Are you ready for another exordium? Well here it is... - Meet Amanda Nelson

Hey Underground! I’m so excited to join this awesome community and share my feelings about entertainment with all of you. By the way, if you don't know what exordium is I give you permission to google it. I'm Amanda. I'm a 28-year old single geek who's alter ego works at a jewelry manufacturer of men's wedding rings. I attended BYU-Idaho for my bachelors degree and the University of Phoenix for my masters degree.

My love of pop culture and the geek world was like falling in love. Not that I know what that feels like (ha ha), but Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice pretty much sums it up. “I cannot fix the hour or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.” Yep, I just compared being a geek to being in love. I went from a girl who read books and didn’t “nerd out” over anything, to a girl who buys geeky shirts and attends cons. When I’m not trying to catch up on all of my favorite shows, hitting the movie theater with my movie theater popcorn and frozen Junior Mints, or shamelessly seeing what the latest celebrity gossip is, I love to read as many books as I can get my hands on, spend time with my awesome family, play the piano, and rock out to classic rock in my car. There you have it. I’m just a geeky girl who finally has an excuse to talk about things that cause normal people to squint their eyes and give me the “who are you?” look.  So bring on the apocalypse because I’m ready to go Underground.

Meet Austin Christensen

Meet Austin Christensen

I'm Austin, 24, married to a wonderful woman and I'm the younger brother of the mastermind behind the Underground. 

As a youth, I attended and graduated from Alta High School. I currently have a really poor outlook on education which I don't care to explain at this time, but if you'd like to know more, you know how to reach me. I'm a writer for a digital marketing company, and I've had plenty my work published on many well known sites, as well as some that aren't so popular. I will also be working with the Utah Jazz's radio broadcast, this winter (for the second year), as a statistician and assistant producer. Yes I've met the players, and no, I can't get you free tickets (unless you're really, really cool). Aaron has asked me to contribute to this blog as a sports writer, and that's what I intend to do--write about sports. 

As far as my sports background goes, I've been a fan of sports my entire life. I'm a fan of the Utah Jazz, Boston Red Sox, any team that Drew Brees plays on, Real Salt Lake, the Brazilian national soccer team (I served my mission there) and the University of Utah. I like to consider myself to be a level-headed fan, although I didn't use to be. 

I'm very excited to start my writing at SotT Underground, and I hope that you all enjoy my writing. 

A little post about me - Meet Jordan Holmes

Well, it's a little overdue for me to write this post. I'm Jordan Holmes, and I'll be contributing to this wonderful little blog from time to time. I'm a 26 year old married man, raising 3 kids and attempting to balance school, work, and home life to the best of my abilities. Since spare time is nearly non-existent in my world, I have come to enjoy those things that are duties for a man such as myself; fixing things, cooking, facilitating entertainment for my family, researching impending purchases on the Internet to try and get the best bang for my buck, and so on.

My contributions here will include but will likely not be limited to; food (the stuff i make and/or eat), technology, music, perhaps a little home repair, and the occasional rant about whatever is on my mind. I am generally not the most serious guy, so I will hopefully be able to weave a little humor into my posts so the readers are not completely bored with me. Heck, I'll even take requests if you want. Just shoot me an email or something and I will be happy to respond as long as it is within my intellectual power to do so.

Here's to a happy future of reading and writing!

What is up SotT: Underground?! - Meet Crystal Nichols

HELLLOOOOOO Signs of the Times: Underground! What is up? No for real, what is up? I have decided that as part of my posts I want to start a dialogue between you, the readers, other readers and me. So to get things started I will introduce myself. Hello (again J) my name is Crystal Nichols and I have been asked by the amazing and talented Aaron to be a part of this awesome and totally fantastic endeavor! I am so excited and can’t wait to get started.  A little backstory, I wrote the most incredible and inspired blog of my life, but my computer decided it would be fun to crash before I could post it. Alas, I had to rewrite it and that is what I am now posting. Maybe someday I will be inspired again and write the perfect post, but for now enjoy. I just wanted to get the ball rolling and post a little sumthin, sumthin.J  So without further ado, a little bit about me and then I would like to get know you all because I am all about getting to know people and that starts with communication which of course is a two-way street, right? Right. Plus I work in the world of communication so I find it fascinating, communicating that is. 

I currently work for a company called Simmons Media Group, they own 5 radio stations and some days I absolute love my job other days I totally want to leave. Just like any other job. I am obsessed with music, learning, culture, people and just life in general! I actually wanted to start by focusing on music for a moment. Music is my escape from the world, it is a place where I can leave every problem behind and just get lost in the moment. It moves me and makes feel inspired, happy, sad, or just plain excited! Though I do love lyrics, there are times that I just love a good tune I can groove to; especially anything I can Zumba to. J I am open to listen to and learn about any new kind of music that anybody would like to throw at me, so do share. I am also an avid social media user; though I use it more to learn about what is going on in the world or how my friends are doing then really posting much. I am all about enjoying moments and sometimes that is a little difficult when you are always tied to a phone or camera and constantly posting on social media outlets. However it is fun to have those memories forever reserved, so it is a two way street.

 I like learning about the different media outlets and how they are every changing. From My Space to Facebook, Instagram to vine, and of course the never-ending thoughts of millions of people, Twitter. Call me old fashioned but I would rather not know what everyone is thinking ALL of the time, but it can be quit entertaining.  J Plus I am an avid fan of Face-to-face time, like literally person-to-person, there is nothing like it. As you have probably gathered by now my main focuses, will most likely be social media and music. The ever-changing world fascinates me and I can’t wait to hear from you and what you think. Like what are your thoughts on Vine vs Instagram? What kind of music do like? What inspires you? What can we learn from one another? You know, the basics. Oh and also how does everybody like the new Facebook layout, for the 50^th time?  Speaking of social media maybe I will leave links so you can follow me…or not J until next time “Live life to the fullest, enjoy every moment and every experience!”

By Crystal Nichols

Me with my fav singer Ben Kweller

Meet Michael Brunson

Hello one and all!  Welcome to the Signs of the Times: Underground!  Thank you to my good friend Aaron Christensen for putting this together and asking me to be apart of it!

As for myself, I am 38 years old and have been married to my wonderful wife, Sandra for 15 1/2 years.  (In case you were wondering, she still likes me.)  We have three beautiful children and we now have a good little puppy dog.  I graduated from Brigham Young University in 2005 with a degree in Communications, which means I'm doing something other than what I graduated in.

I guest blogged on Aaron's previous blog "Signs of the Times" and am pretty sure that I was not the catalyst to the cataclysmic end of the SotT.  It was feared that when Aaron announced the end of SotT, that the world would stop spinning, a whole in the fabric of the universe would appear, and quite possibly, quite possibly, the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series.

So... with all of that said, I hope that you are a frequent visitor to the Underground and hope that you find this a good respite from your cares.

Don't worry, the Cubs aren't close to winning the World Series.  The universe is safe for now.

Meet Aaron Christensen

Welcome to The Underground. I'm glad you made it safely. My name is Aaron Christensen. I guess you could say that this whole thing is my idea.

Many of you may remember me from some of my previous blogs, most notably "Signs of the Times," which I discontinued three months ago after five years of faithful writing. Every week for five whole years, I posted my Newsletter that helped me keep an optimistic outlook on my life. You know, it's tough being 26, Mormon, and still single. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that as a 26-year-old, white, Mormon, Utah Jazz fan that grew up in a conservative Republican household, I'm the most discriminated-against person in all of America. So it's easy, I guess you'd say, to find things to complain about. So that's why I did every Tuesday. It helped me Feel Good About Myself. But my beloved blog got to the point where I needed to change things up. There came a point where I knew I couldn't possibly do anything more with my blog than I had previously been doing. It wasn't going to get any more popular and I couldn't really talk about many of the things that I actually wanted to discuss anymore. Plus, I finally came to my senses and asked, Why the heck am I telling these people such detailed information about my personal life?? So I stopped. Straight-up stopped. Thankfully, being the OCD freak that I am, I was able to stop it on the five-year anniversary of its creation. Five years. Five is a good number. I like it.

These past three months, I always knew I'd do something else. I even had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. I just didn't know how I was going to get it started - and I knew I couldn't do it alone. There are many times when I wish I had more blogs to read. I think that many people out there are actually very good authors. They just don't realize it. So, in order to help my friends realize their full potential - and also to give myself more interesting stuff to read online - I decided to create a community of bloggers, including my funniest friends, to blog about the things that we care most about. It is my hope that we will be able to blog about our personal interests and hobbies, no matter how nerdy. We will develop our talent for writing, we can embellish our journalistic portfolios, we will open the eyes of our readers to things they may not have known about or tried in the past, and, heck, if this goes as well as I want it to, I'm hoping that we will be able to create an enormous online presence and maybe make a little money out of it.

But why "SotT: Underground"? Naturally, when I decided to end "Signs of the Times," I wanted to escape all the fame and stress of my celebrity lifestyle. So I found a bunker in an abandoned subway tunnel and I went underground. After a while, I started thinking and, you know, I kinda liked it down there. Then I thought some more. For the last five years, I had warned my Loyal Subscribers of the "Signs of the Times" of this technological generation. I'm trying to save you from the stupidity of our own popular culture. There are a lot of crazies out there and I want to protect all of you. I figure there's an apocalypse coming. And when that apocalypse comes, we're all going to head to The Underground. It's safe here. Stay for a while, won't you?

Moved It. Sold It. And Left the Door Open. Now, the decision is yours. There's room for everyone.

Welcome to The Underground.

Aaron