Water should be frozen if it is below 32 degrees right?

Week: 3
Camp spots: 3
Rainy days: 15
Free food venues attended but not invited to: 6
Logan river temp: 0 degrees Cel.
"Wow it really should be frozen," I thought to myself when I read the temperature of Logan river that served as our bathtub last Sunday. The snow runoff has kept the river at a constant flow which also allows it to average the temperature of ice but stay liquid.
It is the perfect bathing temperature I doubt there was a strain of bacteria that lived through my bath. Even I barely did.

Clockwise: Campsite #3, View from our current home, and Breakfast crawling on my tent.

Eric Richardson
Status: Bum
Current Location: A little north of 2nd Dam, Logan Canyon.

If you don't know I am homeless. No, I don't live in a van down by the river. I live in a tent down by the river. I love it.
Sure it has been raining the last couple of days. I am still sleeping under the stars. It is just that the stars are covered by rain burdened clouds that find our camp spot as a perfect place to drop a load.  Despite the cold wet nights when you wake up to this.......

... it is worth it.

Food? I cook oat meal everyday on the stove at work. Dried soup mixes for lunch. For dinner it has been different everyday. For instance yesterday we (Tyson my fellow bum) ate usu catering at a beautiful wedding on campus. The bride and groom seem like decent people. I would like to formally meet them one day. One day dinner was only a can of beef stew. The stuff isn't half bad cold.
 The bum life is great! I might just make it my profession.

Statistically You Are All Crazy

Just reading my text book and thought I would share what I learned.
WE ARE ALL CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!
The numbers come from the DSM-IV-TR and peer reviewed studies cited in my textbook.
They are the percentages of the prevalence of that certain disorder over the life time of the general public. 

12.5% Specific Phobia
4.7% Panic Disorder with or without Agoraphobia
5.7% Generalized Anxiety Disorder
12.1% Social Phobia
1.6% Obsessive Compulsive disorder
7.8% Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
0.8% Depersonalization Disorder
16.1% Major Depressive Disorder
3.6% Dysthymic Disorder
1.3% Bipolar I and II Disorder
2.8% Binge Eating Disorder
0.6% Anorexia Nervosa
1% Bulimia Nervosa
0.16% Narcolepsy
4.1% Attention deficit/hyperactivity Disorder
0.9% Autism
2.3% Paranoid Personality Disorder
4.9% Schizoid Personality Disorder
3.3% Schizotypal Personality Disorder
1% Antisocial Personality Disorder
1.6% Borderline Personality Disorder
2% Histronic Personality Disorder
0.1% Narcissistic Personality Disorder
5.2% Avoidant Personality Disorder
1.5% Dependent Personality Disorder
2.4% Obsessive-compulsive Personality Disorder
1.5% Schizophrenia

The Grand total is %101.56! That means if you have 1000 people in a room 1015 and 3/5 of a person are crazy out of everyone in the room.
The stats don't lie you are crazy.
(I also didn't include Paraphilias, Somatoform Disorders, Substance Related Disorders and many more in my list. Mostly because I am too lazy to find them.)

Why does eveyone keep apologizing to me on the street.?

The last few weeks the strangest thing has been happening. I just go down the street minding my own buisness and people just stop look at me, then look at my leg and then look me in the eyes and apologize while shaking their heads. I hope their apologize are aimed at my broken leg and they are just not apologizing because I have a funny looking face or something.
News flash strangers you didn't do it I did so no need to apologize.
Really it is not that horrible of a thing. When you see me crutching around there is no need to say "man, that sucks," instead you should say something positive like "dude your triceps are going to be so defined."
Look at the positive.
For instance

• Now I can beg for rides from the girl I have a crush on when I miss the bus. ( I really did that today)
• I no longer feel guilty for using the spacious handicap stalls in the restroom.
• I will set off metal detectors in the airport!

• If I am late to a class I just pretend like I am out of breath and the teacher thinks the world of me while she cusses out the kid who came in right after me.
• I can scratch myself with a wire hanger and no one will even question me. ( I am doing it right now)
•  I finally have a reason to get over my fears of elevators.
• Being lazy is not just allowed but expected.
• I am almost a walking legend (OK, so I don't walk). I was at an interview the other day and I met this girl. After I explained the story of how I broke my leg she told me that her roommate had told her the same story that was told to her by a friend that had a friend who new the kid who broke his leg skouching. No joke. She ended the conversation by saying, "I am totally going to tell my roommate I met the skouching kid." My self-esteem went through the roof.

My Job

For those of you who wonder how I pay for college here it is.
It get paid 9 dollars an hour to make pictures like these. Now they look cool but they have a little more practical purpose. Every detail is measured out to the specks drawn in the architectural drawings. When I say everything I mean everything. The dry wall thickness the size of the windows the type of bricks.
I don't just do the outsides but the interiors as well.

It looks fun, but it is actually very monotonous. I don't sit in one spot for very long. Good thing I have other people in the office to throw things at and joke with when I get bored, every 10 minutes.
So if you wanted to know there you go. That is my random college job.

Why I go to Utah State and not BYU

No, I am not going to dis on BYU it is a good school. Academically it's in my opinion one of the best. It's basketball team has done so well this year that it even cancels out how poorly the football team did.
All I am going to comment about is why I am glad I am here at Utah State and not at BYU.
This idea popped in my head today as I turned in a 8 page literature review to one of my professors.
Reason 1: I also added a handwritten note to the paper right before I turned it in. The note read:
"Dear Professor if it is not obvious by the content of this paper, I just want to inform you that I was on drugs when I wrote this. The next draft will be better I promise"
(If you didn't know this I recently had surgery and was prescribed drugs so everything was according to the word of wisdom.)
I fill completely comfortable writing a joke like that on a pretty important assignment here at Utah State.
I wonder how it would have been accepted at BYU.
Reason 2. BYU is not allowed to worship false idols like their own basketball players. At Utah State we don't just worship the players and the coach we reverence the most unruly and offensive fans and strive to be like them. (except we don't strive to look like them)

Meet Wild Bill the most popular kid on campus.
Reason 3: This excerpt from the Utah State's event calendar will explain it all.

"20,000 bouncy balls dropped from a helicopter!! What? No, you read it right, we will be dropping 20,000 bouncy balls from about 100 ft in the air onto the stadium parking lot just west of the Student Wellness Center. Why? First off because it is the coolest thing we could think of to do..."
I am glad to see my tuition dollars hard at work. At least it is my tuition dollars and not tithing dollars.

Spring Break 2011

School is out but I am still learning.
Lesson of the week: It's bad karma to joke around about doing drugs.