D Rawk in P Town

Hey Fam,
Well sorry I gots no jokes (I'm saving up for my divine comedy audition in a week or so) but I guess I'll just get right down to the nitty gritty on what's new:
WORK: Finished with Gemtek Tuesday, and will hopefully never go into another person's crawlspace as long as I live. I made roughly 5,500 dollars, which should take care of me until maybe halfway through winter semester. That said, I'll probably look for a couple more ways to cut corners, but will unavoidably end up looking for a job. Needless to say, thanks SO much to Joel for giving me the job (selling and teching) and for taking me under your wing, especially with my selling.
CHURCH (Emmett and Provo): Taught Sunday School for the last time last week. In the end, it was for sure the best option for Nic, Jake and I to have a attended singles ward. We got a lot of experience, had a lot of fun, and I definitely think it has helped me to hit the ground running in my new ward. Today's church went well (though we don't have any callings yet) and I look forward to my interview with one of the bishopric tonight at 7:30. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for hymnbook pass-outer or assistant scout master.
ROAD TRIP: Completely awesome and worth it. Nic Greiner, Jake Black and I hopped in Madi's junky Saturn and, complete with matching "HSB Rat Pack Road Trip" t-shirts, drove three hours to Burley Idaho. There we slept in some park on the river, got rudely awakened at one in the morning by the sprinklers and then messed around taking pictures at skate parks and grade schools in Burley and Oakley until we met up with the girls (our buddies from BPA state) at noon. Then the six of us all hopped into the Saturn, did a beautiful three mile hike up to Independence Lakes, swam in the icy water for a bit, ran back down and finished off the night with burgers and goat milk at one of the girls' houses. Really, really fun, filled with great jokes and memories. I'll truly miss Jake Black and Nic Greiner; both true friends to me and great examples to me of priesthood bearers.
P-TOWN: Absolutely incredible, even a little more fun than I thought it would be (and my expectations were pretty high). Mom and I got down here at around 4, signed me in, blew in all my stuff, went on a little shopping trip, got that all blown into the apartment and then she left me on the curb and went with Haley to the temple. It was pretty sweet and painless (for me, though I guess for mom it was also the shortest college move-in she's ever had) and I'm of course so SO grateful to mom for her help and devotion. My roommates are cool, all good, mature, mission-bound freshman boys with their heads on straight; we've got two from Sandy and two from Southern California. New Student Orientation has been totally worth it, we've had tons of free food, gone to a lot of cool activities (like a performance highlighting the honor code starring Jan Jorgesen, a crazy get-to-know-you activity called playfair and an awesome all night party with dancing, obstacle courses, jousting and comedy shows), and hanged out with a different group of girls every day. Classes have also been good (so far) but I guess now I'll get back to homework before I have to get along to my next class.
Sure love you all,
D Rawk

Senior Trip

Seals at the tide pools

My magnificent birthday cake with snickers on top

Kool dudes and Kool-Aid Shoes

Giant crabs at the Aquarium

Undersea Gardens

A fish skeleton stuck in seaweed we found on the beach

Homies

The ever popular, ever disgusting Fiji Mermaid

Senior Class of 2009

BPA State Pictures

Me trying to choke down one more bite of ice cream.

Horseshoe Bend's BPA eating at the Golden Corral
The move Franceso (our Italian foreign exchange student) pulled
when he finally tied his tie right. Skidoosh!

Playing pool at the SUB.
Nic, the girls and I eating lunch at the Institute.

Franceso playing Sudoku and looking like an old man.

Football Star

These are some senior pictures I took of Derek the other day. Vote for your top 3. We'll probably still take some more pictures, we need some of him in a suit. I was thinking of taking them by the temple. What think you?


With the Horseshoe Bend sign.



Near the Horseshoe Bend sign.


By the Horseshoe Bend bridge.


This one was totally a random shot, but turned out nice. One of Derek's favorites. It's just outside the middle school.


Right outside the library. This one's probably my favorite.


Laying in the leaves. This one was also pretty random.

Let me know what you think. I messed around with the coloring. Is it too obvious on some of them?
-Whit

7-9-3, I'm talkin' 'bout H-S-B...

This bright red tree in our front yard

Me, BreAnn Walker (her grandpa and Jeremy’s dad are brothers) and our pumpkin

Dear Fam,

Here’s the update (emphasis on DATE):

SCHOOL: Am I just making this up, or did one of you tell me senior year would be easy? One of you lied! This year’s workload has, without any exaggeration, been the five times more trouble than any other year of school I’ve ever had. I don’t know if its just because I have a small procrastination problem or if I was just taking easy classes for the last eleven years of school, but I’ve for sure never had so much homework, never had such trouble with classes and never been stressed out more in my life! Man! Anyways, I’m pretty chill about it normally and I’m sure its great preparation for college…

FOOTBALL: We’re almost done! Two more games and then a short two-week break before basketball! I’m really pumped. As much as I’ve enjoyed playing so much in the games and tackling people and all of the fun stuff, I am very ready for football to be over and to move on to the next sport.

CHURCH: Well, church is great! How I love having one day where I’m not even allowed to do homework! In a month our branch will have NINE priests and one teacher. Crazy, huh? Man, our quorum is so cool! I cannot wait until we all start going on missions, it will just be AWESOME.

Anyways, I think that’s it. I attached my essays for my BYU application to the email, and I’d really appreciate any input anyone had before I send them in (probably Wednesday).

Keep it real everyone,

D Rawk

Pretty impressive, huh?

How ya been Nigel? Weird.

Hey Fam,
Hey, this is just going to be a regular weekly post, but if anyone wants to read about BYS or Brian Regan, I'll just send that in a separate email.

Monday I woke up late, so wasn't able to shower, pack a lunch or even get much water before I had to go to work. Work was good, the first really hot day for me I think, so hot in fact that I ran out of water about halfway through the day. The guy I was working with was nice though, so he bought me a nice, cool caffeinated beverage that I quickly drained (haha, just kidding. I actually dumped small amounts of it into his drink every time he wasn't around and drank delicious gas station water instead). That night Mom and Dad came home late.

Tuesday I got up early to go to Twin Falls with Jake Flake, which was fine, then home to welcome Cassidy back! Sweet! I was so glad to get my little sister back! That night we had blow-by-blows for Cassidy's California experience and then Dillon's and mines EFY reports. Pretty fun.

Wednesday I worked with Uncle Brad in Emmett.

Thursday I worked with Dustin in Boise and Dillon, Cassidy, Whitney and I all slept on the trampoline.

Friday I woke up on the trampoline around eight as the sun started to get really bright. Sleeping on the trampoline is loads of fun, but not really very resting. None of us slept very well except for maybe Cassidy, who probably would have slept another hour had Dad not turned the sprinklers on… Anyways, Whitter and I left to go pick up our dates around 11:30, her’s in Emmett (Nigel Youngberg) and mine in Boise (Carissa Jones. She's a real cool girl who was in mine and Whitney's group at last year’s BYS) and then we hit a couple other places (Wal-Mart and Whitney’s old apartment) before we made it to the river. It was AWESOME, tons of people obviously but still a whole lot of fun though things did get a little hairy at the end. You see Whitney and I are both retarded, so we didn’t figure we’d need paddles, which of course turned out to be a problem when we weren’t able to move the boat out of the way of this fallen tree near Ann Morrison Park. It was pretty terrifying actually, the log gashed a whole in the boat, air and water was spraying in mine and Carissa’s faces, then we were all dumped out when the raft snagged on the tree, except Whitney who got caught in these ropes and couldn’t seem to manage to get her head up for something like thirty seconds, fifteen of which the rest of us were freaking out trying to swim upstream and untangle her… It was a bad situation, and I’m glad we’ve learned our lesson. Anyways, from there we walked back to Whitney’s old apartment where we waited for some of the others to get back before we headed over to the Gemtek Barbecue. Pretty fun, good food, football, all that fun stuff. I was just glad that Carissa’s BYS counselor from this year was one of the technicians’ girlfriends; it might’ve been REAL boring for her otherwise. After that was the Boise Hawks game, which was pretty fun, then I took her home (she had to be back at nine), hanged out with her family for a little while and then went back to the game to watch Boise win and FIREWORKS!! Haha, I love the 4^th of July…

Saturday I had off, so I did some chores, watched Sarah’s kids a little, and later that night went over to Nic’s house with Cassidy to hang out. Pretty fun.

Well I guess that’s it for now.
Keep it real,

Derek