatever outburst and understand that from that person's perspective, said outburst was most likely warranted, but we simply giggle and change the subject whenever it is brought up.

Once upon a time Ingrid and I went to Mars. I have just decided that I am going to post that narrative on this very blog... after a bit of freshening up, of course.


Occasionally, Ingrid compares herself to others. In elementary school she described herself as being socially retarded. Had I known her in elementary school, I'm sure that would not have stopped me from realizing her awesomeness. During my final year of elementary school, I was sort of wrapped up with being in sixth grade. I had my group of friends and we were going to go to junior high next year. I don't know if you remember, but when you're in sixth grade, you don't mess around with your very unstable social status. Ingrid, Eva and I walked to school every morning together. Eva and I were friends, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Ingrid and I were kindred spirits. But then junior high came around. Fortunately, the universe was looking out for us and brought us back together with the wonderful gift of Walden.

(I took this picture of a photograph that I have of Ingrid when we just started to be the best of friends. I do believe that it was at that very moment that I realized how much I truly love her)

Whenever, where ever, we travel I have always kept a protective eye on her (which doesn't mean that she always needs it). Her mother says that, although, she was a kind and quiet child, she was actually difficult to raise because she was always getting lost. But then, during my senior year of high school, she went to Germany FOR A YEAR... okay, it was actually ten months. It was a pretty difficult time for me, learning how to basically function without her; turns out we have a symbiotic relationship. Germany was the best thing for Ingrid. She came back knowing herself, more confident in her education and more confident in herself. We wrote letters back and forth, and her letters were my favorite parts of my entire senior year of high school. One such letter came in the mail at the most perfect time and warmed my heart. Just looking at the envelope comforted me, and even brought tears to my eyes. The tears were quickly replaced with fits of laughter when I opened the envelope, and as I pulled out the letter, was covered in puffs of purple glitter.




















One of my favorite things about Ingrid is that she offers boundless, unyielding support for me. Whatever I want to do in life, she is always there to help make it happen. Whether it is being someone who is there to bounce ideas off of, or someone to talk to for hours on the phone, or to sit with me in a Mexican city square for five hours while I get dreads tied into my hair.


Ingrid is such an amazing free spirit, one of the many reasons that I look up to her. Sometimes her refusal to conform might drive me nuts, but in the end, when I return to my level headed
state, I realize that she was right all along.






Sometimes she wears wings, or tiger ears, or tries to shave her head, but dyes it blond instead.

As painful as it will be for me, I know she is going to be the best mawrtered owl, ever. She has, and will forever be a great part to my family.

In short, put out your left arm... that's how much I love Ingird Marie Asplund.

a tribute to the coolest duncan I know

Senior Caleb William Duncan is one of the best guys you could ever wish to meet. He really is. If he were a food, he would be ice cream, definitely. He is just so smooth, and delightful and cute, and just makes everyone's day a million times better. I would have to say that his only problem is his lack of white blood cells, he only has a few of them, but don't worry, he's not going to die.
Lemme explain our history...
One day Caleb Duncan came into Zupas, although I did not know who he was at the time. He interviewed and promptly got the job, of course. He seemed pretty alright, but I figured he'd be one of those adorable BYU boys that works at Zupas for a couple of months then goes about his life, whatever. I wasn't too intimidated by a future of a friendship so the entirety of our initial interactions consisted of me confronting him with an odd object in my hand saying "Caleb, do you think I could kill you with this?"
Now, I'm not sure what his initial reaction to these situations were, but he seemed to handle them quite wonderfully. I assume the normal reaction of freaking out, and maybe talking to the company about their mentally unstable employees, never crossed his mind, but instead very confidently shot me down with logical reasons as to why I would not have the ability end his life using a twisty tie or a drinking straw.


Depending on what you believe about fate or serendipity, one might think that our relationship would have ended there. Luckily, I didn't...don't have a driver's license. Caleb, being the gentleman he is, offered me a ride after we were done with work every night, believing a longboard to not be a reliable form of transportation. Those drives home were quite enjoyable; he's just delightful to be around, ya know? They were eventful as well. We did stuff like read whole articles from a New Yorker magazine, left at the restaurant, and make pit stops at grocery stores and gas stations, or just talk about work or life or people.


The Caleb/Zupas carpool soon grew to entertain quite the crowd, on some nights. A regular crew consisted of Melissa, Aimee, Caleb and me; whom we called the fantastic four (ok, so I don't know if anyone ever actually called us that, but there were four of us, and we are fantastic).
The events then grew from trips to the grocery store to be as big and awesome as bonfires up the canyon. The first ever Tri-Quarterly Zupas Funfest (named by Caleb, himself) was in April of 2009. We initially tried to have a bonfire up at Aspen Grove, but couldn't actually get through the multiple feet of snow. We rethought our plan and found the perfect spot way down by the mouth of the canyon. That has been our spot ever sense, but we're also open to new possibilities.


Did you know that each semester (depending on contracts and such) some BYU students are homeless for three days, more or less? I gladly offered my couch to Caleb in these situations, although he did... initially... want to "rough" it and live in his car.
I would definitely say that Caleb's presence was an extremely important ingredient to my amazing summer last year. Listen, of course I was super stoked to the idea of him going on a mission, but there was always a glimpse of sadness at the thought of losing him for two years. Oddly enough, I was the first one to leave. College was great. Although Caleb wasn't physically there, he was still a great addition to my year. Don't worry, we visited plenty. No matter how much I saw him I was always overjoyed when we were reunited. On one such occasion, I learned my lesson about being too excited when seeing him. I had just received a lecture from him about priorities and how hanging out with him was way more important than sleeping. I sat, tired and grumpy, on the parking lot curb, but the second I saw him neurons started firing. I jumped up. Muscles contracted causing my feet to flail and I, with help from the winter ice, fell smack on my butt. Lifting my head to see his mocking face, through the windshield, was painful and yet still exciting. He then lectured me on controlling my emotions, because, as we saw that night, I could be hurt if I don't.
I would have to say that Caleb is quite a wise man. But some of my favorite situations have to do with Caleb acting like a complete child. Apparently, he knows how to wrestle and tackle people using football moves, who knew? We also like to help out in the community, by having fun of course. The Reams parking lot was always scattered with shopping carts after work, which we took care of on a couple of occasions. I feel like the night that ended in a wardrobe change for him was important for some reason, but I do not recall why. How someone gets a seven inch long hole in his pants from simply riding some shopping carts around a parking lot, I have no idea, but he did it. We ended that night with a fashion show where Caleb tried on my brother's old clothes. We came to the conclusion that my brother has an awesome, and yet weird, fashion sense and that Caleb is quite talented at ripping his pants.


Caleb can be quite childish, in the best and most fun way, but he also has his powerful, insightful moments. Sometimes he does something, like grow a beard for you, just because it would sincerely mean a lot to you. (He also lost the bet we made about whether or not he would have a girlfriend before his mission. I was right, of course.)


He has always been there to offer me well needed, logical, advice. And he is one of the most diligent and hardworking people I have ever met.
Caleb appreciates that there are perfect bites of things, like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He also doesn't share ice cream cones. Sometimes Caleb buys me dinner and I buy him an ice cream cone. He is handsome and, genuinely, has a great heart. Occasionally, I drive him absolutely nuts, but he still appreciates my hard work. He has been my boss twice, and I think I'm doing better this round, except when I profess my love for him while we're working.
I am so proud of Caleb and his devotion to serve the lord, not just for two years, but in everyday. Those Spanish speakers in McAllen, Texas won't know what hit them, but everyone involved will come out of the situation more blessed than ever before.