Birthday Reflections

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

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

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.

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...

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?

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

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).