I Think, Therefore I Am

Wards-That-Must-Not-Be-Named

2011-12-19T00:13:00.001-07:00

So I moved out of my apartment about a month ago. A lot of factors influenced my decision, including, but not limited to, the following:

Non-functioning oven
Mysterious radiators that operated on their own schedule
Pot-smoking neighbors
Awkward encounter with one such pot-smoking also gay neighbor where I learned that the term "Mo" does not refer to "Homo" which means I definitely answered her question incorrectly and FAR too quickly. She was nice but our hallway encounters were never the same...
The amateur X-rated movies being filmed in the apartment below mine

However, the thing I dreaded the most....was the Singles Ward. To understsand this feeling, recall the fear and loathing with which the characters in Harry Potter said the name 'Voldemort'. In most cases they used the term 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' becuase his name was too powerfully horrible to utter. I have yet to come up with an adequate subsitute for the "Singles Ward" term that brings me such grief...but I'm working on it.

I could write pages and pages of Singles Ward experiences....but I won't. I'm not even going to touch the testimony meetings turned into date auditions, or the Family Home Evening formula (who decided an ugly Christmas sweater party was required every year...the funny and original ships sailed a long time ago on that idea), or the spirituality = A's Relief Society lessons, or anything beyond my most recent encounter.

I was at my most recent Ward (which I should point out was not in Provo - the weirdness is not contained in that one city by any means) listening to the announcements. Nothing out of the ordinary (activities, food, servce, etc.) but then they announce something called a Blitz. I was intrigued. They went on to explain that all the interested Ward members would gather at the Church and then proceed to visit 3-4 members who hadn't shown up in awhile (LDS word for these people is 'inactives').

My interest turned to horror. One Tuesday a month some poor unsuspecting people would have 10-30 people descending on their house to investigate why they'd stopped attending church and pressure them into coming back. It was amazing to me that the people sitting around me could have convinced themselves that this was a great thing they were planning, as if the word "blitz" was a synonym for "friendly service," something akin to helping an old person cross the street.

Clearly no one had taken the time to look up "blitz" in a thesaurus, if they had they would have found the words assault, attack, bomb, bombard, carnage, charge, offense, onrush, onslaught, rush, storm, and millitancy, which hopefully would have clued them into the terror they were about to bring on innocent souls. Right then and there I resolved to do my best never to be home on Tuesday evenings (as I knew I was already at risk of being considered 'inactive'). When I was home, I kept the lights off, refused to answer the door and thought about getting a ladder for use in quick-escape situations. Thankfully, my manuevers allowed me to escape the dreaded 'blitz.'

My whole life I have heard quotes about LDS youth being "strong and righteous" and basically the best generation to live on the earth. Having been in a few Singles Wards I've realized something... this generation wasn't saved for this time because they're interesting or smart or funny or attractive. So which generation was that? I'm thinking I'd like to trade.

My Dad

2011-09-30T23:12:00.000-06:00

As of yesterday, my dad is officially not the CEO for Control4 anymore. And while he's just moving to new role with the company, this was a bit of a milestone. I usually find him an easy target for criticism or jokes, everything from his lack of hair down to his Tevas-with-socks fashion choices, but this feels like a good opportunity to reflect on why I'm proud of my dad.

Until I was probably sixteen I didn't realize that most people considered 'work' a 9-to-5 deal. I always saw how hard he worked - he was working when I left for school in the morning, he was at work when I got home, sometimes we'd see him for dinner, and then he'd be working when I went to bed. And that's when he wasn't traveling. What I didn't really get to see, until I started working at the company three years ago, was what all that work produced. I am so proud of what he's been able to accomplish in his career, especially at Control4. The late nights, early mornings, and hours of travel aren't easy but I think the results speak for themselves.

In a busy work environment, it can be easy to lose sight of the human element. I've seen and heard plenty of examples...using an employee's lack of performance, an elevated title, or potential financial gain as an excuse to mistreat or disrespect people. One of the things about my Dad that I am the most proud of is that he simply doesn't think that way. He has been successful without ignoring or forgetting the well-being of people around him. He is a successful businessman, but he is an honest, caring and good person first.

His commitment to his work has at some points caused him to miss out on family time, something that I used to remind him of constantly. Being the manipulative teenager I was, I would often remind him that he had missed something like six of my birthdays, especially when I thought I could get a laugh or use guilt to help me get something from him (never actually worked). But, when I was a Freshman in college, my dad was invited to speak to the Entrepeneurship club at my school.
I went to watch and to my surprise, he spent quite a bit of time talking about the impact his work had had on his family time. In fact, he even got choked up as he told everyone how he had missed six of my birthdays. Needless to say, I haven't brought up the birthday issue since. Despite the amount of time he's spent working over the years, none of my siblings, or my mom, or I have any doubt as to how important we are to him.

I love my dad. He's passionate about Control4 and making it successful, he's put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into getting it to where it is and I'm so proud of him for that. He's a great example, a great human being, and a great dad.

My Summer Vacation (Girls Camp)

2011-07-11T19:00:00.000-06:00

So I was assigned to help with our Ward girls camp. 33 girls, 7 adult leaders, 3 days, 3 nights, camping. It was an enlightening experience in a lot of ways, but generally pretty fun. Here are the highlights:

The theme of the camp was Happily Ever After and we were all supposed to be princesses (not my idea). I didn't think it was possible to be a princess when you had to sleep in a tent...but I was wrong. There were people with cots, with sleeping pads on the cots, with sleeping bags, and comforters! They also had whole bags of makeup, perfume and even something called dry shampoo. I didn't sleep or look or smell like a princess but some people sure did.
Justin Bieber songs never fail to make teenage girls scream. I bought my first Justin Bieber song after I got home - hoping if I listen to it I will understand this phenomenon
I made crafts. With flowers on them. Enough said.
Advice: If you want to make people happy after a long day of setting up campsites (complete with a carriage that lit up and chandeliers in our case) don't feed them sandwiches for dinner
Snoring sometimes come from the most unexpected sources
Sleep aids: sometimes necessary
Whole wheat pancakes are one of the best breakfast foods that exist...when covered with buttermilk syrup.
There's a reason the fairy godmother in Cinderella floats - that robe is impossible to move in, especially through a circle of camp chairs while pirouetting. Floating is the only way to go, and I have the bruises to prove it.
Removing hair wraps requires hair cutting - something you should find out BEFORE you have one put it in your hair.
Women of a certain age are really hot ALL the time so they like to leave the tent windows open when they go to bed - makes for a pretty chilly night. Again, insert sleep aids here.
There's this thing called Crackle that is apparently supposed to go on top of nail polish and make a cool cracked-looking pattern or something? My nails just look like they were really poorly painted with whiteout.
I will never again walk up to a tent and just start unzipping without giving the people inside some sort of warning. You see and hear things you wish you hadn't.

Living Solo

2011-06-28T21:32:00.000-06:00

Discoveries I've made since living alone:

I actually can kill spiders, given a heavy enough shoe that can be attached to the end of my swiffer.
I'm messy. That will shock a lot of you, but it's true. I always thought I was just messy when I only had small spaces to work with (like my bedroom or my desk) but it turns out the messyness just expands to fill the space.
I might not like the color green as much as I thought I did. I have a LOT of green stuff.
It becomes really easy to leave doors open when no one else is around...bedroom doors, bathroom doors...there's no one to separate from!
I love yogurt and cheerios, together. That's been my dinner for the past four days. Still trying to get around to unpacking my kitchen.
I need to take more pictures (I have so few to put up in my apartment) but I now have a lot less to take pictures of - I'm not going to take pictures of myself sitting on the couch, reading on my bed, standing in the kitchen....the solo apartment doesn't lend itself to exciting photographic remembrances.
I cannot tolerate sleeping in the heat. If I were on a jury and a murderer testified that he lost his temper because his bedroom was hot and that's why he killed the woman who cut him off on his way to work....I'd let him off.

The New Place and Some Old Places

2011-06-20T23:33:00.000-06:00

Two of my favorite places in the world are Walden Pond (Concord, MA) and Central Park (NYC). My new apartment is nowhere near as cool as either of those places. BUT, I think there are some similarities.

When Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond, he "wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if (he) could not learn what it had to teach." I came to my apartment for sort of less profound, but similar reasons. I was ready to be on my own. I aslo needed some separation from my parent, which apparently Thoreau did not - he still had his mother do his laundry.

Thoreau was not completely isolated at Walden Pond, but he clearly had a lot of time on his hands to think...he wrote a 300 page book with chapters like "The Bean Field", "Solitude" and "Brute Neighbors". Since I've started living here, I've written in my journal almost every day. And in fact, one day I wrote about how much I like being alone (solitude) and yesterday I wrote about my neighbors! I don't plan on writing anything about a bean field.

I live by Liberty Park, which has a pond.

It's a little harder to show similarities between my new place and Central Park. There's actually just one thing that reminds me of it, and that is the squirrel. When I went to Central Park I remember being really surprised by how many squirrels there were, and how they didn't seem to be afraid of anything, humans or otherwise. Well outside my living room window lives the most obnoxious squirrel in the world. Every morning I wake up to him squeaking away for no apparent reason. It took me awhile to find him, but when I did he seemed to be squeaking right at my neighbor, then he went to another tree and was squeaking at some bird, and on and on. I had no idea squirrels could be obnoxious, I don't even think I knew they could really make noise. But now....well I never understood the point of BB guns.

Betrayal of Jerry Sloan

2011-02-10T22:21:00.000-07:00

What happened today between the Utah Jazz and Jerry Sloan is infuriating. I'm not going to talk about what I think of his coaching style or whether he'll win a championship, because I don't think that's relevant.

A coach who has been here for 23 seasons and over 1,000 wins should not be disrespected this way. I'm sure there was more to it than Deron Williams calling his own play in the game against the Bulls, but I'm also sure that Deron's attitude didn't help. Maybe Deron didn't love Jerry's style, but guess what...it worked for John Stockton. Stockton's stats didn't suffer because of Jerry Sloan, they were incredible...because of Jerry Sloan. Maybe Sloan wasn't going to take the Jazz to a title, but the current roster isn't going to do that no matter who the coach is. There are a lot of factors that go into a team's success or failure, and everyone involved knows it, which is why it is so disappointing that the Jazz management and the players would allow a storied, hall of fame career to end this way.

Jazz fans aren't going to like it, this is not going to help Deron's image, or Greg's image or improve loyalty to the team. Jazz fans don't buy tickets or watch games religiously because of any one so-called super star. The Jazz have always represented the down-to-earthness of Utah residents. We don't put up with diva players (the reason why players like Stockton, Hornacek, and Matt Harpring are the most talked about...not people like Boozer or even Malone). We value hard workers who are going to stick around and get the job done. Jerry Sloan represented the best of that, and for him to leave with anything but a standing ovation is a travesty.

Business Professional - Or Not

2011-01-27T22:03:00.001-07:00

This week I had to take a one-day trip for work. . I've watched my dad travel for business quite a bit and I wanted to emulate his efficient travel style. So this morning I set out to play the part of an experienced business traveler.

Step one: pack light. I succeeded in this. I fit everything I needed into my computer shoulder bag. Toiletries, computer, clothes for tomorrow, I'm all set. More on this later.

Step two: don't waste time at the airport. I also succeeded here, sort of. I arrived at the terminal 15 minutes before my flight was supposed to board. No big deal, I had checked in online, had my boarding pass on my phone, no checked bags. I got through security, checked my gate and headed off towards my flight. The board had said B17 and I didn't think much of it until I was halfway through the trek to the B gates in the Salt Lake Airport. They are two people movers and one level away from security. I arrived at my gate, there was no where to sit but I saw some columns marked with row numbers so I went over and hovered near the one marked '6' because that was what row I was on. I waited until they were boarding and I went up to give the woman my boarding pass via phone. She didn't take it and scan it, she said "Uh...this is a Delta boarding pass." And I liked right back at here thinking "Yes....?" Then she explained, "This is a Southwest flight, not Delta." Then it all made sense, trekking all the way over there, the row numbers, almost no business-types around. Apparently when I checked the boards for my gate, I had looked at the wrong flight leaving for San Diego. What are the odds that there would be two flight leaving at almost the same time, for the same place, from the same airport? High apparently. So back I went to the C gates (which happen to be RIGHT in front of security). Thankfully I arrived before they called my zone. I was perspiring a little, and the two men sitting on either side of me didn't seem thrilled, but I didn't care. I had originally planned to read my Wall Street Journal finance book to keep up my appearance as the 'savvy business traveler' but that had pretty much gone out the window, so I played Monopoly on my phone instead.

Lesson: Double-check gates.

Step 3: Move through the airport without slowing down (like you've been there a million times before and you know right where you're going) and get a cab. I did this just fine. Got in the cab, told him where I needed to go, and we were off. However, about 30 minutes in I looked up at the price clock thing and realized the amount of cash I had in my wallet was possibly not going to be enough. I remember thinking about that before I left, but also thinking, eh, the cab ride isn't going to be more than $40, that's how much it is in New York and there's no way it will be that much here.I quickly mapquested the directions to find out how much longer we had to go and realized that I DEFINITELY did not have enough cash to cover this. And there was a little sign that said no credit cards. Bad news. So we arrived, and I told him I could give him what cash I had (enough to cover about 60%) when he pulled out a credit card machine from his glove compartment. He didn't exactly know how to work it so he was not happy but he got his money and I got to my hotel.

Lesson: Cab rides are based on distance, so don't assume the fee will be the same wherever you are.

Step 4: Get rewards points. I made sure the hotel had my rewards number when I checked in so I could get all my points. She called me Ms. West and told me there would be a shuttle to take me to my meetings in the morning. I felt that I had succeeded in making this woman think I was a savvy business traveler. She even looked surprised when she found out I hadn't stayed at the hotel before.

BUT THEN....I got to my room and realized I had forgotten two things in my effort to pack light. First, pajamas. Second....well, at certain times of the month, certain items are required. I required them...but I forgot to pack them. I literally ran to the hotel services book to see if they had a gift shop where I could buy them. They didn't, only vending machines with food. But they did have a section that caught my eye called "Forgot something?". It said they would provide toothbrushes, combs etc. free of charge as a service to guests. So I could call them and ask them, or ask my male business associate who I was going to dinner with, to make a stop at a store so I could buy them. I decided it was better to embarrass myself in front of strangers than colleagues.

So I called the front desk. To my chagrin a male voice answered. I just took a breath and said "This is an embarrassing question...but do you have any feminine hygiene products?"

Response: LONG PAUSE...Uhhh...let me check. ANOTHER LONG PAUSE. Yes...we have both....kinds.

Me: Oh great! So, should I....

Response: I can have someone bring them up.

Me: That would be great!

Response: Ok, um which kind would you like?

Me: Oh, uh, (awkward laugh) well..either one is fine.

Response: I'll have someone bring one of each.

Me: (To myself: One? Seriously one? Oh whatever I am not making this worse). Ok thank you!

So then I waited for the awkward exchange. Pretty soon there was a knock at my door, and I found myself being presented with a tray, the kind hotels use to bring room service food, lid and all. When I opened the door the man standing there lifted the lid for me, I took the stuff, and he walked away without saying anything. I'd like to think that they made it look like room service for my sake...but from the look on the kid's face...it was definitely for his.

Now I'm sitting here trying to force myself to call the front desk again to ask for a toothbrush, yet another thing I forgot.

Lesson: There are more important things than packing light.

Sharing the Joy

2010-12-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

I am in my last real week of finals at BYU, sort of. Anyway, I'm attempting to find the joy in these last few (except the one that was at 7am - I literally felt like I could kill someone if they even looked at me wrong. Early morning=irritability to the point of psychopathy) and I thought I'd share the joy with you. (I fully expect this to be the least read blog post ever). Here are some gems from the week:

Philosophy of Law: Today at 7am I was presented with five questions, including the following - our answers to each were supposed to be at least a page long - in total I ended up writing ten pages. Who needs coffee when you have this stuff?

(a) Under the standard proposed by Estrich (p.875), what would a person be required to do to avoid being negligent regarding the consent of a sexual partner? (b) What problems does a negligence standard for rape entail? (c) In your opinion, what should be legally required to be guilty of rape? Defend your answer against possible objections.
(a) Is the U.S. government morally obligated to provide remedies for past discrimination against African-Americans? Explain. (b) State arguments for and against using affirmative action as a legal remedy for past discrimination. (c) How does Justice Brennan in Bakke (p.594) argue that preferential treatment (affirmative action) should be subjected to less than strict scrutiny. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Logic: Mostly proofs and some symoblizations. It's like math without numbers.

I had to give proofs for give statements like the following:

(x)(Cax→Dxb)
(Ǝx)Cax C: (Ǝx)Cax→(Ǝx)(Ǝy)Dxy

Philosophy of Language: Mixed bag, essays, short answer and memorizations.

Essay: Drawing upon Kripke's theory of naming and the notion of a rigid designator, give a semantical account of the word "philosophy." Implicit in this answer should be an explanation of why "the love of wisdom" is a problematic answer.
Turn sentences like "The French king is not funny" into:

It is false that: "x rules France" is sometimes true, "if y rules France then y=x" is always true, "x is not funny" is sometimes true.

Memorize nine quotes like:

Everything is what it is and not another thing.
All these results were obtained not by any heroic method, buy by patient, detailed reasoning. I began to think it probably the Philosophy had erred in adopting heroic remedies for intellectual difficulties, and that solutions were to be found merely by greater care and accuracy.

Philosophical Writing: Papers. Lots of papers.

Excerpt from my term paper on Skepticism and St. Augustine: The Academics deny that knowledge is possible. They deny the validity of cataleptic impressions and sensory experiences because they are too easily duplicated in verifiably untrue ways (such as dreams), and they are too vulnerable to the errors of human perception. The Academics do acknowledge that truth exists but deny the existence of knowledge because our human modes of perception and reason are too fallible to access truth. They argue that while people may think they know some fact which actually turns out to be true, they have no way of knowing that they know it. Therefore, true knowledge, that is knowledge of our knowledge, is not possible (Klein).

Philosophy Senior Seminar: Very broad/general readings and another Paper.

Excerpt from the paper on Ethical Egoism and Kantian Deontology: While it is true that committing to certain duties takes a degree of thought out of some choices, it does not take away one's autonomy in Kant's sense, or one's concern for self in an Egoist's sense. In fact, the adoption of these duties may be necessary for us to truly conform to either system. If we always had to make hard choices in the moment of action, we would probably be much less effective both in choosing what is moral, and is choosing what in our own best interest.

Doctrine & Covenants: Multiple Choice and Matching - lots of terms like these:

Keys for detecting messengers (D&C 129)
Kinds of beings in heaven (D&C 129)
Appearances of the Father, Son (D&C 130)
Willard Richards
John Taylor
Alvin Smith

Saturday, November 5th - Oy

2010-11-12T18:55:00.000-07:00

Twas the hour before kickoff and all through Rice Eccles

All the fans had donned black and prepared their best heckles

The Horned Frogs were coming, ranked number three

We hoped the Utes would emerge victoriously

The crowd was in place, the fight song had been sung

We were ready for our team to tackle, pass and run

The ball was kicked off and the crowd seemed to swell

And then that dumb game went completely to…..

Normally I keep my sports thoughts to my sports blog...but this post isn't going to be focused on the game (because I'm still not really ready to talk about it). It's more a Philosophical musing about large sporting events and why we attend (like lambs to the slaughter in some cases).

The game last week allowed me to get a little perspective on the strange customs and rituals that are such a part of our sporting experiences. For example, by the end of the third quarter there was clearly no hope for a comeback (no matter how many bad habits I insisted I was willing to give up for a little divine intervention) and an interesting thing happened. The crowd seemed totally separated from the team on the field. Normally at these games it feels like we're all on the same team, willing the people who actually play on with our yells and dances and chants etc.

Then, the 'Crazy Lady' (picture here) got up to do her dance that she always does and for the first time, she literally seemed crazy. I sat there and realized that this was actually just a woman, dancing in front of 40,000 people, just because she always does.In the context of a football game it always seemed like a cool tradition....sort of the older generation of fans (her) reaching out and showing the new kids (the MUSS) how its done. But on Saturday, by the time she got up to do her thing, there really wasn't a game going on, and I found myself sitting amidst a bunch of strangers watching an old lady dance.

I suppose it was more realistic this way. Normally we have some illusions about our importance as fans, and our involvement in the wins, and we have a feeling of being a part of 'the team'. But in this game there were no such illusions. There was all this pent-up energy and nowhere to use it (except for booing our quarterback and yelling at the coaches and walking back to our cars).

Inkiversary

2010-10-17T23:15:00.000-06:00

I was told it would hurt

And that I'd feel like dirt

And that it meant I was going astray

And that I'd regret it someday

However, on this date

One year late-r

I think

My ink

Rocks

And it puts me outside the box

I still love the quote

And I'll end on that note.

The New Apartment

2010-05-27T00:19:00.001-06:00

I've been living in a new apartment for about a month now. We moved here because we thought it would be a great place to live during the great Spring weather (which has yet to appear here yet...we had snow a few days ago). It's got a pool and lots of grass to lay around on. However, after staying at the Stein Eriksen Lodge last week, I realized what a dump our apartment is. And I decided to document it.

Our roommate Becky, whose TV we have been using for two years, moved somewhere else so we were left with my TV. I thought it would be perfectly adequate, but when we set it up...well the screen is about as big as a computer screen. We have to squint to see the ball when watching the NBA finals, and whenver any writing shows up (most often in the after-stories at the end of movies, ie: so and so went on to own a store in Bluffton) we all have to get about ten inches from the TV to be able to read it. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I think this picture just needs one word: pathetic.

We were actually fairly excited about the couches here, they look a lot softer than the ones we came from. However we soon discovered that upon sitting on them, you sink to the point of drowning.

The bathroom is doable. The toilet necessitates an unnatural observation of one's own waste as it doesn't completely flush about once in every ten flushes. You'll notice in this picture that the outlets in the sink area are oddly positioned. We're curious what electrician thought that putting the outlets immediately below the lights, barely within the reach of shorter people like me, was a good idea. I don't enjoy being reminded of my lack of height every morning as I go to plug in my hair dryer.

There is another lighting mystery in the bedrooms. Apparently the electrician also decided that only one of the two occupants deserved decent light, so he decided to put the fixture on one side, right up against the wall. I lucked out with the lit side of our room, but it is absolutely blinding in the morning.

The kitchen is small, but that's very doable as there are just three of us. The biggest problem is the absence of a dishwasher. It's sort of a wash-and-use situation at this point. If you need a spoon you've got to dig through the sink, find one, and wash it. But we don't really have anything to dry them after we wash them, so I've been using a clean t-shirt. We also decided to actually cook something after things settled down from the move-in. We wanted to make a chicken dish in the oven, but we realized we had no pans to put in the oven, and nothing to pull hot dishes out of the oven with. We bought some cheap stuff at Smiths but only the minimum. We made quiche (baked in an alumnum pie tin we got for 93 cents) and muffins last week. Instead of springing for a muffin tin we bought the cupcake liners, put them on an old cookie sheet, and poured the batter in. It worked well enough that I may never invest in a muffin tin!

The last, and possibly most irritating aspect of our apartment is the noise. We live right above the lounge of our complex, and there is a piano in the lounge. We have to deal with people pounding away at all hours of the day. I woke up to someone playing Phantom of the Opera (not well) and singing along! We also live on the pool, which we thought was brilliant. We'd have easy access, we'd have a good view of whoever was hanging out there, what could be bad about this? However we soon learned about the pool gate. It's this big iron thing that closes automatically behind people as they enter or exit. However, if they don't slow it down before it closes it BANGS shut and shakes our whole apartment. The heater vent drowns out most of the talking and yelling at the pool but there is NOTHING that will muffle the noise of that gate.

Thankfully only three more weeks of this place.

Hot Tub

2010-05-21T15:20:00.000-06:00

I currently have the great pleasure of staying at the Stein Eriksen Lodge in Deer Valley, UT for a work event. The Stein is one of the premier ski resorts in the world (top 10 in the U.S. according to Forbes magazine, top 500 hotels in the world according to Travel & Leisure magazine). As you come up the main drive you pass U.S. and Norwegian flags waving against the backdrop of the gorgeous mountains covered with pine trees and some with snow. Needless to say, I love this place.

Upon my arrival, I discovered that I had a hot tub out on the deck of my room, with a fabulous view of the mountains. So, although I had not brought appropriate hot tub attire, I felt obligated to take advantage of such luxurious accommodations. After dinner, I fired her up, turned on some appropriate 'sit-in-the-hot-tub-and-look-at-the-view-music', (a little Frank Sinatra and one of my favorites, 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca), disrobed and climbed up the steps to get in. It took me minute to get comfortable, I had to ease into the heat, and I was enjoying taking my sweet time getting in. I thought my balcony was pretty secluded, however, the road that led to the service entrance for the hotel was below me, and as I was taking my sweet time, a car drove up the service road. Feeling COMPLETELY exposed, I practically dove into the hot tub for cover and scalded every inch of my body. After that fun experience I realized that leaving the lights on on the balcony was probably not the best move, so I checked for approaching cars, and ran quickly to turn all the lights, every last switch I could see, off. (It was pitch black outside and any light on on the inside drew attention to my area.)

I floated around in the hot tub for awhile, although I must admit I've never really understood the point. I turned on the jets but they kept pushing me around the hot tub, I couldn't just sit and relax while being buffeted about like that. So I turned them off, but then I felt silly, I might as well be in the bath if I was just going to sit, less chlorine and I could get clean. So I turned them back on, and braced myself so that I remained stationary, despite the jet flow. I lasted about ten minutes, but I was bored and hot. So I got out, put on my robe and slippers, and went to go put the cover back on.

However, in my haste to remove the cover I had let it slide to the side of the hot tub, and attempting to lift it between the edge of the balcony and the hot tub from the side was not working. I could lift it high enough on one side to get it over the hot tub but the other side of the cover would be stuck against the balcony. It was sort of stuck and there was only one solution: I would have to get back in the hot tub and lift it back on using the handle in the middle. So I disrobed again, and climbed back in. I had to stand on the edge of the hot tub, balancing precariously near the edge of both the tub and the balcony, to lift the cover high enough. So there I was, in my hot tub attire, or lack thereof, standing on the edge of the hot tub, high up on my balcony, pulling on this cover, when another car comes driving by on the service road. I couldn't have been more visible if I'd lit off a flare! When I had gotten out the first time I had turned on the light to make it easier to see the cover, but of course, did not think to dim it again when getting back in. I was horrified once again and dropped immediately back into the hot tub, pulling the cover with me. Thankfully only half of it closed so I wasn't completely stuck. But I stayed down for a good five minutes, half waiting to hear a honk from the car below (clearly an over-estimation of my impact on the driver). Then I started envisioning walking around the hotel the next day as people sniggered to each other "Is that the one from 218...the one with the hot tub?" Oh I felt sick.

When I woke up this morning I started to think that I hadn't been seen. But when I went back to my room for a half hour this afternoon a man stopped by to 'check my hot tub'. Lesson learned: hot tubs on balconies - only to be used with appropriate attire.

Perspective

2010-05-17T01:16:00.001-06:00

Last week I was talking to my sister, well actually attempting to ask her to pickup her toys. She was not responding well and I made the comment that she needed to go to bed earlier because she was being grumpy. Her reply completely caught me off guard. She glared at me for a second and stomped up the stairs as she said: "It's not because of when I go to sleep, it's because I don't have a good life!"

At first it just made me laugh and I couldn't believe I was related to such a drama queen. Then I realized just how off her perspective was. Now, I am wondering about mine.

She demeaned her entire existence all because she was required to pickup a few toys. I like to think of myself as pretty undramatic, completely above such overstatements. However I have started to wonder about the little things that upset me or get me off-track, and how silly they'll seem in twenty years. I have to believe that my hundred-page reading assignment will be no more significant than picking up a few toys.

While I may not usually be as blunt as Lucy and go so far as to say that I don't have a good life, I think my behavior and thought process may communicate a similar message. I like to think that this is a problem that lessens with age, so that my perspective is at least a little more accurate than Lucy's. But I have a feeling that my twenty-one year-old issues are no less ridiculous than her five year-old issues.

Least Favorite Thing? Fiber One

2010-03-24T22:32:00.002-06:00

I did a 'favorite things' post....but that was awkward for me. I'm not naturally a positive, tell-the-world-about-the-things-I-like-type person. Unfortunately talking about, discussing, criticizing, and generally ridiculing the things I don't like - now that rolls right off my tongue. Today some co-workers of mine reminded me of something I really dislike: Fiber One.

They lure you in with the healthy buzz word 'Fiber'. You think hey, I am supposed to have twice as much fiber in my diet (according to WebMD). Some brilliant doctors even recommend fiber to help with weight loss, so you think hey! Healthy weight loss! Brilliant! Sign me up!

So you eat some Fiber One products, expecting to avoid constipation and lose weight. Well duh you're going to lose weight when your entire system empties itself out in one day! Fiber One makes your digestive system a veritable slip 'n slide! Who wants to spend more time at work on the porcelain chair than in the office chair? Who wants to have to plan every hour of their day so that a clean, flushing toilet is never more than two minutes away? I once ate four Fiber One muffins in a day (not all in one sitting mind you, just throughout the day I would grab one of the muffins that was sitting on my counter, not knowing that they were Fiber One muffins) and I couldn't do anything to stop my digestive system for a week!

My experience with Fiber One products? Not good, and my experience has been corroborated by several people I know. It's like taking a chewy (in the case of the Fiber One bars) or crunchy (in the case of the cereals) laxative! It will open your eyes to the amount of crap (literally) that is inside your body by cleaning it all right out of you. If people were meant to eat that much fiber, we'd be herbivores who just ate grains all day....like horses!

Now I understand that there are situations which may call for desperate digestive relief, but at the very least I think the following warning should appear on each and every Fiber One label so no unsuspecting people with normal digestive systems are turned inside-out by this stuff:

WARNING: Not to be consumed in large quantities unless a SERIOUS blockage is impeding your digestive abilities. If consumed unnecessarily, leakage may occur. Fiber One is not responsible for any ruined undergarments, emotional damage to other human beings in your vicinity, or mental problems that may result from spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom.

You're better off with Fiber NONE than Fiber One!

April 9th, 2005 - A Defining Moment

2010-03-17T22:13:00.000-06:00

An event doesn’t become a defining moment as a result of its gravity or scale, but rather through the change in direction it elicits. The approach of my younger sister's 5th birthday made me reflect on one of those defining moments....

During dinner one night in the Fall of my sophomore year, my parents gave me the most horrific news I had ever received. My mother was pregnant. Again. I am not typically an emotional person, but after a few minutes, I couldn’t restrain myself. A sort of shocked disbelieving laughter quickly turned into quiet sobbing, and then bawling so uncontrollable I had to leave the table and sprint up to my room. I already had four younger brothers, and I didn’t need or want any more siblings. Two years earlier my mom had had a baby, and with the emotional highs and lows that come with pregnancy coupled with the stress of taking care of four other kids, I just tried to stay out of my mom’s way for a year. I wasn’t really prepared for another year of exile in my room.

Once I finished venting about how the baby was “ruining my life before it was even born,” I was able to calm down and the dark cloud of doom seemed to pass from over my head, although doom clouds typically don’t stray far from teenagers. Then came the ultrasound; that highly anticipated image which appears to be a big blob of black and gray shadows but somehow reveals whether the child will be donning rosy pink or baby blue upon its arrival. It turned out pink was the color that would be invading our house for the next few years.

Having had four brothers and not one sister, this news was supposed to thrill me. However, the doom cloud came roaring back and I lost control. I went on a rampage with a green highlighter and left my mark everywhere. The florescent green words “Stupid Baby” appeared all over everything on our refrigerator, including and especially the ultrasound pictures. I was swiftly and heavily reprimanded but my feelings remained unchanged. I had always been the only girl, the favorite daughter and sister, carving out my own place among a frenzy of brothers. Now there would be a new girl, sure to be everyone’s favorite if for no other reason than her age. She could be everything I was not. She could be the perfect girly girl and love getting her hair done. She could be the loving “huggy” type and be a star in some athletic endeavor, or even worse, she could be into dancing. My new "sister", I could barely choke out the word, could be my replacement.

The pregnancy months dragged on and finally in April, the “blessed” day arrived. The morning I was set to take the ACT, I got a phone call at 6:45am from my dad saying I had a healthy baby sister. All through the test I kept thinking, “Baby messing up my life phase two… post-pregnancy.” I finally got up to the hospital around two o’clock and was able to hold the baby that had been the object of all my resentment. Something I discovered at that moment: it’s absolutely impossible to be upset at a newborn baby. By no means did I have an epiphany moment where all my feelings of anger left me, but I slowly began to change my tune about the new addition to the family.

Having a sister sixteen years my junior has not been a cakewalk. Whenever I used to fill out forms that asked what language was spoken most in my home I looked for the box that said “Baby Talk”, but for some reason it was never an option. Whenever I tell people about my family and I mention George and Lucy (my youngest brother and sister) at the end, I always get questions like, “Oh, do your grandparents live with you?” and after I reply no but before I can explain they ask, “Oh do you have dogs or something?” Once again I must reply “no” and proceed to explain. I’ve changed enough diapers to fill an entire dumpster. My world has been flooded with more shades of pink than I knew existed.

Despite these and other drawbacks however, it has been nice to arrive home from school and have little person run up to meet me. It has been nice to have an ever-present source of entertainment to turn to between the long hours of school, work, and schoolwork. I learned first-hand the benefits of laughing rather than crying over spilled milk.

Nothing ever turns out the way you think it will; life’s full of surprises and change is inevitable. All the old adages are true. I just wish I would have realized it earlier. I learned a valuable lesson in the importance of rolling with the punches. Sometimes what appear to be punches turn out to be simple pushes in the right direction.

My Favorite Things

2010-03-12T00:30:00.004-07:00

A popular LDS hymn instructs us to 'count our blessings' when we are 'upon life's billows'. Psychologists tell us it is good for our mental health to contemplate the positives in life. Julie Andrews as Maria thinks of her favorite things when 'she's feeling sad' and then she doesn't 'feel so bad'. Bing Crosby (in White Christmas) suggests 'counting your blessings, instead of sheep' when falling asleep is difficult. And Oprah enjoy her blessings so much that she shares them with the entire country, and even gives them away for free on her show!

So maybe to get some spiritual energy, maybe for my mental health, maybe to lighten my mood, maybe because I can't fall asleep, but NOT because I am going to start giving things away... I decided to share some of my favorite things:

- Psycholocial egoism, the idea that there are no such things as selfless acts. Altruism does not exist. People act primarily out of self-interest. It starts some GREAT debates/conversations. And it makes me feel smart.

-Sushi, I eat it at LEAST once a week. Raw tuna, raw eel, raw salmon, fish eggs, wasabi...I don't care! Just get it in my mouth! I've heard that when you're pregnant you aren't supposed to eat fish, especially tuna, raw or cooked. Trying to decide if a baby is worth that...thankfully that decision is a LOOOONG way off.

-Walking/sitting around Central Park in November, with a scarf, a hot Starbucks cup, a camera, and a good book for gaps in interesting people watching.

-Washing my feet. I do this every night. I think I picked it up from my dad - back when I was little I would always hear the water running when he was in the bathroom. For some reason I assumed that he was washing his feet. Later I found out that he used the water as a sound barrier to prevent unpleasant noises from within being heard by passers-by. But for some reason the feet-washing idea stuck with me.

-Reading great books. I just finished a FABULOUS book called The Help, an excellent and entertaining read. Before that I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - possibly my all time favorite book. I find myself wishing I could catch up with the characters, find out what's going on in their lives...then I remember they're fake. Depressing. But this post is supposed to be positive, so hooray for good books.

-Winning. I LOVE to win, and thankfully I am a skilled game player so I win often. Turbo Scrabble, Scattergories, Nerts and California speed are some of my favorites. If there was a league for these games, I would join and I would dominate.

-Bowling. Normally a game which involves putting on pre-worn ugly shoes, touching a greasy ball which has probably been held by hundreds of people who had previously touched who-knows-what, and playing in something called an 'alley' would NOT appeal to any part of my personality. However, I was conditioned to enjoy bowling, before I was aware of the greasiness and the germs. I am very grateful for this fact and hope to join a bowling league when I have the time and/or money.

Not sure I feel more spiritual, more mentally sound, cheered up, and more tired...but there is a certain feeling of contentment that comes after reviewing the happy things in one's life. Plus it can't be wrong if it's in a hymn, from psychologists, Julie Andrews, Oprah AND Bing Crosby can it?

Parker - The Deficiency

2010-03-03T22:46:00.003-07:00

For those of you who don't know, I bought a car about six months ago. His name is Parker, he's a great little vehicle. (For more on Parker, click here). However, recently Parker and I have experienced some deficiencies and blow-outs in our relationship.

The first was back in January. On my way back from the airport Parker's oil light came on. I had heard horror stories about driving without oil so I called my parents in a panic and was told to go to a has station and get some oil, as though this was the most obvious solution in the world. I was not enthused. For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to make enough money to ensure that I wouldn't have to know about cars. I have fluxuated in my desires to be wealthy, but I have always wanted to have enough to pay other people to take car of all car-related issues.

Unfortunately, I couldn't buy my way out of this particular situation. I pulled into a Chevron station in Salt Lake and, after gathering myself, went in to buy some oil. I went to the section of oil, and to my chagrin, there were about a dozen different kinds. I figured that I had a simple car (Parker is a Honda Accord) so I could just get the simplest/cheapest kind of oil. As I was paying for the oil, I worked up my courage and asked the boy (he could not have been more than 18) if he knew anything about putting oil in cars. He said he didn't, but that his co-worker (can't remember his name but I think it was something like Ralph) definitely did. He pointed to the bathroom and indicated that he would be out in a minute.

So, apparently this whole idea of fixing my own car had flustered me to the point of losing my sense of social decency. For some reason I thought it would be a great idea to go over and wait outside the bathroom for Ralph to come out. He was a little surprised by my close proximity to the door, apparently I was so close that he thought I was just confused about the little standing man icon on the door and said, "This is actually the men's room." After I sorted out that confusion and explained my awkwardness he was very nice and followed me out to my car. I went to put my wallet down in my car and he said, "Can you pop the hood?" I said, "Sure, is it stuck or something?" and promptly went to the front of the car and tried to help him lift it up. He said, "Oh uh...I just meant could you hit the button to pop the hood..."

I walked back to the front seat to attempt to find the hood-popping button, all the while feeling like a complete moron who stalked people while they were in the bathroom and assumed that a 30+ year-old man would need MY help because he wasn't strong enough to lift up the hood of a car. Oy! Thankfully Ralph was very patient and after two minutes of me pressing the trunk button, the gas tank button, and pulling some plastic piece off the inside of my car, we finally got the hood up.

Not only did Ralph help me put oil in my car, he took real interest in me and tried to educate me so that in the future, I would be a little more self-sufficient. He asked me if I knew how to check the level of oil in my car, I said, "Oh, my car has a light that tells me when it's low." He didn't even roll his eyes when he said, "Right, but we need to know how much you have so we know how much to put in. So you pull out your dipstick and check...." I'm afraid I didn't hear the rest of what he said because I was using all of my powers of concentration to keep from laughing. I was unsuccessful. On his second use of the word 'dipstick' I giggled uncontrollably. He laughed and just said, "I think one quart of oil will do fine. Do you have a funnel?"

I stared blankly back and he said, "We have them inside, they're free, you can just go ask for one." The rest of the process went fairly smoothly. He got me a different bottle of oil, because apparently just assuming that simple/cheap cars get simple/cheap oil is incorrect. He poured it in, threw away the empty container and used funnel, and asked me if there was anything else I needed. I almost made it out with a very enthusiastic, but graceful expression of gratitude. But not quite.

When he was about to go inside I asked one last stupid question, "Should I turn it on to make sure it works?" He said, "Uh..sure." I turned the car on while he watched and after seeing the dashboard I said, "I think we must need more, the light is still on. Should I go get another bottle, or should we do two just to be safe?" He then explained to me that the light was just not reset, and all I had to do was to check the owner's manual to see how to reset the light. I thanked him again and went on my merry way. I felt bad for not doing something for him. But do you tip a friendly gas station attendant? I'm not very savvy about tipping protocol. But I didn't want to risk insulting him, especially since I only had one dollar....

Stay tuned for upcoming posts 'Parker and I Seek Help from a Mechanic" and "The Big Blowout".

Mormons Don't Drink - Does It Mean They Can't Know?

2010-02-22T21:05:00.001-07:00

A response to the responses to my previous alcohol post:

I clearly know nothing about alcohol (the types and varieties - until reading a response to that post I had no idea Margheritas had Tequila in them, and my categorization of wine as white, red, bottled and boxed incurred quite a bit of ridicule) or the culture (the emotions and social aspects - I had no idea having a beverage in hand was such an integral part of many people's social interactions), which was sort of my point. I thought it would be interesting for those of you who are alcohol drinkers to know what it might look like from the outside, from someone SO outside, and I thought it would be educational for me to hear responses, and boy was it ever.

I've decided to undertake a difficult task, that is to become as educated as possible on all things alcohol, without actually drinking it. To do that, I've got to carefully observe every alcohol-related experience I can. As I encounter alcohol-related enlightenment I'll share it here for the benefit of all my outsider friends: http://mormonsdontdrink.blogspot.com

To all my 'insider' friends, you are more than welcome to comment and and thus assist in our education.

Alcohol from the Outside

2010-02-22T00:20:00.001-07:00

I am a non-drinker and a completely uneducated observer of alcohol culture. I've grown up in Utah my whole life, with family that doesn't drink and friends that don't drink. But I've recently become semi-acquainted with this culture, at least enough that I have some observations about it that I would like to throw out there, and be corrected by those who know better.

I have three categories, because they're the only ones I really know. I realize there are others, but my observations of their consumption have been rare to non-existent. So I here I discuss Tequila, Beer, and Wine.

Tequila - My undestanding of Tequila is that it is consumed in shots, is sort of a south-of-the-border drink (ie: mostly from Mexico?), and is usually ideal for situations when the people want to become uninhibited, and quickly.

Beer - I realize the sphere of beer is probably too large to be summed up under just the heading 'beer' but I wouldn't know how to narrow it down beyond the types I've seen on clever TV commercials (ie: light, frost-brewed, Coors, Budweiser, etc.). My impression of beer is that it has a bad reputation for being the lay-person's drink, or only for middle-aged men with large stomachs watching football. But I think it can be much more sophisticated than that, titles like 'pale ale' do not say unsophisticated slob to me. I've come to think of beer as an extremely general term used to describe alcoholic drinks not made from grapes and somehow involving wheat or this mysterious thing called 'hops' which I cannot seem to understand. My impression of beer now is that it is ideal for people at bars because they can drink several without feeling too intoxicated, they're not to expensive, and because beer is the most social drink, and what more social place is there than a bar? I also think beer is a good choice for a casual lunch at a sit-down restaurant, where you might order a cheeseburger but a waiter would serve it and it would come with some sort of gourmet fries or the option of getting a salad.

Wine - Again, I realize there are so many kinds of wine that an attempt to describe it and its use cases is probably silly, but I have just enough gaps in my knowledge to feel like I can pull this off. Wine is for those who appreciate food, and in some cases aesthetics. It is also a social-aloofness drink, where beer is the "I'm here to party with y'all" drink, wine is the "I'm here to enjoy conversations with people I deem worthy" drink. There is red wine, white wine, bottled wine, boxed wine, and the interesting thing is that each type has some sort of social stigma attached to it, or at least expectations of how it should be used. So I think wine is as much about image or status (demonstrating sophistication by pairing the right wine with the right food, or defying social norms by drinking boxed wine instead of bottled) as it is about enjoyment.

So there's what I think/know about alcohol? Am I way off? Am I close? Anybody who has an opinion, educated or not, I'd love to hear what you think.

PS - I'd like to give a small shout-out to my friends at work who have provided me with most of my education on this subject, both purposefully and inadvertently :)

Brand Conversion

2010-02-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching the Olympics the other night and this Nissan commercial comes on. I typically find car commercials occasionally entertaining but completely uncompelling. But as the next commercials continued I found myself thinking more and more about the Nissan tagline "Shift the way you move through the world." The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I was impressed. I didn't want to go buy a car, and I felt no particular interest in their cars, but I loved that tagline.

And then a Coke commercial came on. It was not extremely clever, and had no tagline, but I was compelled by it. Nothing sounded better to me in that moment than an ice-cold bottle of Coke. All I wanted to do was hold that bottle, remove the cap and hear that refreshing pop/hiss sound, tilt my head back and pour some down my throat.

The contrast of these two commercials got me thinking about brand images and what I call brand conversion, and it reminded me something from a class I'm taking. So we're making our way through St. Augustine's 'Confessions', and we continue to see him switching idealogies, from Manichiesm to Skepticism to Platonism etc. His continuous conversions however, are clearly not complete, or at least not lasting. He moves through all of these systems of belief in a matter of a few years. So I kept wondering, what is it that finally makes Christianity stick for him? Well, I think Christianity was his Coke, whereas the Philosophical idealogies were his Nissan.

I had an intellectual connection with Nissan as a result of their commercial. The problem was, it had no motivating power. I had an emotional connection with Coke. Emotional conversions motivate and compel people to act in a way intellectual conversions never do. In Augustine's case, his emotional conversion to Christianity motivated him to finally give up his all-consuming sexual escapades.

Now there may be something more to the Coke vs. Nissan problem, it is entirely possible that the difference in the purchasing process between a car and a drink has something to do with the intellectual vs. emotional marketing.

But here's what I know: Coke's got me. I count myself among the devout.

Valentine's Day: Part II

2010-02-11T00:02:00.001-07:00

In the last post I explained why I have always detested Valentine's Day, but here's why and how I've re-thought my position:

A few weeks ago I heard someone suggest that rather than having one day a year to celebrate love, we should have one day a year to celebrate hate, or at least to liberate ourselves from the oppression of that ugly emotion. I laughed at first, but upon further thought I decided that the idea of making hate the one-day exception, and love the rule was not such a bad idea after all. Unfortunately, I am not so optimistic as to believe that is possible. I do not think love is the default in the settings of human emotions.

I think we need a day focused on love and I am determined to take advantage of the opportunity this holiday provides. After the attitude of benevolence which so pervades the Christmas season, wears off and we all settle in to wait out the doldrums of winter, we need Valentine's Day to shake us out of our selfish hibernation.

I am going to to credit my Philosophy class with opening my eyes to the possiblities here. In my St. Augustine class we've been talking about how love is one of the greatest goods, however, when directed toward the wrong things/people it loses its value. We've discussed the various types of love, unfortunately Augustine had a little problem with focusing his love, a lustful type of love, on women, multiple women, hence his famous line 'give me chastity, but not yet'. (If he looks confused, it's because he clearly was.)

His 'love' was slightly misguided and I see Valentine's Day as perpetuating a similar problem. Valentine's Day focuses too narrowly on one kind of love. So what have I decided to do? I'm expanding my Valentine's Day horizons. From this point forward, the day of love is no longer just a holiday about receiving flowers or chocolates from anything male that speaks, but about love in all it's forms. I'm evolving my Valentine's-Day-love-thoughts from the narrowness of the Supremes to the broader ideals of the Beatles.

I am going to take this Valentine's Day as a positive opportunity to express how I feel to people who matter to me and to show love to people who need it. I will not be making a blanket statement of love to anyone who reads this post, but I look forward to this Valentine's Day as an opportunty for growth and an opportunity to avoid the bitterness associated with the day also known as Singles' Awareness Day.

Valentine's Day: Part I

2010-02-08T12:53:00.007-07:00

It's February, and besides all the excitement associated with President's Day, Valentine's Day is just around the corner. I have very strong feelings about this holiday, and in the past they have been nothing but negative. However, in a riveting two-part post I will explain first what my past issues with February 14th have been, and then why I've come around to a more positive point of view.

This crazy holiday is such an easy target for criticism: the extreme over-commercialization, the insipid little candy hearts which completely mock the ideals of love, and the stress this holiday puts on casual relationships! Need I go on? I have long held that this holiday must be stopped! In the name of love!

For me this holiday is especially painful due to my issues with the word 'love'. I could very likely count on one hand the number of people I have said the 'L' word to, and I don't mean just romantically, I mean at all. Most attempts to verbalize the words to other humans result in a sudden hot flash, accompanied by a restricted airway-type feeling. This makes things difficult around Valentine's Day when it is IMPOSSIBLE to escape the 'L' word. However I like to think that this physiological abnormality is not so much a result of my being emotionally stunted, but rather a safety mechanism of sorts which helps me understand and preserve the real meaning of the word 'love'.

I've always thought of valentines day as representing the worst of and even mocking love. It debases love, and turns it into a commercial commodity. Something that is to be bought with roses and chocolates, or expressed to people we may not even like with little candy hearts.

Is this what love is? No. But this seems to be what Valentine's Day is about. It takes the most complicated emotions and attempts to contain all the complexity in one icky little symbol, the heart. Not only that but the perpetuators of Valentine's Day attempt to sell this symbol in every possible form: chocolate hearts, gummy hearts, heart balloons, stuffed hearts, heart-shaped cards, lace hearts, cases of soda in the shape of hearts, heart shaped flowers, and more!

I realize that some of you who enjoy Valentine's Day will write my opinions off as those of a bitter single person, and I may be both bitter and single. However, no matter what my Facebook relationship status may say, I doubt that a day full of chocolate and giant, pink, heart pillows will ever be a day I can enjoy.

Coming soon: How I've Decided to Cope with, and Even Make the Most of February 14th

A Little Italiano...

2010-01-26T20:04:00.008-07:00

So normally this blog is all about me. That's what I know, that's what I like, and that's the way it is. However, recent amusing occurrences in the life of my brother, and his surprisingly decent written communication skills, made me decide to include an update of his life here. Some of you know William, Anziano West as he is currently known, some of you may not but I think you will all find this updated entertaining.

To catch you up, William is an LDS missionary in Italy. He spent three months in the Provo Missionary Training Center and has now been in Italy for almost four months. This first snippet is from his stay in the MTC and highlights some of the difficulties in trying to learn a new language in three months:

Over the course of the week we've also had a few other funny mistakes. In practicing food vocab i tried asking for a "head of lettice" which is Testa di Lattuga in Italian. However, i said "tetta di lattuga" which, it turns out means a nipple of lettice. Can you imagine the look on my teachers face? It was a good 5 minutes before we could continue. it was very funny. We also found out that we had been teaching all week in our practice lessons that Jesus Christ was "deep fried" for our sins. The word for suffered is Sofferto. We used Sofritto. I'm just glad that i didn't make that mistake in sacrament meeting in Milan. Oh man...

This next bit is from a church experience he had in early December:

I failed to plink out the first few notes on the piano for the opening hymn, then president announced that one of the sisters would be giving a talk (having completely forgotten to inform her earlier). She then gave a quick testimony on how she had seen that the downtown Ancona Nativity scene was missing the baby Jesus, and how she had born testimony to a beggar right there about how we don't need to steal Jesus to have him in our lives, but how we can have him in our lives through following the word of wisdom. My companion was translating for her (she is nigerian and speaks english) and he was dying - trying not to laugh and figure out how to translate "stealing Jesus" at the same time. Very funny.

For those of you who get William's emails, you wouldn't have heard this next one. He wrote this one in a letter to me, and asked that I not tell our mother so if any of you talk to her, DON'T tell her this story:

So we were doing house to house tracting in some student housing. We got in at one apartment with two Albanian students (one named Blendi, he told us he was named after the English word 'blend', the other was pretty much all consonants, Zlithr or something that will never be pronounced right by an English speaker). So these two guys seemed super tired - moving slowly, talking slowly - they just seemed exhausted. We just assumed it was because they'd had a long week at school. So we started teaching the lesson, and pretty soon we started getting tired too. I couldn't pay attention to what my companion was saying, and from the way he kept pausing and looking around the apartment, neither could he. At first I assumed it was because we had also had a long week, or because the TV was on. Then I noticed a jar on the table full of what looked like sugar. There were also lighters and a spoon that had clearly been used to melt the 'sugar'. We had walked in on these guys doing drugs! Needless to say we got out of there as soon as we could. We definitel got a piece of whatever that was - our brains were way fuzzy and we just had to give up halfway through the next lesson and leave because we couldn't think. Who would have thought the word of wisdom would be so hard to live as a missionary.

And the last story, maybe the best, comes from his letter this last week:

Monday morning, we had gotten up early to catch the 6:30 train to get to interviews. We had just gotten on the train and i had just opened the Book of Mormon to start off the 3 hour journey when the man across the isle started gasping for air. He was at lest mid 70's, and minutes before had seemed fine - complaining a bit because of the cold train car. But now he was fighting to breathe and his wife (also in her 70?s) was starting to panick. We came over to see if there was anything we could do, and i'm not going to lie, i was freaked out. I knew that somewhere in my mind was all sorts of stuff about what to do in all sorts of different situations like this. However i was well aware that it had been 6 years since i had really been trained as a lifeguard, and 3 since i had practiced CPR. I didn't remember a thing! But the guy was getting worse. His breathing slowed and then stopped and he started turning a really nasty green. And nobody was doing anything. So i had people help me lift him onto the floor (my italian completely failed me, and with a mix of hand motions and my companion's translations we got him situated on the floor). I was still in denial at this point. I couldn't give CPR. I was not qualified. I didn't remember anything at all. I would probably just cause more problems. with all that going through my head i grabbed his wrist and tried to find a pulse. There was nothing there. Suddenly this was all very real. This man was dead if i didn't do something right now. So the next thing i knew... i was giving CPR. Its fascinating how when in doubt you just flip back to the super basics. all i remembered was the stuff i learned from the first time i learned it - 1 breath, 15 compressions... i realized that i was doing it that way, i didn't plan to do it that way, it just happened. Then after a few repititions, a girl on the other side told me to just to 5 compressions - i, being freaked out and well aware that my skills were quite rusty, just assumed that she knew better and told her to do the compressions while i did breaths (nope, she didn't know what to do, but it hey, cpr was happening so i just kept breathing). So between the two of us we gave CPR until someone else took over after a few minutes. It was terrifying. After the other guy took over (he certainly was no pro, but still cpr was happening which was about as much as we could ask for) i just tried to comfort the poor wife, who had been standing behind us the whole time watching (can you imagine?) I just tried to calm her down, had her sit, tried to comfort her (i didn't do much. the language part of my brain had long since shut off.) So the results: During the ameteur CPR the man started breathing twice, but since his heart didn't start back up it didn't last long. The train stopped at the next stop (miraculously this station was right by the huge regional hospital) and the ambulence arrived and we were told to wait outside the train. For about 15-20 really freaky minutes we sat and waited and prayed that everything would work out. It didn't look good. we saw a defibrilator (the classic electric shock heart starter) go in, we watched the paramedics jog back and forth from the ambulence. I felt terrible for my sorry excuse for CPR, thinking how i could have acted faster and bolder, etc... Finally they carried him out of the train, and in a wonderful moment we watched them pumping the breather bag (that means he isn't dead), and then watched him moving around. And in that final rush of emotion and adrenaline, finally knowing that this guy was alive, my companioned turned to me and said, "ok, now i'm going to say it. That is the only lip service you are going to get for the next two years!" What would i do without such a great companion? In that moment i could finally relax, laugh, and stop worrying about my performance. 5 minutes later we were back on the train (we got to ride first class because the paramedics left all sorts of stuff in the other train car) and the day just wen't on as if nothing had happened. We even got to talk to a few peolpe about the gospel because of it. And who knows, maybe they will remember the terrified missionary on the train the next time the missionaries knock at the door.

So there you go, some experiences from my Italian missionary brother. I know everyone says missions are really hard but it sounds like he's living the life! All of his letters are entertaining, he gets fed a TON of amazing Italian food (he's already gained 11 pounds), and he's living in Italy! What more could you want?

Central Park Squirrels

2010-01-20T23:55:00.005-07:00

I spend last Saturday morning in one of my favorite places in this whole world, Central Park. I always enjoy walking through the park because I always get something out of it. Sometimes I get great pictures, sometimes it's great people watching, sometimes it's a great New York hot dog. This time, I saw some fascinating people, ate a great hot dog, and learned something about squirrels.

The Central Park Squirrels have been conditioned to put up with, even seek out our genus because they trust in our beneficence, but even more in our constant supply of food. Their pause in our presence is no longer a result of fear, but of contemplation, is this person worthy of my presence? Do they have enough food to make this exchange worth my time?

This sizing up is not so unlike us in the way we treat each other. Animals we treat with equal openness or closed-mindedness. And for the most part the animals do the same, treating all humans with equal suspicion. But this discriminating aspect of human nature, this is what we've passed on to the Central Park squirrels. The squirrels are certainly less guilty for their judgments than we, their's comes from natural survival instincts, a search for food. We however, are guilty of shallow, hurtful discriminations.

Thankfully, I was apparently judged as one who is worthy although I prefer not to think about the factors that lead them to believe I had food to spare.

The Place I Call Home

2009-10-13T23:21:00.009-06:00

Not sure if I just like my new apartment a lot more than past residences, or if it's just a matter of being used to living in an apartment, or if it's a function of finally feeling settled in my third year at school...whatever the reason, I've adapted to this place much faster than any so far.

In the dorms, it was 'the box','the hole', 'the dorm', 'the room', and my favorite, 'the cave'.

Last year, it was 'King Henry', 'the apartment', or 'the place'.

This year, we have a red kitchen. There is a serious lack of storage, but it is so worth it to have a red kitchen. We've all moved past Ramen or Pasta Roni this year, and have actually begun developing our cooking skills. Sometimes it pays off - as in the case of delicious Pear and Brie chicken we had last week, and sometimes...well let's just say one of us learned not to cook chicken by placing it frozen in a frying pan. (Our apartment was so thick with smoke it looked like we lived in a cloud, but at least we learned that the smoke detector is broken.) Anyway, I attribute our new exploits in cooking to the pleasant aura created by the red paint.

The bathroom/sink area is a little small this year...two sinks for six of us - but this is where the magic happens. Six disheveled and sleep-deprived girls emerge from their bedrooms, but after considerable time spent in front of this mirror, which includes lots of negotiating of various cords, and in some cases massive amounts of makeup and/or hairspray (to the point of causing a fire hazard - if one of us lit a match in front of that mirror in the mornings we'd all be toast, literally), six well-dressed girls in varying degrees of glamour emerge ready for the day. That is to say nothing of the bathrooms themselves. There are shampoo bottles on the floor of the tub because there isn't enough room on the edges and the hot water is so flaky that we have all resigned ourselves to the fact that we will be going without showers or be dealing with frozen hair this Winter.

Our living room is much larger than last year, and despite the ugliness of the plaid couches we actually enjoy hanging out in there. This is where we study when we can't stay awake on our beds, where we play marathon card games, where we do roommate therapy sessions, and where we watch Grey's Anatomy religiously every week.

And then there's my room. Well, our room. I have transitioned from having my own room last year to sharing a room this year. It has actually worked out pretty well, with the one exception that it is MUCH more difficult to go to bed at a reasonable time when there is someone five feet away to lay in bed and talk to about the big picture philsophical issues, the minor details of the day, and everything in between. It's fairly small, but we handle it. I just have to keep my mess to my side, and Ainsley keeps her order on her side. So far we've managed not to overflow but it's only been a month.

Anyway, that's the new place....this year, it's 'home'.

A New Era of Responsibility

2009-10-10T01:24:00.006-06:00

Parker - that is his name. My new pride and joy...well neither actually. Can I just say that getting a car is far less exciting when it's one you are paying for and that you are responsible for? When I finally got my license and could drive my dad's old 1994 Ford Taurus (Bruce - see blogpost dated March 2nd, 2009 for more on him), when I got to drive that car I was ecstatic. There was nothing better! I volunteered to run every errand under the sun, I spent every minute in that thing that I could, despite the fact that it had no air conditioning and for music the choices were either radio stations full of static or good old-fashioned tapes.

Oooooh how times change. When I bought Parker, which name he shall be called, I could barely bring myself to go 70mph on the freeway. I would leave a good twenty feet between me and the car in front of me at stop lights. I tried not to accelerate or break too fast for fear of damaging something. It was much less a toy or source of fun, and more a prized possession, needed for transportation to work, and something I felt a real sense of stewardship over. It was all I could do to let my dad take it for a test drive up and down the street the night I bought it. And when he came zooming past the house, clearly giving the accelerator a good test, I determined that I would never let anyone get behind Parker's wheel ever again.

Now the cautiousness has worn off a little, I've returned to my normal, faster, more efficient method of driving, and I've already gotten two speeding tickets since I started driving Parker. In fact, the second officer to pull me over felt it necessary to inform me that the most common cars pulled over by his officers were Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords, like Parker, because apparently they run so smoothly that people don't realize how fast they're going. Hmmm, but was he going to let me use this as an excuse? Heavens no. $260 ticket, signed and binding. All of you in Millard County out there, it's poor Accord and Camry owners like me that are paying for the frivolous expenses of your country leadership. I hope you feel good about that.

Anyway, while my driving style hasn't changed, there is definitely less of a sense of fun when driving Parker. It's much more sophisticated and responsible. I notice every scratch, every crumb, every noise. I feel like I have to up my game for Parker, he is a car deserving of NPR and nighttime Jazz. He represents a transition to a more grown-up and sophisticated phase in my life. It's sad to see the fun driving days end, but at the same time I enjoy my morning commutes with the Diane Rehm Show and evening commutes with All Things Considered. Besides, this new phase of life calls for different types of thrill-seeking and rebellion, and Parker won't be a part of it.

Be Still a Man

2009-10-06T23:46:00.007-06:00

Life since Europe has been an absolute whirlwind of school and work (I thought this was a perfect representation of the uniqueness of being a Philosophy major at BYU - two books laying on my bookshelf - very different reads.) Anyway, it got to the point where I was barely sleeping...and when I was asleep I was dreaming of forgetting things at work or missing class and bothering my roommate by apparently snoring like a bear and mumbling to myself during the night. None of these things are signs indicating a restful night's sleep, or good mental health for that matter. Anyway, life was insanely busy so I decided to take this last weekend and chill for a little while by joining my family at Lake Powell.

I was looking forward to getting away from all the couples and relationship garbage that is thrown in our faces down in Provo, but, what was one of the first things I heard after arriving on the houseboat with my family? A girl that I used to babysit (she and her family were in Lake Powell with us) was telling people about her boyfriend of 8 months! Yikes, so much for that.

I was looking forward to getting some much needed sun - it was cloudy and too cold for a swimsuit most of the time.

I was looking forward to eating more balanced meals instead of the junk I have in my apartment. However, my two greatest food nemeses won out at Lake Powell - I basically lived on Cheetos and chocolate covered raisins, with a few glasses of chocolate milk thrown in for good measure.

I was looking forward to a few days without worrying about messing anything up - no stress or obligations or expectations to maintain. Well - the very first day I got roped into a game of California speed, the epitome of stressful, and managed to lose - killing what had been a 3-year winning streak in the game.

I was looking forward to being out of the reach of email, so I wouldn't have to think about work for a few days. However, whenever we went out into Padre Bay, my phone would randomly get service for seconds here and there...just enough time to download the emails to my phone with their subject lines and the first couple words of the email body - but not enough to show the whole email. So I kept looking at the emails, trying to figure out what they said, and wondering the whole time what was going on and what I was missing.

However, despite the fact that the trip didn't quite go as planned, it was marvelous. It was a great break from the stress of daily life, and it allowed me to re-evaluate my priorities. There were certainly some unexpected difficulties but I realized I hadn't spend that much time talking to and enjoy the company of people I really liked in what felt like forever. I realized I had checked out of a lot of things that were really important to get too involved in work, and especially school. I think this idea is best summed up in something I read from David Hume, he was speaking about and to Philosophers specifically, but I think it applies to any profession or preoccupation that gets in the way of what's important. "Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man." So that is my plan...to be still a human being, amidst school, work, school and work...and more school and more work.

Europe: Self-Discoveries and Advice - #1

2009-08-13T19:56:00.007-06:00

I learned a lot in Europe, a lot about myself and what to do, and not to do while there. Life is a little crazy being back home, but I want to pass on the pearls of wisdom I gained. So I will attempt to do this over the next few weeks. One pearl at a time.

I have never been a sweets person, not a big chocolate fan, I generally prefer cheese. However, I discovered something in Europe that completely altered my sweet/salty priorities. It's called the Magnum Classic.
Normally you don't want to quote from the company marketing spiel, as it's clearly bias, but in this case their description is right on: The crack of the Magnum chocolate as you bite in, followed by the contrast of the smooth and silky ice cream transports you away to a land of luxury...the original, pinnacle of pleasure, Magnum Classic. Everything, from the bronzy wrapper, to fine-grain wooden stick, to the monogrammed 'M', to the rich chocolate, to the delectable vanilla bean ice cream on every bar....it all says 'pinnacle of pleasure'.

I became so addicted that people would have to physically restrain me to prevent me from buying one. I once had four in one day. My name is Jennifer and I have a problem...but I don't care, it's heaven in an ice cream bar and if I was back there I'd do it all again!

So, Europe advice: Seek out Magnum Classics for a refreshing, luxurious, delicious, artisan treat on hot afternoons. Beats the heck out of Gelato.

Warning: You may experience withdrawals once you've returned to the U.S., a barren land devoid of these, one of life's greatest pleasures. Symptoms include: late night grocery store raids searching for Magnum substitutes only to be disappointed by the unworthy Dove bars, frantic internet googling Magnums with the hope that someone, somewhere brings this joy to deprived U.S. citizens, and finally, massive consumption of all things sweet - aka over-compensation.

I Love Paris!

2009-07-27T16:18:00.012-06:00

I’m getting behind again, but I have to provide an update on Paris…possibly my favorite city in the world. We got there around 8pm and, thanks to the great location of our hotel, we immediately set out for the top of the Eiffel Tower. By the time we got up there it was dark so the views weren’t necessarily spectacular, but the wait in line provided great bonding opportunities.

The next morning we (Erica, Britt, Sarah, Mira, Ainsley, Melissa, and I) went straight to Notre Dame and got in line to climb to the top. It was about an hour wait but definitely worth it, in my opinion you get the best views of Paris from there because you get great views of the river on all sides, and you can get the Eiffel Tower in your pictures, not something you can do when you’re standing on it. Other highlights of that morning include eating my first crepe (butter and sugar…I was in heaven) and going to San Chappelle – a cathedral with walls made of 80% stained glass.

We grabbed lunch on the go, I had another crepe, this time with cheese, and hopped on the train to Versailles. The inside of the palace was closed, which was just fine with me, so we headed straight into the fabulous and extensive gardens (which were free!). We slowly made our way down to the main lake and decided to rent boats…possibly my favorite thing we’ve done so far. We all had had some experience rowing so we thought we could handle the 4-person rowboats fairly easily…not so much. It didn’t start well as we apparently all sat down backwards, but the nice French dock-worker helped us out there and also pushed us out to give us a little head start. But then, we managed to row ourselves right back in somehow, and ran into several boats on our way. We continued this difficulty with mobility until we finally got the hang of it and got out into the middle of the lake. We still had some trouble with hitting other boats or scraping them with our oars, and we’re pretty sure every single other boater on that lake hated the dumb American girls incapable of rowing by the end, but it was a great way to spend the afternoon. The gardens at Versailles are enormous so we didn’t even scratch the surface, but here is one small section we saw on the way out – it’s what you might call the first level of the backyard of the very west wing of the palace. Oh and there’s the spare lake, in case the king wanted to go for a swim but didn’t want to walk the ½ mile to the main lake. The extravagance of some of these royal sites in Europe is unbelievable.

After dining at an exceptionally slow French restaurant in the Latin quarter, we met up with the rest of the group for a boat ride on the Seine. There was a recorded guide playing but we were in the front and fairly talkative so we couldn’t hear a thing. In fact, some of the group was enjoying the ride so much that they decided to break out into song, but it wasn’t quite spontaneous. Somehow they got it into their head that they wanted to sing ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey, so they planned out a little musical number. One person would start then others would join in softly, this person would stand up, then the others would raise their hands up, etc. It was a nice idea in theory, but when it came to showtime it became clear that a couple of them didn’t know the words, and two in particular were fairly tone deaf. But they got it on camera and enjoyed themselves – I think most others on the boat did not. This was definitely one of those loud, obnoxious, American moments.

It was quite a long day, but we wanted to get in as much as possible during our short time in Paris, so after the boat ride we hopped on the metro out to the Arc d’triomph.. Coming home, I was fairly tired and wanted to get home quickly so I walked out in front of the group. I had been the leader most of the day since I remembered my way around fairly well, so I thought this would be fine. This time though, I didn’t stop often to make sure everyone was with me, and it turns out they weren’t. I got to a place where the turn was tricky, and stopped to make sure everyone went the right way for the right line, but no one was there. I waited for five minutes but gave up after that, thinking they had all either gone the wrong way or somehow gotten ahead of me. So I went and hopped on the train. It was probably 11pm so not too late, but I still felt slightly iffy about being there alone so I just pulled out my phone and started to read email, looking very busy. Two men sat down across the aisle from me and soon one started trying to ask me something in French. I explained that I didn’t speak French and so he tried to mime/communicate fireworks to me. I think he was asking when the fireworks from the Eiffel Tower would be. I told him I didn’t know and thought that was that, but then he asked me if I was American. I said yes, and he pointed to his companion and said, “He’s American.” I turned to the other man out of politeness and said “oh, where are you from?” He answered and I thought that was that, but no, pretty soon I was trapped in conversation with this guy, who, I realized, was clearly drunk. Next thing I know these two are inviting me to join them on the Eiffel Tower. I, being the idiot that I am and not thinking before I spoke, said, “Oh it’s closed tonight, I don’t think you can go up because they’re setting up for Bastille Day.” They would have gotten off at the next stop, but no, I had to tell them that it was closed. So they stayed, and were apparently getting off at the stop I was supposed to take, so I got off one stop early, hoped they wouldn’t follow me, and just walked back along the track to the right place. It was dark and I passed more than a few people sleeping on the ground between cars who did not look happy to see me…but in the end I made it. After that day I was ready for bed in a big way.

That was just day one in Paris, other highlights include my first encounter with tartare (see picture above), fireworks off the Eiffel Tower, more crepes, and lots of art. But I think I have to stop now...more on Switzerland and Austria soon to come.

The Sound of Music in Salzburg

2009-07-25T15:28:00.007-06:00

I spent the last few days in one of the most musical cities in Europe, Salzburg, Austria. On day one we did the Sound of Music tour, which means we saw the sites where Julie Andrews and co. sang those immortal songs...as well as actual sites where the real von Trapp family lived/walked/sang etc.

We spent our second day slightly differently, acting less like obnoxious American tourists and more like locals. We shopped during the day, spending way more money than we should've on fabulous items we felt we couldn't live without, and joined the Austrian aristocratic elite in an evening of sophistication. We took a funicular up to the main castle in Salzburg where we dined in a fancy restaurant with great views of the city and surrounding musical hills.

The first course was a fairly strange gelatin-with-beef dish, not our favorite. The second course was a delicious cup of soup, which somehow reminded someone of Christmas and as a result we all discussed our Christmas traditions for the rest of the meal. The third course, for me, was a salmon cooked in a white wine sauce with parsley potatoes....quite excellent. The dessert was 'a Mozart assortment' composed of some light chocolate ice cream and a small apple fritter with jam and powdered sugar in the shape of a treble clef. Great stuff, perfect to get us in the mood for the next stage of the evening.

We then adjurned to another higher room in the castle, where a string quarter played four pieces by Brahms, Hayden, Mozart and Dvorzac. It was fabulous and we all felt very posh. Then we came back to the reality that we are not wealthy aristocrats, rather we are cheap students....and ate McFlurries at McDonalds.

Paragliding in Switzerland!

2009-07-20T09:07:00.012-06:00

Ok, so I’ll have to go back and back-fill you in on Paris and Geneva, but for now let me just tell you about the here and now. Today I went paragliding….in the Swiss Alps. It was completely amazing. Let me preface this story by saying that I was heavily medicated when I set off for this little adventure. I have a pretty awful cold, congestion and coughing, the whole bit, so yesterday I went to the pharmacy and got some mystery German cold medicine. I have no idea what anything on the label says, but the woman at the Pharmacy said it was for colds so I bought it. I normally would have been hesitant to take German mystery medicine, but I haven’t been able to sleep at all since getting sick. It was either this or going back to Ambien, and I was not ready to go down that path again. I had also taken two Advil, had three cough drops, and eaten a healthy helping of scrambled eggs at breakfast. Having said that, here’s how the morning went down:

We took the train down to Interlaken and met up with the paraglider pilots who gave us our hiking boots and ushered us into a van with no instruction whatsoever. So there we were, six girls and two less-than-intimidating guys, in a van with nine Swiss men we’d just met. The guy who seemed to be in charge told us to choose our pilots, and after some hesitation, we all basically pointed to one of the guys. I chose one who looked fit, was fairly attractive, seemed like he would have a sense of humor, but also looked like he really knew what he was doing. In this case, my judgment of the book by it’s cover turned out to be very accurate. Bert (he spelled it Beat, but every time he said it, it sounded like Bert, said with a Swiss accent so it really sounds like Bear-t. Anyway, that’s what I called him.) turned out to be a great pilot, calm and happy no matter what.

So after ascending to almost 3,000 feet up (we’re pretty sure that’s how high the take-off point was from the ground, not sea level) on a tiny, windy road in a packed van I was starting to feel a little queasy. But as soon as we emerged and saw the view and where we would be gliding I, along with everyone in the group, could barely contain my excitement. Bert helped me get into my harness, pretty much a backpack with a wooden board underneath for a seat, and my helmet. The whole concept of needing a helmet kind of confused me…if we were to fall, the chances seemed very slim that helmets would be of much use. But I donned the helmet anyway, not feeling the great need to question Bert about what exactly would happen if we fell.

We reached the take off point, a hill with a pretty significant downhill grade, and were given our takeoff instructions, those being just to run until we couldn’t touch the ground anymore. It sounded too simple, but it worked like a charm and soon we were out soaring over the Alps! I wasn’t sure about the appropriate social protocol for such a situation, was I supposed to make conversation with Bert while in flight, or did he need to concentrate on steering? Even if I had decided to attempt to start a conversation, I think I would have failed miserably as I was pretty much overcome staring at the beautiful scenery and trying to snap whatever pictures I could.

After about twenty minutes of climbing higher and higher above the thick trees and beautiful blue lake, we made our way towards the town of Interlaken and our landing location. As we were starting to make our descent, Bert asked me if I liked roller coasters. Had I been safely on the ground, my answer would have been ‘yes’, but this didn’t seem like an offhand inquiry as to my thrill-ride preferences. I responded, “Yes, although if they’re too intense they make me sick.” He took this as a green light to do some corkscrew-like turns, but assured me that if I started to feel sick we cold stop. He did two, and I knew I was in trouble. I hadn’t been feeling completely stable stomach-wise since we’d left the ground but this had pushed me over the top. I told him we’d better stop, so he did and asked me if I was feeling sick….but as he was asking, the evidence that I was not had started to explode from my stomach all over the little town of Interlaken. I’m not sure if it was the meds or just straight-up motion sickness, but after several minutes of emptying my stomach I felt just fine, and even laughed a little at the thought of my breakfast raining down on someone below…not a very nice thought, but still amusing. Maybe I was used as a sort of pre-Sodom & Gomorrah warning, I rained down vomit, but next time the big guy is bringing fire and brimstone

Bert and I did not escape my sickness unscathed unfortunately, and I felt bad for that but he just laughed and we went over to the fountain in the park to wash up a little. I felt kind of silly washing my jacket in the a fountain in the middle of a city, and as people walked by, I wondered if they thought we were homeless and just using the fountain as some sort of washing machine. Despite this tiny hiccup at the end, it was a great experience, possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I highly recommend it for anyone and everyone, although I would advise you not to experiment with German mystery medicine and Swiss scrambled eggs right before takeoff.

Belgium

2009-07-14T15:59:00.009-06:00

So we left the Netherlands and went to Belgium. My main comment about that country? Waffles. That is all anyone needs to know about Belgium. I thoroughly enjoyed them plain, with chocolate, and with strawberries.

Our first stop was in a very cool little town called Brugge. Belgium is known for it's lace and chocolate, so of course people spent what little time we had there shopping for lace and chocolate. I am not so much a shopper, so I walked and walked and walked and just explored the cool side-streets. They were little narrow cobblestone streets with old building all around, and towards the back near the river/canal (I never really know the difference) we found a lace sewing factory place and some huge windmills. In our explorations we also ran across a church with a crowd of people around it, so of course we thought there must be something cool at this church and we went up to check it out. We joined in with the crowd but then a bride and groom exited the church and everyone around us started to clap...turns out we'd ended up in the middle of a wedding party with our cameras out and backpacks on. Needless to say we did not blend in. We tried to back slowly out of the group to avoid bothering them anymore than we already had, but it turned out that they were all going the same direction we were. So there we were (one friend had her giant, digital, SLR camera hanging around her neck) walking down the street with this wedding party as they were on their way to a pub for some sort of afterparty. We felt slightly like stalkers or paparazzi but the bride didn't seem to notice us so it was alright. The rest of the group didn't seem to mind the dumb American girls too much either.

After leaving Brugge, which we LOVED, we arrived in Brussels. Our bus driver had to take the back way in for some reason, so we drove through what felt like murder city and when we arrived at our hotel there was a fight going on near the entrance. It was not the best welcome and that definitely tainted our view of the place. The hotel was nice but had a strange style of decor....pictures of moldy food adorned the halls and the lobby. Seeing a giant picture of a moldy orange (see left) is not exactly what you want to look at as you're on your way to breakfast.

Despite our first impressions of the city, we did decide to explore the next day. So, after meeting with panel of expatriots working in Brussels, we went down to the main square and changed our minds, at least slightly, about Brussels. A big group of us started at the main plaza and then made our way to what is apparently Brussels' most famous tourist attraction.

It's title sort of speaks for itself...it's called Manneken-pis. We heard two different stories explaining the title: One was that some important building caught on fire, so this little boy tried to do his part to put it out by relieving himself on it. The second story is that relieving yourself in public is illegal in Brussels, but one little boy disobeyed and was found making designs on a wall. Well, a witch came up to him, and as punishment, turned him into stone. Whatever the story...there is a statue of a little boy creating a fountain of water. Strange thing to have as the main tourist attraction in your city, very strange. Kind of typical of my experience in Brussels though...something's a little off. We heard there was a girl version of the statue somewhere too but didn't look to hard for it.

Beyond eating waffles probably the funnest thing we did in Brussels was laundry. About ten of us walked around the corner to the laundromat, struggled mightily trying to figure out the system and which detergent to use, received assistance from the non-English speaking owner, and just sat and talked in there until we had nice clean laundry. It was a fun hangout and it was wonderful to have clean clothes again.

That was a long summary of Belgium...but I will say again, all you need to know is waffles. Next up, the best city in the world, Paris!

London & Amsterdam

2009-07-09T14:03:00.029-06:00

We've been in London and then Amsterdam for the past few days, here's an update on what's happened:

Here I am taking two embarrassingly touristy photos in London, one with Big Ben and the other in one of the many phone booths (kind of cool that those haven't gone away in London yet). What can I say, I got caught up in the moment, gave into peer pressure, swallowed my pride...and I liked it.

That's me at the Tower of London. I have no idea why they call it the Tower because it's practically a village in there. We saw the crown jewels which was amazing but also disgusting in a way. The extravagance was shocking, there was a Grand Punch Bowl made of solid gold and big enough to hold more than 100 bottles of wine! I cannot imagine needing a bowl that large unless you planned to bathe in it! We also saw the many suits of armor which belonged to Henry VIII. He was either extremely well-endowed or....he had his armor made to over-compensate for an area in which he was lacking. Either way, I've never seen anything quite like it.

We ate Indian Food (chicken tiki masala and naan bread... mmmmm) and all 31 of us saw Les Miserables together. It was pretty incredible and we still have the songs stuck in our heads.

Here Bitt, Ainsley and I are standing on the dock in a little village in the Netherlands. We have no idea what the village was called, our bus driver is Dutch and he kept saying it but we couldn't ever quite catch it. I do know it has 'dam' on the end of it, but what city in the Netherlands doesn't?We missed out on taking a picture with one of the Buckingham Palace guards but this was definitely the next best thing. When Brits refer to 'beefeaters' they're referring to these, not consumers of beef.After arriving in Amsterdam we stopped at a little Dutch shop called Cheese and Clogs where they made just that, cheese and clogs. We watched a demonstration on cheese-making, complete with delicious samples of seven kinds of cheeses including Gouda (apparently correctly pronounced 'how-duh'), Stinging Nettle Cheese, and Garlic & Onion cheese. I of course couldn't resist and bought myself a wheel of Gouda. We also got to watch a demonstration of how wooden shoes are made, Hans made it very entertaining. Then we were left to explore the shop and the many different sizes of wooden shoes laying around.

In Amsterdam we visited the Van Gogh museum, as evidenced by my bag, and the Anne Frank House. Both were well worth it, and seeing the secret annex where the Franks and four others hid was very interesting and made me want to right out and read the Anne Frank diaries. We also walked through much of the city and were surprised at all of the canals, they were everywhere! We heard that there are more canals in Amsterdam than in Venice and after being there we believe it.

Our last visit in the Netherlands was to a flower auction. Apparently every day at 4am buyers gather to bid on flowers from around the world. The sheer volume of flowers was amazing, and the efficiency with which they are bought and shipped is incredible. Apparently the flowers can be bought and arrive at the nursery within 24 hours. We walked through this flower warehouse, probably a mile long, and it was just packed with pallets and pallets of flowers like these.

Next up: Belgium!

Update from Europe

2009-07-07T17:26:00.010-06:00

Ok so I've been a negligent blogger...but I'm keeping up on email so if you want to ask anything or give any advice on what to see while here shoot me an email! I can answer them on long bus rides and when there is no internet access.

So after the hiccup with the arrival in Spain, we've just been going, going, going. Rather than attempting to describe everything that's happened since then, here are some highlights:

So we spent two of our evenings in Madrid sitting in the Plaza Mayor, a sort of town square where people come to eat or drink and enjoy the fabulous ambiance of Spanish Summer evenings. Here we are having drinks in the plaza, I ordered a chocolate shake which turned out to be chocolate milk, Ainsley ordered water, as she has done the entire trip...not the adventurous type. Other highlights in Spain include the Prado, visiting the little town of Toledo, and just walking the streets of Madrid.

We went from Madrid to Edinburgh, Scotland which was a dramatic climate change - from hot and dry to cool and humid. Our first evening there we hiked up an extinct volcano where we had great views of Edinburgh (see picture at right with Edinburgh castle in the background on the left) and also met three new friends who invited us to stay, drink, smoke, and sing with them. I was tempted...but my companions were not so we declined.

Other highlights from Scotland include touring the highlands and running into a bagpiper in the middle of nowhere, seeing Loch Lomond, the cute and fabulous bed & breakfast we stayed in, and walking up and down the Royal Mile (the central street in old-town Edinburgh. In this picture I am spitting on a heart in the street. It is apparently the only place in Edinburgh where spitting is legal and it is supposed to bring good luck. However, we spend a good ten minutes standing there while waiting for everyone to get a good picture, and after seeing/hearing all the various wads of spittle fly onto the sidewalk, or in one case, splash up onto me, I was ready to forfeit my spitting rights and vacate the area.

We spent two days in Preston, England, going to the temple on Saturday and church in the morning on Sunday. It was a fairly relaxing stop but we were all ready to get to London.

Monday morning we started the long drive to London, taking detours to the Wedgewood factory, a famous pottery company, and Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. We loved visiting the Wedgewood factory, the boys were less impressed, but even they had to admit that seeing the way it was made and painted was interesting. I think almost every girl bought at least one thing, I was proud of myself for buying only two items, a cup and saucer, that were very inexpensive. Here Ainsley, Sarah and I are eating at the Wedgewood cafe, which was delicious, off of Wedgewood dishes. All-in-all a fun little sidetrip that helped break up the drive.

When we arrived in London the first night we were all starving so we set out for Picadilly Circus and found a great little Italian restaurant. We were all thrilled to finally have a good solid meal, where we actually felt full. Plus the waiter was great...he told us the nights he's on while we're here so some of us may be going back :)

We decided to do a little bit of walking around aftet dinner, so, guided by my trusty Rick Steves book, I lead the group towards Trafalgar Square. We ended up in a few dark alleys, and at the end it took us a half hour in the rain to find a Tube station, but we were not lost at any point, despite what some may have said or thought. It was a fun way to spend our first night and at the very least we'll have great memories of being soaked in dark London alleys...post-walk pictures and a description of today's edition of 'Lost in London' all coming soon so stay tuned!

Greetings from Spain!

2009-06-29T16:04:00.006-06:00

So we arrived in Spain this morning at 9:30am, after a very very long flight. However, thanks to the miracle of drugs, with a little help from an accidental overdose it flew by. I managed to procure some Ambien for the trip so I could sleep on the plane. I could SWEAR I was told to take two...but upon further inquiry that was incorrect.

So, there I was, on the plane out of Atlanta thinking how long the 8-hour flight was going to be and just hoping the meds would help...little did I know. Apparently about forty minutes in I started getting fairly loopy, insiting that Ainsley and I watch the same movie, but not quite being able to navigate the buttons on the TVs in the seats in front of us. Thankfully I kept to myself this trip as I have a history of becoming a little too outgoing when on sleeping meds, but I am sorry Ainsley had to deal with me. I barely remember asking for the chicken dinner option and then I was out, next thing I knew we were landing in Madrid and the breakfast Ainsley had gotten for me was sitting on her tray, as it had been for at least an hour.

I have never had a flight go by so quickly and I was thanking my lucky stars for this mircaulous sleeping drug...but then I had to sit up. I quickly started to feel sick, and the only thing that helped was leaning over to go back to sleep on my tray table. Of course this was not in line with the 'seats and tray tables in their full, upright, and locked position policy' so that didn't last long. By the time we were exiting the plane I knew what was coming. As we shuffled past the first-class seats I struggled with all my might to refrain from exploding all over them but as we walked up the exit ramp I couldn't help it, and made a bit of a mess all over my hand and sleeve. Luckily I hadn't had much to eat so the volume was limited, but the smell is the smell and it was highly unpleasant.

After cleaning up a bit we met my uncle who drove us out to his house, I struggled to keep up with his numerous questions but it was a long drive and I was regretting every bite of food I had eaten. When we arrived at their awesome house, large backyard, pool, and all, I said a quick hello to my aunt, and after they showed us our room I pretty much hit the bed and slept for three hours. Ainsley meanwhile was stuck playing with my energetic young cousins while I tried to sleep of my overdose and made periodic trips to the bathroom.

I did make an almost-full recovery though, enough to join my cousins for dinner and then make a trip into the city for the evening. We walked around Madrid for three hours and enjoyed the fabulous weather (almost exactly like Salt Lake Summer evenings), the amazing architecture, and the fascinating people-watching. Unfortunately no pictures of the airport/bed scene, but here a few from our evening walk.This is me in front of the Royal Palace, which we hope to enter tomorrow. The post was supposed to communicate a feeling of belonging, and say 'one day wealth and power will all be mine'. Didn't quite come off that way though...but hey, it'd been a loooong day.
We thought this sign was funny, we wondered if it was just ice cream with an 'n' added on, or if they just thought there cream was nice. Then my uncle explained that it was probably named for Nice, the city in France. We hope no one overheard us discussing that...one of many culturally/geographically ignorant moments I'm sure.Last, and probably least, I just thought this lampost was cool, is it just me or does that look like a soccer ball? Overall, the time we've spent sightseeing has been great so far. I'm off to bed...my stomach isn't quite back to normal, hoping it's all fine by tomorrow we can start sampling some real local cuisine!

Subjects Not To Discuss Until Age 7

2009-06-08T18:42:00.008-06:00

While I am home for the Summer I have been asked to help with the primary kids at church. My initial reaction was excitement because my memories of being in Primary were all of treats and singing and games...much more exciting than sitting around with women twice my age in Relief Society. (For last week's lesson the teacher put up a big quote on the board which said something about remaining faithful lest we be 'cast down to Hell'. Uplifting yes? But it got better, one woman told a story about evil spirits sitting in the back seat of her car, I kid you not. Now I'm not denying the existence of evil spirits/negative karma/bad juju or whatever, but it was a little awkward.)

Anyway, I had my first Primary assignment yesterday, teaching the 4 year-olds. The lesson title was I am Grateful for Food & Clothing but could have been more accurately titled Subjects Not To Discuss Until Age 7. The first problem was that this food lesson fell on Fast Sunday, so talking about food at 3:30pm when I had been without since the night before put me off my game a little. Second, the lesson manual focused on teaching about where food and clothing comes from (animals and plants). I thought this would be pretty easy, I brought some examples of various foods (carrots, cheese, bread, etc. - edible object lessons to keep their minds and mouths occupied), and we talked about where each came from. Then I asked the three kids what their favorite foods were, the first kid, Van, yelled, "Chicken Nuggets!"

In response to his outburst, I continued the theme of discussing where food comes from, I asked them if they knew where Chicken Nuggets came from, they said no. Well they actually stared blankly back at me, which I took to mean no, so I explained that they came from chickens. This turned out not to be such a good idea. The follow-up question, which I should have seen coming, was, "How? From the eggs?" "No," I explained, "From the meat of the chicken." "Where's the meat?" Van was staring up at me, honest curiosity radiating from his large brown eyes, a very rare occurence in my experiences with this hyper-active child. Then I was trapped, was it really my job to communicate the brutality involved with the creation, or rather compilation of Chicken Nuggets to an innocent 4 year-old? How could I show this kid's favorite food for the disgusting amalgamation of leftover parts that it really is when he was staring up at me like that? I didn't think this dilemma was one that I, a 20 year-old subsitute teacher with no children of my own, should have to deal with. But I also couldn't lie in reponse to such an honest query, so I brushed it off by saying, "The meat is all over the chicken. Who wants to play a game?". I silently congratulated myself on the stealthy avoidance of a serious issue. But then, the game I had thought up went awry.

I had the kids point to different items of clothing and then explained where the materials of each came from. (I'm no expert on that subject, so my answers were basically restricted to cotton or sheep's wool, I'm fairly sure that did not cover every item they pointed to but I was not about to explain where one child's leather belt came from!)

However, I did make the mistake of asking the question, "Why do we need clothes?" Clearly, I should have known from my experiences with four brothers, that this question would inevitably lead to a comment about nakedness, apparently one of the most hilarious words on earth to 4 year-olds. I should have avoided asking the question for that reason alone, I could not however, have predicted the unfortunate response given, again from Van. He started with the simple statement, "So we don't have to run around naked in the house," but then it got uncomfortable, "Sometimes me and my dad run around naked when my mom's not home." While the other two students laughed uproariously at the word 'naked', I had an unfortunate image run through my mind of Van and his dad, who I know a little bit and who had in fact, been sitting in front of us in Sacrament Meeting that morning, strpping the second his wife left the house and running around in some sort of strange, male-ritualistic free-for-all. (I thought it would be inappropriate to post a picture of the image I had in my head, but I thought this summed it up pretty well.)

There was no recovering, at that point I just resorted to crowd-control tactics for small children, I pulled out the markers and paper and we colored for the last ten minutes. Thankfully, they were so excited about the candy bar they each got to help them remember to be grateful for food, that they forgot about the 'naked' discussion and kept their drawings to a series of unfathomable scribbles that they claimed were innocent items like strawberries and batman pajamas.

Next Stop: Senior Citizen Discounts

2009-05-13T21:37:00.005-06:00

I turn 21 in October. I realize it is far too early to start talking about and/or planning for this birthday, I only bring it up because this fact is important in providing some perspective on my experience today. I have really been looking forward to being 21 because I will finally be able to go to bars. The bar atmosphere is probably not really my scene, and drinking isn't really my thing either, however, the fact that I am not allowed to enter certain buildings just beacuse I have not reached a certain age pre-decided by some legislators somewhere...well that really gets me. I hate being limited in any way by my age, it's just a number! But after age 21, there's really only one more age barrier to cross...that being age 65 when I'll be allowed to get Senior Citizen discounts. Sweet! The point of all that is to say I have never been afraid of aging, I embraced it, whenever I got asked that 'If you had one wish...' question I would answer, without hesitation, that I would like to fast-forward my life, TiVo style, to age 55. Today though, today might just have changed my entire outlook on the slow process of decay we call aging.

As I was walking out of Harmons, the grocer in my neighborhood, a blonde, high-school-senior-looking guy was walking in pushing several carts. (I have included a rough depiction of said guy here. I couldn't find an actual picture that quite matched his look so I created this approximate but well-done representation.) He had quite a load from his chore of cart collecting so I moved all the way to one side to let him pass more easily. As we made eye contact he smiled, always a nice thing, especially from a fairly attractive guy, and then, it spoke. "Have a wonderful day ma'am," it said. I smiled back thinking "That was a nice of him." But when I reached my car, I paused, "I believe he just called me ma'am. That boy, that nice-looking one who I made eye contact with and with whom I exchanged smiles, he called me ma'am." I spent the entire car ride home attempting to wrap my mind around the fact that I had just been "ma'am"ed. At first I attributed his confusion to the fact that I had just come from work, and was looking fairly professional. But while I was dressed for work, I was wearing jeans...so I couldn't have looked professional enough to merit a 'ma'am'. I looked in the mirror, "Is it my hair?" but I couldn't find anything in my hair that merited a 'ma'am' either. I checked for wisdom lines (wrinkles), "I know I get some creases after I've been making my concentration face for awhile, maybe they stuck longer than usual," although after inspection I could see no signs that the creases were becoming more permanent.

I'm utterly puzzled, and I would ask for ideas on why I might have been mistaken for a 'ma'am', but I don't think my self-esteem can take it. The conclusion I have come to is that this boy somehow made a terrible mistake, and I don't want it to happen again anytime soon. No senior citizen discounts for me thanks, no wisdom lines, no golden years, at least not yet. I'm no 'ma'am'. I'm 20! And I like it that way.

A Gem of a Book and Its Average Cover

2009-04-16T23:12:00.005-06:00

If you haven't heard of Susan Boyle or seen her performance you've got to check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Her story is at once both a representation of triumph over preconception, and disturbing evidence of the lack of depth currently existing in humanity. No one who saw Susan Boyle was expecting what came out of her mouth, no one. We took our opinions about her external self and extended them to a judgment and dismissal of her as a human being.

Now why did this woman become a worldwide sensation, over 50 million views on Youtube, virtually overnight? Because she conquered the obsession with packaging. People like Susan Boyle give us hope in the idea that good is good, no matter what form it's in. She gives us hope that being good is good enough, that beauty and charisma are not necessary to succeed when every day we are presented with evidence to the contrary. She reminds us that we need to be willing to see positivity and goodness wherever it is, without some preconceived notions of what it should look like. Susan Boyle was and is a symbol of something we all want to believe in...that covers really don't have anything to do with the quality of the books, you never know what ugliness an attractive cover is hiding or what beauty an unappealing cover is protecting.

Doctor Dread

2009-03-18T18:09:00.016-06:00

Why is it that we dread going to the doctor so much? No one looks forward to it, and as I drove to my appointment the other day, I couldn't really remember what was so dreadful about the whole thing. Apparently, it had been so long that I'd completely blocked the awfulness that accompanies even routine visits.

My new doctor's office is at a GIANT medical complex right in the middle of the Salt Lake valley, it's so big in fact, that they offer complimentary valet parking. Valet parking! I passed on this option, feeling like I could leave that to the sick people. Plus, I haven't cleaned my car in awhile and I'd prefer not to have strangers see it in its current state. I managed to find a parking spot, the building was just a distant speck to me then, got out of the car and made the LONG trek to the building, which I found out, was no speck, but rather a great and spacious building. This should have been a sign to me of the unpleasantness that lay waiting inside, but instead I entered, unsuspecting.

I didn't even make it inside before the unpleasantness began, as I was walking through the doors, I noticed something wasn't quite right....I shifted around a little and realized my bra had come unsnapped. Thinking that would send the wrong message when the doctor came into my exam room, I navigated the maze that was the first floor of 'the tower' and fixed the issue in the bathroom.

Then the real problems began. When you walk into the lobby of this place, there is a long list of doctors on the wall next to the elevator. If you're not there just to see one of those physicians, you better ask the info lady standing near the door because if you don't, there's no way you'll find the right place. Signs for various labs and procedures point every which way and it would be quite easy, especially if you are, as many of the people I saw, old, infirm, or ill in any way, to get lost. My problem was, I knew I was there to see one of the listed doctors, but I couldn't remember which one. So I did a very not-me thing to do. I have a habit, most common in adult males, of not asking for help and/or directions. But I didn't want this appointment to take any longer than it had to, so I meandered casually over to the info desk lady and said, "I don't know where I'm supposed to be. I think I'm supposed to see one of those doctors," gesturing to the exhaustive list, "but I'm not sure which one. I know the guy I saw last time has a beard." Realizing how stupid this sounded as it came out of my mouth, I suddenly saw a name that sounded vaguely familiar, so I told the lady, "Nevermind, I think that's him. Thanks." It was a gamble, but one I was willing to take in order to avoid looking completely stupid in front of that woman, again. I took the elevator up to the floor I guessed I was supposed to be on, everything looked right, and the woman at the desk knew who I was so I had guessed correctly. Evidence of my brilliance.

The nurse called me back almost right after I got there, highly unusual for a doctor's office, especially since I had arrived thirty minutes early. (When they called to remind me of my appointment they said to plan on thirty minutes to park and check-in, I thought it was ridiculous but after seeing the parking lot I understood why.) Anyway, she took me back and then I remembered why I don't like doctor's appointments. We walked around the corner and there was the scale (pause reading here for emphasis, were this a movie the music would suddenly get frightening) with a chair next to it where she said I could put all my 'heavy stuff'. I wanted to ask exactly how much 'stuff' I could put on that chair, but didn't. I stepped on the scale, she wrote down the number, but then said, "That's your weight in kilograms just so you know," then pushed a button, "and that's your weight in lbs." As if I thought I suddenly weighed as much as my six year-old brother? As if she thought I had some delusional hope that the very small first number was my weight in pounds?! She didn't even write down the pounds number, she just showed it to me as an FYI, as if I needed to see that? And so it began...

I do have to say that the nurse was really nice, she remembered me, even though I had only been there once, remembered my mom and asked about her, remembered that I go to BYU, and responded very reasonably when I told her I was majoring in Philosophy. She also said I had 'perfect' blood pressure, I liked those numbers a little better than the first ones she insisted on showing me. Then she left me to wait for the doctor. An interesting phenomenon occurs during that waiting period, even if you're just there for a routine check-up, siting amongst all those tools, in the sterile room, listening to people in the halls walking around and talking in hushed tones, waiting until the footsteps stop at your door...it gets a little uncomfortable. Then a sound exactly like my elementary school bell went off and a woman came on the intercom saying, "Emergency department, shock/trauma, priority one," followed by a room number. So I started thinking about the poor person who probably just flatlined, images of Grey's Anatomy running through my head, getting me all worked up, when the sound comes again and the woman says, "Please disregard alarm, please disregard." What, did the guy not even last until the emergency crew got there? Must they announce things like that to every room in the building?

Anyway, the doctor finally came in at 1:45, my appointment time exactly. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that at this place they have residents who come in first because they're trying to learn. Ugh, I'm all in favor of education but this was a real inconvenience, I had to get back to work, and whatever I told this guy was just going to have to be repeated for the real doctor. Now my description of resident boy may sound a little harsh and judgemental, but medical students need people to push them so they can be the best doctors they can be!

So this guy comes in, and he's basically a child. I mean really, I'm young I know, but he looked like he was in high school, plus he was smaller than me. He was a teeny, childish man. I judged him, and the minute he started speaking I started to rate him on his doctoring skills...first item, awkward small-talk. He failed patient small-talk, failed. He asked me what school I went to, what I was doing there, I said Philosophy, he said, "Oh, lots of philosophical things," with a knowing smile and a laugh as though he had just made a good joke! I get a lot of odd comments when I tell people my major, lots, but this was by far the least intelligent. All he did was turn the word Philosophy into an adjective! If I had said I was a Biology major, would he have said, "Ah, lots of Biological things," or what about English, "Ah lots of English things"? I was less than impressed. Then he asked me a bunch of pertinent medical questions, including whether or not I was allergic to any medications. I said Ceclor, he said, "Ok, what is that?".... What is that? Honestly, that is not the question you want to hear from you doctor, and I have no idea what it is! I just know my mom used to say that when she would take me to the doctor. So he pulls out his little PDA and has to look it up. He says, "Ah it's an anti-biotic." Oh wait, I did know that, I just thought he needed something a little more....complex than that, for example that it's in a group of drugs called cephalosporin antibiotics.

Then we went on to the actual medical testing, checking my heart beat, checking my throat, I had a piece of gum in my mouth so I'm sure he enjoyed looking down my throat and seeing that. Then there was the ear-checking and the eye checking, which he took VERY seriously. He started about eight inches from my face, and over the course of forty-five seconds moved to within two inches, once for each eye! He made me think I had some cornea problem that was hard to diagnose. But then after checking each, he put the light away non-chalantly and said, "Alright, looks good. Now the reflexes."

Can I ask something? Why is it, I mean really, why is it that even for a routine check-up doctors insist on hitting your knee with a hammer? What problem can be diagnosed if for some reason my leg doesn't kick up a little in response? If anyone reading this is in med school and/or understands this please explain.

After this, and some more awkward check-up stuff, he left to get the real doctor. More waiting, more examining of various medical instruments and curiosity about what exactly went on in that room before I got there....then real doctor came in (pictured at left). He was extraorindarily condescending, sometimes saying something, then repeating the phrase using smaller words so as to clarify in case I didn't understand. Then he had to listen to my heart because apparently he didn't trust resident boy to do it right, and let's face it, neither did I. But all-in-all I was happy to have made it out realtively unscathed. No needles, no unnecssary tests, just the routine awkardness and unpleasantness that is inescapable at every doctor's visit.

Facebook 'Friends'

2009-03-16T22:15:00.001-06:00

Social networking...it's the next big thing. People of all ages are participating, even businesses are getting in on the game.

Now I enjoy Facebook as much as the next person who loves knowing all about people without having the burden of maintaining a non-virtual relationship. But what Facebook has done to the word "Friend" is interesting. It seems to me that this social networking business has altered the meaning and thus the usefulness of the word.

What exactly does it mean to be someone's 'Friend' on Facebook? A few examples from my own Facebook Friend collection:

We went to the same high school and might have had a class or two together...so let's be Facebook Friends, it will boost our numbers.

We went to elementary school together, I always thought you were crazy, but now that we're Facebook Friends I can see actual proof...pictures of you at your Wicken cult meetings, etc.

We're second cousins, the least we could do is become Friends on Facebook, we share a great-grandmother!

We were in English class together where you were constantly on Facebook. We were talking one day while waiting for the professor to arrive and you said, "What's your last name?" I said, "West." You said, "Ok I'm adding you on Facebook,"and I, well it would have been awkward the rest of the semester if I hadn't accepted. Now your constant status updating is extremely agitating, especially the Nicholas Sparks quotes, but addicting at the same time. I can' get enough of the weirdness.

You play for the Jazz, I friended you on a whim and you accepted! I love you and I love Facebook!You're 60 years old, have no idea how to use Facebook, and so I feel as though I get all the benefits of Facebook Friendship without the burdens. Plus, you're more likely to put some interesting tidbits out somehwere I can see them because you don't quite get just how open this thing is to everyone under the sun.

You friended me at least three times, I didn't have the heart to say no again.

You were dating one of my friends, now you're not, I barely know you and yet we are still Facebook Friends.

I work with you, and it was easier to get a response from you by facebook messaging you than by actually coming to your office. You respond faster to Facebook messages than emails anyway.
I've never met you in person, but we apparently will be going to Europe together this Summer so we may as well start the virtual relationship now to prepare. Plus your profile picture is of you scuba diving next to a GIANT fish and I want to know more...is it real? Was it dangerous? Where was this taken?

Should I consider all these people my friends? Do we hang out on the weekends? Could I call them up if I was in trouble? No, I think not. But what? This is a quasi-relationship that needs a term, and I think this term lies somewhere between Friend and Stranger.

Bruce - A Eulogy

2009-03-02T15:16:00.005-07:00

Last week I received some bad news that Bruce had given up the ghost, so I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate a post to him and the good times we shared.

I was introduced to Bruce through my dad. We hit it off immediately but I don't think either my dad or I could have guessed how great Bruce would be for me and my family, and how long he'd be such a big part of our lives.

Bruce, well he was a character. He was a little older than was acceptable for most people my age, he had some scars and stains from the wrecks and spills of life, and had a pretty expansive trunk for his size, but he was my first and I'll never forget him. I never would have been able to get around without those first few times with Bruce.

He was a great listener, I could talk for hours with him, and say whatever I wanted and never worry about what he thought. He didn't require conversation, and could appreciate the value of silence. Sometimes we'd just sit there not saying anything, but at the same time we knew were moving in the same direction.

We shared some deeply sad moments, I could cry with him and he would just be there for me, but also some extraordinarily happy moments, I never sang louder than when I was with Bruce.

There were some troubled moments too, once we had an uncomfortable confrontation with an undercover narcotics agent when we were caught giving in to peer-pressure and doing some things we shouldn't have. We were a little gun shy for awhile afterwards, but we laughed at the experience later and became better because of it.

Some of our greatest triumphs together were conquering the elements. Once we found ourselves in the bleak, blizzardy, sub-zero temperatures of Wyoming, but we really bonded then. He kept me toasty warm through the whole ordeal.

The heat of Utah summers used to get to Bruce too. We had some scary health moments when he'd get a little over-heated due to over-exertion, but I was able to sit with him until he cooled down or help arrived.

I've moved on to a more robust and younger model now, but it's never quite been the same as it was with Bruce. He struggled with the peaks and valleys of life, stalling on the steep ones occasionally, and some said he wasn't fit to be with me, but his flaws made him lovable.

He did his best and never let me down. I am just so grateful to have had him as long as I did and he will truly be missed.

I don't have many pictures of Bruce, but this one captures his spirit pretty well. Even when he wasn't exactly clean, he had a certain glint and shine to him.

For those of you who got to know Bruce, feel free to post your comments below.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad....Boobs?

2009-02-05T18:18:00.002-07:00

I am. I am afraid, so afraid.

I ran across this story today...at first I thought there were no words. However, then I realized that those uh, melons, deserve some sort of tribute. This woman, Sheyla Hershey, broke up with her British boyfriend because her begged her to stop with the surgeries. He had paid for many of her previous surgeries but apparently this last one was just too much for him. She said, "I loved him very much but I had to leave him to follow my dream." Well, she apparently dreams big, really big. Big may not even be sufficient to describe her 'dreams'. Apparently in the most recent surgery, which took her from a size 34FFF to a size 38KKK, the doctors used an entire gallon of silicone. An entire gallon! Think of a gallon of milk, except instead of milk, it was a gallon of plastic used in the 9th breast enlargement surgery alone! It gives new meaning to the term 'jugs'.

I felt a little iffy about posting this photo, but trust me the others are much worse. You can click on the link below to see the full story, and you can see more pictures. I've seen pregnant women with stomachs smaller than one of her plastic filled...twins!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,488384,00.html

Just think of how her new enhancements will diminish her quality of life. She won't be able to drive, every time she shifted in her seat the horn would honk. She could never ride a roller coaster, think of how painful it would be trying to pull those shoulder straps down over those things! Think of the back problems she will have to deal with for the rest of her life, and she will never be able to shop at regular-sized-person clothes stores again!

Ahem, Ahem....Clarification

2009-02-02T21:31:00.004-07:00

I have apparently not given a sufficient explanation for my idleness this semester, so just to clarify:

I am NOT attending school this semester. (The standard line is that I just needed a break. Sometimes there is more to it than that, and sometimes there isn't. But for now I am thoroughly enjoying the break from homework and luckily, since I chose a short major, I have time to take a semester off.)
However,
I AM living in Provo (Same apartment, same roommates. Only they could make living in Provo bearable.)
I AM working (Same job, Marketing Intern at Control4, enjoying making money and learning about business.)
And,
I AM planning on going back to BYU next Fall.

And to address a few other FAQs:
I AM still a University of Utah fan and always will be despite the school I attend or where I live.
And,
I am NOT dating anyone currently. (You can stop wondering Mother.)

An Announcement, a Request, and an Opinion

2009-01-21T19:44:00.013-07:00

I've not been a responsible blogger over the last few months, I've been an infrequent poster, and my blog has not only been lacking in quantity but quality as well. So, in an effort to remedy this situation I've decided to take a break from school this semester. Instead I plan to work full-time and in my spare time I will hopefully be a more productive blogger. The problem is, I don't think these two things will fill all the hours in my day, so I'm looking for a good hobby. I thought about starting a pedigree circus rat breeding business, however I haven't been able to find any evidence that circus rats actually exist. (Note: The rat pictured here is just your average everyday rat with no circus talents.) Then I thought and thought and thought...and then I gave up. I am now counting on the readers of this blog to decide how I will use my newly gained free time...find me a hobby!

Well....for now this is my hobby so I'm just going to keep writing. I don't intend to turn my blog into my political soapbox, however I do just want to weigh in on the Obama inaugural address. I agree with many people in that his speech Tuesday was not the best we've heard from him in the last year. But the emotional, soaring rhetoric of his campaign speeches wouldn't have been appropriate in this speech. He needed to bring people back to reality a little bit in terms of their expectations of him and the country for the next four years without killing the hope that he tried so hard to create. He had to portray a stoic optimism, and I think he did by openly and bluntly acknowledging the challenges we are facing, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of hard work in making America's dream or any American's dreams possible.

Keys to the Game

2009-01-02T11:01:00.002-07:00

We're about 7 hours away from kickoff here in New Orleans so it seems that now would be an appropriate time to list my 'Keys to the Game' for Utah. What makes me qualified to do this? Almost nothing, but hey, this is my blog and I think after the game it will be evident about how right I am.

First and foremost, we MUST prevent our offensive and defensive lines from being totally exhausted by the 3rd quarter. There has been a lot of talk about the size of the 'bama line in comparison to ours. Well, true it's nice for us that the Outland Trophy winner Andre Smith is suspended. However, on average the Alabama linemen outweigh ours by 50 lbs, on AVERAGE! Also, there is Terrence Cody, the man they call Mount Cody, partly because it's a place and partly because he is huge. He anchors their defensive line at 365lbs, yes that's right, a defensive lineman who weighs 365lbs. Our center weighs 305lbs and he's supposed to block a mountain all on his own? It's going to be tough. Oh, and did I mention they sometimes like to bring in Mount Cody as a blocking fullback just for kicks? A 365lb blocking fullback!

The second key is to make sure Brian Johnson gets into a passing rythm right from the get-go. Our first series should be nothing but passes, mostly short slants and into the middle stuff. Our offensive line is not going to be able to give him much time so he's got to be able to step up and make quick accurate passes. Ludwig has got to call plays at the beginning of the game which will build his confidence and put him in a good rythym.

The third key is for us not to force the run up the middle. Our linemen are going to get tired trying to block the mountain and all his buddies and if we continue to run right at them we're not going to last the whole game. I understand that we've got to get something going on the ground just to keep their defense honest and keep our pass options open, however the direct snap to the RB or the I-formation run straight up the middle is not the right way to do this. We've got use end-arounds, options, and whatever creative trick-plays Ludwig has up his sleeve to take advantage of the speed of some of our skill players against their sheer girth.

The fourth key....our secondary will have to play better than they have all year. Pass-rushing is going to be very difficult this game so our secondary has got to help pressure their QB by taking away his receivers and making sure no one is open.

The fifth and final key will be getting in Louie Sakoda's range. If we can consistently get into 40 yard field goal range we absolutely have a chance to hang around. Our offense has got to be able to do this.

Here's hoping we can pull off the upset against the rolling Crimson Tide....GO UTES!

Mexico by the Numbers

2008-12-01T21:08:00.007-07:00

1 - The number of people sitting near me who threw up on our boat ride out to the island of Cozumel. I got stuck sitting next to a 13 year old girl who had seasickness issues, issues she was not aware of until this ferry ride. After about 10 minutes she was forced to relinquish all the contents of her stomach. I was fine for the most part, but listening to her dry heaving in between sobs made it difficult not to feel queasy. I felt bad for her, there are plenty reasons to be embarrassed in the life of a 13 year old without throwing up in front of a ferry full of people.

3 - The number of sharks we saw scuba diving. (Picture taken by me...not bad for my first time with an underwater camera.) They were just nurse sharks, and I’m told they don’t actually have any teeth, but still, I felt pretty brave for not swimming the opposite direction. (I didn’t have to as the sharks usually swam away from us.)

3 - Also the number of Mexican Christmas songs we heard while there. Not quite the same, a little more upbeat, like they were meant for salsa dancing, but still good to be reminded of the holidays while on sunny beaches with no hint of a coming ‘White Christmas’. When I heard the Mexican version of that song, I wondered if it really applied….they should change it to ‘Yellow Christmas’ or something more fitting for the climate.

30 - The number of the sunscreen most of our group wore. I however, wore none and am returning with a slight red tint to my skin. This I don’t mind so much, it’s the unevenness and strange lines that are unfortunate. I was sitting at the pool and got distracted watching all the fascinating people. There was a French couple sitting near me and the man decided he wanted to participate in the water aerobics class but did not have his swimming suit on. So, he had his wife hold up a towel while he changed…I’m not sure whether he thought this was sufficient coverage, or if he just didn’t care about his rear exposure. It was quite a sight to say the least, and that was just one of the partial nudity incidents that afternoon. Anyway, I got distracted by the people watching and neglected to perform the rotation required for even tanning.

43 - The number of pina coladas I drank, not an exact number but it’s close. All of them virgin of course, with the exception of one fairly sour drink brought to me by a fairly incompetent waiter. He wasn’t all that bad but he couldn’t hold a candle to Ernesto. Ernesto was my favorite waiter, at my favorite restaurant, and introduced to me my new favorite beverage. It’s called a mango tango…not sure exactly what’s in it, sort of half mango/half strawberry, and he made sure all my drinks were ‘sin alcohol’.

5 - The number of times I actually understood any of the Spanish that was spoken to me. I took Spanish for a few years in middle school and high school but the rate at which they speak in Mexico is totally beyond my ability to comprehend. The way they smile whenever they speak also confuses me, it’s not something I’m used to back in good old grumpy America, plus I am not a smiler. I would always end up smiling back, I had no idea what they were saying but it just seemed like the right thing to do, but then once they walked away I was left grinning like an idiot for no apparent reason. However, my face quickly snapped back into more normal, thoughtful, and less cheerful repose.
4 - The number of times we ate at my new favorite Asian cuisine restaurant located in none other than Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I was a little sad that we’d be missing out on the big Thanksgiving dinner back home but I realized my love for sushi at this place and it made a great Thanksgiving meal. Plus, the ice cream tempura was to die for…and I’m not usually a dessert person. (I think part of the appeal of this place was also the excellent service provided by Ernesto.)

4 - Also the number of double-bogeys I got in my 18-hole round of golf. Not terrible right? Except that those four holes were by far my best. I had a 74 on the first nine holes…that’s 38 over par.

2 - The number of papers I had due while in Mexico. One was a ten-pager on Jimmy Carter for which I hauled five library books all the way there. The second was a paper in which I was supposed to argue whether or not Philosophy and the Gospel are compatible. For any of you who think Philosophy is evil, or like one relative of mine, that I am putting my eternal salvation on the line by studying Philosophy, please let me know and I will send you my paper.

14 – The number of bags checked by my family alone. No, this does not include carry-ons, of which there were many, and yes, we thought we’d bring the whole house just to make our hotel in Mexico really feel like home.

19 – The number of people we were traveling with. The Woods: Dave (7), Nancy (Fancy), Hannah (Dolores), Adam (Slim Jim), Aaron (Air Bear), and Caleb (Christopher). The Andersons: Dave, Mindy (Cruise Director), Paige, Claire, and Jack (Double O). And my family, the Wests: Will (Tope), Lisa, Me, William, Peter, David, George, and Lucy. Trying to make your way around Mexico with this size group… it’s not easy and you get a lot of eyebrow raises. But they were a fun group to be with and made for a great trip.

Cave Person Day at the Palace Golf Club and Spa

2008-11-28T14:10:00.001-07:00

Today we had the privilege of golfing at and enjoying the services of the Palace Golf Club and Spa in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. However, it wasn't as glamorous as it sounds.

I started playing golf fairly recently, in fact the word 'playing' may be an exaggeration, I have the equipment and go through the motions but I still don't think I am justified in saying I play golf. My first time out I think I broke every single rule, every one. In attempt to be efficient and help my brother I apparently walked across his 'line' when I should have walked around and avoided the vicinity of his ball entirely. I also made the mistake, on several occasions, of taking a practice swing while someone was 'addressing the ball'. Being totally out of his sight, I thought this was acceptable, but apparently the swish of air caused by my club was a disruption to their zen-like state of concentration. I had a hard time keeping track of my shadow too, it had to be watched every minute lest it interfere with someone's concentration or strategy or whatever it is they were doing in the five minutes they took to stare at the ball, then the hole, then the ball, and the hole again. Normally when playing games at my house (Monopoly, Cards, etc.) we have some kind of time limit on turns which is usually supported and enforced by everyone. But all of a sudden the whole idea of timed turns went out the window in favor of totally silent, standing, staring acceptance of long, drawn-out indecision. Man alive! I have a hard time being instructed about polite behavior when my dad is the instructor, but when I got shhhh'd for groaning after someone's tenth practice swing, and reprimanded by my 11, 15, and 17 year-old brothers for impolite behavior, it was absolutely irritating and unacceptable! They took great pleasure in pointing out my stupidity. I was shocked that my brothers who have no problem burping loudly in the middle of a family dinner or spontaneously erupting in fistfights in public were turned into masters of restraint and propriety just because they were on a golf course. It was some kind of parallel universe where they were the smart and sophisticated ones who totally understand sports and I was the sloppy, stupid, cave-person who wandered into the path of flying golf balls, knocked branches off trees with inadvertent swings of her giant club, or the equivalent of someone who stands up and tells the refs to call traveling at a football game! I don't like being the blithering idiot, but I didn't give up. I wanted to get good, so good in fact that I could be the one who steps up, addresses the ball, hits a beautiful drive, and looks over my shoulder with that look that absolutely says 'That is how it's done.'

Unfortunately I'm not there yet. I spent most of our 18-hole round in the sand, although that was not due entirely to my lack of skill...this course had an unusually large number of sand bunkers. After hitting my first sand shot, an ugly one that barley cleared the sand and landed on the edge of rough between the bunker and the green, I thought I would head over to my ball and continue to play. So, that's just what I did. I was not aware of this unwritten golf rule that governs sand traps 'When one is in the sand, one leaves the bunker along the same path one went in. Then one erases every TRACE of evidence that one was ever present in the bunker." Like the cave person that I apparently become on the course, I had tromped across almost the entire thing and left footprints larger and deeper than I would like to admit. My putting woes continued today as well, every time I get that putter in my hand I seem to turn into Grog the alpha cave person who has to prove his strength by yelling "I am Grog, see me putt!!" and putting with great gusto (off the green in some cases).However, my prehistoric cave-dweller ways came roaring out much more when I arrived at the Spa. I had an appointment to get a massage, but I let someone else take it because, well because I didn't want to get one. I had my book, the sun, and a nice lounge chair and I didn't think a stranger greasing up their hands and rubbing them all over me would be any more relaxing than that. I did however decide to get the manicure and pedicure. I was a little nervous about the whole thing, mostly because we are in Mexico and I was worried about being the only English-speaker and not understanding what was going on. However, I realized that I am no more a minority or out-of-the-loop here than I am at hair salons back home. I walk in, am assigned one of the many blond hair-dressers, and they ask what I want done to my hair. I give my usual response "Cut a couple inches and color." Then the blondes start asking questions of me, the neanderthal brunette who doesn't understand words like 'layering' or colors like 'auburn', and I am reduced to grunting once again, "Cut same, color same." I can usually refrain from chest pounding, but there is a lot of awkward pointing. Once they decide what they are going to do with me though, I am usually pretty good at sitting still and not getting in their way.

Today however, was another story. The first thing I had to do was pick a color for my nails....once again more awkward pointing and some grunting, "Toes (point), fingers (point)." Then there was a lot of dipping, rubbbing, pruning, and generally strange hand stuff. I never knew where to put the hand that wasn't being worked on. At first I thought, oh I'll just follow where she puts the other hand. I learned that was the wrong thing to do when both of my hands would not fit in the tiny bowl of water she had placed my right hand into. She quickly removed my left hand and said, "No." It was like I was worse than a cave person, like I was a dog! While she was painting one finger, I apparently kept touching nails she had already painted to the cloth and my other fingers....she had to repaint one nail 4 times because I kept messing it up. We went over to the pedicure chair and I realized I still had my golf shoes on, "Not a problem," I thought, "I'll just take them off." So I reached down and started untying them. When Thelma turned around she twitched like she was about to reach down and stop me, but then she changed her mind. I think she'd given up. I just went on merrily untying, then when I was in the chair realized I had just messed up three nails. The most embarrassing part was yet to come however. Having never had a pedicure, I did not know that I apparently have very very ticklish feet. When Thelma started using the scrubby thing (no idea what that is called) and the little toe-bush thing (is there a technical name for this?) I giggled out loud. She stopped for a minute and I said, "Tickles." She nodded knowingly and bent low, working intently. Then it happened. My leg twitched, not a lot, but just a quick little tickle reflex, and my foot hit her face! I apologized profusely, she was fine, it was really only a tap. The real problem is that I couldn't stop giggling for the duration of the pedicure. It was ticklish, I was a little sleep deprived, and my foot hitting her face was kind of funny. Once again, I was the cave person, this time laughing at the slapstick humor of someone getting hit in the face! I walked out of the spa shamefacedly shoeless (I hadn't brought any shoes other than golf shoes and my nails hadn't dried)...just like cave persons of old.

Giving Thanks at Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

As the most thankful of Thursdays approaches, I need to write the obligatory ‘What-I’m-Grateful-For’ post. I, like most people, have many things to be grateful for. I am hesitant to list them for fear of appearing unthankful for all the things I forget. I could say I am grateful on this day for Utah football, and believe me I am. I could say I am grateful for the opportunity to go to Cancun with my family (more on this in the coming days), and I am. I could say I am grateful for my family and friends, and I am. But today I am going to talk about how grateful I am for my roommates.

I am sitting on a plane on my way to Cancun and I keep thinking of everything I'm missing in Provo, and am kind of bummed I won’t see Ainsley, Becky, Brandi, Sally, or Whitney for a week. Lest you think I am a pathetic zoobie who’d rather be in Provo than Cancun, let me explain a little bit about each of them and maybe you’ll understand.

Ainsley is the mother of the apartment. She cooks for us regularly, and at least in my case, is always making sure homework gets done. Every Monday and Wednesday I come home to an empty apartment as everyone else is either in class or at work, but without fail the silence is broken by the sound of the dishwasher going. Why? Because Ainsley is the first one to get back from class and she ALWAYS does the dishes before heading off to work. She is tentatively majoring in Accounting but she does not have the hideously boring personality that typically accompanies Accountants. She’s just good with numbers, she has a gift and might as well take advantage of it before she pursues her real dream of going to Culinary School. She is Mary Poppins-like in that she is practically perfect in every way. It's a little annoying sometimes, having a perfect friend, but it's who she is and we've accepted it. I go to Ainsley when I need someone to roll their eyes at me and tell me to get back to work.

Becky is the decorator of our apartment. I have to admit that I was not that excited about going to live in Provo until I walked into our place for the first time. Becky made it feel like a home and I actually couldn’t wait to move in. One of the most endearing things about Becky is her laugh. It’s sort of difficult to describe, she laughs with her whole body, almost uncontrollably, and it’s almost impossible not to laugh once Becky gets going. I also enjoy the fact that she will laugh at almost anything and so she makes me feel like a top-of-the-line comedian…it’s good for my ego. Becky also provides us with a surprise in our living room on occasion, his name is Hunter. It’s happened several times that we’ve come out to find the two of them asleep on the couch, exactly where they were the night before. He’s a nice guy though, so we don’t mind too much. Besides, it’s kind of exciting waking up not knowing who may be sleeping on your couch…like living in some sort of youth hostile. I go to Becky when I want to rant and rave about Grey’s Anatomy. We share a passion for all things Grey’s.

Brandi is the athlete of the apartment. She is on the BYU lacrosse team and loves almost all athletic activities. She was very patient and taught me how to throw and catch with a lacrosse stick, she played with me for almost three hours. By the end I could actually catch and throw, but she had to put up with a lot of waiting around while I chased the ball and I think I even gave her a bruise due to my inability to aim. Brandi has boys galore but she doesn’t get carried away by the whole thing. She sees no conflict in having different boys for different geographic regions, in fact I think she prefers it that way. It’s less complicated. Brandi goes to bed early, by eleven every night, a fact which amazes us all. She is very insistent on getting her sleep, and for some reason doesn’t think sleeping until noon on the days she doesn’t have class is the right way to go. This I do not understand. I go to Brandi when I want some down-to-earth and practical perspective. She is always cool-headed and doesn’t get carried away with the ups and downs of every day life.

Sally is the one roommate we didn’t go to high school with, and we were a little worried about who we’d get stuck with. However, we all feel like we lucked out. She’s hard to describe, she’s got a lot of uh, spunk and is not afraid to say what she thinks. This is also good for my ego I think, although in a less pleasant and more humbling way. She is up until the early morning hours doing one of two things…studying or partying, hard. Sally is a Nutrition major and thus is in lots of science-type classes that would make me want to kill myself. She has a friend, Kristina who comes around fairly frequently, another one who may be sleeping on our couch when we wake up. Sally likes to share, she shares my bed, my lamp, my food, my pens, whatever she needs. It’s a little unnerving when I walk into my room and find her already occupying it but I guess it’s good, she’s helping me learn to share. I go to Sally when I need to pick a fight. She always wins when we argue, that’s probably because she’s louder than I am and all the other roommates think it’s funny to jump in on her side. I also go to Sally when I need a good laugh, she’s always good for a witty comment or at the very least a well-placed swear word.

Whitney is the social coordinator of the apartment. I don’t think there is one new person I’ve met that hasn’t been a result of her bringing them to the apartment. I guess that makes me kind of a recluse who won’t go out and proactively meet people, which makes me even more grateful for Whitney. She is also very studious, but has a bit of hard time choosing studying over sociality. She’s been given the nickname ‘Distracted’ due to her inability to concentrate on homework when people are having fun somewhere. I cannot count the number of times we’ve been sitting in the living room just talking when we’ll hear the disembodied voice of Whitney jumping into the conversation from down the hall where she is supposedly studying. She always manages to get her work done though, in fact she is one of the hardest workers I know. I’m pretty sure she never slept over the summer as she was insanely busy working two jobs and picking up overtime shifts in the middle of the night. I go to Whitney when I need a break from studying or sleeping and just need someone to talk to about whatever because she is a good listener and easy to distract from whatever she happens to be working on.

These are the people that I go home to, and I am thankful that I have the privilege of living with every one of them.

Year of the Ute

2008-11-22T21:12:00.005-07:00

I don't have much to say about today's game, what could I say? BYU put up a good fight, they made some big mistakes but I think Utah earned this win. There was no better place to be today than Rice Eccles Stadium. I am proud to be a Ute fan, I look forward to our BCS game in January, and...Go Utes!

Hoods - Rain Protection We Can Believe In

2008-11-10T15:42:00.007-07:00

Today was a rainy day, not in the figurative sense but literally a day with heavy precipitation, and when the rains came down the umbrellas came up. Unfortunately the manners that are necessary for the proper handling of these bumbershoots were totally absent. I am one of those who prefers toughing it out with a good hood covering my head rather than bothering with the cumbersomeness of umbrellas, but today it seemed that I had to put up with their incommodiousness without actually reaping the protective benefits. While walking around campus I was already pushing my luck trying to avoid objects, people, and puddles in my path with my hood seriously limiting my peripheral vision. I did not think to worry about the potentially eye-poking, or even blinding, spokes or the streams shooting off the edges of other peoples' umbrellas, and apparently neither did they! After a day full of unfortunate umbrella encounters and full of hope for the change this new administration will bring, I plan to petition for ethical umbrella use laws, one of which will be an absolute ban on the spinning of said umbrellas while in use. At the very least I will push for umbrella wielding licenses which will only be issued to those who can prove they have a good sense of common courtesy and self-awareness. We hooded people hope we have found our candidate of change in President Obama and look forward to his umbrella reforms.

Democracy and Senior Citizens

2008-11-04T22:27:00.012-07:00

Tuesday I had my first voting experience working as a poll-worker. It was not the efficient machine-like system of democratic expression I had expected but more of a slow-motion geriatric comedy of errors. Hearing aid problems here, senior moments of forgetfulness there, and the distinct scent of the elderly was everywhere. But for all that, the people in our precincts were lucky to have these old poll-workers, and I was lucky to have been put with this group. There are not many people with whom I could spend 15 straight hours but I thoroughly enjoyed almost every minute with them.

Our Poll Manager was Sue, she had been the chief nurse of a 400-bed mobile army hospital (four times the size of a MASH unit) in the National Guard for 20+ years and now works at the King's English bookstore. She was very calm throughout, making sure some of the more excitable old folks kept their cool and that we all had plenty of breaks. She even initiated a little pool, we all were betting on how many voters we'd have by the end of the day...sadly I took third.

Rex was our technician, a very very nice old Greek man. He has diabetes and so had toes and parts of both feet removed. Walking was not easy for him, but he was always quick to jump up whenever anyone was having trouble understanding how to work the voting machines. When he wasn't helping in that way he would sit by the doors on his big wooden stool, thank people for voting, and tell them about all the free Starbucks coffee, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and Ben and Jerry's ice cream they could get for voting. He would typically say 'Don't forget your free coffee, doughnuts, or ice cream.' This lead about half the people to turn around on the spot and say 'Where!?' Twice we had two people collide because the one in front turned around abruptly to look for the free food while the person immediately behind did not.

Rachel was our Provisional Judge, and the youngest worker....probably in her late 40s. She was given the nickname Deep Throat because she would get updates of election results on her phone and quietly relay them to us without letting the voters hear. (We were supposed to maintain complete political neutrality and not discuss politics in any way.)

Jeanne was the funny one in the group, a fifty-something year old English-major who came in wearing her daughters turquoise converse sneakers. She lead us all in a big cheer for each and every first-time voter who came in. She could always be counted on to know exactly how much time we had left...'six hours and 37 minutes!' When I was being too quiet she would say 'Alright Jennifer, let's turn the heat back on you...tell us why you're at BYU, or tell us about Philsophy.'

Anne was an almost-seventy year old English major with a fabulous vocabulary and a fiery competitiveness. She initiated a second contest, to see who could guess the time that we'd hit 500 voters. She beat me by 4 minutes and was tickled about it. At one point, when it was getting down to the wire, we had a man come in who had to vote on a provisional ballot. She was worried that I would count him in our tally and had he counted, I would have won, so she began saying 'He doesn't count, he's not in our books he's on provisional so his vote doesn't count!'. She made no attempt to keep her voice down and the man was looking concerned until Poll-Manager Sue went over to assure him that his vote would in-fact count.

Sue #2 was a 68 year-old originally from Montpeilier, Idaho who was sort of a math guru. When Poll-Manager Sue announced our original total numer of voters contest, Sue #2 spent almost an hour counting and calculating numbers to reach her guess. Unforunately her magical math did not give her the winning guess. Towards the end of the night as the number of voters dwindled to almost nothing, the rule of political neutrality went out the window. All of my left-leaning cowokers were letting Palin jokes fly and talking about moving to Canada or Mexico if the election didn't go their way. Sue #2 found all of this to be absolutely hilarious and would giggle to the point of tears. The sight of 68 year-old crying and shaking with laughter, on top of all the wittiness of the others made for lots of laughing all around.

Then there was Bill and Ruth, a married couple in their eighties, both with hearing aids, and seated on either side of me. Ruth graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music as an Organist and Bill is a former Physics professor at the University of Utah. Ruth was the grandma of the group, she brought homemade cookies, homegrown pear tomatoes, carrots, and nuts to sustain all of us. Bill is not a proponent of String Theory (the only physics topic I knew enough about to discuss with him) and does not understand things like music and sewing machines, he understands semi-conductors and likes them for their usefulness. Our only error in reconciling the books came when I took my ten minute afternoon break. When I got back and we checked our books against the machines we were off by one. Bill and Ruth started arguing about where the mistake was but eventually Ruth and I found the error and fixed it. Then she said, "You can't even leave us alone for ten minutes without everything getting messed up!" This gave me a completely exaggerated sense of importance.... like an indispensable cog in the machinery of democracy.

We had a good crew and at the end of our fifteen hour-day I was sorry to leave their company. But, they had stopped their almost intravenous intake of coffee and were all quickly losing steam so they each gave me a hug, I felt like I had gained eight new grandparents, and we all hurried home to watch the numbers come in. Senior citizens may not be the most efficient folks, but they take their title of 'citizen' seriously. It's not easy for an 80 year-old to work from 5:30am to 9:00pm, no matter how much coffee they've got. Things like hearing aids, canes, sight problems, unsteady hands, and even poor memories don't make it any easier. But their age group seems to be the one that answers the call of civic duty. This 'slow-motion geriatric comedy of errors' was what allowed approximately 643 people to vote, and probably millions more across the country.

Birthday Reflections

2008-10-22T23:33:00.006-06:00

The best part of birthdays is being reminded of all the great people in your life. Today I am grateful for these people, but somehow I never seem to be able to express this, or at least not to the extent I would like. To put it more eloquently and philosophically, "Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small." (Emerson) Thanks everyone for making today a fabulous birthday.

Now here are some pictures from the the celebration of my two decades. (I am aware that 20 is not old, but being able to measure my age in decades makes me feel old. Not complaining though, I'm very happy to be officially out of the teenage years.)

Here are four of my five roommates out for dinner at CPK: Ainsley, Sally, Whitney, and Becky.

This is the fabulous hamburger cake made by Ainsley, enjoyed and admired by all. I wanted to have a giant hamburger that looked like a cake, but that wasn't really doable so Ainsley made this for me instead. The most important thing? It was delicious.

And here are some people who came to eat the cake

Thanks to all, apologies to those who were not included in the blog pictures. You are still appreciated.

BYU Top Ten

2008-10-20T16:30:00.005-06:00

For quite some time now I've been working on a list of the top reasons I enjoy being at BYU. It wasn't easy, I thought about giving up at 3 but I finally found a way to get it done, plus two. So here it is, Top Twelve Reasons BYU Isn't Really Completely All That Bad!

#12 - When you write the name of your school, you only have to write three letters.

#11 - You don’t have to worry about your roommate asking you to leave so she can get some ‘alone time’ with her boyfriend, she only asks that you type a little quieter so she can read her scriptures.

#10 - You don’t have to deal with wasted college students being stupid/weird/inappropriate. You get to deal with a bunch of college students being stupid/weird/inappropriate because that’s just who they are, and no amount of coffee or sleep will solve these hangovers.

#9 - You say the word Hell and 90% of the students are either scared of you or label you as a sinner, or both. Why is this a good thing? You've immediately found the 10% of students who are potential friends.

#8 - Volunteering to say the prayer at the beginning of class is a good way to get out of saying anything else through the entire class. If you didn't read or do the homework, say the prayer!

#7 - Again with prayer...you know when you walk into the testing center praying that your test is easy, you've got at least ten other classmates praying for the same thing, thus the chances that the big guy is on your side increase ten-fold.

#6 - You've get nearly 13 million members of the church paying for part of your education through tithing.

#5 - It's really easy to find. Once you see the mountain with the big cement Y stuck in the middle of it, then keep walking until you find yourself in a strange land completely devoid of caffeine. If that doesn't work, don't stress, remember 'The World is Our Campus', it's impossible to escape no matter where you are.

#4 - Every football game day you get to be a resident of the international community known as 'Cougar Town'. You don't even need a passport!

#3 - You get to experience what earth life would have been like under Satan's plan. Once you’re in, your agency is out. It’s good I guess, they want you to leave BYU with a strengthened appreciation for Christ. Nothing will make you more grateful that Lucifer got the boot.

#2 – You find peace from the confusion and confrontation of politics because you suddenly understand that the Republicans will be the ones in power during the Millennium. Bar-Who O-What-ma?

And the number one reason BYU is just not that bad....

#1 - You get to witness, up close and personal, the despair that ensues on the day when residents of Cougar Town everywhere realize their team's 'quest for perfection' is over. Last Thursday was that day thanks to TCU, and it was sweet. It's a gift that just keeps on giving, we got to re-live it a little bit yesterday when the first BCS Standings came out and Utah was at #11, TCU at #14, and BYU....#21. That is why, if for no other reason, I like being at BYU.

There's No Place Like Home

2008-10-12T21:56:00.006-06:00

We're a little over a month in to school down here Provo, so I don't think I can put off the back-to-school posts any longer. Turns out Provo isn't quite the awful center of the twisted zoobie universe I thought it was. Or maybe it is. If so, my apartment here has managed to remain a haven of sanity in the sea of self-righteousness. That is largely due to fabulous roommates, however a post about them will have to wait as I have yet to take any blog-worthy pictures of them. (Apparently post-shower towel shots are not eligible for blog posts) But for now, a short photo tour of the place itself will have to suffice...

This is the kitchen. Smallish, but the only real space problem we have had thus far is fitting all of our college-student-microwaveable-frozen foods in the freezer. Clearly our refrigerator was made before well-balanced frozen meals became numerous, cheap, and delicious. Or maybe this fridge was not made to hold a week's worth of meals for each of six girls.

This is the living room. We call the couch on the left 'the Whitney couch' because somehow she always seems to end up laying across it, always, while the rest of us make do with the other couch and the Love Sac. Other than that, the living room is the biggest reason we are grateful to be done with the dorms.This is our remote. Do you even have to ask why this picture was blog-worthy? This impossible-to-lose and completely sick remote was purchased by roommate Sally. She gets major props for this.

This is one side of my room. I thought about cleaning it up before snapping some blog pics but I decided it would be better to show it for what it is...and this is it 98% of the time.

The desk is clearly not functional space, neither is the floor as it is typically covered by various items, and so I use my bed as an all-purpose study and sleep surface. Unfortunately there is a fine line between studying and sleeping, I love Philosophy but sometimes it's a real snooze.

2008-10-05T14:49:00.002-06:00

What is it about Fall that is so appealing? It would seem that Fall should be the most repulsive of seasons. After all, Fall is essentially a dying time. The vegetation, the fun, the free time, almost every aspect of the life that came in Spring, and peaked in Summer, withers and dies in the months of September, October, and November. So what is it? My theory is that by the end of Spring and Summer we are just ready to be done with the frolicking and the happy. I suppose I can only speak for myself, perhaps I am just a grump, but I am a realist. I am a person who likes to wear brown and black wherever possible. I am a person who likes, at times, to hole up in my room and avoid the sunshine and the people who seem to exude it. So, I like Fall because it brings people out of the clouds, they've got to get back inside and get back to work. I like the 'darker' seasons because the obnoxious springy and summery happiness is contained indoors and out of my face, by structure and schedules, work and weather. The Fall brings a different kind of happy, not loud and exuberant, but rather content and serene. Nature is on it's deathbed in Fall, and it is dying a calm, cool, and collected death.

Note: Picture taken by me last November in Central Park.

Another Take...

2008-08-19T20:51:00.003-06:00

I cheer for the Chinese gymnasts, I am happy to see them succeed. Yes, I know that most are clearly underage, and yes, I know that they've gotten quite a bit of help from the judge, and yes, I know that they are the consistently favorites. But I have also heard the story of Cheng Fei.

She is one of the few Chinese gymnasts who actually looks her advertised age, 20. When she was 3 she was 'recruited' to the Chinese gymnastics program, most likely because at that age she could bend her and contort her body better than other 3 year-olds. She was taken from her family, part of being 'chosen', and has been allowed to see them once a year since. She comes from a working family, and her success as a gymnast was there chance to make it. While she spent seventeen years of her life in a gymnastic sweat shop, her family counted on her to ensure that they didn't spend their lives working in a sweat shop. At one point she called home, begging her parents to let her quit, but they would not, probably could not, allow her to quit. She has clearly been successful, and the Chinese government has rewarded her by building a house for her family, which she got to see for the first time a few months ago.

When she cried over her mistakes in the vault and floor event finals, I have to believe it was about more than just medaling in the Olympics. Gymnastics has been her life for seventeen years, to an extent that almost no other athletes can claim, and for all the work to culminate in under-performance would be more than a little disappointing. To say nothing of the undeniable pressure from the government, and the pressure from her family. Did she earn the bronze medal with her two vaults? Maybe not, but I think she deserves it.

Unintelligent or Simply Impractical?

2008-07-03T12:14:00.005-06:00

A recent experience caused me to reflect on the different between intelligence and practicality. Is it simply knowing a great deal that qualifies a person for the 'intelligent' adjective? And is practicality the ability to put to use whatever amount, small or large, of knowledge one possesses?

I am currently vacationing on the sunny beaches of Southern California, sunny being the operative word. Now, at the risk of throwing any semblance of humility out the window, I consider myself to be an 'intelligent' person, and as such I know that when exposed to large amounts of sunnyness, certain reactions are likely to occur on one's skin. I also know, as any smart person does, that there is a certain lotion-like substance that is made to help prevent this uncomfortably red reaction caused by exposure to invisible UVA and UVB rays. Sounding pretty intelligent so far?

However, looking at the oh-so-flattering picture at right, would you guess that I possessed such large amounts of knowledge about sun exposure? Unlikely. However, does the fact that I completely disregarded smart sun behavior make me unintelligent or simply impractical? I would argue that the knowledge is still there, and thus I still deserve the 'intelligent' adjective. The extremely unusual red and white stripyness, which caused one cousin to inform me that I look like Neopolitan Ice Cream without the brown, and caused one uncle to insist that my strange skin phenomena be documented through the taking of numerous pictures, and caused my five year-old brother to ban me from applying his sunscreen ever again.... this unusual coloring is simply a result of a lack of practicality. Now, whether intelligence or practicality is the more desirable trait is debatable. I am happy with being intelligent but a little bit of practicality sure would have saved me some pain.

A City Upon a Hill

2008-05-06T15:48:00.015-06:00

In 1630, a group of Puritans set out to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a community their leader hoped would be a 'city upon a hill' and an example to all the world. Today Boston is the metropolitan descendant of that ideal city and in my brief stay there I became absolutely convinced of it's virtues as the consummate 'city upon a hill'.

My first real Boston experience was walking the Freedom Trail, a very cool historical walk around Boston following a little red-brick path (red-brick is Boston's en-vogue medium). In almost every place you walk you feel a sense of duty to stop and contemplate those legendary figures who walked the same path. People like Samuel Adams, Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Boston's most dear Paul Revere. One of the highlights for me was to walk into a church and see a plaque dedicated to Charles Wesley, the lesser-known brother of John Wesley and a leading figure in the development of a distinct American hymnity, who had a been a minister for at least a short period in that very place.

Continuing the historical theme of that first day I walked through the JFK Presidential Library. It is not, as I had foolishly imagined, a large library named for the former President. Nor is it a large collection of books he liked or used or read. To my surprise I found myself thoroughly enjoying a very interactive museum chronicling everything from his campaign to his assassination. The best rooms were the ones with dinner party guest lists that had been hand-edited by the first lady. It was fascinating to see which celebrities, artists, authors, and dignitaries didn't make the cut and why. The building was pretty architecturally interesting in and of itself.

My experience Saturday was what really convinced me of Boston's virtues as the ideal city. Shelly and I started the day in the MFA...a fabulous museum with an excellent sampling of a wide variety of artistic periods. There was a special exhibit featuring El Greco, Velasquez, and other Spanish artists. The museum was crowded with people, young and old, enjoying fine art.
From the museum we walked over to the Mecca of major league ballparks. When we reached the blocks around Fenway we found hoards of people already assembling for the game. I have strong feelings about what it means to be a true sports fan, or a true fan of a team. As I was walking past the lines of Red Sox fan waiting to get into the bars, or just lining up to get into Fenway I realized I had found people who get what it means to be a fan. I don't remember seeing a single soul not sporting at least one item of clothing stamped with the Red Sox B. Not only had they shown up in their team apparel but they were there 2 HOURS before the game was supposed to start. They were all there 2 hours early for a nine-inning baseball game! It was phenomenal. To spend the day in an art museum full of refined and intelligent and cultured people and then to attend a baseball game with thousands of true sports fans was amazing to me. You would be hard-pressed to find a more well-rounded city. It has a heartbeat that compels it's citizens and visitors alike to educate and improve themselves individually but also draws people into the Boston community.
I could go on for pages about all the other fabulous sites and sounds I experienced in Boston but I feel as though I should leave it at that. Some of the other highlights pictured below include Walden Pond, the Public Gardens with the Make Way For Ducklings Statue, and Beacon Hill (my future place of residence).

Pink Princess Mania!

2008-04-12T21:39:00.007-06:00

Yesterday was Lucy's (my three year-old sister) third birthday celebration. Her actual birthday was Wednesday but due to family scheduling conflicts, and the fact that she has no idea when her birthday is, we postponed the celebration until Saturday.

Whether it's all the practice she's gotten from watching the rest of her siblings' birthdays or just an inherent proclivity for being in the spotlight, she was a master of present opening efficiency and graciousness. She'd receive a present with an appropriate wide-eyed grin, exercise enough restraint to pause and pose for a photo, then proceed to tear the wrapping paper in an methodical yet eager manner. She reserved a special exclamation of glee for any item that was branded with Cinderella's face. If you're ever walking through Walmart or Target past the little girls section, and if you are at all like me and think 'Who on earth buys those neon-pink sparkly items? Who would ever turn their child into a walking Disney advertisement?' The answer? Well my sister now only owns half of those items and I don't know who takes care of the rest. She has pink princess sheets, a pink princess towel, two princess barbies complete with a spinning musical horse-drawn carriage, a pink princess lunchbox, two new room additions for her pink dollhouse (a laundry room and a bathroom....up till now the poor dolls have been roughing it and using the great outdoors when nature calls), the Sleeping Beauty DVD, a pink Leapster (a game boy of sorts for little kids with all sorts of learning-oriented games...hers are the princess variety), a pink backpack, and, last but not least, four princess figurines from her princess cake.

After present-opening was complete she did not complain or moan about wanting more but rather climbed up on her chair resolutely and ate dinner with all seven of us. In keeping with the birthday tradition Lucy got to select her favorite breakfast and dinner...she requested princess cake for both. After several difficult conversations about the subject she finally selected Macaroni and Cheese, but not just any Mac and Cheese, the kind from the box! So my mom cooked up four or five boxes and we all ate it together. Lucy seemed to enjoy it but when the cake was brought over she lost all interest in dinner. After my mom had placed the candles, Lucy's emotions got the best of her and she yelled, "Now put some fire on it!" After blowing out the 'fire' on the candles she requested the piece with Cinderella figure on top. Much to my dismay, my five year-old brother George requested the piece with Sleeping Beauty on it. In addition, he wanted the big rose next to where the Sleeping Beauty figurine stood! Thinking he was just excited about having a toy on his cake I didn't worry to much about it.

Later, after my parents had left and George and Lucy had watched Lucy's new movie, they wanted to play with the new Barbies and the carriage. Twenty-five minutes later I had finally loosed all the pieces from their wire and cardboard containers. In the process one of the Barbies lost a chunk of hair and I sustained three paper cuts and one scissor-puncture wound. There were several incidents where Lucy was on the verge of tears because one of the the Barbie slippers had gone missing. Thankfully all were recovered in a timely fashion. George took one of the Barbies but explained to Lucy and I that it was ok for boys to play with girl toys. I agreed with him...until I heard the awful sounds that were coming out of his mouth. He had thrown his voice up at least two octaves and Lucy, following his lead, had done the same. I watched for a minute as they paraded the Barbies around their carriage but I couldn't take the shrieking. I asked George why he was changing his voice and he said, "That's how girls talk!" I couldn't argue with the fact that girls have higher voices than boys but the thought of him thinking he needed to change his voice because of it's masculinity was a bit much...the kid sounds like Elmo. He started getting pretty into his Barbie and I was getting a little worried but didn't know what to do. On the one hand I didn't want to promote unfair gender roles but I also didn't want him to be such a....girl!

Luckily bed-time saved me from having to interfere. We went upstairs to their room where I was instructed to put Lucy's new princess sheets on her bed. As I was struggling to do this around the gates on either side of her bed (they keep her from falling off at night), I heard her yell my name in distress and I turned to see her squatting by her closet making a large wet spot on the carpet. I grabbed her and ran her into the bathroom but by then the toilet was of no use and I just had to stick her in the tub to clean her off. In the midst of running between cleaning up the spot in her room and checking on her in the bath, George needed my help getting his shirt off and over his abnormally large head. Finally I got both kids tucked safely in bed. However Lucy's omnipresent and most-cherished color pink had spread to my face - whether from pink-princess exposure or exhaustion I don't know.

April Fools Day

2008-04-02T00:02:00.010-06:00

Ah, April Fools' Day, the one day a year where total cruelty can pass for good-natured humor. Perhaps it's because I am surround by nineteen year-old college Freshmen who didn't get a Spring Break and needed to release some pent-up energy, or perhaps my family just never really celebrated the first of April....but either way, this has been an April Fools Day to beat all others, and so I feel the need to issue some awards for the best and worst of the day's pranks.

First, the Elicited the Greatest Reaction Award! And now the story...Last night at about 3AM Millie and I were asleep in our beds with visions of Spring dancing through our heads when we were awakened by a loud knocking at our door. We ignored it, and then it happened again, and we ignored it. Then again came the rapid rapping at our door, and again, we ignored it. Finally, the fourth round of knocking came and I had barely had a chance to pull back the covers when Millie had jumped from her bed and charged at the door. It turns out some unique girls on our floor had gotten the urge to tie our door shut, and had tied it to the doorknob of the room across the hall from us. So, Millie's attempt to throw open the door was not quite successful. This didn't do much for her mood and she grunted, 'Get me some scissors'. I did so, still half-asleep, and she began chopping and stabbing at the plastic ties on our door. She had it loosed in no time, but this was not enough. She opened the door wide and stood in the hallway striking an intimidating pose, huffing, scissors still in hand. I asked if she was going to wait for the culprits to return and she nodded. Worried about what might happen I removed the scissors from her clenched fist and retreated into the protection of our room. After about five minutes of waiting, there was no sign of the door-tiers and we gave up and went back to bed. We're not sure why we were singled out and privileged to be the only ones on the floor with our doors tied. We're even less sure of why anyone would knock on our door at 3 AM on a Monday night, totally interrupting our sleep when Millie and I have a very clear history of being sensitive about getting our sleep. Nonetheless, any prank that can get Millie to make those noises, those faces, and those threats, well it's a winner in my book.

Second, we have the award for Lameness and Lack of Originality. Upon checking Facebook this morning I found no less than four of my friends had changed their relationship status' to 'Engaged'. Pretty weak if you ask me, everyone knows that no engagement that is announced within a week of April 1st is legit. Plus, a week rarely passes where someone doesn't change their Facebook RS to 'Engaged' or 'In a Relationship' just to get a reaction. Come on people! In other fairly pathetic attempts at Facebook pranks today we have the boy who came in close second for the Lameness award when he changed is status to 'has been diagnosed with terminal cancer'. It was at the very least distasteful and insensitive.

The award for the Most Vile April Fools' Day Prank goes to a girl named MJ who lives on our floor. About 11:30 this morning she came by and asked if she could have the hair from our hairbrushes. Millie and I looked at each other, not quite sure what to do with that question, but we proceeded to get our brushes as MJ kept a totally straight face. She skillfully removed the hair from both brushes and added it to the giant hairball she was carrying around. We couldn't resist asking what she needed the hair for, hoping it wasn't for some strange sort of memento she wanted to remember us by. She explained that earlier that morning her roommate Carly had taken all of MJ's underwear and hidden it, forcing her to go to her first class bra-less. MJ's brilliant plan for revenge was to take advantage of Carly's utter disgust with hair. She went through our whole hall collecting hair which she then spread out over Carly's sheets. I don't have a hair phobia, I dislike it a normal amount I think, but the thought of an amalgam of old hair being deposited in one of my favorite and most sacred places, my bed, absolutely causes me to shiver with disgust. Although, I find the thought of it happening to someone else highly amusing.

The final award is for Most Annoying Accidental Prank. I say accidental prank because I am fairly sure it was not meant to be a prank but I have chosen to see it as one so as to avoid being EXTREMELY annoyed by it. I walked into the bathroom this morning to find a new flyer posted on the stall doors. (Various flyers and announcements appear periodically...the stall doors are where we get our news) The headline of this flyer says Have You Considered Marriage? It's written in a fancy cursive handwriting and below it is a large picture of a wedding cake. Following the graphic is a bulleted list with the title Marriage License Requirements for the State of Utah. Things like age requirements, fees, on-line information etc. are listed. Then at the bottom are the words 'Your Forever Begins Today' written again in the flowy cursive. Honestly! I'm not sure if they purpose of the flyer is to advertise marriage or just to provide information to those who might need it. Either way, I am quite sure that such a flyer does NOT belong in the bathroom of the Freshman dorms! The only thing that gives me hope is that these mystery marriage license ads appeared on April Fools' Day. Annoyance or Prank...you be the judge.