Further Portland proof of Fun!

Due to the fact that I can only upload five faces at a time, and there is slew of Santa's helpers in Portland, I am uploading another. Plus, Craig seems to be a little camera-shy, as I only have one picture of him. I found it though, and it is a good one! Finally, I guess the first person you upload kinda becomes the star of the video, and below that was Nicole, here it is Craig, and it is really funny. Enjoy! See you all on Sunday!

Portland Christmas Preview!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

It is a little later in the season than usual for me, but I still want to make my blog Christmas-a-rif-ic. Sorry if you don't like the music starting when you get here, but someone has to get all those Scrooges in the Christmas spirit, and I'm just the man for the job.

I am not lazy, I am busy, so busy that when I do have time I am too lazy to blog

It is time for another post. I have to apologize to anyone that used to read this blog, I have not kept up in recent months. Consider this my apology to all of the blogs I visited and thought in my mind "they never blog!" I am now your brother, and you my, whatever.

I just needed to do a little update. I saw M.C. Hammer live at the park. He still has it. It was free and very cool, the pure awesomeness was not lessened by the fact that it was really a concert for elementary kids. I also saw a late model green Cadillac nearby and I am sure that it is Hammer's. My friend from Oakland also told me that back when Hammer was huge he used to drive around Oakland blasting his own songs in his car. If I ever cut a record I am totally doing that.

More stuff I did. I went to Reno. I talked about this in the family letter, and I think those letters are the reason that I do not post as much, I feel like I tell the family everything that they need to know when I write those. I can still post pictures and stuff that I forget, so that is not a very good excuse.

Reno was very cool though. My roommate Mark was showing me that it is a cool place to live, and I think he is right. It was not too bad. The high altitude also makes it not as hot in the summer. Might be a good option in the future, only four hours from S.F. and eight from SLC. It is not very high on my options list though, don't worry. Las Vegas, Portland and SLC are all higher. So is D.C. This might be a good time to reiterate my deal with the siblings/friends. Find me a job (in the legal field, babysitting is not really an option at this point unless it is a really good offer), and I will move by you, and maybe name a child after you. Emphasis on the maybe.

Back to Reno, it was a cool trip and we got to swing by Lake Tahoe on the way home, which is just beautiful in the summer.
The bright lights of Reno. Sounds like an awesome country song. What you cannot tell from this picture is that I am on my bike. I biked all over Reno at night, and it was awesome. Good biking city def a plus when I am looking at jobs.

This picture also bring up another relevant point. It is beard season again. Each year my beard comes in a little stronger. Migrating from the back of my head I am assuming, but I have no proof. Except photographic proof. Here is a little slice of beard season, about four weeks in.
That is right. Better than ever, plus, that tomato is telling a story of its own. I love how each picture is feeding into the next story. You may remember that I planted a garden back when I had a lot of free time on my hands. Well, except for a few cherry tomatoes, that garden was a complete flop, something burrowed in there and ate all my seeds. However, I had also planted a tomato plant in my house. In a "As seen on TV" Topsy-Turvy thing. It really works, next year see me gushing about it in their commercial. Seriously though folks, I grew that tomato and many more are growing. I had a BT (would have been a BLT but I don't have any lettuce) last night and it was delicious. On an unrelated note, who remembers eating lettuce with sugar on it growing up? Oh man, Harrison kids would seriously do anything to get sugar into our bodies. OK, here is the tomato plant.
It looks a little weak in these pictures, but is actually quite awesome and healthy. I get a lot of compliments on it, plus a lot of people like to say "who is growing the tomatoes indoors?" and other stuff like that. Haters. I am still getting blossoms and little tomatoes are growing, so I think I will continue to have tomatoes until it gets colder here in S.F., which might not be til November or December, or it might be tomorrow. I am just going to enjoy it while I can. Besides that I am having a great time and living the dream.
I have really been studying a lot during the week but I try to take some time off on the weekends at night at least. I finish my big brief this week, so that will free up some time that I can then use to focus on things that I have been neglecting all semester, yay! That is all for now, I need to go to bed so I can get up early tomorrow, but I will leave you with a picture from the General Conference Breakfast Party I threw on Saturday a week ago. The angry one is my roommate, Peter, I think he is joking.
OK, I will give you one more. Here is one my friend K.C. took. Notice how I am carefully focused in the background, Mom. Good times conference. Someone also randomly brought M&Ms, so it was just like family times!
Thanks for playing. In the next post look for Hacksaw to attempt to catch a large amount of whipped cream in him mouth. Stay tuned!

New Beginnings

Well, I started my last year of school yesterday. I guess that is good. It seems a little surreal to tell you the truth. There is a weird mix of excitement and a little bit of apprehension. A year from now I will have taken the Bar (assuming I graduate, and all indications seem to say I will, May 15th by the way, mark it on your calendar), and will be trying to start a new job. My future will be my present. I think it is only normal to feel a little off when you are contemplating things that you have not had to think about before. I also think that I am a little tired so once my normal schedule is back I am sure that I will feel more like my usual self.

In other news, I am really excited about my classes. I am taking some practical classes, a writing class on wrongful convictions, professional responsibility, legislative process, and complex litigation. A little boring but should be good. Things are gonna be pretty lively on the home front as well. I am taking a little trip up into the mountains over Labor Day with a YSA group, and there are a lot more fun things planned, but I need to make sure I don't slack off in my school work. One thing about finishing up school, it is really great to think that I am almost done with classes, and I learned a lot this summer and improved my resume quite a bit.

In the end, I am really excited to graduate, and even more excited to practice, just a little more work. Oh well.

And don't worry, I finished the summer strong.

Wordless and Segway Wednesday

Two for Tea, and a Party.

As Bill and Ted would say, this was a very triumphant weekend. My good buddy Puls from my BYU days came into town and we got together with our old roommate Chad, who is living in Sacramento, and all my wildest dreams came true. Not to mention a few dreams that were a little wild even for me. Puls came into town and we hit up some of the tourist spots, you might recognize this bridge, it is the Golden Gate to the West. Puls had not been to San Francisco before so of course now he wants to live here. I think.

We had some good Naan & Curry for lunch, then we headed for a Giants game. Puls and I are huge baseball fans, and Chad is always down for any type of good times, so we had a good time. It was a 1-0 game and pretty exciting. I am proud to say that I have not lost my ability to yell crazy things throughout a game. When even the little kids in front of you are starting to get bugged, you know that you are a good fan. I don't know if they were actually bugged, but they did turn around and state at me every time I yelled something crazy. I offered to fight a Mets fan, but I was only half serious, I don't fight women. Usually. Anyway, we met up with a couple friends and had angel food cake with strawberries and whip cream. This is my life. I am getting jealous of myself.
The next day was the time for Chad to shine, and shine he did. He took us to Sac Town and around a hundred-degree temperatures. Needless to say, I was loving it. Chad had the idea of going to the California state fair. I was skeptical at first, but then I started remembering all the good times we used to have at the Utah State Fair and I got pretty excited. It was all I ever hoped for. I think that is clear from the picture below.
We started off the adventure with hay-bale bucking broncos and it only went up from there. The state fair is seriously so much fun. We started out small with looking at the animals, sounds lame but it is pretty fun, there is a little 4-H in all of us I suppose. Then we moved on to the food. Chad and I had huge sno-cones and Puls had a reindeer corndog. The fair is so cool, and there is more coolness to follow.
Some of the other sights that we saw were lawn-mower racing, dog jumping, and city kids milking a goat. That was pretty funny, the look on their faces was somewhere between "this is cool" and "this just is not right." Gotta love those city kids. There is one story that I have to tell though. As we were sitting eating some fried foods that I will talk about in a second there was a karaoke performance going on. It was a pretty run-of-the-mill group, but then something happened. The MC announced that a little eight-year-old girl had been asking him to sing all day and he was going to let her. He announced that she was going to sing A-Capella and then he asked her what she was going to sing. He did not tell the crowd what she said though, which I thought was a little weird, until I heard her song. She got up there, and bravely starting singing "I love to see the Temple." It was pretty awesome. At some point we all get a little afraid I think of letting people see who we really are, but this little girl was not afraid. She sang the whole song, which is obviously one of her favorites since she had been begging to sing it all day, and then the crowd applauded. I was really proud of her.
As a Harrison I like to eat. As a former employee of Hot Dog on a Stick I like to eat fried foods. Believe me when I tell you, I LOVE THE FAIR! Below you can see a few of the many healthy offerings that the fair provides. You have fried twinkies, fried snickers, fried cookie dough (my favorite), fried brownies, and fried oreos. I would say that I felt sick, but that was just my stomach, my tongue felt like it was walking on sunshine. That was not the craziest thing though, we found a place that sold chocolate covered bacon. It is pretty good, more of a novelty item sure, but that sweet salty chocolaty bacon-ey flavor is nice every once in a while. The fair is so great, we should call it.
I just wanted to say one more thing about the fair. Little kids can ride sheep there and it is awesome. I made a resolution last Saturday, and that is my kids are one day going to ride sheep, and they are going to like it. What you cannot see from the picture below is that the sheep is in a full-out run. It is pretty funny because the sheep do not really buck, they just bolt, and all the kids slide to the side, but that just pulls the sheep over with them. It does not look very dangerous from outside the ring, but judging from the death-grip that some of these kids had on the sheep it must be a little scary when you are back there. I gave the winner a high-five. I still have not washed that hand.
All in all it was a really great weekend. It is always good to see friends that I spent so much time with in the past that like my jokes and I get along with so well. It was a little weird because we have not all hung out together in about three years, and getting together made me realize that I have changed quite a bit in the last few years. Like it or not I am not a kid anymore (but not and adult either, never that!). It is good to see how far you have come though, and I am pretty happy with the result. I may have lost a little of my jokey attitude (not that anyone seems to notice) but I have gotten a little more responsible and take-charge -ish. I can tell that I have more of an opinion and don't worry about what people think about me too much, I am just living my life and as long as I am good with who I am I don't worry that someone else is not. Just live your life.