The Church of Steve Part 3

Tomatoes, Pickled Anything and now dried fruit in fact in commandment form:

Thall shalt not dry up fruit and partake thereof

I don’t hate all dried fruit. Actually I really like Banana and Apple chips and Fruit Leather. The Church of Steve is pretty forgiving on a lot of its rules and membership is more of agreement to the majority of the rules. In a situation like this where you have to draw the line is taking a delicious fruit like grapes and you remove the plump juiciness from a grape and you are left with something that can just like pickles sit on a shelf for years, looks like dried up rabbit poo, and doesn’t taste at all like the fruit it came from.

Now raisins are probably acceptable for a good standing in the CoS although I personally don’t like them, I have at times eaten them and enjoyed them. I don’t like when they ruin things like Oatmeal Cookies, Carrot Cake, Rice Pudding, etc. The problem that happens when you combine them with things like that is that they try to regain some of their former grape glory and become soft again. If you ever watched a Zombie film or better yet if you’ve watched or read Pet Cemetery, you know that once something is dead (dried), it doesn’t come back too well when you try to bring it back. When you bring them back what you are left with is a freakishly disgusting mutant raisin that is shriveled yet soft and it sneaks up on you. Once one of these hit your molars and squishes moist raisin guts all over your mouth, the vomit reflex isn’t far behind.

The most disgusting and sure way to lead to excommunication from the CoS is to partake in the bowel regulatory practice of prunes. There are other options for your fiber now a days, so take some Metamucil and be regular. Many Scandinavian friends of the CoS will be going to Hell for a traditional Christmas Prune Soup. This is the only food that while on my mission to Finland I was not willing to eat. I tried it once and nearly yakked. It’s meant to be a dessert but it quickly becomes a bulimic’s best friend because once this hits your taste buds the texture, taste, and smell will do everything a finger or two down your throat provide.

Lobsters

We all have experiences growing up that have traumatized us in different ways. Some of them we look back on and still feel the horror while others we look back on and think "I can't believe that scared me."

I have an interesting story about Lobsters to share that traumatized me when I was growing up. I think I was around 4 or 5 at the oldest and my dad traveled a lot (He was a pilot). He had just returned home from New England and we were going to have a big dinner. The dinner had a special main course that none of the younger kids knew about....it was simply a surprise.

So Mike and I were taking a bath together (Yes we were young enough to do that and still fit comfortably in the tub). My dad had just returned home when we had got in the tub and he decided to come in and see us. Little did we know he had guests in each hand......Lobsters. They were still alive and pinching or trying to that is. My brother and I had never seen anything like them before and well I don't know about him but I was scared.

So here we are in the tub filled with water when my dad tells us that the Lobsters came from the water and that he would like to make them feel at home by putting them in the tub with us. We didn't like this at all especially when my dad said that if we got to close to the Lobsters they would pinch our weeners off. This wasn't something that I really fancied, and I don't think my brother did either because we screamed loud enough for our mother to save us. I can still remember my dad joking about it later.

The funny thing about this is, yes that traumatized me as a kid, and it wasted a perfectly good slot on the 3 things I didn't have eat list for many years, but now that I'm a dad I think back on those things that traumatized me and laugh. Some of them were pretty funny and although I'm not going to threaten Carter with Lobsters, I'm sure there are things when he grows up that I will have done that he will laugh at when he has kids of his own.

The T.V. Diet

I think this might be the craziest thing I have ever tried before. I have realized over the past few months that I watch too much television. When it is time to go to bed I will turn on the T.V. and I will channel surf for hours, even if there is nothing on. I don't know why I do it, and it drives me crazy.

The idea occurred to me yesterday when I then thought of all the things I could accomplish if I replaced my T.V. watching. I could finish the books I am reading faster, and I could free more time for writing, which I have been meaning to do for a while now, I have just been too lazy.

So the rules of the diet are thus:

-I will go one month with no T.V.

-Video games can still be played. (I control how much I play xbox extremely better than T.V.)

-Movies can also be watched.

I figure this is a good time to start since we will be on a cruise for one week. I want to try this and see if I can improve the quality of time that is normally spent worshiping the boob tube.

Wish me luck.

My haircut experience

Ever since I got home from my mission to Brasil I have cut my own hair. I started doing it because I had a really bad haircut right before an important date and the stylist did a terrible job. Ever since I vowed to always cut my hair. The first couple of episodes were pretty terrible but if you do something long enough you eventually get good at it.

So five years later of cutting my own hair I received a free gift certificate for a hair cut at Sport Clips. This was a little over a week ago. The girl is cutting my hair and we are talking about absolutely nothing (I feel awkward if I don't talk to someone cutting my hair.) She then asks "So who cut your hair last?" I know exactly where she is going.

A barber never says, "whoever cut your hair last did a great job." She was asking because it obviously sucked. So then I backed out like a wimp and answered "um, my friends sister cut it." Silence was all that followed. She said nothing and kept cutting for a bit. Then she asked if she was licensed. To which I answered "No she isn't. I was hanging over at their house and we were bored and there was a pair of scissors." I was trying to make a joke but she didn't even smile. I felt like an idiot.

So apparently I suck at cutting my own hair.

James Intro

I think Steve summarized perfectly how Aaron Richards came about. I was introduced to fantasy by my brother and sister when I was in junior high. They were reading Terry Brooks and could not stop talking about his books. Which at the time were the Sword of Shannara series. Until this time the only books I had ever read were required in school. However, once I picked up the Sword of Shannara, reading became a hobby.

A year or two later my family moved to Lindon where I met Mike and Steve. One of our things we enjoyed were playing board games. I remember they had a game with little lead figures of goblins, and wolves and knights that they painted. Then soon after D&D came into the picture. We were hooked on it. I remember several times we would play all through the night and then long into the next day. I can't quite explain what was so addicting about D&D but a suggestion is that if you know me Mike and Steve one thing we all have in common is a very strong imagination. I think the game exercised our minds to limitless possibilities.

Me and Steve never really got back together until after we returned from our missions and were married. I remember the day that Steve suggested we write together. We were at his sister Chellie's house for some kind of party. I think It was Richards party. The one where I hit the pinata with a bat, it broke completely free of the string holding it and hit the birthday boy square in the face, knocking him on his back... Priceless.

We were in Chellie's basement and I told Steve that I had an idea of a book I was thinking of writing. He then told me of this idea that was roughly based on the stripling warriors. It sounded like it had a lot of potential and he sold me on it. (and you think you can't sell Steve)
That is our first book that we started on. It is actually pretty far along, it just hasn't been transfer ed to paper.

I know eventually we will get something underway and complete. I was actually inspired last week at the BYU game. Not by Goiter boy, but by Steve Burke. He is one of Steve's friends from work that comes with us. As we were driving home he told us that he wrote a fantasy book and sent it to a publisher. I asked him how long it took him to write it and it only took him about six months. If he can do it, I know we can too.

I am excited to post here. I have a good idea about Steve's bathroom rules. It would be very easy to make a quick 20 second commercial for each bathroom rule. I don't know if you can post video clips here, but if not we can link it to Youtube. I can see it being pretty popular.

I will also be creating posts on the following:
-Fitness advice from a fat guy
-My annoying neighbors upstairs
-The mystery of the man crush

A Guy's Guide To Proper Public Bathroom Etiquette Part 1

Let me start this series of posts off with the statement that I don’t spend more time in the bathroom than the average person. Also, I don’t sit in the bathroom and think of things that annoy me like this. Over time working with larger companies I have noticed a few things that guys do that in my opinion ‘break the rules’ for public bathroom behavior.

Here's an obvious one right out of the gate.

Wash Your Hands.

You wouldn’t believe it, but a lot of guys don’t do this. It’s pretty sad because I would say at least 1/3 of all guys don't do this (At least that I observe). This is probably one of the etiquette rules that I do notice actively. Actually, if you don’t do this my friend at work and I put you on an unwritten list of people that we track. This is the list of people that we do not allow to touch anything we have at work. When we have to let you touch things we then liberally apply GermX to the affected area. Just because you’ve decided to live with the nastiness of not washing doesn’t mean we all have to have your germs.

I think in the spirit of not breaking Rule 2 I’m going to keep these posts to 1 or 2 rules, so I’ll share one more rule and then I’ll save the others for future posts:

Don’t peek over the dividers

Some of these are just simple things that most of us sit there and say “No duh!” Well, this is another one that for whatever reason and it’s not a subtle thing, but guys will look at you while you are peeing in the urinal. I don’t know what type of guy needs to get their kicks from this, but it’s gross. Even if you live a different lifestyle, this is not something that screams sexy to me. This also begs the question….why are dividers in the guy’s restroom only 4 feet high? Oh we have our normal tall Stalls, but for the urinals you’re only getting privacy if you’re 8 years old or a midget. They just beg for guys that are perpetual offenders to break this rule. This makes for one of the most awkward moments in the restroom.

The Church of Steve Part 2

Thall Shalt Not Pickle

Pickled Beets, Pickled Cucumber Slices (I think they call those Belly Achers), Pickled Herring…..honestly Pickled Herring, think about that for a second. You stick raw fish in a solution that will somehow make it 'OK' to eat. All you’ve done is transformed the fish into a stinky soggy mess that tastes terrible. People eat this stuff. I can understand why people eat foods that are pickled, but pickled fish or any other non vegetable food, is just completely disgusting.

Ok so back to pickles, although I can understand why people like this food, it completely contaminates the other food it touches and that is why I hate pickles. Because I hate them they are officially against the Church of Steve.

Here is another problem with Pickles….there is something wrong with a food that can last forever. I don’t know exactly what the shelf life on them is, but it’s long. I mean that is the whole reason for pickling things, but I think we had one jar of pickles the whole time I was growing up. Then Kenna and I got married and well we have had one jar of pickles for as long as I can remember. I don’t think I’ve heard people eat pickles and say….”Wow these pickles are bad.” No, they can eat pickles out of the jar that have been there for over 25 years.

Case in point last summer at the annual Gordon 4th of July festivities, my grandma brought out Ketchup from her storage. Let me preface the next comments on this post by saying I really love my Grandma and she is amazing. Ok, back to the story, my grandma brought out brown ketchup. This is a bottle of ketchup that had never been opened and it was brown with age. We switched out the ketchup for a normal healthy red version. Here is where I bring back the pickles. A bottle of pickles was brought out from the same storage and probably bought around the same time. Everyone ate the pickles, why because pickles can be older than my Grandma’s first food storage installment (we’re talking pre-war here and I'm not talking about Iraq, Vietnam, or even Korea) and yet somehow they are still good. You could get a pickle caught in your teeth and rediscover it months later when you finally floss and it would still taste the same.

All of this adds up to the second food in hell being pickles. As a pretty combo, I’m pretty sure they can pickle tomatoes.

Who is Aaron Richards?

So I realize that I haven’t fully explained the Aaron Richards things at all. Why are there two authors to the blog? Where is the other author? Well, the answers to those questions and many more interesting stories will shortly follow.

I know that earlier I said that this would be the True Hollywood Story of Aaron Richards, but as I tried to write the story, I realized that there is nothing really extremely interesting about my late teenage years like the usual THS stuff that E reports (Addiction to drugs, dealing with exorbitant amounts of money at a young age because of fame, etc..). Actually, there are a lot of funny things to reminisce about, but the story of Aaron Richards is pretty simple. Let me just lay out the background information:

James and Mike were really good friends from Junior High on.
Mike and Steve (me) have been brothers since birth (I realize that’s obvious, but you never know, some readers may need clarification) oh and we’re only a year and week apart in age not that that’s anything special, but it meant we shared friends growing up. It was a package deal, if you got one you got the other...although I think I probably spent more time with Mike’s Friends than he spent with mine. I’m trying to decide if that was because my friends and I were older and we didn’t want Mike to tag along or if Mike thought he was too cool for us (obviously he’s not, cuz I’m awesome). Since this is my blog and Mike doesn’t know about it yet, I’m going to let you all assume that it was because Mike was an elitist who thought he was too cool for us and I was more grounded (and did I mention awesome/humble) and would hang out with the younger crowd. Ok, more needed information:

James married Natasha in June 2002
Steve married Kenna in May 2002 and since the weddings were happening all around the same time and Steve and James were friends, the wives got to know each other and became friends….which makes the two couples married friends and that means life friends. Our first sons will be in the same grade…..can you say double-family vacations!!!!

So now that the background is set, James and I currently like to create things (clarification for Kenna, I said create, not finish). One of our passions is writing. James is an excellent writer, as you’ll see when I actually get around to giving him a login to this site. And I am great at coming up with stories. Somehow I dream these elaborate stories. I remember dreams like they are movies and if I had a good one I write it down and James and I bounce it around until it becomes something really cool and worth writing. Because our names are just not exciting we write under the pen name Aaron Richards which is James and my middle names, respectively.

What can you look forward to from Aaron Richards if James and I ever finish a project? We have a few book series that we are working on….One that is an Epic Fantasy type series trilogy which is the furthest along project. We also have a Ghost Hunter type series that we are working on. Aaron Richards also writes screen plays.

I’ve messed with Rule 2 again and that’s 3 straight posts that I’ve had to break it. Hopefully I get better.

The Church of Steve Part 1

The Beginning

Let me just start this off with a little background, as long as I can remember back when I was a young boy I was able to create a list of 3 foods that I didn’t have to eat if they were made for family meals. Rather than forcing me to eat food I didn’t want to eat, my mom would say. “Is this on your list?” The list was something that she would write down by our fridge and it couldn’t be updated on a whim because when it was first instigated if I saw my mom making meatloaf and I didn’t want to eat meatloaf I’d update the list to say meatloaf and voila I got to eat something else while the family had disgusting meatloaf (just a side note, I absolutely love meatloaf now….in fact I could eat it every day. It’s funny how tastes change). Ok, back to the story…..the list had a waiting period on it. I can’t remember how long it was, but we’ll just say it was 24 hours after an update to the list I still had to eat a recently added food. Why was this list so important, well because if you didn’t have something on the list, then you had to eat it without complaint.

Now that I’ve got the background set, let me tell you about the most disgusting food memory I have ever had to eat in my life. I can’t remember the exact types of food that I had on the list besides the old standbys of meatloaf, lobster…that's a different story entirely, and maybe a few other very specific things, but they were always very specific things that we had for dinner at one time in my brief life. It wasn’t until my mom made Baked Tomatoes stuffed with Tuna Fish that I really started to hate entire groups of food.

So Tomatoes baked and then stuffed with Tuna Fish….if you think that sounds good you need to get examined….in fact I asked my mother about this tragic moment in my life and she even said it sounded gross, but back then I guess it must have been an experiment. Basically, the tomatoes became really soft in the oven and then you would add tuna fish to them after you empty out the insides. What you have left is a mushy pile of goo that didn’t mesh with Steve’s Palate.

From that day on, I had Tomatoes and I’m pretty sure Tuna Fish for a little whileon the list. Tuna Fish eventually got pardoned as it was not the main offender in the dish, but Tomatoes have never been the same since. I can eat things made with Tomatoes ie Ketchup, Tomato Sauce, Salsa, etc., but I rarely eat tomatoes because the squishy insides still remind me of that soggy dinner I had to eat.

Once again I’m breaking rule 2 of the blogging rules setup only two days ago…..I think that rule 2 and I are going to have a lot of problems in the future. I will continue this history of the Church of Steve on upcoming posts, but Commandment numero UNO in the church of Steve is:

Thall Shalt Not Partake of Non Processed Tomatoes!!

I’m pretty sure I envision one of the foods they serve in Hell as baked tomatoes, and everything is made with the mushy seedy guts of tomatoes.

More rules to come.....but if you don't like Tomatoes, you should seriously consider membership in the Church of Steve

Blogging More Frequently

So, I had to rip the computer away from Kenna to be able to post once in 3 months. Hope is on the way for the blog though in the way of a work laptop. This means that I can have a computer to do my stuff with at home while Kenna monopolizes our current laptop (She currently has all the Yellow and Green Properties). I don't mind at all that Kenna does use the laptop, however I do feel bad for you faithful readers (I know you're still there....right?). The reason I don't mind Kenna having the laptop is that she actually does productive things with it. Unlike when I have it, I play games, read useless sites, and then I usually end up sitting there wondering what in the heck I should look for on the Internet until Kenna asks for the laptop.

Anywho (Time to get to the point).... From here on out I'm going to try to keep to some rules for the blog:

1. Post at least once a week. (Hopefully more, but once a week is practical)
2. Shorten the posts (Did you read my previous two posts???? I know I'm awesome....I think Guinness called about them)
3. Actually invite the other half of Aaron Richards to post on the blog I created for the two of us...James that would be you.

Here are some ideas for future posts.....if anyone still reads this let me know which ones you would like to read about first.

• The Church of Steve (It's a dietary thing, and we have a lot of followers....you may be one and you just haven't pledged allegiance to the flag....ummm I mean church)
• The guy's guide to proper public bathroom behavior (Just some simple rules every dude needs to live by)
• Why Aaron Richards? What's that all about? (True Hollywood Story Style)
  

I know what you're saying......"How do I pick just One?" Well don't worry we'll get to all 3 and many more on this fantastical journey that is the Aaron Richards blog. (Note to my son Carter in the distant future: I'm sorry that your dad is a total nerd, hopefully I get better, although that all hinges on your ability to play Cornerback. (Note to myself at the same time in the future: I was freaking cool back then....uh I guess I mean now....whatever))

This post is already breaking rule 2 of the aforementioned rules for the blog, so I've got to go....Thanks for reading.

P.S. If you can't tell I really like to use parentheses (I like to call them brackets).....maybe it's because all these years brackets have been brainwashing me with the fact that when put together they look like the shape of a football ().....very tricky brackets, touche indeed