That Time of the Year

Every year, for just a few short weeks something truly magical happens. An event that brings people together in a spirit of unity and thanksgiving all working together for the common good.

This time is, of course, the few short weeks in which college basketball and college football seasons overlap.

If there are two things that I love about the college experience it is college sports, especially basketball and football. So when I have the chance to go to both of these events in the same week I get super excited.

Last week I went to the home opener of BYU Basketball at the Marriott Center and it was awesome. The house was packed to the brim with people in white shirts all working together for the common good of cheering our team to victory! And we won!


If you look closely you can see me in the top left corner of the picture.

This week I get to go to the Utah State Game on Wednesday (which could be even better than last weeks game!) AND the BYU Football game on Saturday (and maybe even ANOTHER basketball game on Saturday). Could there be a better remedy to a week of crazy school work than two BYU sporting events? The answer is yes, THREE BYU sporting events!

Sadly, this wonderful overlapping time only lasts a little while so we better take advantage of it the best we can.

See you at the game!

Niece and Nephew

Wanna see the cutest thing you have ever seen? Look below.



That right there is my niece Sofie. She calls me Mitol, wears pink "pip pops" ie. flip flops, and is super fun (at least when she is with her Uncle Michael, her mom could probably attest otherwise).

And here is my nephew Soren.



He is awesome and loves transformers and is starting to learn some sports like lacrosse and soccer.

Today I got to hang out with these two for about an hour. We went to the duck pond, wrestled and just had a good time. They both live in Arizona so I almost never get to see them but when I do it just makes my day.

If you have a niece or nephew you know exactly what I mean. If you don't..... convince one of your siblings to get married and have some kids. If you are an only child...well...I'm sorry but you are just going to have to go convince someone to share their niece and/or nephew with you.

Spring is in the air

Well I know it’s been a little while since my last blog entry (probably because it isn’t required for my English class anymore) but I have decided to start typing again so that you all can enjoy my amazing literary genius. Well I hope that I am not jinxing myself when I say that spring has finally arrived! We had a little scare this week with some snow (yes, SNOW in MAY!!!) but the last few days have been amazing weather. There is only one thing I am missing to be able to fully enjoy this wonderful spring weather, and that is someone very close to me. Betsy. I have known Betsy for about five years now and we are very close. We enjoy spending time together and going for rides up on the hills in east Provo. The only problem is that Betsy has been in the repair shop for the last two and a half weeks (by the way Betsy is not a person, she is my blue 150 cc scooter). But I don’t want anyone worrying about her. There is nothing seriously wrong, just a leaky valve and loose breaks. The great people at The Scooter Lounge have been working around the clock to get her back to me and hopefully she will be back very soon.

So I will not bore you with any more details about my transportation needs but know that I am back to blogging and hopefully will be able to find some interesting stuff to write about!

Commando

This week some friends and I got together and played possibly the best night game ever, commando. For those of you who haven’t played commando, it is a night game where you have one counter, several bases, and many commandos. The counter will announce that he will count to a certain number and then close his eyes and count all the way down from that number. The purpose of the game is for the commandos to touch all the bases and then tag the counter without being seen by the counter and called out.

It might seem simple but this game is a lot of fun. The whole time you are madly dashing to the next base or spot hiding spot and then diving to hide yourself before the counter reaches zero and opens his eyes. The adrenaline gets pumping and you find yourself attempting feats that normally would raise a red “don’t do that” flag. At one point I underestimated the height of a drop as well as the bushes underneath. The counter was about to reach zero and so I vaulted over the fence only to find myself crashing down through some not so friendly bushes. Did it hurt? O yea. Was it worth it? Of course! I didn’t even get caught. And that was just one of many awesome (and sometimes painful) stunts pulled by my friends and me that night.

So next time you are looking for something amazingly fun to do at night GO COMMANDO!!

April Fool's

This week we all got to see that Mother Nature does indeed have a sense of humor, a sick one, yet a sense of humor nonetheless. April Fool’s day is supposed to be a day where you can get a laugh at someone else’s expense without getting in trouble. Most April Fool’s day pranks are good natured and are always good for a laugh when we look back and remember them. Mother Nature apparently did not get the memo.

I bet you all were similarly surprised when you stepped out your door and instead of feeling the warm April sun, you felt snowflakes land on your face and a chilly February wind freeze your hopeful flip-flop clad feet. Yes, this April first Mother Nature surprised us all with a prank of her own, a free weather trip back in time to the cold days of February.

In fact she was so pleased with herself that this morning, Easter, instead of a green lawn full of colorful Easter eggs I found a few inches of wet white snow!

Mother Nature, please stop trying to be funny, no one likes you or your sickly cold jokes. If you want to be popular, give me the warm weather that I have been waiting so many months for.

Festival of Colors

HARE KRISHNA!!! What does Hare Krishna mean you ask? I have no idea. But for those of you who went to the Festival of Colors yesterday you most likely went crazy dancing to a monk singing it for three hours.

The Festival of Colors happens once a year and is some kind of Hindu spring celebration. But if you ask any of the 10,000 college students who attended why they were there, they will not mention anything about Hindu, spring, or religion. There is only one reason why the Festival of Colors is so popular and that is chalk. Yes chalk, but not just any chalk, I’m talking about colorful, throw in your face get everywhere chalk, and lots of it.

Basically the entire purpose of the festival is to buy this colorful chalk and throw it at people while you dance and go crazy to repetitively awesome Hindu music. This continues for quite a while and just when you begin to think that there is no way for you to get any dirtier, it happens, the cloud. The cloud is the pinnacle of the festival. The head monk leads all 10,000 people in a countdown from 20 and when he reaches 0 everyone throws their chalk in the air at the same time. Think that sounds like a dirty idea? You have no idea. Last year the cloud was seen 10 miles away. For those lucky enough to be in the cloud the exact opposite happens, visibility shrinks to about 10 inches as you are choked and colorfied in the crazy color cloud. It is awesome.

You leave the festival energized, full of hare krishna spirit, sneezing purple, and with colorful chalk all over. Do I recommend the Festival of Colors? Yes. I promise that you will never have so much fun while getting so dirty.

The True Meaning of March Madness

Well March Madness is now in full swing and what a madness it has been. I said last week that filling out a bracket is like trying to “predict the unpredictable”; these last few days have proven that true. Who would have guessed that Kansas would lose to Northern Iowa? Or that Villanova would get beat by St. Mary’s? Upsets like these can destroy even the most carefully picked brackets and cause an aspiring bracketologist to weep like a schoolchild.

But amidst the tears and angry screams at the television, one can see the true beauty of March Madness. The true beauty of March Madness does not lie in picking the perfect bracket or winning the office tournament, it lies in the experience.
There are few things in this world that are more exciting to a sports fan than being able to cheer on their favorite team. March Madness is the only time of the year when every game has “your favorite team” playing. Every game matters, every win makes you cheer, and every loss hurts you. This week my roommate and I were watching three games at the same time and we cared about every single one, because all of them were important for our brackets. That is a sports fans dream, to be able to go crazy and be passionate no matter who is playing.

So if your bracket is destroyed and you have no more chance to claim the coveted title of champion, do not be depressed. There are still two more weeks of March Madness. That is two more weeks of buzzer beaters, two weeks of amazing upsets, and two weeks of cheering for your picks to go all the way. So to all the sports fans out there, keep watching, this holiday only comes once a year so don’t waste it pouting over your busted bracket.

March Madness

People say that the best time of the year is Christmas time. As far as sports fans are concerned that is a lie. This week marks the beginning of one of sports most sacred holidays, March Madness. This is the only time of the year when family and friends band together in the spirit of friendly competition to see who can predict the totally unpredictable.

Every year my family has the “Theurer Family March Madness Competition” and everyone participates. Even my niece and nephew join in. When my nephew was one and a half years old his dad held up cards with the team names and let him pick his brackets that way. Needless to say, it gets pretty intense.

I however have yet to claim the chalice of glory that is first place. I have been in the top three and I think one year I came in second but never first, until this year. This will be the year that I take the Theurer family bracket glory and earn the ever so coveted bragging rights.

Wish me luck!

Hunger Banquet

Yesterday I had a really great experience attending the 20th Hunger Banquet. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Hunger Banquet, it might sound like an oxymoron. But the Hunger Banquet is not your average feast; in fact it is the only dinner I know of where people will pay eight dollars to attend a dinner they will likely leave hungry from.

The hunger banquet is divided up into three groups, high-class, middle-class, and the poor. The size of each of these groups is proportional to the world’s actual economic ratios. Ten percent of the people who go are randomly chosen to sit at super nice tables with all the trimmings and eat delicious food catered by Tucanos. Twenty percent sit in chairs and eat hotdogs with chips and a can of soda. The remaining 70 percent sit on the floor and have beans, rice, and tortillas. It’s an eye-opening experience to see such a visual representation of the amount of people in the world who leave hungry from every meal.

Besides the meal (I was middle-class so I got a hot dog) they had performances and a interesting key-note speaker. The speaker spoke on the theme of the night, “Celebrating Human Dignity.” He said that all people have the same value even though their economic circumstances might be different. He called us to action and said that we can make a difference in the world by supporting organizations that teach people how to help themselves leave poverty. The speech was short, direct, and memorable.

The best meal I ever had that I left hungry from.

Iron Chef

This week we had an amazing ward activity, Iron Chef Olympics. Personally I am a big fan of Iron Chef on the food network and lately I have been baking a lot, so when I heard that we were doing an Iron Chef activity to make desserts I was really excited. My excitement only increased once I found out what the secret ingredient was, Peanut Butter Captain Crunch.

Each team was made up of the FHE families and my FHE family is awesome so as soon as we found out what the secret ingredient was we took off running to my apartment and started thinking of ideas. We shot off a bunch of tasty peanut butter ideas and finally settled on a delectable concoction. We made a crust from the peanut butter crunch, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. We layered it with chocolate pudding, another crust, and topped it with a homemade chocolate sauce, vanilla cream sauce, and a strudel made from the peanut butter crunch. All I can say is, delicious. Iron chef is awesome.

Shaun White

If any of you have had been watching the Olympics I hope that you were able to watch the men’s half pipe final this week. It isn’t often in sports that you have an athlete that is way above the rest of the competition, but that is the case with Shaun White. This was shown in the men’s half-pipe final this week where he blew everyone out of the water. All the athletes were spectacular, but Shaun White was able to do the tricks better and fly higher than everybody. In the half-pipe competition they take the best score out of two runs. After his first run Shaun had already won by a few points. But rather than take a conservative victory lap he went all out, landed an amazing trick never before seen in competition, and improved his score from 46.8 to 48.4 (out of 50 WOW!). I was going to post the video of his run but NBC has is copyrighted so just follow the hyperlink at the end of this and be amazed.

Click here!


I don't think the hyperlink is working so just copy and paste this (I know not as cool but I am still figuring out this blog thing)

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=d924411a-bea6-4fd8-b485-f58dc5238dfe.html

Lockout?

As I was watching the news Friday I was surprised to hear of a possible NFL lockout for 2011. I couldn't believe my ears. Was I really hearing this? No professional football for a whole year? My mind raced back a few years to when, because of salary problems, there was no professional hockey season. Could we have that same thing happen for what I consider a much larger sport? Just think, that would mean no Superbowl!

Now I lived in Massachusetts and am a New England Patriots fan but I can't say that I follow professional football as faithfully as BYU sports or the Boston Red Sox. So what got me was not the fact that I personally would not be able to watch football, but the reasons behind the possible lockout. NFL teams say that they are loosing money because players' salaries are so high. The teams want to keep the salary cap, which is set to expire, and give the players an 18% cut in salary (according to the article I read). The article that I read on ESPN.com (http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4887844) said that this would mean an average loss of $340,000 for each player. After a bit of math I learned that this means the AVERAGE salary is $1,888,889. I'm sorry but if you are making that much you have no room to complain.

So a word to the NFL players. Get over it! You make more than almost everybody in this country. Maybe taking an 18% pay cut will be a reality check for you (if you can call making $1,550,000 reality). Hold off for a year before you buy your new yacht, it will be good for you. Learn how the rest of us feel.

Well, there you go, my first opinionated article of this blog.

What a Game!

I don't think that I would be a true BYU fan if I did not blog about my wonderful experience yesterday, culminating in an exciting victory over a face-punching Utah.
What can I say, I love BYU and have always been a huge fan. So when BYU and Utah go head to head you know that I will be there. Now that doesn't mean that I am going to wait in a tent for a week to get a good seat. But if that's your style, good for you, I can respect that, you really really want a good seat and are willing to be cold for a week to get it. I on the other hand just love being in the student section and feeling the energy of the other true cougar fans. I love the cheers, the chants, the fight song, and just going crazy when Jimmer drains a 3 or BYU gets a sweet dunk.
So even though I won't wait a week for a good seat, being a little closer is always better, so my friend and I were out there in front of the Marriott center at one o'clock to soak in the pre-game atmopsphere and play some games in line while we waited for others of our group to arrive, and more importantly, to wait for our chance to cheer on the cougars to another glorious victory. The wait was well worth it. After a few hours sitting on a blanket with a hand-warmer that refused to warm we finally got our chance to rush through the doors and grab our well-earned seat in the student section.
For those of you who saw the game there is no need for me to give a recap because it was unforgettable. For those of you who didn't see it you need to, so I won't recap it for you either, that is what ESPN.com is for. I will however point you to the link I will post (if I can figure out how) to the youtube video that shows a Utah player showing a bit of "classlessness" and punching Jackson Emery in the face. But know this, it was a spectacular game, an awesomely exciting win, and best of all a win over the Utes! What else needs to be said? GO COUGARS!!

Murder in the Dark

Okay well last week I as going to tell you about an awesome new game that I played called Murder in the Dark. But because I can easily get off tangent I spent time talking (or blogging...whatever) about games in general. At the end of last week's blog I promised that this week I would repent and talk about my new favorite game, so here it goes.
Murder in the Dark has that familiar flavor of your other night games but it is a lot more exciting. The basic premise of the game is that there is one murderer (it can be done with two) and he/she wants to kill everyone while the other players want to stay alive while trying to catch the murderer. To start the game you draw pieces of paper, one of which has an X, to decide who the murderer is (the one who picks the paper with the X). You then turn off all the lights in the house (yes, all of them, thus the name murder in the DARK) and scatter. You can hide, you can simply wander, or do whatever, but be wary because the whole time the murderer is trying to find someone or someones to kill. He/she does this by sneaking up and passing their hand across the victims neck, the victim must then collapse to the floor without a sound. The murderer may then try to stash the body if he/she so sees fit. This goes on until someone comes across a body or witnesses a murderer. When this happens witness screams and turns the lights on. The survivors then vote who they think the culprit is and kill them (not literally please). If they killed the murderer the game ends, if not it continues.
The reason I like this game so much is because it feels very real. You know that nothing can happen but you are still afraid of everyone that comes near you because they could be wanting to kill you. If you are the murder it is fun because you have to be sneaky and kill without being seen and if you are seen you must kill the witnesses before they can raise the alarm. All in all a very enjoyable way to spend an evening with friends. So now I just solved the problem for what each of you are going to do this next weekend. Don't worry the weekend will come fast.
So that's it for this time. Tune in next time and I will talk (blog) about.....something, don't worry it will be cool. Have a great week!

Game Night

Welcome back to another exciting week of "Rolling Along with a Theurer!" If you are reading this post it means one of three things: you saw my post last week and actually liked it, you have to because you are in my MCOM class, or I used the friend/family card and you are reading this so I don't feel bad.
BYU is a very unique university. Normally when you think of a university and what the students do there for fun the first things that come to mind are alcohol, women, crazy partied, and other not-so-good activities. Here at BYU alcohol isn't as popular (I Hope) so we find other ways to entertain ourselves. One of the most common ways to pass the time with your friends on weekends is to have a game night. It is ont uncommon at these game nights to hear people suggest Mafia, Ninja destruction, catch phrase, card games, signs, and a variety of others. I myself just returned from a thrilling game of Mafia where my fellow non-Italian mafia and I succeeded in killing all the poor townspeople while only loosing one of your non-Italian mafia friends. If you have ever played mafia I hope you're impressed.
So yea, I originally started this tangent because I wanted to tell you about my new favorite game night game, Murder in the Dark, but since I have already gone on long enough I will ask that you contain yourselves and patiently wait till next week (I know that hard that will be for some of you). So tune in next time as we roll along with a Theurer (that's me) I promise you won't be disappointed.

My first blog!

Well thanks for visiting my blog. At first glance the name of this blog might seem a little strange to people who don't know me personally (or people who know me but don't know how to pronounce my last name). My name is Mike Theurer and that weird looking last name is actually pronounced TIRE, yes, like a car tire (thus the rolling along pun).
I never envisioned myself getting into blogging, much less making my own. But for my MCOM 320 class at BYU one of our assignments is to create a blog and write in it every week. At first I had my doubts and wasn't too excited about the assignment. But after much pondering and self reflection (and realizing that I had to do it for a grade) I realized that maybe blogging won't be so bad after all (this is where you let out a shocked gasp... it's okay... no need to be shy).
Well there you have it, my fist blog entry. I hope that you will join me in my blogging adventure and will come back to see where this all goes. As the title says this is Rolling along with a Theurer (remember Theurer=Tire) so we are just gonna roll along and talk about whatever happens to be interesting me at the moment. So stay tuned!