I Feel Obligated to do This

     There is no doubt in my mind that The Office is the best T.V. show ever. I have watched every episode 9 times. With most shows the more you watch them you get less interested, but the more I watch The Office the more I love it. Lately, my friends have been writing posts about our friend group and relating each member to something. I am going to do a similar exercise but I will be relating each of my friends to a few characters from my favorite TV show. If my friends decide to read this, I want them to guess which one they are.

Dwight/Maradith: This person is clever and genius in their own way. They are extremely odd and you never have any Idea about whats going on in their head. This person strives to be the best, and if you watch the show, you know Dwight gets their.

Kelley/Oscar: This person is once again brilliant, but always thinks they are right. In most cases they are, but they always have to debate it. This person is hilarious and if you've ever seen Kelley, you know you watch the things she does and you can't help but laugh. This may have to do with the way she engages people or her constant dilemma with her love life.

Creed/Ryan: This person is probably the funniest person you will ever meet. They are extremely random with what they say. They don't speak much, but when they do you know your side is gonna hurt from laughter.

Aaron/Jim: This person is by far the nicest you will ever meet. They are always caring for others. Not only that, but they love making jokes and pulling pranks on Dwight. You could say this person and Dwight/Maradith are fairly close ;)

Pam/Gabe: This person is extremely awkward, but in a way that you can't help but think its amazing. They are extremely sweet and smart but they have never been very good at flirting. They say so many stupid things but you love them for that.

Andy/Darrel: This person is very outgoing and is always looking after their crew. They call people out for being politically incorrect but god do they know how to sing and act (this one should be obvious). They are very caring and brilliant in their own right.

Kevin/Michael: This person always says the wrong thing at the wrong time. They are hilarious because of the way they eat things. They are love-able and you alway wanna give them a hug. They have awful ideas but they somehow still end up at the finish line.

There is one last person in my friend group, but to be honest they are too smart and awesome to be defined by any of these idiots (not saying my other friends are idiots). This person is clever as hell but I could never ever see them going to work at a place like Dunder Mifflin every day, they are just too good for that.

I love all my friends, and just like when trying to figure out what faction you are in in the Divergent world, its extremely difficult to not say them all. These people shouldn't feel like they are only defined by these characters, because they are so much more than that. This just characterizes and emphasizes a few of their key traits. Love you guys :)

 I took this selfie.

Favorite Family Dinners

     Do you have that one meal that you are always craving? Well for me that is fondue. This is a thing my family does where you are given a plate of raw meat, vegetables, and some bread. You then take the meat or vegetable and put it on a screwed and let it sit in hot oil. It takes about 30 seconds and then you eat it. You obviously do not do this with bread because who wants hot soggy bread? You take your bread and you dip it in melted cheese, and I am telling you IT IS SO GOOD. Maybe its not that good... but I am so starving because I have to wait 30 second in between each bite.

Look at how good that looks! (Courtesy of here)

    The one thing about this dinner that makes it so exciting is we only do it with all five family members. Being that one of my siblings is working and the other is still in college, I rarely see them. Even rarer are all five of us together. This last week both my siblings were home and last night we had our family fondue dinner. All five of us have very strongly social personalities which helps fuel our massive discussion. Our discussion last night went everywhere. It started with the debate of the order of our favorite Star Wars movies. My list goes 6, 4, 7 and 3 tied, 5, 1 , then 2. During this debate I stated that I actually prefer the new Star Trek movie with Chris Pine over the bottom half of that list. Most people believe you either like Star Wars or Star Trek. I do not see why you cannot like both because they are two totally different things. Star Wars is more magical compared to Star Trek which could actually happen in the far future. Anyways, Im getting off topic, back to my family discussion last night.
     We then evolved the conversation from space movies and started debating the best movies of all time. We all conceded that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was the best set of movies ever. I then said Inception was my second favorite with Leo Dicaprio, and then The Dark Knight with Christian Bale.
My sisters started talking about Titanic when my dad stated that Titanic was a chick flick. At first I disagreed but the conversation then evolved to the definition of a chick flick. At first we said it was any movie liked by a girl and then my sister then stated that based on that definition, Transformers with Shia LeBouf was a chick flick. My mom said she thought a chick flick was any movie with a female protagonist. My sister than debated that in Transformers, it is never stated whether Optimus Prime is a male or a female. Sure, it very much leads to the fact that he is male, but it is never technically stated.
   We then conceded with the definition that a chick flick is any movie predominantly liked my females over males. Anyways, this were just a few of the conversations my family had over dinner. I always love these fondue dinners because our family talks about the weirdest things. I love my family.

Local Boy Takes Down Number 3

     On Sunday March 13th, I competed nationally in a Div II event. What that means is very complicated but basically I competed against much better and much older fencers. There are usually five large national events a year. There are four during the main season and then one at the end of the season on the fourth of July that we call summer nationals. Conveniently, one of those four "in-season" tournaments was in Salt Lake City. In the past I had to travel to Kansas city, Richmond and even Reno for events of this size. The tournament lasted four days, certain events on each day and I invited my friends to come down and watch. My events Thursday and Monday were great but not very interesting. But today I am going to tell you about my Div II fencing Sunday. Which by the way was some of my best fencing ever.
     Usually men's foil events are the first event of the day, which means we normally have to be there by 7:00. But on Sunday, God was on my side and we didn't have to start until 1:00. I woke up at around 10:00 and I was ready for an amazing day. I ate a large breakfast and made my way to the Salt Palace in SLC, the convention center the event was being held at. I checked in and stated warming up. After running around the gym and stretching, I suited up with one of my friends and we started running a practice bout, or match. After some brief smack talk we started hitting each other. Probably the only good part of wearing all that gear, other than getting killed, is how fast we warm up. My regular friends showed up slightly later and it was showtime!
     As explained in previous pools, a tournament basically works like this: you are put in a group and you fence everyone in said group (pools), you then are placed into a direct elimination bracket based on how well you did in pools. The only difference between this structure and the structure of a normal tournament was that in this national event there were twenty five pools. I was placed in a pool of six fencers including myself, each of these fencers I hadn't met previously while traveling. Knowing it was Div II, I didn't have very high expectations but I ended up winning two of my five bouts which I was proud of.
    Seeded 67th our of pools, I knew I was going to have my first match be relatively easy, and then I would go up against someone very highly seeded. I was first matched up with someone around number 40. I ended up winning that match 15-11, so not extremely difficult. I quickly learned I would be going up against the third seeded fencer. I knew my time was up and I was headed towards my doom.  You know your parents think you're screwed when they say, "have fun Bryce, think of it like fun, you have nothing to lose." This boy attacked me hard four times in a row faster than I could blink. At this point, my parents weren't the only ones who thought I was screwed. Something clicked in my head and I started actually fencing. Seventeen points later I beat him 15-6.
     At this point I was in the top 32, and my legs were killing me. I now had to fence number 5, a fencer from NYC. He was up on me 10-4 and I could barely walk. I called my medical brake because If I was gonna lose, I wasn't gonna lose because my legs wouldn't let me fence. I called my medical break and laid on the strip in agony as the medical guy did his thing.

After my ten minutes was up, it was time to fence again. Even though I couldn't even take a step. I had a massive comeback and ended up losing 15-13. So as I heard from some random guys from California, "local boy takes 32, pretty awesome."