Ten Years of My Life 2000-2009

Before the first month of the last year of the current decade ends (whew), I wanted to do a quick review highlighting what I remember about the double-aughts. Most people make New Year's resolutions for the things they didn't accomplish the year before. I should make belated 2009 resolutions for all the things I planned to do ten years ago but still haven't done. I was very ambitious when I returned from Brazil in February 2000. I made goals to learn all the Romance languages since I had already learned Portuguese (Spanish, French, Italian, and surprisingly Romanian, which I hear is the closest to Latin), build a computer from scratch, and cook all my own meals. After two years of college French, a preassembled Dell, and much too fast food, I admit to failure. I am disappointed, but not discouraged. There is still time to change. If this blog has yet to make you laugh, here are some before and after pictures of my brothers and I, the first taken in February 2000 (me doing my best Josh Brolin) and the second on the second of January 2009 (after too much fast food):



2000 was the year my birthplace got a LDS temple, my first high school friend got married, I started my freshman year at the University of Utah, moved into the new dorms built especially for the athletes of the upcoming 2002 Winter Olympics, attended my first church worldwide conference (and the first in the newly constructed church conference center), and last but not least, "Election-gate."

The most sentimental movies released: God's Army (3/10) - the first of a five-year string of "Mormon" movies; The Testaments (3/24) - the Salt Lake City Temple visitor movie that replaced Legacy; Center Stage (5/12) - the first of a new generation of urban teen dance movies; my picks for movies featuring old guys I'd followed for ten or twenty years, Unbreakable (11/22), Cast Away, and Finding Forrester (both 12/21).

Music artists I discovered or got back into: Nelly - Country Grammar (6/27); Coldplay - Parachutes (7/10); Everclear - Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile (7/11); Erasure - Loveboat (10/23 as an import); Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (10/24)

My first date back home from Brazil was an overzealous drive to Las Cruces for a ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty. I took my first girlfriend in college to Ballet West's Taming of the Shrew. The first official date with my wife was to The Nutcracker. Why all the ballet? I don't know (other than I like girls in tights), but it helped me get married.

Books I started: Harry Potter (there was an article on The Goblet of Fire in a magazine on my plane ride home from Brazil) and A Series of Unfortunate Events (which would tide me over till the next Harry Potter)

Restaurants I discovered: Hires (for burgers) and Gandolfo's (for sandwiches)