PLNU Public Safety Video Series - Matrix Pops: Aaron's Edit

Two weeks ago I shared with the world the first part of my PLNU Public Safety video series: Two Angry German Men. Today I share with you another classic featuring myself, filmed by Evan while being laughed at by Grace. The distinguished Aaron Riveroll provides his excellent though novice (at the time) video editing skills to tastefully amp up the excitement of this scene.

Enjoy Matrix Pops & Matrix: Aaron's edit!

Matrix Pop's: Aaron's Edit

...and the source clips:

Matrix Pops

PLNU Public Safety Video Series - Two Angry German Men

It's been a good number of years now since my Public Safety days at PLNU but while I was there many of the officers were known for our video taking prowess while on the job. I still have most every stupid video we ever filmed (that I ever saw, at least) during that era and through the wishes of some I will slowly start reintroducing them to the world through the wonders of YouTube.

For my first installment of PLNU Public Safety videos I present you with: Two Angry German Men featuring David Schmidt and "brother" Daniel Schmidt, narrated by the reverend, Pablo Vargas. Enjoy!

Shipwrecked In Disneyland

Last weekend on Saturday after Flor finished up with her 2nd year of med school, we had the pleasure of heading up to LA to meet my family for a rousing day at Disneyland. We had a fantastic time taking in all the sights and riding all the rides while enjoying short lines on a Memorial Day weekend. In fact I can't even remember the last time that my family got together for something like this... maybe last Fall when we hit up the Charger's Chiefs football game but that just seems somewhat different in my opinion. The last family vacation like this was probably back before I moved out of the house if you take weddings and the like out of the equation. Anyway, Jim was there to join us as was my sister Kathleen. For around three years now the family outings have been lacking Kathleen because she was living in Boston so it's been great to have her around again.

Anyway, I'm not going to say too much about Disneyland because we all know about the place but I will say that while we were there we were treated to an exceptionally long ride on the Pirate Ship. It's not really a pirate ship though, it's actually a replica of the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. The replica now circles the pond/river there at Disneyland every day while guests take rides like they would a roller coaster. Well, we were no different than any other group of riders except that on our ride the motor on our boat went out and we were stranded about 15 feet from the shoreline for about an hour and half on this boat. We ended up having to be rescued one by one down a ladder onto the Mark Twain River Raft. Keep in mind this ship supposedly circumnavigated the globe... I guess they worked better before they threw motors into them. Apparently the Disneyland model doesn't have sails.

Eventually of course we got off and they treated us to some fine bottled waters on the house as well as some complimentary front of the line passes for our troubles. Lets just say I'm glad none of us had to go to the bathroom while we were on the boat; that would have been some significant trouble. It's hard to complain though because we got to do pretty much everything we wanted to do on the day despite the lost 90 minutes. I will also say I had so much fun spending time with my dad on roller coasters; I honestly can't remember riding a roller coaster with him for some reason. It makes me smile thinking of it.




I took a lot of pictures during the day and I thought I'd share a few of them here. Note the awesome picture of my uncle Jim squealing like a five year old girl at the fake elephant behind him on the Jungle Cruise. Hehe, I love it!



On a side note, Flor and I hit up Loma Linda the following day and saw Carolyn Sharpe and her family on Sunday. She just graduated Medical School and is now a doctor! Congratulations Carolyn!

Mr and Mrs Arend Hermsen

I guess technically it's after midnight and today is now tomorrow but ignoring that fact Aaron and I went today to Sycuan Resort out in East County to film / enjoy my old friend Arend Hermsen's wedding. Ironically he married Aaron's former coworker Carrie Stone (whom I've also become friends with over the past couple years) though there was no prior knowledge of the friend of friend situation. To my great pleasure Flor also came out about an hour after Aaron and I arrived to enjoy the wedding too; it was great having her there.

Weddings these day's seem a little different to me than they did not too long ago. Since Flor and I married I now think about us whenever I watch a wedding ceremony. I think about what I was feeling and thinking during each significant event during the day. It makes me smile. Anyway, the wedding was very nice, the location and weather were perfect and the food was good. I just wish I was able to enjoy the party a bit more than I did... having to wield a camcorder kind of wipes you out.

Congratulations my old bowling friend!

Reminiscing on the Past

As I've been diligently working on cleaning up my blog and website over the past week or so I've actually gone back and re-read virtually every post I made on the topic of bowling. I've also started going back through many of my oldest posts on all other topics (mostly my personal journaling from my old Live Journal blog which has since been transferred over to this site) and I've been cleaning up a lot of these posts to fit a little nicer with the format of my newer entries. I like the look of justified margins and none of my old posts were aligned this way. Also, back in 2004 and 2005 I apparently didn't know how to utilize the spell check nor does it seem like I ever proof read my posts for grammar problems. A lot of these errors are finally getting fixed thanks to my recent ambition.

All of this reading however has really got me reminiscing on all the old friends that I have but don't see anymore and all of the fun times that I had back in my undergrad days. I know I didn't start blogging until after I had graduated but many of the people I spent time with were my friends from college and many of them were still there in '04 and '05. We had good times together back then and I miss them.

Beyond the sentimental, I also found myself looking back at a few old pictures and smiling wholeheartedly at them. I guess everybody does this from time to time so this is not earth-shattering but I have enjoyed reviewing some of the memories. I'm not going to elaborate any more but I will share a few of those good times below. Enjoy!

2001 - Venice with Doug Downing & Kevin Parker


2002 - Madrigal Dinner with Matt Sconce


2003 - SD Gulls Game with Erin Westgate and Klingons


2004 - Impromptu Dinner Party at Hotel Del with Friends


2005 - With Evan at a Schmidt's Place


2006 - Hanging with Chris and Brad


2007 - Rob being Rob with my Girl


2008 - Rich and Flor | 80's Party


Fun times... and don't we all miss this fantastic facial hair:

Groundhog Day - ASL - Sea World - A Winning Combination

Saturday, February 2 was Groundhog Day. How did Flor and I celebrate? We went to an ASL funcion at Sea World! Everything was translated into sign language! Very cool, and after walking around we ended up hitting up The Anheuser-Busch Brewmasters Club for a little beer tasting. Interesting experience to say the least. The day was a lot of fun as was watching Flor and Lindsay learn new sea-related words in sign and it was cool seeing all the people signing to each other everywhere we went. Check out this sweet translation!


Woman Signing at Sea World's ASL Day from Brian Mounts on Vimeo.


I ended up taking my camera with me and I went crazy taking pictures. Here they are over on Picasa Web.

An Evening At The The Opera: Wagner's Tannhäuser

So I haven't blogged much lately For reasons that are somewhat lacking. I have been busy with school but I think the real reason is my lack of interest in actually writing anything lately. That's all my MBA class is, writing. I write forum postings and papers constantly. It's making me feel like writing is a very boring thing to do. Even though I have many things on my mind I just can't seem to want to site down and write about them. I will try however.

Two weeks ago on Tuesday January 29th, Flor and I got awesome tickets to see Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser at the San Diego Civic Theater; it was incredible! We were the beneficiaries of deeply discounted tickets due to a student initiative at UCSD. For $30 we got to sit on the orchestra level almost halfway up to the front. We had a great view and the music was beautiful. The opera was 3 hours plus one hour of intermission so it was long but we had a great time.

We went with Lindsay and Cat and they relayed to us a message from Steven. When told we were all going to the Opera he said: "The Opera! That's so boring!" Well, I must say it was not boring Steven and we are going to do it again... next Tuesday. Bring on Mary, Queen of Scots!

To Recap The Wedding: Part 2

So I just posted a lengthy post on the subject of The Wedding Rehearsal Day over at http://www.florandbrian.com/ so I'd encourage anyone checking out my blog here to go read that over there. To summarize however, I will say that the day was very long and very busy. I was stressed but not quite stressed out for most of the day and I lost my appetite by dinner because I was so tired. I LOVED spending time with family by the way; it was incredible to see so many people from my extended family sitting with me and Flor for dinner in San Diego. These are people that flew thousands of miles just to support Flor and myself in our marriage and that is a powerful statement that didn't go unrecognized. I love you all and I'm thrilled that you all were a part of our wedding.

Now, in the interest in making pretty posts I'm going to attach the following pretty picture from the day. Now go check out my more "enhanced" post on this same subject over at the wedding site blog. Here's the direct link.



In case you missed it, here's the link to Part 1

To Recap The Wedding: Part 1

Wow, it's now Thursday December 27, 2007. A full two weeks ago I last wrote and since then I've had a bachelor's party, wedding, honeymoon, and Christmas. I have been stressed, sick, in love, and in utter joy. It's been a whirlwind of emotion and activity and now it's time to settle back into the routine. Before I do that however I must take a smidge of time to reflect on the happenings of the past 14 days.

Friday December 14th: I finished my last day of work before the wedding. It was an incredibly stressful day and I woke up sick on the day to top it off. I got so much stuff done at work and I never thought I'd make it out. Family flew in from all over the place and my Best Man Aaron threw me an amazing bachelor party complete with all the dudes decked out in suits, Hooters, the Bowling Alley, a limo, and swanky lounges downtown. It was quite a night. I even had a gigantic stuffed pink flamingo taped to my loins the entire evening. I will share a few pictures from the evening to illustrate and leave the rest of the evidence in my unlisted album. Enjoy! As always more in depth detail on the wedding can be found on our wedding website: http://www.florandbrian.com/.

Christmas Time Is Here Again

Man time flys! I can hardly believe that Christmas has come again. Last year I wasn't blogging hardly at all but it was the first year I ever bought a Christmas Tree. Granted Aaron and I bought it together so I guess it was our first tree but now I get to say that this is my second tree and my first with Flor. :)

It's really great to be able to continually share new experiences as a couple even though we've been together for some time now. Anyway, last week I went out and picked up a tree late Wednesday night and then Thursday evening we stayed up and decorated it and our balcony. We also snapped some pictures and here they are your enjoyment.



Now whenever we go into our living room it feels so festive and happy. The tree really makes our place feel like a home.

For further picture pleasure the following are our pictures from last year decorating. Yes, Flor was there. We're now making it through our second round of holidays together. How fun!

Wierd Al Concert

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention the coolest thing I've done in a long time!!!

Back on the 13th Flor and I met up with Rich and Nicole Trager for a Weird Al Yankovic concert at San Diego's House Of Blues. It was quite nearly the most entertaining thing I've ever seen. He featured a number of complete songs from his current album along with classic fan favorites and medleys of many of his older songs. We got to see the "Fat" suit, Storm Troopers dancing on stage, Al TV, and the unrecorded parody of James Blunt's Beautiful... Pitiful. Fantastic!

Anyway, that's it, not much more to this post then this enlightening fact and this strong recommendation to see a Weird Al Yanckovic concert at least once before you die.

A Summary Of Recent Festivities

I haven't really been writing too much here in this blog over the past few weeks and I've gotten behind in all my pictures. The highlighted picture was a funny sign I saw at the Hillcrest Street Fair, which Flor, Rich, Nicole, and I went to a couple weeks ago. I thought it particularly funny because Aaron likes funny signs and it made me think of him. There you go Aaron, enjoy.

2007 - Hillcrest Street Fair

Last weekend Flor and I spent some QT with Rob and Michele. I scored awesome nosebleed tickets to the Padres game for a dollar off the ticket price through my work so the four of us hit the game full force. We started the day off with some Kebabs from The Kebab Shop, which is awesome by the way, and then hit the game for the afternoon. The Padres won off the strength of Greg Maddox's pitching... and hitting and it was a fine afternoon spent. We finally finished off the day sitting pool side at their place. Fun times and here are some of the pictures.

2007 - Padres Day With Rob & Michele

Later that night the folks came to town and we had some dinner. It's always nice when parents come to visit, at least in my world. I even took Monday off of work to spend the day with them. I didn't really get many pictures but I caught this one of them both outside of the Urban Grind right after lunch.

Anyway, I'm back at work now, on my lunch break, and I figure I'd share my little project that has kept me from writing more often these past few weeks. Monday evening Aaron joined me and my parents to photograph my dad. We took some corporate style shots that will be used for his new website. That's right I've been putting together the shell of my dad's very own dot com that he will be able to use for his ministry. If you are interested in visiting the site it is: http://www.stevemounts.com/. The site is still a work in progress but it's coming together quite nicely. Now it's just a matter of getting my dad more computer savvy and get his typing skills up to par. :) Hehe, he looks funny on a computer.

A Funny Picture Of Aaron

I thought I's share this picture that I took of Aaron taking a picture of my cookies last week. It's pretty amazing to see how funny Aaron looks making a beautiful picture of cookies.

I Am A Culinary Genius

So Saturday afternoon Flor and I were loafing around the apartment watching TV and relaxing. We were feeling pretty good about staying in all day when I suddenly got the urge to bake some cookies. Now, if you know anything about me you'll know already that I have a love affair with baked goods and cookies rank high on my "baked goods list". I don't use those nasty box mixes either I build those cookies straight from scratch.

Anyway to prohibit myself from droning on about this too long I'll just summarize from hence forth. The cookies ended up coming out of the oven in perfect condition. Quite soft but not gooey, fluffy but not towering too high, chocolaty but still leaving plenty of the doughy goodness to savor between chips. Let's just say they were perfect and they looked gorgeous!

Aaron even thought so too and later that evening after he had finished his photo shoot for the day he set up his indoor studio and took some awe inspiring shots of my cookies, catching them in all their glory.

I now present them to you with one disclaimer. There are no more cookies left. Jeremy, Aaron, AJ, Rich, Flor, and Myself killed them off by yesterday evening. Sorry to tease your sweet tooth and then leave you wanting more but some things must be the way they are.

For more of Aaron's ridiculously good photography check out his blog and portfolio. He usually photographs beautiful women but sometimes he takes a break to photograph my food.

Death By Coffee

I met Aaron for lunch today. We decided to go to Blimpie's for their awesome sandwiches and then for their close proximity to Walmart. This of course allows us to kill two birds with one stone as after we ate we could then shop without leaving the building. Anyway, In case you didn't read Aaron's blog this morning he went to bed pretty late and only got about 3 hours of sleep last night so to replenish his sluggish body he wanted to get a Double Shot. Being the nice guy that he is he decided to buy me one too just for the heck of it.

Death By Coffee

This series of events got me thinking about the Starbucks Double Shot and how the caffeine in it works and then I remembered this cool Death By Caffeine calculator that I found via Healthbolt. Apparently this is a cool little calculator on the Energy Fiend website that calculates how much of something (anything) you would need to ingest to kill yourself with the caffeine content... assuming you could physically ingest that much of said item.

The site asks for your body weight and what product you are indulging yourself with and then calculates how much of that item would kill you via caffeine. Apparently since I weigh about 150lbs it would take 78.75 cans of Starbucks Double Shot to do me in. Since I drank down the one then that means I've got 1/78th closer to death, just 77 more to go! Check out the calculator here and for those interested in the positive side of coffee and caffeine check out his post on how coffee may extend your life. Ahhh. :)

I Got Skills; They're Multiplying

So my last post was about the baseball game that Aaron, Flor, and I went to. Well, I forgot about the video that Aaron got of me at my very worst while at that game. Needless to say he has immortalized it by placing it prominently on YouTube. I guess I'll help spread the word about my sweet dancing skills by embedding it right here.

Baseball!!!

Ohh my gosh! I almost forgot that Aaron, Flor, and myself went to a baseball game Friday. The weekend has seemed so long and it's only Sunday morning. I continually remind myself every time I do something cool right after work on a Friday night that it makes the weekend seem twice as long and extremely worthwhile.

Anyway, you can see Aaron's blog for his take on the game or just take a look at the pictures.

I gotta say the game was a lot of fun and we got cool visors. The Padres played pretty good but they couldn't finish the job as they left runners on base all night. I think they had something like 13 men left on base. With stats like that they deserved to lose. Box Score

The game also brought to mind our failed attempt to watch the Padres - Red Sox game a few weeks back. It seems that we didn't learn our lesson because until 4pm I didn't know I'd be at the game. We got lucky. I guess the Red Sox are a bigger draw to local fans than the Phillies. -Shrug-

Family Camp

This weekend I went to family camp with my favorite lady and her family. I had a pretty good time but it could of been better. For starters, had I come away without catching a bacterial infection aka stomach bug I'd have been much happier.

Aside from that it was pretty nice. We stayed at a small camp ground in Tajunga Canyon North of Los Angeles. We roughed it in a cabin with bunk beds and an air conditioner. To our defense the in-room shower had no hot water and the air conditioner was past its prime. It was pretty hot even with it running full blast the whole time. Anyway, after enjoying our time in services and in bed and in the food line we all had to find something to do, myself included. So we strapped it on for a game of soccer! I shudder thinking that I actually played soccer in 95 degree weather. I don't even like soccer! Well, I still don't like soccer but it was fun. My team won and I even scored a goal! That's pretty impressive considering this was the Hispanic Nazarene District's family camp and everyone else has been paying soccer their whole lives.

By the end of the game I almost died though. I'm a desk jockey and all that running around in intense heat almost made me sick. Maybe it did too. Later that day I started to feel the effects of my stomach ailment which has kept me out of commission ever since. I didn't even go to work today and I think I'll stay home tomorrow too.

Anyway, since we've been back I've just been nursing myself back to health and playing a lot of Civilization IV. I've got a great game going right now. I'm hoping to win via domination before 2000AD. Should be interesting to see if I make it for all the Civ nerds out there.

This is where I'd probably post the pictures from the weekend but unfortunately my camera finally broke and is out of commission. I bought my Kodak DX3600 roughly 7 years ago. It was a 2.2 megapixel camera and it was awesome. Now Flor's phone is a 2.0 megapixel camera so mine pretty much sucks and now it is dead, so until I get a new one I'll be picturless. Later.

Two Birthdays and an Anniversary

This is my current favorite picture of Flor:

In other news Flor and I just got back from Missouri last night and it was quite a nice trip. I was not feeling great at the beginning of it but by Saturday I felt great. My family went out to a Japanese sushi and steakhouse for lunch after bowling and then we all spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for Jess and Johns wedding. Fun times that I'll have to go into more in detail later. I haven't even taken the time to unpack or take a look at all the pictures from the weekend.

The previous week however was a nice vacation-like week with the 4th of July and all. Amazingly I didn't get any pictures on the 4th of July as Flor and I stayed in for the most part all day. We were tired of being in the sun so we ate with AJ Buerer at IHOP around lunch time and then went shopping for Jess's wedding present until 2:30 or so. The rest of the day we hung out at home until early evening when we met up with the Tragers and Kelly for fireworks on Coronado Island. We showed up 30 minutes before the show; the show lasted 20 minutes; and it took us two hours to get off the island after the show. Needless to say we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic not moving at all for the longest time. Flor and I actually got out of the car and sat on fold-up beach chairs next to the car for a little more than an hour. I'll be honest, we were kind of gloating as we had told the Tragers beforehand that we'd be there forever if we went to Coronado. We didn't change their mind but I'm sure they were second guessing the decision as we sat around on Orange Ave. :)

Even earlier in the week though were two big days. Sunday the 1st was Flor and myself's 1st anniversary followed by my 27th birthday on Monday the 2nd. We've had a great year to say the least and we celebrated by going and spending time at Mission Bay with Mahina and company for her birthday party. Of course later on we went out shopping and celebrating that night but we pretty much kept it low key. Pictures from the Bay follow:

2007 - 1st Anniversary & Mahina's Birthday

The next day on my birthday I found waiting for me in my dining room a power drill; an awesome gift from Flor for my birthday. I'm starting to get the manly itch to become a "tool man" so now my collection begins. What follows are a couple pictures of me using the drill for the first time and then hanging out at league later that night. We had a great week to say that's for sure.

2007 - Birthday Bowling & Using My Drill

I guess tonight or tomorrow I'll have to upload pictures from this weekend and recap it because it was a doosy.

A Week Of Pictures

This past week has come and gone and here I am presenting the albums that correspond.

Last weekend Flor and I spent a lazy day around the house. I caught this awesome picture and a couple others of Cutie sitting on Flor.



Later that day I got bored as we never left the apartment so what did I do? I decided to shave for the first time in about 3 years. I don't know why but it was awesome. It took me about 3 days to get used to my reflection in the mirror but I started liking it. Now unfortunately it's been 8 days since the shave so I'm going to have to decide whether I'm going to grow the beard back or take it back down to the skin. I think I'll shave again tonight and go with the shaved look for a little while.



This past weekend Aaron and I went out to photograph a wedding it was a good time but I missed this awesome good time with Flor, Abby, Rob, Michele, and Taylor. Flor took over with the 2.2 megapixel Kodak relic in my absence and took these fine pictures while I helped out Aaron with pictures at the NGS Media photo gig.

2007 - La Fayette Pool

Aaron has also posted a couple shots from the wedding on his blog.

That's it for now. I'll have to post our Mission bay pics from yesterday a little later. It was Mahina's birthday bash and the beginning of me and Flor's anniversary day. We had a good time.