End of an Era

So this is it folks...I know that I promised some stuff...but alas, I am but a lowly college student. You know the kind; easily distracted, lazy, the kind where you look at them and wonder what in the world they are doing with their lives. Anyways, this shall be the last post for the next two years.

Teddy has gone and I am next. I thought more fun times were to be had but the Man brought us down...but instead brought gas prices up keeping me from seeing Teddy before the day he left for his mission.

The time-however brief it was-was still good for us. We got to say last goodbyes, see him with short hair (weird...haha) and have one last adventure before the fateful goodbye.

We had a nice walk around BYU campus to show his parents the main sights. The Wilk, the Library, the Creamery and where it all started...Snow Hall. It was fantastic and I will never forget my will be life long friend Teddy. I love him (no homo) and can't wait to see him as a brother of the Lord after our missions.

So to all those who actually read this...I bid thee farewell in the hopes that when we return you will be interested in what is to come. Have a fantastic next two years because I know we will. Farewell!

New Roommates

Now that Summer stories are over I have news of Fall and Winter to tell. I guess I will start with the new roommates and friends that were made from these semesters (there are many).
When I moved over to Wyview I gained two new roommates, Jesse Grigg and Aaron Moss. Teddy got Matt Woolley, McKay Miles and Logan “Too Fine” Tatham.

Jesse is one of my best friends back in Boise. He is a great guy and loves to do dishes and clean, which I was glad about. Good times were had by all in that apartment. A time such as this when we watched General Conference over at our apartment and played some intense Risk. Then the time we played Axis and Allies and Jesse got a major sugar high. *Warning, do not let Jesse eat tons of Pixie Stixs and drink Vault in 5 minutes…he gets really funny to watch! Haha!

Aaron is more laid back. He is a big guy, like one of those guys who when you see him you keep your distance because he is kinda scary. But he is an awesome person and really nice and not scary at all. He loved sports and he and I took a tennis class together. It was awesome! Along with the sports he liked video games so every now and then we would have epic video game nights at our apartment, whether it was on the computer or on the PS2.

Matt Woolley is a smart, awesomely named person who would eventually go on to be mine and Teddy’s roommate in Winter semester. He plays the viola (lame I know… :P) and liked to hang out with us and still somehow managed to get great grades. I was jealous of how well he could do in school. Anyway, we became the Tri-Matt when I moved in and had tons of sweet things happen. There was all of the videos that he showed us…which occupied a lot of our time haha. There was the St. Patty’s day party. There was the time that he taught us what FTW stands for…which apparently is clean. Who knew? One of my favorites from Fall and Winter (no offense other guys).

McKay Miles is a trombone player. He and I had some epic conversations about playing trombone and how I wasn’t very good, which is fine because I was still in the Marching Band and Pep Band. He liked locking doors. Like all the time. We eventually came to an agreement about the doors and everything was good from there. He also kept us on top of the dishes most of the time, which was good for us. We needed to keep up with them cause it got pretty nasty after a while.

Logan Too Fine Tatham…well, I’ll save talking about him for another time. He needs his own entry. The point is, is that with each new roommate came new adventures. Fall and Winter was long, but very rewarding. Kind of. Teddy and I needed to work on our Academics a little, but we made it work. Good times were had and people will be missed.

Parasomnia Tales

Now many people have heard of the term “insomnia” but how many people have heard the term “parasomnia”? It is not as well known as insomnia but still as prevalent in our community today.
Parasomnia is defined as “any several disorders that interfere with sleep such as sleepwalking, sleep talking, night terrors etc.”

For example when a person is sleeping, there is a part of the sleep cycle called the REM stage that causes the body to freeze in order to protect itself. With parasomniacs this doesn’t always work which is why they walk or talk in their sleep. Parasomnia comes and goes as well. It is usually triggered by some sort of stressful event. School, a new apartment, any number of stressors can cause this disorder to come about.

I believe that I have this disorder. Or at least I think I do, based on the many tales that I have heard of from my roommates. I am a big sleep talker (apparently). Over the summer when I was rooming with Landon I would wake up in the morning and he would tell me some funny thing that I said to him that night. He would know and remember because he would stay up late a lot.

But one night in particular…I walked…and by walked I mean I thought I was some sort of secret agent or something. Now, most of the time I do not remember anything about the times that I walk or talk, but for some reason, I remember parts of this time. It all began that night when I started punching and kicking my wall. Landon asked if I was alright, no response. Then he told me that I “James Bond slid out of bed” and crawled into my closet. Once I was in the closet he asked me if I was awake. I did respond to this question saying that I was. He didn’t believe me and when I began to make my way to our door he told me to get back in bed. I guess my body understood this command because I did go back to bed with a quick stop at my computer to find something (which I obviously couldn’t find because there probably wasn’t anything to find). The next morning I woke up and was told what I did. It was embarrassing at first, but now it is really funny.

Now over the next few semesters I haven’t really had the opportunity to find out if I have walked or talked in my sleep. This is because my roommates would go to bed before me, which is fine, but I was curious as to whether or not I was doing these things still. Eventually Sterling began to sit by me while I would be sleeping during the day, just chilling at my computer. One day I sat up in bed, saw him there and said hi. I vaguely remember that part. But then I said something completely random and had no idea what I was saying, but after I woke up an hour later or so he said that I do that quite a bit. So I have still been sleep talking I guess.

My most recent exposure to sleep talking has happened fairly recently…as in last night. My roommate has insomnia, and even though he goes to bed earlier than I do, he wakes up in the night sometimes. The last few nights he has been woken up by us having conversations with each other while we are asleep. Last night (as he tells me) we were talking to each other and when he woke up he asked if I was okay. Apparently I yelled, “I’m not crazy Logan! I’m not crazy!” He said that it was okay and went back to sleep while I was still saying funny things in my sleep.

So there you have it. These are the funny doings of Matthew Rich at night. I sleep talk and sleep walk. If you ever want to get a few laughs at me (from something other than me being colorblind…) then come watch me sleep and you might just end up hearing something really funny come out of my mouth. So, I wish you all a good morning, because I cannot wish you a good evening while I am sleeping…um, never mind I got confused.

We're On a Boat!

Our apartment during summer term was founded upon one simple, beautiful phrase…I’m on a boat. Everything we did we tried to focus it around I’m on a boat. What is I’m on a boat you say? Well, it is in fact a lovely little ditty about a group of guys who get a boat ride for three. Here is the video.

So...the video feed isn't working. I have been trying for a while, but it isn't processing the video very well. I guess I can provide a link for it instead. If you really feel the need to watch it (which I suggest doing) be my guest and click on it. It's funny.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/56632/saturday-night-live-digital-short-im-on-a-boat

Now this video is a clean censored version. The uncensored version is not good…at all. It is funny when listened to while censored. Really funny in fact. Just, everything about it (especially at like 2-3 in the morning) is funny. It doesn’t make any sense. It just makes fun of rapping, which I appreciate greatly cause rap sucks!

We had a lot of good times with this video. Any time any of us saw a boat or heard a boat or about a boat or whatever we would mention this spectacular piece of art. Not really, but it is funny. Now, in Spring term, Logan and I have put up a boat of our very own in our room to decorate cause it’s awesome in memory of this video!

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that this video is very funny and enjoyable. It’s SNL which speaks for itself. Here are some links to other very funny videos (not all necessarily from SNL, but still good) that you may also enjoy to go along with this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpaW2eVBFd8&feature=related (thug story)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8pEzi1E5Og (let's go to the mall)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJqlso8tZVE (you just got slapped)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yacccC98uoM (you're the voice)

Sorry, this kind of turned into not "I'm on a Boat" but...it still is. Cause "I'm on a Boat" is awesome. And the point of this...yeah. Good Day.

BIRDMAN!

So this post goes out to our good friend Eric. Even though he is on his mission right now I know that he knows that I know that what I am about to write is true doctrine. Anyway, this is the true doctrine of The Birdman. The Birdman is an ongoing game of honor. Once someone learns the rules of Birdman, they must continually abide by these rules or they have no honor (Teddy…). Throughout this post I will explain these rules and show you the signs of the Bird so you too can participate in the Birdman and get your friends and family in on the Birdman. Some of the terms that I may be using are just made up by me. I’m sure that they have some specific names, but I am writing this for fun, not to be specific.

The Rules of the Game:
1) If a player looks at another player who is in birdman position, that player must lie down on the ground, flat on his or her back, regardless of the location, situation, or any inconveniences.
2) If a player throws the block sign in the air before looking at another player who is in birdman position, he or she has successfully blocked the birdman attempt, and does not have to lie down on the ground.
3) If Player A watches Player B get into birdman position with the intentions of birdmanning Player A, Player A does not have to lie down on the ground.
4) Any player who has successfully been birdmanned has a total of 3 steps before he or she must lay down.
5) Any player who refuses to go to the ground after a successful birdman will be suspended from play indefinitely. Multiple penalities will lead to expulsion from the game for life.
6) When two people birdman each other simultaneously, both will cancel out and nobody goes down. We call this the "Forget and Move On" policy.
7) When 2 people birdman 1 person who is already in birdman position, the 1 person must go down once (same goes for 3 v 2, 4 v 3, etc. attacks).
8) When a driver is birdmanned, he must get down at the first possible stop.
9) Birdmans may be stacked based on time. Meaning, that if a person is birdmanned once and does not lay down right away they may be stacked at intervals of 5 seconds ground time per Birdman with a max at 45 seconds. To put it plainly, a person may be birdmanned up to 9 times before they lay down once.
10) When a person looks at himself in birdman position in the mirror or at his own birdman drawing, he must get down. This is referred to as "suicide."
11) Peripharals (periphs) are legal if used honestly to detect an attack. Abuse of periphs will result in banishment from the game.
12) The right to birdman shall not be denied on the basis of race, skin color, gender, or age.

So, now that you know the rules of Birdman, you must respect your honor and play. Get your friends to play, get you family to play, get anyone to play. But, if you see the Birdman, you know what to do.

Now for some funny stories of Birdman as found in our group here at BYU.

The only people that I have heard of to Birdman people on campus (you know, like during school hours) are Eric and me. We each have birdmanned each other while on campus. Not at the same time, but different times in fact. It was quite entertaining.

We were first taught Birdman by Eric over the summer and now nearly everyone that we meet has been taught the game. Now there is a delicate topic about if pictures are legal or not…well, the majority will say no it is not legal, but there are some (like Eric) who believe that pictures are okay. For example, he tells a story of his friend who got birdmanned by a billboard in Spain. So, I will leave the picture rule up to the digression of the viewers of this post.

Eric was the Elder’s Quorum instructor at his ward in the Fall and one day when he was teaching we decided to pull the greatest thing ever! We birdmanned him while sitting basically right next to the bishop. He saw us only on the last time we tried and took his 3 steps and made it to his chair once he was done with his lesson. He was able to lay down after the meeting was over and explained to everyone around him what he was doing. Then after his farewell talk we birdmanned him while he was saying hello to everyone who came to see him. He didn’t move again until he was done saying hi to everyone so he could lay down with not a lot of people around.

Well, since I have been told that my posts are too long…I shall end here. There aren't a whole lot of epic Birdman stories anyway...but I would like to leave one last thought with you. If ever, you find yourself thinking about what you could possibly do to make someone’s life more enjoyable, just remember these five words. “The bird is the word…” That is all. Have a good night!

The Can Tower

So, the majority of our roommates over the summer enjoyed the occasional soda. And by that I mean most of us had multiple cans a day. So as a result there was a large pileup of cans after a few weeks into the semester. We were too lazy to actually recycle them that often so we tried to find ways of doing something with the cans besides just straight up throwing them away. While wondering what to do with these cans, I was discussing with Sterling what we could do. We came up with a few ideas. We tried just laying them out. We tried stacking them sideways in the recycling bin.

Eventually we tried stacking it along the wall. This is the first day of stacking. We had a lot of cans to start out with. We even tried stacking it in a 3D pyramid, but that didn’t work as well so we stuck with our original tower idea.

We liked the idea of this and just went with it. It turned into a project of ours to see how high we could get it. The regular providers of the tower were Sterling, Eric, Landon and me. There is so much green throughout the tower because of all the Vault that Sterling and I would get. It’s yummy. We each had our own tastes that we enjoyed so there was some diversity in our tower. But with all the Vault and Mountain Dew it seems really green.

Over the next week or so it grew. Not too fast, but it would eventually get there.

It didn’t take too long before it fell though and this is what happens with that. Even though Teddy was not a regular provider of the can tower he was an avid builder and the eventual structural design expert on the tower. He found the best ways to stack the cans and that some of the cans we were using were a little taller than the rest, so we had to use those on their own rows. He rebuilt that thing so many times because it would just collapse on itself.

Once it got to the point where we put the final can on top we decided to take memorial pictures with each one of us. Adam wasn’t with us though. But it was a very fun night for us.

After we got it to the last can, we kept going and added other layers onto the sides so that it would get taller. It actually reached the point where it was too tall for the ceiling so we started building a second layer in front of it. It was a lot of fun that lasted all summer. Here was the final product.

The top can wouldn’t fit because the ceiling was just too low. Once the semester ended we had to get rid of the tower. It was a sad day when we had to take it down, but we let it go with a bang! Here was Sterling, Eric and I kicking it down before we all left. It was a lot of fun.

Final Hurrah!

It seems weird that nearly a year ago right now I was counting down the days till graduation. Now i am sitting alone in my apartment just thinking about the past year. It has been one hell of a year to say the least. I sit back and think how it may have never happened. Its a miracle i ended up in such a great place amongst an amazing group of young people. We all have grown and matured, i have learned so much from them. Tomorrow is when this dream ends for one chapter in my life. Tomorrow i leave this wonderful BYU Campus and enter a shifting period between school and my Mission. It is all surreal. Not seeing friends that actually care about me will be the hardest thing to leave. Man i have learned so much from all of them. Sterling, Eric, Matt, Matthew, Landon, Alyssa, Brittany, Heather, Sharona, Amanda, Heather and Brittany's Roommates and Alyssa's Roommates, and even Logan and Robert. All have taught many different lessons in friendship and the way a real friendship should last after we all break apart. i hope we can all still maintain this friendship even after we go our separate ways. We all say we will but in my case i have never been able to keep a friend after leaving a certain area. i don't know, but i finally for the first time want to try and keep up with all of these great people in my life. i may not have achieved great things in college but i did achieve a great thing in college, and that is the Friends i have made. i am grateful for all of you who have helped me grow up and your examples of friendship you have. sorry Matthew is the Story teller but i just wanted to say thank you for everything. I love all of you and good luck to the Future for us all.

Teddy (matt) Hubbard

The Awesome Stories of Roommates and Friends Part 2

Well like I said a while back, the stories of summer term don’t end there. We had tons of adventures as a group. Car rides, nasty dishes, the amazing can tower and so many more! But the can tower is a story for another day. It’s difficult to document all of the amazing stories but I am going to try my best and try to not make it ridiculously long.


I guess I will start this story sharing time with a tale of Transformers. As many of you know, Transformers 2 came out during the beautiful summer of 2009. This was an opportunity that Sterling was not going to pass up. He decided that he was going to get us down to Thanksgiving Point to see Transformers 2 on the opening night at midnight. So we went. Sterling was able to get a car from his parents (who live a grand total of 20-30 minutes away) and got us all to the theater. That was an awesome night! In fact, this was the night that Sterling made the incredible revelation that when he gets kids he wants to name one kid Optimus and another one Boston. It’s pretty awesome. It wasn’t as cool of a story as I thought it was going to be…but opening night! That’s pretty fun.

Speaking of car rides…how about the time everyone (and by everyone I mean everyone except me) went to Wyoming for the 4th of July? I did not go because my girlfriend Amber came down for the weekend to visit, so I spent time with her and not my friends…but I hear I missed out on a good time. This is what happened. Teddy, “We journeyed to the far away, no-mans land of Wyoming to light off fireworks in a place that does not discriminate based on how the fire works. We collected enough money to conjure an impending amount of fire power that lasted for over 6 hours of explosive patriotism as we celebrated our great nation’s birth. It was a spiritually uplifting experience to see all the funky colors and lights (he was tripping…) and spend time with those closest to me…not just physically, cause it was cold and people were huddled together for warmth, but those emotionally closest to me.” However, according to the pictures it seems Eric was the only one getting people to cuddle with him for warmth. Way to go buddy ;). I really missed out…oh well, next time…next time.

As I was writing this entry I realized that there was a lot of stuff that we did that involved driving places. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. There was more than I expected and remembered right off the bat. Not the point though. We had a ward activity that we was being held at Jump On It. Now according to Sterling, this place was supposed to be pretty legit. So we decided that it would be worth our time to go. It was free, so why not go right? We all had to bum rides off of people in the ward which meant everyone else got a ride with random people and I got to ride with Amanda, Brittany and Heather. It was a pretty fun ride since I got to know them a little better during that time. But this place was awesome! Imagine a platform made entirely of trampolines…and you have Jump On It. It was a lot of fun just jumping around and hanging out. Trampolines are sweet!


One day during as we are all just sitting around hanging out and what-not, we all got invitations to some dance that was being held in the Wilkinson Center (the Wilk). It was called the “Blue Tie Invitational” which is funny cause it’s like a black tie event, but blue because it’s BYU and not as formal. Trust me, it’s funny. But when it came time to go, a few of us (Teddy) didn’t really want to go, but with some gentle persuasion and the immortal words of a newfound friend of ours, “Suit up!” we all suited in an unmistakably upward direction and went with the girls to this dance. It ended up being pretty fun. Not because of the dancing, cause the dancing was pretty lame. Dances aren’t really mine and Teddy’s thing…but I at least go to hang out with friends, which is what it’s all about anyway. So, we all had a good time. The drinks were really good. I think Sterling and I had about…a lot, and we would go out of the actual dance area to throw it away. We would walk around the main hallways of the Wilk and at one point we had counted all of the trash cans that we could have potentially thrown our trash away in. I think our count was just over 40 or pretty close to that. Pretty fun I know. Then we decided after being bored with the dance that we would go bowling…but that didn’t work out cause the girls weren’t wearing socks. So we just went back to our place and watched a movie or did something fun like that. What a great night.


So I have mentioned Sharona, our adopted Fhesta before now. Well, her birthday was over the summer. In fact it is exactly one day after Brittany’s half birthday, which they are pretty excited about for who-knows-what-reason. Well we decided to throw this huge surprise party at the girls’ apartment. So we got our FHE group and her FHE group to show up and eat candy and cake and other fun activities and amusements. We even had a piñata! It was Elmo…and we didn’t really have anything to hit it with so Adam ran back to our apartment and grabbed some ninja fighting stick or something like that, that he had and let us use that. It was a nice stick/rod/pole/thing…whatever. Teddy and I had a lot of candy that night…like maybe too much cause we were having too much fun. We ended up taking a pixie stick and put some in a balloon and blowing it up. Later I think we tried to light it on fire to see if it would explode which doesn’t really make any sense cause it wouldn’t explode with fire…but we tried anyway. In the end we just popped it and watched the pixie stick powder get everywhere. It was entertaining.

Aha! I remembered another car driving time…period. Um…? Anyway, it was towards the end of the semester and Eric had his Mustang with him. There weren’t a whole lot of people from our group left. It was pretty much me, Sterling, Eric, Brittany and Alyssa (Teddy went home early…psh). But one night Sterling, Eric and I were really bored so we called up the girls and asked if they wanted to go to Walmart with us. They thought it sounded fun too so we all hopped in Eric’s tiny Mustang again and drove to Walmart. I loved that car…so many fun squished memories in the back of that car. ;) *bing! No, but seriously it was fun. When we were almost there we saw this guy walking across the street in front of us (at like, 1 in the morning) wearing a banana outfit. The girls asked why he was wearing it, and he replied “Cause I can!” or something pretty close to that. Sorry I don’t have the exact words said in the conversation. I’m trying though. That was one of the funnier just straight up random things that I have ever seen while in college.


This is not all though. This only scratched the surface of what is to come with our stories and adventures at BYU. We have had so many good times here, it’s weird to think that it’s already almost over. Great memories were made and many more will come, but for now I bid you all a hearty farewell! *you can’t see right now but I am bowing with a huge feathery hat in my hand cause it’s awesome and that’s the only reason to use that type of phrase.

FHE activities and the Fhestas

I have mentioned “the girls” or the “Fhestas” a few times in the last two entries. Well now it is time to introduce them. They are: Brittany (the mom of the group…PS, Sterling was the dad… ), Heather (her roommate), Alyssa, Amanda (they were roommates), Anna (no roommate for her) and Sharona (who was adopted into our group). Throughout the semester we would hang out all the time and do so many fun things. We did nearly everything together. It was awesome and still is awesome because we see almost all of them frequently to this day. But, now for the stories of how we first met…

It wasn’t until about a week later that we really officially met our Fhestas (as Eric taught us they are called…well, what he called them at least). However, if memory serves, my first meeting where I first recognized one of our Fhestas (Brittany) was at the BYU Creamery. It was pretty soon after finding out about these “FHE groups” that we had. I had just purchased a Kids Meal at the Grill, which according to Eric was the greatest thing there, and I was going to get my child’s scoop ice cream and Brittany was the one to help me. She recognized me and gave me about a single-and-a-half scoop ice cream cause she’s awesome! I was super excited and shared the news happily with Teddy who for some reason was not as excited as I was…oh well. Anyway, Teddy is saying right now that he doesn’t remember when he first met any of our Fhestas. Sorry girls…he doesn’t have as great of a memory as I do.

It was at our first FHE activity that we really got to know one another. We went to one the Bishopric member’s house (First Counselor I think…?) to “go swimming.” Out of all of us I believe Landon was the only one to actually swim with the cool guys next door like Mike, Nate and Evan. The rest of us stayed dry and played Apples to Apples instead. That is when we found out that Heather did ballet for like…14 years or something like that. Yeah, that number seems close-ish…? That was the beginning of one of the best summers of our adult lives…which is funny for two reasons. One, because that quote is related to The Sandlot (which is awesome cause it has baseball) and two, because our adult lives (except for Sterling) has only really had one summer.

Over time we learned what we liked and disliked and where everyone was from and what everyone did. Sterling claims he is from Boston (which he is) but he has lived like a bajillion other places too, cause his dad was in the army. So he knew a lot about guns. Teddy, as I said before grew up hunting, so he too knew a lot about guns. And Eric, well…I’m not sure why he knew about guns other than the fact that he was awesome. So, with all of their knowledge about firearms, we decided to go shooting for one of our FHE activities. We drove to the other side of Utah Lake and found a nice spot to go shoot stuff. We had balloons, targets, random things that we found on the ground like half of a Care Bear (which was obliterated by a shotgun haha) and birds that flew by even though the girls didn’t approve of the last one (I almost had it too....). But that’s beside the point. The real point is that we put a gun in everyone’s hand and let them shoot stuff cause it’s fun!

One night we were invited by the girls to go watch a movie at Heather’s brother’s house in Orem. Getting there and back was a tricky situation. None of the guys had cars on a regular basis so Amanda was the only one with a car. So, she drove most of the girls and some of the guys there ahead of time. Brittany joined me, Teddy, Adam, Landon and Eric in getting a ride with the Second Counselor of the Bishopric in getting a ride to the house. However, he could not pick us up again, but that will come in later in the story. We decided to watch I Am Legend for the movie. It was a pretty fun night…you know, other than the whole leaving us there thing.

During the same timeframe that Anthony was in town we had our tee shirt spray painting FHE activity. We had made all these different stencils that people could put on their shirts to make them look all cool and fancy. For example, Eric made one with the Invader Zim logo thing on it. Teddy made one with a pirate skull wearing an eye patch. I made one with a pineapple on the back that read “Have You Met…” on the front and “Ted” on the back under the pineapple. Everyone else made cool designs on their shirts too, like random patterns made from laying out scotch tape all over the shirt and other fun and interesting things…like that. Yeah. But that happened the same week that Anthony was there so Heather didn’t spend too much time with us specifically, mostly with him. It was only about a week later that I found out that he had just barely turned 16…yeah, you read that right…16.

There were lots of other fun times that we had. We did so much together over that semester and fun times were had by all. The good days are now gone and past, but the memories still linger. We still keep in contact and we still hang out all the time, but it just hasn’t been the same. Eric and Landon have left on their missions. Sterling moved back home. Amanda and I moved to Wyview (but I came back). Heather, Alyssa and Brittany moved all the way to Upper Heritage. I do not know where Anna moved to and Sharona has moved off campus. It is sad, but new friends were made, and will be introduced in later entries. As for Teddy and I, well…we did find something out about ourselves. We’re awesome.

The Awesome Stories of Roommates and Friends

Picture it…the first day of New Student Orientation (NSO) for the summer. We bail early on some activities and go to our dorm to see who our roommates are. That’s when we first meet Adam, Landon, Eric and Sterling.

*However, this was not my first meeting Eric for me (Matthew). I had in fact visited him on the first weekend of Spring term because we had been emailing each other for a while after finding out we would be roommates over the summer. That day I came to the apartment and he gave me a tour of the apartment. He showed me the rooms, the bathroom, the kitchen, the Brianna and his room (yes that is seriously how he introduced everything). His girlfriend then was visiting him for the first time at college. It was dark in the kitchen and they were alone…scandalous I know. We found out at that time emailing each other that our dads were mission companions in Munich Germany. It was cool. Sorry to distract from the story, but I thought I would throw that in there.

Okay, back to Summer. Now we didn’t know then, but Sterling would prove to be a pretty bad example when it came to school effort. He convinced us to ditch the lame dance that they were having the first night to go play Bang for the very first time. We got a little ways into it when all the guys from the next door apartment came out and joined us. They were pretty awesome guys too. They were Mike, Nate, Evan and Nathan and some other guy. I don’t really remember his name. Anyway, that was the first time we ever played Bang, and it took us HOURS to finish. We seriously were out in the lobby playing until 2 or 3 in the morning. He then convinced us on the next day to skip again and go with him, Eric and Landon to Eric’s house for a barbeque in Eric’s tiny Mustang. It was the first bonding moment for us and Sterling cause we all had to squeeze in the back of the car. It was a tender moment for us all. That was the first impression we had of our roommates. Such great examples…

Sterling taught us so much about life. He taught us to put off our school work to play games like Halo and Ghost Recon. He introduced us to How I Met You Mother which I talk about and reference a lot. It’s an awesome show. He had all the right intentions for teaching us about class and school, but this is what we saw. Every time I would leave for class in the morning, he would be in bed, and every time I would come home from class, he would still be there…in bed…in the same position…four hours later. I only saw him walking to campus once during the entire semester. Great guy though.

After a movie at Heather’s brother’s house, we found this balloon that belonged to the little three year old (or some young age like that) that lived there. So we started tossing it around cause doing that with balloons is fun. So after a while of hitting this balloon around the room it was floating to Adam. Before any of us knew what had really happened, he had whipped out his knife, popped the balloon and put the knife back in his pocket. It was scary to some degree and Heather got mad and told Adam he owed her niece a balloon. That was funny though. Once we were all done with the activity (at like 11:00 or something around there) the girls all crammed into Amanda’s car and left. They did ask if we had a ride and I had said my grandma might be able to take us which they took to mean “we can leave” so they left us. I called my grandma and we did get a ride from her and her home teacher’s wife, but it took us forever for them to find where we were and get home. We had all agreed (as far as I knew) to not talk to them for a week, which Eric and I did. Everyone else caved early. But it wasn’t as hard for everyone else because none of them had classes with any of the Fhestas. I was in Amanda’s and Alyssa’s Freshman Academy group…so I saw them every single day that week. It was hard, but I stuck through and the girls hated me for it.

Then there was the time when Heather’s boyfriend (now ex) came to visit for like a week…with his grandma. That Sunday, we all had dinner at the girls’ place. It was a lot of fun. We even got a picture of everyone that we love…and Anthony’s grandma. :/ But whatever, it was still pretty fun. After dinner we sat around and started drawing pictures with scented markers. They smelled good. Now, like I explained in the last entry, I’m crazy. I will admit that I am insane to some degree. So, when we just sat there for a long time, I started to get a bit restless. I don’t know why, but I did. Maybe it was the markers (everyone will say I was high…I disagree), maybe it was me being insane, but I got bored is the point. So I started saying funny things and acting strange, well stranger than usual. Later, after we were done in there, the Bishop wanted to meet our FHE group to talk about next week’s sacrament meeting. He had us choose who was going to give the prayers, the talks, musical numbers and all that stuff. Well, we had most of the talks assigned when no one else would volunteer. So, he tried guilting everyone into giving a talk. Unfortunately for me, I was still a bit woozy and out of it from going all crazy after dinner. So when he got to me, I tried to wriggle my way out of it talking about how I just gave like three talks within 6 months before coming to BYU and how I had passed out during one of them and I don’t know where I went wrong…but all of a sudden I heard myself saying “Okay, I’ll give a talk,” which was followed very quickly by one of the funniest faces I have ever made according to everyone who was in attendance. It was a look of sheer terror of realizing what I had just done. I had volunteered myself to give a talk when I had spent so long trying to get out of doing it. It was pretty funny afterwards, but when it happened it was really sad.

Then there was that time when Adam disappeared for a pretty long time and our RA and Hall Advisor came looking for him. It was a very interesting night to say the least. It all started out pretty much the same as every evening at our apartment. Oh, except for Adam coming in through the front door and heading straight for the back door to leave again. We were all pretty confused by this, but it was Adam. We didn’t know much about him and he was always so mysterious that we put it off as nothing. Then we started getting the visits. First our Hall Advisor Jacque showed up at our door in search of Adam. Then, Josiah our RA, came to the door asking for Adam. They would ask if Adam was home and then ask questions about him like if we knew him very well or if we knew who he hung out with or what he likes to do and just stuff like that. We were all pretty worried and couldn’t figure out what he had done to get Jacque and Josiah to visit not once, but multiple times throughout the night. After about three or four times asking for Adam, Jacque decided that she would just sit at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him. It was scary. Then while I was on the phone outside I saw what looked to be Adam run by to the front of the building. So I went inside and told everyone else that I thought I just saw Adam run by. A little while later, Adam came in the front door, went straight for his room and went to bed without saying anything to us. A few weeks later after retelling the story to some people Adam told us what had happened that night. Apparently he had been caught jumping off of the balcony (which is illegal and can get you fined) by Jacque’s husband. It wasn’t as bad as we thought but it makes for a great story to tell people.

One night at like, 2 in the morning our neighbor Mike answered a knock on the backdoor. It was Heather and the rest of the girls. Well, no one was answering our door so he walked around to our front door and got Teddy to let Heather in. I won’t ruin anything and just let you watch what happened. I couldn't actually download the video...cause it isn't mine, but I have provided a link so please, go look and enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=1191648876530&subj=1387638462

Now, I have mentioned nearly everyone else a lot so far, but now I’m going to move on to talking about our other roommate (mine to be exact), Landon. He was kind of a quirky kid. We would either see him totally awake for like, three days straight, or I would walk in after class to find him asleep for about three days straight. But one thing that he did while he was awake (other than watch South Park) was mass clean the kitchen. He was an awesome guy and randomly at like, three or four in the morning would start cleaning the kitchen. At one point he found mold in a bowl and in one of our frying pans. The bowl was dumped, the pan was super cleaned! He also liked his cheese puffs. He owned this giant tub of cheese puffs that he would eat over the entire semester. It was pretty legit. There was also the time that Landon was hanging out with Amanda and Alyssa. It was past curfew and he was still in their apartment. Their RA thought she heard something so she came up to check. Amanda and Alyssa answered the door and when asked if there was a guy in the apartment they both had different answers. Then Landon was found hiding…in their shower. Haha.

These are all true stories of the adventures that Teddy and I had over the summer with all our roommates and friends. They are not all the stories from that fantastic summer, but more are on the way, have no fear!

We're Awesome...

So after our Fhestas Brittany and Heather started a blog, I started talking to my roommate Teddy about starting a blog. I tried and tried and tried convincing him to start one with me (a grand total of about...6 hours now) and he gave in. For the longest time we both thought that blogging was pretty stupid and we felt like we were just going to jump on the bandwagon if we started one. Also, we are both leaving for our missions in June so it's not even going to be very long...anyway, the point is...we're awesome! In fact, when we get sad, or sick...we just stop and start being awesome instead. True story.

We are going to take this whole "blogging" idea to a whole new level of awesome and be better than everybody else at it cause that's how we Rolland. So watch out world cause here come Matt^2! *By the way for all those who are math illiterate that means "Matt squared" or "Matt to the second power." But yeah...pictures of our awesomeness and adventurous adventures are to come. And if they have not been photographed we will draw pictures of our awesome times together and apart for our time as roommates is drawing to a disappointing close. This is because Teddy is going home because he "can't afford" college anymore or something lame like that...whatever. I guess I have delayed the introductions long enough so here they are!

My name is Matthew Kevin Rich. I was born in the beautiful city of Santa Monica, California on March 9, 1991. I lived there for a grand total of four and a half years before I moved to Boise-freaking-Idaho...just kidding, it's actually not half bad there, at least it is after living in Provo-freaking-Utah for a whole gosh dang year. Anyway, I met many friends along my journey of my life. I play the trombone (how well is up to those who have heard me play…please be gentle with your critiques). I am not the best student but when I want to try and am not suffering the cruelties of Professor Kearl I can do fairly well. And spoiler alert, I’m insane. I have references on that statement, just ask any of my roommates, Fhestas or friends. “Um, Teddy, what else is interesting about me?” “Um, the trombone?” “Other than that…” “You’re a collector of great movies.” “Anything else” “I don’t have anything else, sorry Matthew.” “That’s okay, neither do I.”

My roommate is named Teddy Matthew Justin Hubbard. ;) He was born in Weiser, Idaho…hehe…on December 30, 1990. He lived there a grand total of one year before he moved to Hick-town, I mean, Pendleton, Oregon. He has lived there ever since and eventually met up with me in Provo-freaking-Utah. When we found out we would be rooming together here at the illustrious BYU I looked him up (sent him an email) and we talked for a good…well…some amount of time before meeting in person. He played the drums in high school, but didn’t continue in college. He is a lover of music and reading. Seriously, he has over 200 hours of music and has read an incredible amount of books in his lifetime. He is a total outdoors person. He grew up hunting and spending time outside. He thinks that filling the space between the muscle and skin of a deer and ripping it off is cool…weird. Well, we can’t really think of anything else other than his love of movies like I have. So…that’s about it for our bios.

In June we are going to be spending the next two years of our lives serving the Lord on missions. Elder Teddy Hubbard will be serving in the Santa Rosa California Mission speaking English. He doesn’t get farther than 200 miles from the beach at any point in his mission…jealous? He reports on June 16th. I will be serving in the Baltic Mission. For those who, like me, didn’t know where that is in the world, it includes Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. That’s in Europe by the Baltic Sea. I will be speaking Lithuanian. I report on June 30th.

So that is us! And I hope that someone will read this, because I read everyone else’s blog. Teddy doesn’t necessarily, but I do. Sorry for writing a ton for the first entry, but it’s hard to introduce two people as awesome as we are in a short amount of words. So please, leave comments (that are kind, because “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all) and enjoy reading of our awesome times together!