Halloween Bash

Alright, so I dressed up on Halloween for the first time 5 or 6 years. For the big night, I dressed up as Zeus! BTW, I was looking up stuff about Zeus and found out he was a ladies man so I figured it was even a better fit for me. ( He had some 30 kids with like 7 or 8 different women.)Some buddies and I went with the whole Greek god theme throughout the night. Zach, my roommate, was Hades and my other roommate, Keith was Hercules. Then two girls from our ward, Maddie and Kat, were our Greek goddesses.

We started off by having a Halloween dinner at our FHE girls' place which was stinkin good. Then we moved onto the black light party and we picked up Stephanie on the way. The party was good and I zapped everyone who was dancing inappropriately with my lightning bolt.

After the party, we had around 15 people come back to our house to watch the movie "Sleepy Hollow." That concluded our night and it was a fun night.And this was the bi-polar pumpkin I carved.

Why I love BYU-I

I'm sitting here at 3:35 am, procrastinating my homework and knowing that it has been a while since my last blog, thinking about what it possibly is that I can write about. Well, as the above title suggests, I'm going to write about why Andy Winn loves Brigham Young University-Idaho.

Girls- Even Droid knows where his priorities are. An old man once told (i.e. Bossman) me that fathers send their daughters to BYU and their cows to BYU-I. I beg to differ old man. The ladies here are top notch.... spiritually of course and not to mention physically but not like that's important or anything. ( Last statement was for all female viewers.) Modest is hottest.I like to play with the odds in my favor due to my former rebellious days of poker and frankly, that's exactly what I have here at BYU-I. Girls out number the guys at a ratio of 2 to 1. Yes, that means there is hope for the Droidinator. Then you take out all of the preemies and my ratio gets even better. Then, the great town of Rexburg makes things even better by giving all these great date activities for cheap. I haven't spent more than $15 on a date and that's meal included.

Intramurals- BYU-I has the best intramurals program in the nation...period. (Look for more on this soon in the No Mercy Sports Blog) I have not heard of any other university that has an eight team tackle football league. This league is so intense, they have all-time statistical records on-line. Because BYU-I doesn't have any collegiate teams, they make sure there is something for everyone. You can play in recreational leagues or competitive leagues with cheerleaders and high school refs ranging from football to golf to ultimate frisbee. I'm currently the star center of Ryan's Boys in the upper division of flag football and head coach of the Ladies Dodgin' Bullets.

Classes- Here classes start with a prayer and end with another engaged couple. I love the small class sizes here. All my teachers know my name except maybe Brother Jenson but then again, all Ev and I do is sit in the back and look at stuff on the internet or make fun of the married 25 year old with a kid who still finds it cool to pop his collar. Plus, the classes really foster an atmosphere for discussion. Lets not forget that I actually have fellow classmates and teachers supporting me when I make conservative comments.

Evan and Whit- Life up here just wouldn't be the same. First off, there is no way I could survive micro-economics with Ev. Second, we have great chemistry on the football field. Ev and I, both, touched the ball on every offensive play last game. Even when I wasn't center for two plays, Ev tossed the ball to me for a big gain. This is another shout out to Ev, thanks for the love! And there is Whit...Without her expertise, we would not have our flag football games filmed in HD or would we have post-game wrap-ups. Also, Ev helps me keep the eternal perspective while here at school; intramurals first, other stuff in the middle and school in last place.

Spiritual- I love the atmosphere at the school. They call it the "Spirit of Ricks" but it really is just called the Spirit. Like I said, every class starts off with a prayer, except in my auto class today.(He got a little listening to a comedy act about BYU biking laws) Also, the things we learn are tied back to the gospel. I have a stud as my Book of Mormon teacher. It's amazing what a difference professional teachers make in religious classes. Almost everyone wants to be obedient; the exception would be my youthful roommates. Give 'em a break, they are learning. Basically, I love the integration of secular and spiritual learning. Last of all, you don't get one of these just a block down the road in most cities.

Last but not least......Did I mention girls?

Summer, Summer, Summertime!

So it's crazy that I have already been home over a month now and summer has come to a close. However, in that month I was able to have a lot of fun and spend time with family and friends.


GOLFING

Alright, so of course I had to get my fair share of golfing in before I could go back to school. There was first the Winn Fam and Friends Invitational. I'm hoping to make this some kind of regular event but we will see. No I didn't win. I actually whiffed the golf ball about 15 of my 20 first swings. However, with practice I was able to make steady progress and I improved 8 shots the next time I played with Brad on a "business" outing. (Actually it consisted of the two of us and his old bishop with a buddy.) Then Tevita took me out for a round at Trysting Tree. I managed to shoot in the low eighties and I was crushing the ball. This last Friday, Evan and I played 9 at the good old Rexburg Municpal Course. Here are a few pics and video that I was able to capture.










Pics: Bossman and Anthony with their golfing hats, Evan bored from the slow twosome in front of us and Brad doing what Brad does. The funny thing is that there is a biker only 20 yards away from him and moving towards him.


Concerts


In the last month, I went to two concerts. The first was the Jack Johnson concert up in St. Helens. It was a good pick for my first concert because it was nice and chill. He sounded really good live but didn't put on much of a show due to his style of music. I went with Twon and we met up with some of his friends from the UofO. The second concert was with Twon and Rebecca, a friend from Oregon, and we went and saw Kutless. They are a Christian rock group that is originally out of Albany and the concert was free so we checked it out. We all had a good time but it was exactly my cup of tea. It was a bunch of Christian groups and it was put on by a Evangelists who talked for an hour or so. It was a good experience for me to see how other Christians worship and what not.

Luau

Thanks to Tanya and Tevita, I went to a Luau at their house-warming party. The house looks great due to the great work done by the hands D.R. Winn Construction. They had a DJ and even inflatable toys. Tevita even recruited the Oregon State D-line to cook the pig. They weren't too happy when I came strolling in with my bright yellow Duck Country t-shirt on. It was a pretty fun party and some dang good food. Riley duking it out with a kid from our ward and the OSU d-line.

Portland

I made two trips up to Portland to stay with Brad, Mandy and kids. I was up there for about 5 days. I was up there for Hailey's first birthday and then Brad and I went golfing. I was also introduced to the wii system. I'll just say I'm not a huge fan if Kaya can knock the crap out of me on the boxing game. However, I did comeback and beat her and Brad at the golfing came. I went with Mandy and kids to OMSI and checked out some pretty cool stuff there. One of these pics is a picture of Mandy if she were 20 years older. That was just one of the many exhibits at OMSI. During the second trip, I followed Brad around for a day on the job as a corporate real estate. We took people on tours all around town showing them warehouses and what not. I don't think its my cup of tea. I could keep myself awake while we were driving in between buildings. The highlight of the day was when we had a business lunch at a sushi place. I wish I could charge $90 meals on the business all the time. I understand how Brad sometimes has challenges with eating out. We could of eaten more but we didn't want to look to fat in front of his clients so we paced ourselves. Then I capped off the night by going to the movies and watching "Dark Knight." Stinkin good movie by the way. One of the videos is Cameron being crazy at the school park. The middle schoolers there thought he was pretty cool.

Tips to Avoid a Speeding Ticket

One week ago, I got to make the lovely trip across the high deserts of Oregon and Idaho on my way to school at BYU-I. Well, at good ole' mile post 95, east of Boise, on I-84 I received a speeding ticket for $75. It was about 10p.m., not much traffic on the road and I was clocked doing 89 in a 75. This is my second speeding ticket and it sure beats the $420 first ticket three years ago. Now, of course, this could have been prevented so here is a list of things you ought not to do if you want to avoid a speeding ticket

• First of all, don't talk on the phone. It is a bad distraction and that's when it all started to go downhill. I had been going a good fairly legal speed until I started chattin' on the phone.


• While driving and talking on the phone, never say "man I'm going too fast but I haven't seen a single cop since I got into Idaho and they wouldn't pull me over anyways." At that very moment, the state trooper had pulled out behind me without his lights on. I thought it was just another car coming up behind me.


• When the officer asks you "How fast do you think you were going?", don't respond by saying "well, my speedometer only goes to 84 and I was quite a ways past that so I know I was going to fast." I don't know how it sounded to him but I knew right after I had said that, that it didn't come out too well.


• Lastly, buy a car with cruise control. Let me tell you, this makes a big difference. Both of my two tickets were because I was on the freeway and didn't have cruise control. With this bad boy you can set your speed at 5 or 6 mph over the speed limit and you won't ever get pulled over but instead, I had Ray Jr. flunctuating speed.

It was still a fun trip even though I didn't have the guts to get my car back over 70mph the rest of the way. The conclusion of the trip was the best because I couldn't find Evan's apartment at 2 in the morning and he was out of town so I ended up sleeping in my car for 3 hours. Fun times!

The First Date

Alright, it hasn't been two weeks and I already got my first date out of the way. Well, I should probably give all credit to Mere because I wouldn't have done any of it without some encouragement from her. I was planning on Mere setting everything up but like a parent making a child learn something on his own, she made me call and set it up. I think the phone call was the most nervous part of the day behind watching Michael Phelps make a comeback in the butterfly. So the four of us; Brandon, Mere, Brooke and I went out to Carino's, a nice Italian restaurant. We followed that up by some intense gaming at the Carlile residence. I think we all had some pretty good laughs, especially the girls. Once we got bored of that, we all became glued to the TV for the Phelps' show. Basically, since I already knew Brooke, it was a good "ease me back into the dating scene that I was never in before." It was like a pre-season or non-conference game. I gotta get ready because things will start to count when the regular season rolls around Sept. 8th.

What I miss about Russia Federation and the mission!

So having been back only a week and a half I already miss many things about the Russian Federation. Here is my list of the things that I wish were still around or that have been weird for me to adjust back.

My boy Lenin- There are stil statues and pictures of Lenin all over Russia. This always provided for a good photo op while out and about.

One thing that I really miss is the "viewing platform." Now you be wondering what this is. Well, it relates to toilets in Russia. Most toilets are not the same as the ones that we have in America. Instead of the waste matter going straight into the water, it rests on a shelf which does not have water. Not until the flush do things get cleaned up. I've learned a lot about myself. Now this isn't the viewing platform but this is the best you get in public restrooms. We were just lucky that we didn't have to pay to use this toilet.

Russia is a very hot and muggy place in the summer and that meant that there were lots of summer storms. I really fell in love with thunder and lightning storms. Here I was caught in one of those crazy storms that took us by surprise. This was all in a matter 20 minutes.

The sunsets in Russia are amazing! I'm not it's from the pollution or something else. I was able to catch a sunset almost nightly in the summer.

There have been a few things that have made me feel awkward with the transistion from missionary to a regular person.

One of the more dominant is the fact that I do not have someone with me constantly. Sometimes, when I'm in the store I forget that I don't need to take Riley with me to the chips aisle. Every once in a while I feel guilty for talking in english since we were supposed to always be speaking Russian.

There is one thing that I don't miss...the trash. Russia is a rather dirty country and especially where I lived. Here's is one picture from a park in Saratov.

There is more to come.....

I've entered the blogging world!

Alright, so I'm not sure how to do this but I'll give it my best shot. I don't know if I can be too creative or funny but I'll figure stuff out. If anyone has any good ideas about what things I should put on here, let me know.