Bleeeeggghhh

That's the sound my face makes as I put both hands on it and pull down.  It's rather disgusting, but that's how I feel at the moment, k?

I'd like to quickly thank my body for getting over that nasty cold I had.  Also, I'd like to thank whoever made ibuprofen as I can take lots of them and not die.  Thank you little red pills, my body hurts a lot less.

I promise there's a point to this, I'm just deciding what's more important to write about at the moment.  I'm eating an apple in the library, that's pretty important, right?  No?  Well then I guess I'll write about English again.

Can I start off with how awesome my teacher is?  Seriously, the man is great.  First, I like that he isn't a Utah local and he suggests that during our research time we get a cup of coffee and sit down and work.  The look on the majority of the kids faces is just priceless (you can see the judgment in their little eyes).  Second, I love his grading.  If you mess up enough on your paper, he'll tell you exactly what you did wrong to and will sit down with you to figure out everything.  Then he'll actually let you turn it back in and you can get FULL CREDIT.  Yes, FULL CREDIT.  I just recently had to do this due to my bad habit of sentence fragments cause. I. Sometimes talk.  Like that. After my little mishap, I got an A and his comments were "I love the tone of this essay, plus you do an excellent job of analyzing the relationship."  Bam.  Score one for Ryan.  I got an I love on my paper, not an I like.  It makes me feel super awesome as you can tell.

Well the problem I'm having with my class right now is our research paper.  Ten pages on a nature artist/writer on an aspect of their work.  Now, the ten pages doesn't scare me, it's the aspect that I'm going to write about that scares me.  Choosing Ansel Adams, I figured that it would be easy enough.  Actually, it should be and I'm just overthinking this whole thing a bit.  I guess I just wanted to say what I'm doing.  Well, there you go.

Well, would you like an embarrassing moment in Ryan's life to make this a worthwhile read?  Why not? I'm feeling generous today.

Once upon a day, I was at the swimming pool at my high school well...swimming.  It so happened that after my workout my coach wanted me to work on my push a little push (push being how I pushed back the water in my stroke).  He thought it could be a little bit stronger so me and a few other teammates gathered around a machine where you lay face-down and push two handles with your arms simulating a stroke with both arms.  I let all the other kids go first, each one smoothly pushing back and forth as they slid up and down the machine in a smooth rhythm.  Eventually, it came to be my turn.

 NOTE:  This is minutes after I got out of the pool so my body is still dripping with water, but back to the story.  I lay down on the black plasticy pad and put my hands in both handles and pushed.  It was smooth, easy, nothing unusual.  "Come on, push a little bit harder," my coach urged.  So I did.  "Harder!" he let me know once again.  So I pushed harder and harder with smooth movement.

SEGWAY:  This machine is also positioned so my head is directly aimed towards the concrete diving blocks, you can probably guess what happened.


Squeee! "WOAH!" One final HARD push and my slick body propelled off the machine like a man from a cannon.  The world quickly turned upside down as I flipped over and landed on my neck (not painfully, don't worry) at the base of the diving block onto the tiled deck.  I just sat there for a moment, my legs twisted behind my body in some weird failed somersault pose, and then I couldn't stop laughing.  Mostly because of the look of concern on my coach's face which cold be described as a gaping mouth and two eyes that screamed "OH SHIT, NOW I'VE GONE AND KILLED ONE OF MY SWIMMERS."  He is one of the quietest and kindest people in the world, so killing someone probably doesn't sit too well with him.  In his defense, I really could have been seriously injured with a metal edge going into my skull, but let's ignore that.  He apologized again and again but I assured him I was fine and just went and took a nice hot shower, laughing the whole way there.

Yet another day that I dodged death and/or maiming due to my own lack of foresight.  Yay me.  I can't say I ever used that machine again.