Xister's Cutting Board

Introspection

2012-01-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

My brother was making his End of Year video for his family and he mentioned to me that he had a clip of me making one of my traditional self-analyzing comments. I think that this one was, "I think that I eat as much candy as the average person; I just do it by eating a four-pound bucket of Red Vines a couple times a year."

Self-analysis is not an aspect of my personality that I had ever acknowledged before, which is a little ironic if you think about it. (Or is it? I always nervous about calling something ironic because I know that literary-types like to rip into that one.) But after he said it, I realized that he was absolutely right. I spend an awful lot of time thinking about the things I do and why I do them.

It has gotten me thinking a lot about where this characteristic comes from. Until my Sophomore year of high school, I really didn't really think a whole lot about how I was just a character in a larger world, and the things that I did had on impact on people around me and what they think of me. Since then, I actually do almost everything on purpose (e.g. what I wear, the things I say, the movies I see) to try to give off (or not give off) a certain signal.

When I was in high school, I think that this primarily manifested itself in portraying a persona that was different than I was in order to better fit in and make friends. I've become more sincere since I've come back from my mission, not necessarily trying to be something I'm not, but being careful to only dispense information about myself at the pace I want. For instance, for a long time, I made a huge effort to dress and act in a nondescript way, wearing plain clothes in neutral colors. I allow myself a little more freedom to stand out these days (I'm wearing bright green shoelaces right now (shout-out to Elisa!)), but I tend to be pretty quiet when I'm around groups of people I don't know.

A lot of this purposeful living leads to a strange sense of humor, involving several inside jokes where I'm the only one on the inside, and the thing I'm inside has more layers than an onion. My sister pointed out to me that my entire life is a little like one big piece of performance art in this way. She is just about right.

For instance, on my mission, I had a tie that I decided I would dedicate as my Depression Tie that I would wear when I was depressed because it was just a sort of dark gray. As a joke, I would occasionally wear this tie on days that I wasn't depressed, just to fool people around me. The thing was that I never told people that it was my Depression Tie, which made it all the more funny to me. I was wearing a tie that was supposed to fool everyone to thinking I was sad, but I wasn't sad. But furthermore, they had no idea I was pretending to be sad because they didn't know about my tie. In short, they weren't being fooled and they didn't know it. Hilarious.

In a similar vein, I often tell people "they are true" (rather than "they are right") partially because I think it is funny, but partially to make fun of the common church-phrase "[fill in the blank] is true," which doesn't really make sense to me. I especially love saying it to non-Mormons who don't know this important piece of information. I also like that I pronounce things like "borrow" and "sorry" with a Canadian accent, that I'm a regular at IHOP, and that I bring my math books to the movie theater by myself for approximately that same sort of reason. Hilarious.

And more hilarious since it's not really that funny at all.

End of Year Video

2011-12-24T16:29:00.000-08:00

Each year, instead of a Christmas letter, each member of my family makes a video of all the things they did that year. Then they get put together and mailed out. It's pretty awesome.

Here is mine for this year.

Gathering

2011-12-13T18:51:00.000-08:00

It is pretty simple to bin my friends into different groups: graduate school friends, FOB friends, Monticello friends, Bible study group friends, etc. The problem with this is that these groups often have very little overlap. This makes me sad at times since I think that all my friends would probably get along if they knew each other, but arranging friend-assimilation is often complicated.

I have tried a few times by inviting people from different groups of friends to events with other groups of friends, but I can't think of a single time that it has worked out. Perhaps the closest thing to success that I've had was my Break-the-Octoberfast/Sober Octoberfest where I invited a few people who were new members of the ward and now they seem to be friends with some of the other people that I invited, but I don't know that I can blame any of that on my pretzels and cider.

However, I realized today that Facebook actually does pretty much exactly what I'm trying to do. I can make muse with my status updates, and all the witty people I know from all aspects of my life comment on my status and other people's comments. It's like a very brief gathering of all my friends. It makes me really happy. Maybe someday I can host a movie night for a few regular commenters. Or maybe I'll just continue to let them hide behind a sort of translucent anonymity, and I can just pretend we are all friends.

Calling-monies

2011-12-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

The thank-imony and friend-imony have received a lot of popular press through the years. Probably the number one context is Girls' Camp where allegedly hundreds of teenage girls cry while they talk about how much they love their cabin mates.

Another common testimony that happens though is the calling-mony, where a person stands in testimony meeting and talks about how important [insert stewardship] is. For example, the temple committee chair may talk about how they have been blessed by temple work or the ward mission leader might share an experience they had sharing the Gospel. Maybe the ward clerk will mention how MLS has changed their life. (Though as far as I understand, MLS is primarily a good tool for teaching long-suffering with an emphasis on the suffering part.) This past Suday, we had three people give calling-monies.

At first, I thought it seemed a little funny and insincere. If you are just sharing to encourage people to do their home teaching then maybe you are not sharing because you are moved by the spirit. Then again, if your assignment at church involves a certain aspect of the Gospel, I imagine you are more likely to have spiritual experiences associated with that aspect, and testimony meeting seems like a perfectly reasonable place to share how your testimony is developing.

Also, many callings in the church are associated with encouraging other people to improve their lives and serve others, and the particular testimonies shared this past Sunday were both humble and powerful. Their thoughts were actually highly motivating to change the way I live my life, and therefore they were appropriate and appreciated.

However, I don't think this is always the case. Clearly, testimony meeting is a time to share our personal convictions. I think it is also generally accepted that it is not a time to just talk about how much we love our friends or talk about or recent trip to [jealousy-inducing vacation spot/Church-history tour]. What is OK then for a testimony meeting in terms of content and motivation?

Marriage Rights

2011-11-17T10:51:00.000-08:00

[This post has nothing to do with the Same-sex marriage debate.]

On Wednesday evenings, I go to a Bible Study with my roommate and a few other friends. We all go to different churches, so I think our conversations are always really insightful.

Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with girl there. I had made a joke about how my roommate had been dating his girlfriend long enough and that it was time for him to get married. Since my roommate is only 25, she said that he was way to young to get married, to which I replied that more than half of my friends were married by 25.

What then followed was a pretty standard conversation that I have sometimes about how Mormons tend to marry younger due to cultural factors that stem from theological roots. As I was explaining the idea that marriage is an important part of the purpose of our existence on Earth, she brought up the point that she didn't feel like marriage was for everyone; she thought that marriage was a gift that a person might be lucky enough to be granted in life.

She then asked the question: "So do you think that marriage is a right?"

The question made me double-take a little. On one hand, I feel a little funny calling it a right since there are two people involved. On the other hand, there are all those statements about how if we don't have the opportunity to marry in this life, then we will not have those blessing denied us in the next. If we are promised something, do we have a right to it? She even asked the question, "So if you don't get married, does the church just arrange a marriage for you?" to which the answer is no... sort of. I guess we don't know the mechanism by which we are miraculously assigned a spouse in the next life (if that is in fact what happens), but this conversation got me thinking about how I think about marriage and how it is viewed in the Church.

Lies

2011-04-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

Today in Elders' Quorum, the topic was honesty. Through most of it, the teacher said fairly uncontroversial things, which was good because the Stake President was there.

Near the end, however, he brought up the subject of why people think it is OK or necessary to lie. The obvious ones came out quickly (e.g. to get ahead, to conceal something, to hurt someone), but I think that there are many reasons that I lie that seem less malevolent.

1. Humor: Sometimes lying is funny. I have been known to tell people that I used to be a World Champion African Stick Dancer but broke my knee in the 7th grade (when I was being chased down by an angry group of Tanzanian rebels)... and it would go on from there until it got so ridiculous that the person I'm talking to realizing that it is a lie. You would be surprised, by the way, on how far you can get before people will call you on it. You would be astounded on how much farther you can get if you insist on it even after they call you on it the first time. I think this is funny but harmless.

2. Convenience: Sometimes it is just easier to say one thing when another is more accurate. For example, I sing in a choir that meets twice a week in the evenings. Often, I'm asked by people if I'm free during that time. If I say I have choir, this often leads to a longer conversation about my choir that I don't want to have because I have other things to do. In fact, they probably don't even care to know about my choir, but they are obligated to ask if I mention it. So I usually tell people I have class, though technically it's not like a class that you register for and stuff.

3. Telling stories: It is relatively common to hear people say that you shouldn't let the truth get in the way of a good story. I don't mean that you should tell stories that are completely not true and pass them off as truth, but oftentimes the details just get in the way. So if a story is actually about my brother-in-law's second cousin's dog, in my version, it will usually be my cousin's dog. Or if the timing of a story would require less explaining if the whole thing happened over the course of a week instead of a month or a day, it will happen over a week. (If the most important part of the story is that it happened over a week, then I don't change that part, but if explaining the characters or setting of the story is noncrucial, and it turns a 15 second story into a 30 second story, I think an adjustment makes everyone better off.)

4. Avoiding hurt feelings: People sometimes call me and I'm still in bed and I try really hard to have a normal voice when I answer the phone, but usually I fail. Then they ask if they woke me up, and I say "No I've been up for a little while now." This makes them feel better and it makes it so we don't spend the whole conversation with them apologizing for pulling me out of bed. Really, I reject about 90% of the calls that come through my phone. If I answer, you shouldn't feel bad; you should be flattered that I wanted to talk to you. You are more important than sleep or anything else that I could be doing right then. (On the other hand, if you call and I don't pick up, you shouldn't feel bad either. I don't like talking on my phone if there is anyone within 20 feet of me, so if I don't answer, I'm probably in some crowded place (like class or something).)

I'm sure that there are lots of other justifications. My general view was that when it comes to lying, I follow the "no harm, no foul" principle. However, remember how I said the Stake President was there for this meeting? After my comment, he raised his hand and pretty much called me to repentance. All of his words were generally addressing the quorum, but he just looked straight at me the whole time.

He seems to think that Honesty is a virtue unto itself and that we should try to be completely honest even when our dishonesty is not hurting anyone. I suppose I can see where he is coming from. I need to think about it a little more though.

12 Steps

2011-03-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm Xister and I'm a Netflix-oholic.

I think that the first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.

I realized over Christmas break that I had watched way too much TV on Netflix this past semester. The first sign to me was when my sister recommended the series Battlestar Gallactica (which was great, by the way) and I got through the whole thing from beginning to end before she finished it herself. I think it took me a little over 3 weeks.

I've made adjustments this semester and have cut back significantly, but until recently, I've been nervous to actually look up how much TV I actually watched. This week, I was finally brave enough to look up the stats.

On watch instantly alone, I watched 23 seasons of various TV shows and 8 movies. This adds up to 244 hours or about 16 hours a week. If you include the DVDs that were shipped to me, I watched 5 more movies and 2 more seasons. I also followed 5 shows on Hulu. This means that my TV watching was about equivalent to a part-time job. My mother pointed out today that in this time, I could've have become conversational in a foreign language. (If only I had watched all these movies in Spanish.)

I don't really know what happened to me. I used to be such a responsible kid. Lest you are quick to judge me, I feel like I have a defense that makes me seem only a little ridiculous. First, I was really burnt out last semester. I had not had a chance to rest during the summer, and I never really got the chance to take a break before classes started. Second, most of the time which I was "watching" these shows, I was also doing other things (like studying, cooking, folding laundry, etc.). Third, a lot of the TV I watched was during holidays when you are supposed to relax already. Fourth, the quantity of Netflix that I watched means I was only paying about 10 cents an hour for their services. And fifth, I really have cut back this semester. It is already half-way over and I've only watched 2.5 seasons of TV shows and 1 movie.

In any case, I'm not sure why I felt the need to expose this in the blogosphere (it is probably one of the 12 steps too), but it sort of legitimizes my efforts to move on. I've taken up swimming to fill the time that I used to use on TV, and it's going well. Last week, I got to the point that I can swim a whole mile, which means I'm about ready to sign up for my triathlon. See? I'm a good kid.

Cities (and a little bit of ethics)

2011-03-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

Last semester, I took a class from this guy. He is actually this intense.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-14-2011/edward-glaeser

After seeing this, I decided to read his book because several of his claims seemed a little far fetched. It's well-written, but he doesn't cite many of the studies that he refers to. He is a very smart man, however, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in a lot of circumstances (i.e. that he is controlling for the right things and that the effects that he claims to be measuring are actually what he is measuring).

However, yesterday as I read it, I came across a passage where he was talking about the fall of Detroit. As evidence, he says that "the current median income in Detroit is $33,000, which is about half of the US average." I assume he means the US mean income because the median is around $40,000. It is odd to me that he would try to compare median and mean incomes when the mean of income data is systematically higher than the median (and particularly since comparing medians would have also supported his point). What he said is true, but it is definitely misleading.

So question one: What do people think about Glaeser's claim that large cities are better for the economy, mental and physical health, the environment, etc.?

Question two: To what degree are authors accountable to avoid true but misleading information, especially when the audience of the writing is primarily people who should be able to recognize this?

The Cruelest Month

2011-02-10T10:56:00.000-08:00

In high school, two of my sisters took a course where some guy read some poem. I don't know who the guy is or what the poem is or anything beyond the first line, but my sisters would often quote the first line in a dramatic British accent: "April is the cruelest monTH."

That guy was totally wrong. It's February.

February is cold. February is dark. February is the time that school work seems to start piling up and there is no break in sight. February is the third lap of the 1600 where you are already exhausted, but you realize that you have to do again what you've already done, except that you can't breathe.

Anything that might seem a little bad in another month is awful in February. I have nothing against Valentine's Day; I actually really like being single. However, since it is in February, Valentine's Day makes me forget all the independence singledom affords and makes me wonder why I'm not dating anyone. (The answer is that I don't really go on many dates.) I'd probably be more patriotic if Presidents' Day was in March.

Anything that seems awesome in another month is just mediocre in February. I was wandering though town the other day thinking about how much fun my life is currently, but it was odd because I still felt a little glum. I couldn't figure it out until I realized that it is February.

A funny thing about February is that, since I don't pay much attention to my feelings, I usually don't notice that I'm depressed until I recognize external signals. The main one is that I make lots of useless purchases. At BYU, this was mostly office supplies. Today I bought a pair of scissors and some mechanical pencils. Recently though, I'm starting to buy more expensive things. I got some goggles on Monday and I'm about 1/2 inch from buying a computer monitor today. It's not like I think, "I depressed... I think I'll buy something." Rather, I think "I really need this thing," and then in March I look back a realize that the previous month, I spent $800 on Red Vines or model airplanes.

Maybe I should buy one of those sunlights. They are only like $100 and they will make me feel better. And while I'm online, I should get one of these, and one of these, and a few of these...

Keep up at home

2010-11-21T20:47:00.001-08:00

So I've had a bunch of different conversations with my friends recently about how I'm not really good at keep up with my family members, in particular my parents. I was talking to one of my friends from the econ department about how he calls home every day. And he calls his grandma every week. My professor even mentioned the other day how he uses his time walking to and from school to call family members. (This was in response to when I said don't have enough people to call to efficiently use that time. He then asked, "Don't you have like a bazillion family members?")

I've justified my lack of correspondence for a few reasons. My parents have a lot of kids already, and I think that the rest of them are pretty good at calling home. When I was still coming home for Sunday dinners, it seemed the phone was off the hook the whole time I was there with one of my siblings or another. So I didn't think my parents were feeling neglected.

I also justified it because very little happens in my life these days that is different from what happens any other day. I don't know what I would say to my parents even if I did call every day. Yesterday, I woke up, ate breakfast, went on campus, did homework [while watching football], and then went to a classmate's birthday party. I might have watched half-an-episode of Battlestar Gallactica when I got home before I fell asleep. And that was a pretty exciting day. If you subtract the birthday part, that is a pretty accurate description of 80% of my days.

I realized the other day that I had taken this to the extreme though. It was one of those rare days that I had actually called home and was talking to my mother. I needed to ask her a question, so I started, "Mom, remember how I'm going to Germany this summer?"

She responded, "You are going to Germany?"

Whoops! I guess I forgot to tell her that my choir is traveling to Germany in May. "Ah! Remember how I'm in this choir?"

"You are in a choir?"

Whoops again! I only really do three things: school, church, and choir. Somehow I have neglected to tell my mother about 1/3 of my life.

But now she knows, so I guess she is up to date. Sorry about that though Mom. I will try to do better. [Even though I didn't manage to call home today. It became unexpectedly busy from 5-11pm when I would normally (or not so normally) call.]

The dream that you wish...

2010-08-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

I get really vivid dreams sometimes. Especially when I'm stressed out about something. It often takes me 5 minutes or so after I wake up for me to identify the parts of my life that are real and the parts that I just dreamed about. I think it is really likely that I'll go absolutely insane in the next 20 years because I stop being able to identify what is my dreams and what is real.

If my dreams were absolutely ridiculous or my life really normal, this would be simple. I remember one time though, I was coming back from a Theater Conference in high school and on the way back, my parents told me that one of our neighbors had hung himself from his basketball hoop. It was perhaps 2am and I was exhausted, so when I woke up the next day, I assumed that I had just dreamed it up. I didn't want to ask though because it could have been an awkward question if it had been just a dream. It wasn't until I got to church and they had a special combined youth meeting about it that I realized it was real.

Most of the time, things aren't quite so dramatic though. I'm starting school tomorrow, and I've been having really long, really boring, and only mildly crazy dreams lately. The most common problem is when I dream that I wake up late or something because then I panic when I actually wake up at 5am and have to exert a huge effort to not jump in the shower right then. I would claim that Inception (A+ by the way) just had a huge impact on me, but I had these sorts of problems long before wind of that move started churning.

Last night, I had a dream that we had a stick in the front yard of my building that would help us tell the weather. Like if it was wet, then it meant it was raining. The stick was named Sally and she was stuck in the ground and dressed in a red dress with white spots. We called her Sally the Stick.

For some reason though, we needed to replace her. We found instead a dark brown two-by-four, dressed him up in a tux, and named him Brock. That meant that we called him Black Block Brock. I remember being so frustrated and how hard it was to say his name that I practiced for a long time till I could say it right.

Then I woke up late for church.

Then I woke up for real 20 minutes before my alarm went off.

Frog in a Pot

2010-07-26T07:06:00.001-07:00

I remember being told as a child that if you try to drop a frog in hot water, it will hop out before it dies; if you drop it in cold water and then heat the water up, it will just hang out in there until the water gets too hot and then frog will die. The point was supposed to be about how we don't make bad choice all of a sudden. For instance, if someone offered me a million dollars to kill someone, I wouldn't do it. If they offered me a thousand dollars to kill a rose bush, maybe I would. And then if they offered me 100,000 to kill a dog and then a million to kill a person, maybe that would work.

(Side note: I've always wanted to test this to see if it's true, but no one is ever willing to try it out with me. The frog one. Not the murder one.)

I sometimes get this story mixed up with the one about crabs in a pan. If you put one crab in a pan and start heating it up, the crab runs away; if you put several crabs in a pan, if one tries to run away, the others grab it and pull it back it. As opposed to the other story, this one is supposed to be about fellowshipping I think. Put a bunch of crabs together and they all support eachother getting killed in a pan. Maybe these stories were written by Americans who don't eat frogs but do eat crabs.

I was reminded of these stories because I work in this office which is like the frog pot. When I get there in the morning, it is usually about 80 degrees, so I turn on the AC. After about 30 minutes, I start getting a little cold because it blows right at me, so I turn it off. I usually don't think to turn it on again until someone stops by at 4 or so and points out to me that it is 87 degrees in my office.

I should be getting an office mate any day now, but I don't know that it will help. What if they are a crab and not a frog?

My Home

2010-07-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

So I've been promising people for weeks that I would post pictures of my new space. I have this really great single-room studio apartment right off the Charles River. I love it to death.

The first thing that a person might notice walking into my building are the great common areas. This one is right inside the front door. It has a pool table and large screen TV.

Other common areas have really beautiful views of the city.
The next thing you would notice is that the door to the residences are very colorful. My door is green.
Thanks to a lot of help from Bob and Brittany, my apartment is now fully stocked. Here is what it looks like on the inside.

Here is the kitchen:
And the bathroom:
And the bedroom/whatever-it-needs-to-be-since-I-have-only-one-room:

Please note my amazing bed/desk. It's a bed on top and a desk underneath. I think that it is the perfect furniture for the space I have.

So there you have it: the grand tour.

The Last Day

2010-07-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

I've been watching episodes from this TV show called "Bones" recently. It's about an FBI team where one guy is the classic FBI tough guy and his partner is a female forensic anthropologist. They solve murders. In order to solve these murders, they do lots of science and often try to piece together the last few days of a person's life.

So of course, I've been a little paranoid as I walk around late at night about being slaughtered on the streets of Cambridge. As I was walking home today, however, I was thinking about how easy it would be to track my last 24 hours if I were murdered on the way home because so much of the stuff I do is time stamped.

24 hours ago, I was just finished a game of Settlers with my brother and sister-in-law. You could ask them and find out.

I went to bed at around 12:32. I know this because I got an email right as I was climbing into bed and it reminded me to turn of the sound on my phone so I could sleep.

My alarm went off at 8:30 and I got to work before 10:14 when I sent an email off to someone to help me with network problems I've been having.

I worked until around 2pm when I went and bought a double cheeseburger from Flat Patties at 2:13pm. I know this from my receipt.

I then went back to work and stayed there until 5:25, when I sent a text to my sister-in-law telling her I was on my way over.

I left their place at 6:40 and called my friend at 6:43 while I walked to FHE.

I caught a train back to Harvard at 10:13, right after hanging up with my HT companion.

I arrived at Littauer (the Harvard Econ building) a little after 10:20 after hanging up with my HT companion again.

I finished up work at 11:20pm and walked home after sending an email to my boss.

Not that anyone reading this is interested in the play-by-play of my life, but I thought that it was interesting that I can account for almost every minute if I had to.

This got me thinking about how we should live every day as if it were the last day of our life. Of course, clearly some philosophies aren't for all people, but I was thinking that it would be a cool tradition if at a person's funeral, someone recounted that person's last 24 hours or so in as much detail as possible. Maybe that's morbid, but I think that I would have really meaningful days if I knew that is what was going to happen.

Just a few funny things

2010-01-03T20:54:00.001-08:00

I haven't said anything in a while, but I see little things all the time that make me laugh so I thought I would do a short post about them.

A few weeks ago, I saw a sign in the FOB that said "One in three people need blood during their lifetime." How cool would that be to be one of the two thirds who don't need blood? And how does one find out that they don't need their blood? I'm pretty sure we are all born with it.

Crolace was talking to me the other day about how she heard on the radio that this year half of the United States will become Hispanic. It would've been convenient to have been in the half that changed since I've been applying to graduate schools recently and all of them ask about that.

I saw a banner about a regional Singles Christmas Fireside that said that only those 8 years and older are invited. I'm trying to think of why a 9 year-old would go. They must just be planning way in advance.

I asked my mother today if being nicer to people was a good goal. She told me that it wasn't since I couldn't attain it. It's good to have a mother who believes in me. (In her defense, I think that she meant that it's not a good goal since it is something that is not measurable.)

That's not quite right

2009-10-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I went to visit a friend of mine. I had never been to his apartment before, and when I walked in I saw this poster on the wall:

"Your apartment comes complete with Marilyn Manson, I see," I said as I walked in.

He looked at me a little funny and said "Yeah."

That night, I tried to go to bed early because I've been a little sick recently, and I'm trying to get better. After lying there for about 30 minutes, I suddenly realized why he had looked at me funny: Marilyn Manson is a very different person than Marilyn Monroe. I don't know if it is more funny that I made the mistake or that I realized it spontaneously 4 hours later. It wasn't like it was on my mind or anything.

In any case, it was nice of my friend to not say anything about it to avoid an embarrassing circumstance for me. It doesn't even occur to me most of the time not to correct someone when I know they are wrong. In fact, in a lot of circumstances I feel like I'm doing them a favor. (Like the other day, someone told me that the only baptismal fonts on campus were in the JSB and the JKB, and I was pretty sure that there was only one in the JSB. So I called the BYU operators and they confirmed my suspicion and told me that if I wanted to schedule it, I could do it through Campus Scheduling, but not until Monday because they aren't open on Saturdays and Sundays.)

Maybe I should be more willing to let people be wrong for the purpose of more harmony. I need to think about this some more.

People watching

2009-09-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

I know lots of people who like to sit in the CougarEat or Brigham Square and just watch people go by. Me too. In fact, I occasionally take it even further and I follow people around to see what they are doing and talking about. This is more tricky because they can't know you are following them. If they are hard to understand, I will sometimes walk in front of them and try to guess where they are going. This tactic usually doesn't work as well.

This being said, I do have a little respect for privacy, and if they are talking about something really personal, I don't listen in. However, I have taken detours for discussions of health-care, anti-matter, and literature. People are really interesting.

Speaking of interesting people, a friend showed me this link today. The first one is about a Mormon missionary. I've listened to 2 of them now and they were both amazing.

Word Play

2009-08-31T22:26:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan. I suppose I can't claim to have never groaned at a forced pun, but I really do appreciate that sort of thing most of the time.

Tonight, I was talking to my roommates about massages and one of them told us about a lady that once gave him a great one.

"She's a really good. . . massager. . . massoose. . ." he said.

"Misogynist," I said. No one laughed. They either didn't get it or didn't think it was funny. Either way, it made me sad.

Two things I've learned this summer

2009-07-31T09:56:00.000-07:00

To keep my mouth shut more:
At the beginning of the summer, I was working away at my desk listening to my iPod when my cubicle neighbor came over, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Your humming is very nice, but I'm having a hard time focusing over here." What made it even worse is that I knew she was there and was making a conscience effort not to hum or sing or tap my desk in time to the music. And I did it anyways. I've been trying really hard since then, and I think that I'm better at not bothering people anymore. Or perhaps they've all decided to work in other places since it seems that my area of the cubicle farm is relatively vacant recently.

To open my mouth more:
One thing that I love about Boston is that more than 10% of the people I know aren't Mormon, so I get to be a sort of liason for the Church. I've had all sorts of great experiences talking to people about it, and I love it. My favorite story from this summer so far is helping a Norweigan stranger break into someone's house and then inviting him to church.

Alarm Days

2009-07-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

I've realized that I really enjoy waking up to an alarm. Here is what happens in an alarm and a non-alarm scenario:

Non-alarm: I wake up briefly as the light starts pouring in the windows. I don't need to get up, so I pull my blanket over my head and try to fall back asleep. I wake up again when I start to hear other people bustling around the house. I don't need to get up, so I put my pillow over my head and try to fall back asleep. I wake up again because I've been lying in bed a long time. I don't need to get up, so I just lie there awake. I get bored so I eventually get out of bed and climb into the shower. Eventually, I make it work an hour and a half or two hours later and sluggishly work on the projects that I've been assigned. After 8 hours at work, I've done about 6 hours of work. I leave that evening, telling myself that I will work an extra hour the next day to fill the 7 hours of work that I'm supposed to be doing each day. (Lest anyone worry, I do work the extra hour the next day.)

Alarm: I wake up to the gentle buzzing of my cell phone on vibrate mode. If I'm concerned that I'm tired and won't wake up to the buzzing of my phone, I put my phone on my desk, and I wake up to the buzzing of my phone on my desk (which is louder). Since it is time to get up, I hop out of bed, hop in the shower, eat a quick breakfast and I'm at my office in under an hour. Maintaining the pace of the day, I make all sorts of beautiful figures and amazing discoveries at work and can leave at 3 pm since I got to work so early and have been so effective all day long. If the previous day was a non-alarm day, I happily work till 4 pm because time flies when you are effective. Life is great.

Sometimes non-alarm days are a little more effective than this, and alarm days are a little less effective than this, but this is the general idea.

The Charles River

2009-06-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

This picture shows how good of a photographer I am. Look at my beautiful fingers on the left. The big problem was that this photo was taken from the inside of the Boston Metro (the T), and I was trying to cover the flash so the camera could actually see through the window.

Another sign of how good of a photographer I am is that I really wanted this picture to focus on the sailboats in the river, and I'm not sure you can even tell that is what they are. Oh well.

One really fun thing about Boston is that they love their river, the Charles. Even in this dreary weather that we've been having lately, there are always people out rowing or sailing or doing whatever else you might do in a river. They have a really nice trail that runs along both sides of the river too, so bikers and joggers can enjoy it. I don't blame them for how much they like it. It really is very calm and majestic.

I think that most people think of rivers as inconveniences these days since they get in the way of where we want to go, and we don't get the commercial use out of them that we used to. I have to admit, a couple weeks ago I was trying to take advantage of the beautiful trails along the river and took the one bridge that doesn't connect the trails on both sides. Instead it brought me into the middle of Boston University (which is a nice place, but not where I wanted to be right then). What I wanted to be a brief 3 mile jog turned into a 6.5 mile one as I ran around the Boston area lost, trying to find my way back across the river. This, though, was not the fault of the river, but of the person who thought that since I wanted to cross the river, I also wanted to cross the freeway and the railroad.

In any case, perhaps I'll get a better river picture one of these days, and post that one, so you can see it a bit better.

Today, I'm leaving to California, so I probably will have to post my daily pictures all at once on Sunday.

A picture a day. . .

2009-06-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend of mine from back home a couple days ago, and she asked me if I had taken lots of pictures, to which I replied, "No, I haven't taken any pictures" because that was the truth. She then got mad at me and gave me a great idea:

I am going to take one picture a day for the rest of my time in Boston.

At least I'm going to try. I already missed Monday, but I have today's picture already. I've decided to put these pictures on my blog unless they are really boring, and then I can tell you why I like (or dislike) the thing in the picture. Most of them will be "like" things since I haven't really found anything that I dislike so far.

So without further ado, here is picture 1:

This is were I took my GRE today. I thought that it was a really cool building and it reminded me of the houses that I saw in Normandy on my mission. Although this building is really cool on the outside, don't be fooled; the inside hallways look a little like a hospital and smell a little bit like vomit. (I guess that makes this my first "dislike" thing.)

On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by the actual testing center. I was expecting a run-down office with grumpy employees and it turns out that it is a beautiful office with pleasant employees. I'd give them an A+.

Words and Friends

2009-06-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

As I've been preparing the GRE (which I take tomorrow, by the way), I've realized that I don't really have that large of a vocabulary. I always knew that my vocabulary was lacking to some extent, but I'm beginning to realize how limited it actually is.

This was particularly surprising to me because I really like words and grammar and other things like that. One of my favorite books in the whole world is "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." I have a special place in my heart for etymology. When I learn a new word, I feel like I've met a new friend. It just turns out that I promptly forget that friend once they are out of sight. I think that my subconscious mind does this on purpose because that way I can squeeze every last bit of joy over meeting a certain word several times.

Honestly, I think that I do this with people too. It seems I re-meet the same people several times in life. The difference is that people sometimes get offended if you forget who they are. Yesterday, I saw a girl at church that I knew from Provo while I was passing the sacrament and she smiled and waved and I smiled back. After the meeting I considered looking for her, but I decided against it in the end since I couldn't remember how I knew her or what her name was. Had she found me, I would've tried to figure it out without having to ask her, but I didn't really want to purposefully bring that on myself. (As a side-note: As I'm typing this, I suddenly remember who she is.)

In any case, I'd like to announce to my mind that given that there are over one million words in the English language and 6,788,282,557 people in the world, if I can even remember the words and people that I already know, there will still be lots more to meet in the future.

It is time

2009-06-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

I measure how far I am behind on posting on my blog by how far down I am on Crolace's blogroll. When I noticed today that I was only just above Annie, I realized that I really need to get crackin'.

Unfortunately, I am at work and don't have time to post anything substantial. Maybe later tonight. . .

Pour on water, pour on water

2009-05-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my church burned down. When I left, the brick exterior was still standing and the fire department was doing all they could to keep the flames off the steeple so that it wouldn't fall, but the roof had pretty much entirely collapsed, the heat from the flames had blown all the windows out, the the building looked pretty much gutted.

It started when we were sitting listening to broadcast for a multi-stake conference, and the fire alarm went off. I thought that it was a little irritating that the fire alarm would malfunction during the middle of a conference, but after a second I started to smell a hint of smoke in the air. The presiding authority then stood up and instructed everyone to exit the building quietly.

As I looked back after exiting the building, I saw smoke pouring from the roof and a little bit of smoldering in the eaves of the building over the chapel. When the fire department arrived, I think that they first were trying to stop the fire locally by going into the building with fire extinguishers and by cutting holes in the roof. Within a few minutes though, there were huge flames all over the roof and they realized that it was more important just to keep the flames from spreading to some of the houses that were only feet from the burning chruch.

It was really impressive to watch. The fire got so hot that you could feel it from across the street. At one point, the heat also blew all the windows out and caused the roof to collapse. You could see the flames devouring the chapel through the smoke-tinted, large, round window over the choir seats. I've only attended church there one and half times, but sitting and watching the building eaten away by flames and being able to do nothing really was an emotional experience.

I'm not sure what we are going to do for the rest of the summer now, but there are several church buildings in the Boston area. I heard as well that the Episcopal Church across the street has offered their facilities while we are getting something more permanent. It's funny how tragedies tend to bring communities together.

What a weekend.

Summer reading

2009-05-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

So I forget how much I enjoy reading while I'm not doing it. In fact, if you had asked me a few weeks ago if I liked to read, I probably would have told you no. This did not stop me during the last week of classes last semester to read through 1600 pages of Fabelhaven when I should have been writing papers and preparing for finals. (They are really good, by they way. I give them a hearty recommendation.)

Now that summer is here, and I haven't made dozens of friends yet. I find reading one of my leisure activities of choice. So far I've read "The Last Lecture" and "Outliers." I think that they both got a lot more hype than they deserved, but each his'er own.

Today I went to the bookstore to get a copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for my summer book club. It was going to be a quick run: rush in, grab it, and rush out. (And pay for it somewhere in there too I suppose.) The problem is that I'm a bookstore junky, and The Coop in Cambridge is one of the more beautiful bookstores that I've seen. So I took some time to wander through the shelves.

In short, I discovered that the next "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" book came out a few weeks ago. I was really excited, so I left with 2 books instead of one. Oh well. I'm really excited for it though. (That whole series also gets a hearty recommendation.)

I'm game for other people's recommendations too. I sort of think that I want to read Julia Child's autobiography, but that is the only one that comes immediately to mind as I sit here.

Summer fashions

2009-04-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

So it has been a while since I've posted anything. I apologize to all of you that check my blog every day hoping to find my pearls of wisdom. I just took my last final today though, and I should have some time to think again. Hooray!

So the warm weather today has reminded me that I don't really have much great summer clothes. I thought about going shopping today and was intimidated by prospect since I have no sense of style. Any hints anyone? I pretty much need a whole wardrobe including footwear.

Remember How I'm Your Friend

2009-03-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

I'm often really surprised how mean return missionaries can be to people who try to persuade them of something. You'd think after 2 years of dealing with unkind people, they would learn from experience how to kindly, but firmly, let someone know you are not interested.

I'm helping out a friend of mine with her run for BYUSA president, and it was my job tonight to cover my ward and make sure they all vote for her. A lot of people were really nice and great; several were not. The most surprising thing to me were the people who are my friends and who were really mean.

I had many people tell me that they didn't really support anything that BYUSA does, and therefore didn't plan on voting, and that's OK. It is not OK to be unkind though. I think that these people don't realize that being mean to people who are pushing for causes that are important to them makes a world a worse place.

In any case, here is my rant at the world.

"The way my brain works"

2009-02-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

So I was just reading something where someone made the claim "... but I'm not stupid. That's just the way my brain works."

I'm not going to make any claim on whether or not this person is stupid because I've never met them before, but isn't being stupid all about how your brain works? Or doesn't work, in this case?

State of the Union

2009-01-28T16:45:00.000-08:00

When I was little, I used to think that the State of the Union Address was similar to Student of the Month. It was always disappointing that my state never won. I was also always disappointed that I never won either.

Reading Days

2008-12-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

So I think I like reading days. When else in the semester do you have time to watch six-hour, Victorian mini-series? Or take naps on benches? Or read books that you've always been meaning to?

I think that the last one is one of the things that I enjoy most about reading days because you feel slightly less bad about it, even if what you are reading has nothing to do with your classes. (I feel the same way about climbing trees on Arbor Day; it's not quite what the day is meant for, but I feel like I better appreciate a tree from the top of it.)

My reading day book today is Ex Libris, recommended to me this week by a friend. I had seen it around the house growing up, and after the first 50 pages, I'm realizing that I had read the first essay already, but I had never managed to finish it for some reason. Perhaps I wasn't at a stage that I could appreciate a compilation of essays.

I think now though that the personal essay is the perfect genre. I've always thought that blot were fun because they are a little bit like road trips through someone's mind. I'd have to call a personal essay a guided tour. And a good essay is like the sort of tour where they will let you stop and play the 15th century grand piano for a moment before moving on. Ex Libris perhaps qualifies as one of these.

In fact, I was going to do some studying after posting this entry, but I think that I probably will take a little more time and read a few more chapters of it.

Today's conundrum

2008-12-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

I've known for a long time that there are many things that I like knowing or doing that I don't like learning about. Like reading. I really like having read lots of books and discussing them and talking about them, but the actual sitting down and reading it isn't really all that pleasurable to me. Or Art History. I love visiting museums that have art that I understand or at least can pretend to understand. My experience in art history classes, however, has been pretty boring.

It is just occurring to me today though that it can also go the other way. There are many things that I enjoy learning about that I don't enjoy doing. This is what originally got me out of the Physics Major and what has stopped me from being a pure mathematician. I love my classes--they are the highlight of my day--but the idea of doing a ton of research in it doesn't really get me very excited.

I've been thinking about this today because this conundrum creates an interesting decision for me. It sort of feels like I can choose a field of study now that I love in return for a profession that I may enjoy less, or I can study something that I enjoy less for a profession that I may enjoy more. Making this decision more complicated is that it is hard to say which professions I'll enjoy more or less until I am there. I was surprised by how much I loved my Physics classes but by how much I disliked research. I like my research now much more, but I still sometimes wonder if I would enjoy a more applied field even more than this.

Decisions, decisions.

Unsteady ground

2008-12-04T14:36:00.000-08:00

So I've been really grateful recently that I don't have an iPod as I walk up to campus. Most of my interesting (albeit twisted) thoughts and experience seem to happen as I'm making the trip from my apartment to school.

Today I saw this guy and girl trying to climb down the hill south of campus rather than taking the stairs. This hill is landscaped to showcase the shrubbery from various parts of the US. I think that this hill was supposed to be Arizona or something.

In any case, as they are going down, the guy seemed to think he was pretty cool for being able climb down so easily; the girl was just following him because he somehow talked her into it. But she didn't seem to be enjoying nearly as much. She was a little unsteady on her feet, and at one point as she was starting to lose her balance, she grabbed the nearest thing that could possibly stabilize her.

It was really unfortunate that it was a cactus.

Tricky

2008-12-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

It is really hard to put a band-aide on your back. It's already tricky to do anything that involves knowing which way your hands will be going when you are looking in a mirror, but it is much harder when things are flipped around again by turning around and when the wound is in a hard to reach portion of your back anyways.

What I learned from computer games

2008-12-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

You might think that this post is going to be about educational games that I played when I was younger that taught me about prime numbers, shooting buffalo, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Or perhaps about how they ruled my life and I've learned lessons about self-restraint and my personal limitations with that regard.

Neither of those things are true. This week I've been thinking about what I can learn about myself and my brothers by the way we interacted with each other through computer games. You see, we would often acquire simple little games that allowed two or three players that we would all play together. Normally they involved fighting each other or blowing each other up with dynamite. They were all high quality. But I think that there is something to learn about how we each approached these games.

My older brother is very creative. He was usually the first one to figure new strategies that were usually pretty effective.

I think though that I'm adaptable. I would notice the strategies that my older brother would start using, and then pick them up as well. Normally, I got better at them than my brother did pretty quick, so he'd have to come up with another strategy to counter the one he invented.

My younger brother would then occasionally win because I would focus on my older brother and would be left too weak to take on my younger brother after that. Most of the time, however, in the initial stages of a game, it would be me or my older brother who would win.

The thing with my younger brother though is that when he decides he likes something, he gets really passionate about it. So he would continue practicing and learning a lot longer than I had the patience for. At that point, he would start beating both me and my brother pretty consistently.

And even though we are not trying to fly exploding sheep into each other anymore, I think that the general things that you can learn about us still sort of hold today.

Violence and me, the sequel

2008-11-26T22:53:00.000-08:00

These have less to do with violence and more to do with my morbid imagination and pessimism:

1) Each year we get a Christmas present for our choir teacher. This year we are flying out her father from Wales to spend the holiday with her. But I was imagining what would happen if the plane crashed. "Merry Christmas, Sister Hall! We don't think you've ever gotten a present like this before!"

2) Walking to campus last week, I started choking on the sandwich I was eating. There wasn't anyone around, and it made me think about how depressing it would be to die by choking on PB&J. How unpoetic is that? I think that I'd much rather be hit by a bus or be attacked by rabid butterflies. Or at least by choking on a more classy type of sandwich. (Ham and cheese maybe.)

3) Walking to campus last week on a different day, I saw a girl sitting by the duck pond on a rock looking very pensive and a little sad. I then had the overwhelming urge to run up and push her into the pond. Can you imagine being a little sad because your boyfriend had just broken up with you earlier that week, so you decided to find comfort in being one with nature for a moment? And maybe it was starting to work, at least until some random jerk that you don't even know bowled you into a gross pond? And then he ran away? It certainly wouldn't be an experience you'd soon forget.

And I sort of think that it is my calling in life to make sure that other people have interesting stories to tell their grandchildren 60 years from now.

Thanks

2008-11-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

So for FHE yesterday, my group made "Turkey Hands," and we wrote around the outside of the turkey things that we were thankful for. It isn't so hard. I started writing things here and there (The Gospel, my family, my school, Red Vines, etc.) and thought I was making good progress.

That is, until I noticed that everyone else was hardly stopping to breathe as they wrote. They seemed to get two for every one that I had written. So I started writing more (my roommates, Mathematica, breaks from school, warm blankets, etc.) But try as I might, I just couldn't keep up with the rest of them. So now they are all posted on our door and some of the turkey papers are so full that there is hardly any negative space; mine just has a pleasant splattering of blessings.

I was worried at first that perhaps I was less thankful than everyone else in my group. I was wandering around concerned today when I realized something: maybe I don't sit around being grateful for birds and red bricks and lined paper and other things, but I don't really go around complaining about things either. I think that it is OK to feel less thankful if you feel less needy.

As long as your thanks outweigh your requests, I think you are just fine.

I love animals

2008-11-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

I love to eat them.

Actually, that is not even really true. I don't really like the taste of most meat and was a vegetarian for about a month once.

In any case, I wrote this song for the ward talent show last week. It's not quite where I'd like it yet since I threw it together the day I performed it, but it was well received. Special thanks to MLH who came up the chorus which inspired the rest.

This song is to the tune of "Feed the birds" in Mary Poppins.

Early each day at the steps of our hill
The BYU students walk by,
And they all look so happy. That is, just until
the bird droppings fall from the sky.

So here's a solution to try, if you dare,
But you'll be glad if you do.
To protect your clean clothing and your well-groomed hair
All it takes is this effort from you:

Squeeze the birds, tuppence a grab.
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a grab.
Squeeze the birds, that's what I cry
While overhead the birds fill the sky.

From the trees of our campus, the birds are all watching,
We walk around unaware.
Although we can't see it, they're aiming the droppings
to cover your cars and your hair.

Though my words are simple and few,
Listen, listen. I'm begging with you:
Squeeze the birds, tuppence a grab.
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a grab.

I don't get it

2008-11-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

So I just learned that eHarmony (an online dating company) was sued for not offer same-sex dating services on their website, and that they settled today for a ton a cash and the agreement to launch a same-sex version of their website.

I'm all for not discriminating, but I think it odd that businesses are being told what goods they have to sell. It seems a little bit to me like suing McDonald's because they don't sell hotdogs. Or perhaps a little more like suing cattle ranchers for not selling vegetarian options.

Some people may say that it different because in this case they are refusing to serve a certain segment of the population just because they are gay.

But that just isn't true. A date with a man and a date with a woman are very different things. If a company finds a niche market that they manage to make profitable, I think it strange that the government would show up and tell them that because they are offering a certain good, they also have to offer other good that they maybe deem unprofitable.

If anyone can think of a reason why this whole set-up isn't really weird, let me know.

Campaign funds?

2008-10-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

So with the last financial disclosure due before the election on Tuesday, I was curious about how the financial reports of the various candidates differed.

I think that the most amusing/depressing thing I found (depending on your mood) was a "campaign meeting" expense paid to Sherwood Hills by Keith Grover.

"What's Sherwood Hills?" I asked myself. After Googling it, it turns out that it is a spa and resort in Northern Utah. North of Ogden even. What is he doing holding campaign meetings up there? And how much meeting was going on compared to how much spa-ing?

With the $22,000 left in his campaign account, is his next meeting going to be in Paris?

If it is, I wonder if he will let me be on his committee.

Microsoft

2008-10-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

Overheard as I was walking to class today:

"Yeah, it's more like Internet Exploder."

Falling with style

2008-09-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

I read the following quote today:

We like to praise birds for flying. But how much of it is actually flying, and how much of it is just sort of coasting from the previous flap?

-Jack Handey

And I thought it was perhaps mildly inspirational, but mostly just really funny. If I wanted to turn this into a serious post, I might make some sort of comment about how we often covet the positions of those in life who are figuratively flying when we in fact are just as capable but simply don't realize that most of the time we would only need to coast from previous flaps.

But I don't plan to make this serious, so I'll just leave that whole discussion off.

Picture of Righteousness

2008-08-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

I just sat down next to a guy wearing a short-sleeved, white shirt, a nice conservative tie, and an MTC teacher name badge. His shirt pocket is full of all sorts of things, including a pen and a missionary planner. He is currently sitting at a computer with the "Eternal Marriage" manual open to the "Mate Selection" chapter. He has no ring on his finger.

How long do you suppose this guy has been home from his mission?

My nephew

2008-08-07T20:05:00.000-07:00

Me: M- M- Mommy starts with EM.

Him: EM.

Me: D- D- Duck starts with DEE.

Him: DEE.

Me: W- W- Waffle starts with DOUBLE-YOU.

Him: DOUBLE ME?

I'm not sure he understood how this game worked. He'll catch on someday.

Waiting

2008-08-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

So I've been programming a lot of little algorithms that are trying to optimize this or that. Mostly I have been using Matlab. Today, I am using Stata. I have not been converted. I ran it once and it gave me some results that I didn't believe. So I ran it again with different initial conditions and (tada!) it turns out that the point that maximizes a given function depends on where you start. Grr! (Just in case, I've already lost all of you, that is the same thing as claiming that my apartment located in a different place depending on the path you take to get there.)

So I read through the whole help file in order to see if maybe there was a better way of arriving at my conclusion. It looks like there are different search algorithms available in Stata that I can choose from. Thinking that maybe another one might be more accurate, I'm giving another one a shot.

That was an hour and a half ago. I just broke iteration 200 a minute ago, and it doesn't seem to be quite done yet. I would just head out and work on something else while it's crunching away, except that I'm doing this one a library computer, and they automatically log me off if I don't touch it for 10 minutes.

In any case, I'm all caught up on current events, I know what all my friends are doing on facebook, and I've written two blog posts. Maybe while I'm waiting, I can go and become the world expert in South-East Texan dragonflies.

Amazing Blessings

2008-08-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that I'm a starving college student. I wasn't always this way, but this summer I've been spending a lot more than I've been earning, and I noticed suddenly last Friday that I had $20 to my name in both my savings and checking account.

I was only slightly concerned. I'm a member of a dinner group, and I had already bought the food that I needed to cook when it was my turn next. I also often eat lunch at my parents' house after I babysit my sister's kids. All I really needed to worry about was breakfast, and $20 should've been more that enough to take care of that.

However, I woke up on Sunday morning and I remembered that it was fast Sunday. This may seem like just the thing a struggling budget might need; however, I pay my tithing on fast Sundays. I quickly looked up how much I owed and it was $40.

"Hmm," I thought. "How am I going to make this work?" I wrote out the check anyways and handed it in, knowing that the extra would be absorbed into the line of credit on my account. It was a little intimidating to go into debt to pay tithing, though. Knowing that my dad would likely disown me if I were to try to cover my expenses by selling my plasma, I went throughout that day trying to figure out how I'd make ends meet that month.

That evening, I walked into my apartment and noticed a letter on the table that my roommate had brought in from the mailbox that afternoon from Brent Brown Chevrolet. I had bought my car from them several months ago, so I just figured it was a letter saying that they wanted me to by another car from them.

I started walking down the hall to my room as I tore open the envelope. Inside was a $70 check! I couldn't believe it.

"BLESSINGS!!!" I shouted. One of my roommates had just come out of his room to the hallway and looked surprised that I was shouting high-pitched, incomprehensible exclamations in the hallway. After I had calmed down a bit, I was able to explain the whole thing to him.

Lest you be a skeptic, I realize that the check was in the mail much before I paid my tithing and probably even before I realized that I was really hurting for cash. I think though that the main lesson to be learned here is to just do what's right, because God is already taking care of the details you.

In any case, I think that this story is almost Ensign-worthy. The only thing that would make it better is if I had 3 starving children and lived in Tahiti. I mostly just think that it's fun that I have my own tithing story that I can one day tell my grandkids.

Dance Like Patrick

2008-07-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

So I have been asked by several people to post my new instructional video online. I hope that you all enjoy it. It has been broken into two segments for viewing simplicity. If you only have a couple minutes, the second segment is shorter and the better of the two.

Odd new plates

2008-06-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the new license plates for Utah. I am perhaps biased because when I first saw them around, I thought it was very brave of so many UofU fans to be parked on campus. Now that I realize that they are actually the new default plates when you buy a car, I just think they bear a striking resemblance to a beer can.

The other one isn't so bad, except that it makes the new license plate slogan stand out more. This wouldn't be so bad except the "Life Elevated" sounds so much like a drug reference.

I'm sure who ever was on the committee to design these was chuckling to him-(or her-) self, thinking that the poor, sheltered Utahns would never make such a connection. Well, the secret is out, though it seems it is too late. I guess we will just have to put up with beer can/druggie cars until 10 years from now when they get around to redesigning them.

Pizza in Tight Spaces

2008-05-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

I approached my locker for the first time in an upper hallway of the JKB. I was a little dispointed in the placement--it was not near any of my classes and on the opposite end of campus from my appartment--but I was soon pleasantly surprised. As I opened the door, I realized that my locker was huge! It was not a tall locker, but it went back at least 3 feet.

As I gazed into the depths, I was hit by a sudden epiphany. Why am I paying so much for rent when I only pay five bucks a semester for a locker this size? I slipped inside and realized that this dream was conceivable.

Well, alright. Maybe not living in the thing, but I had another idea. And so the planning began. . .

This is a rough sketch of the phone conversation:

Me: I'd like to order a small pepperoni pizza.
Her: Where would you like it to be delivered.
Me: Can you deliver on-campus?
Her: Yes.
Me: OK. Could you send it to the JKB, across from room (such and such), locker (something or another)?
Her: Yeah, that'd be fine.
Me: Great. Just knock on the locker when you get there.
Her: [Silence] You'll be in the locker?
Me: Yep.
Her: [Nervous laughter] OK.

After waiting about 30 minutes, I once again ventured into my little home and waited. After a few minutes, I heard Bran (whom I brought just in case) say "It's that one right there," which was followed by a few loud bangs on the door.

"Hello!" I shouted.

"You've got to be kidding me!" he responded.

"Hey, can you do me a favor?" I shouted back. "I can't open this from the inside. Here is my combination. . ."

He proceeded to try to open the door, and on the second try, he succeeded (lucky for me).

As a whole, I'd have to call a it a pretty successful venture.

Something about Lit'rature

2008-04-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

Summer is here and I want to finally read all of those books that I've been putting off in the name of lack-of-time. Yesterday, I read The Miracle at Speedy Motors which is the latest in The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series. It was fabulous, as usual. I think that Alexander is starting to wax more and more philosophical in these later ones actually. He skirted the topic of religion several times.

One of my favorite parts was right at the beginning when Mma Ramotswe is thinking about how the address of her Detective Agency is c/o the adjoined auto shop. While her assistant believes that such an address belittles the agency's importance, Mma Ramotswe notes that there is security in being "care of" another. In fact, she says that we should all be "care of" one another. And I thought it was a great idea.

(P.S. If any of you have ideas for me to add to my summer reading list, I'm up for suggestions.)

Problems

2008-04-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

I think that a great majority of the world's problems could be solved with basic human kindness. The rest can be solved by good and able economists. :)

(and maybe an occasional doctor.)

Won't somebody think of the children

2008-04-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

I think that it is vulgar to have finals at 7:00 AM. I also think it's awful to have finals on Saturdays. This morning my Econ 110 students had both. At the same time.

Luckily, the other TA is married, so he goes to bed at around 10:00 every night, so he volunteered to proctor the first half of the exam while I did the second. It still amounted to me arriving on campus at 8:30, but that is an hour and a half better than 7:00.

Perhaps I'll take a nap this afternoon. I'll do it between washing my car, going shopping, depositing checks, and studying for the other 3 finals that I still have ahead of me. Hmm. . . .

Fame

2008-03-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

This is just about the most amazing thing I've ever seen:

MLH's blog

Gregory Mankiw's blog

She's famous!!!

I can do it on my own

2008-03-29T07:41:00.001-07:00

Please note:

b n b n b n

Do you see how they work? It because I fixed it.

For the last few days, my spacebar, b, and n have been tempermental, only working about 20% of the time. I tried to be patient with them, hoping that they might repent of their ways and return; I learned the alt-codes for b, n, B, and N, which make typing a little tedious but I was working with it. Thursday I gave up and replaced them. (I'm going to be a great church leader someday.)

I chatted with Kiran from Dell who didn't get any of my jokes, but did send me a replacement keyboard.

Last night, I got to gut my laptop in order to replace the keyboard myself. I was very brave. It's a little intimidating to peel back sections of one of the most expensive things that you own when the pieces that are supposed to snap out of place feel like they are probably just going to snap in general.

Now it's all better though and I can write about all sorts of things that are more than one word long.

The cat is out

2008-03-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

So I've officially submitted the hatred post below to the campus newspaper and it's been printed today. I'm also currently typing this from the BYU Democrats booth. I usually try to hide my political leanings from strangers (I make more friends this way), but I seem to be pulling out all the stops these days. The next thing you know, I might buy one of these Democrat t-shirts and wear it around campus or participate in an eco-terrorism rally.

You know that feeling when you buy new clothes and wear them to school for the first time and you are a little self-conscious about it. It's a little like that.

So far, no one has disowned me.

But the day is still young.

Hatred Awareness

2008-03-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

I just noticed a "Radical Islamic Terrorist Awareness Week" poster in one of the buildings on campus that is in part sponsored by the BYU Republicans. I think that it is great of them to occasionally remind us of the people that we are supposed to hate and fear. Otherwise I may have forgotten and, as a result, been kind to the Muslim people that I know.

While we are at it, I thought that it would be a great idea to start other sorts of similar weeks:
Columbian Drug-dealer Awareness Week
Thieving Mexican Awareness Week
Violent African Awareness Week
Lazy Poor-people Awareness Week
Communist Unpatriotic Democrat Awareness Week

Where's McCarthy when you need him?

Language

2008-03-11T21:27:00.001-07:00

I recently had an English assignment where we were supposed to find a letter to the editor that we agreed with and disagree with it. Here was mine:

"On February 5, 2008, Gary Hatch published a letter to the editor of the Daily Universe condemning the verbage of Senator Chris Buttars, who referred to a bill that he didn't like as "dark." Have we become so sensitive as a people that we can't say a thing without someone accusing us of racial hatred?

"As I sit here typing this response, my screen is a little dark because I don't want it to run out of batteries. By that, I mean I decreased my screen's luminescence.

"I went to bed early last night because the film my roommates were watching was a little too dark for my tastes. I mean it wasn't as light-hearted as I would have liked it be.

"I recently made a batch of cookies, but they didn't turn out well. They were a little dark. I mean they were not quite burnt but more well-done than I usually prefer to eat. But this is not because I don't like non-Caucasian people. Had there been one there, I would've given him or her one of my cookies. Except for the fact that they were a little da. . . I mean, burnt.

"In an effort to avoid offending a small minority of hypersensitive extremists, it seems we often have to tiptoe around language, and sometimes it's quite a detour. Since when have special interest groups hijacked freedom of speech?

"In short, perhaps we all need to learn to not take offense to the smallest turn of phrase. People usually aren't out to get you."

I thought it was one of the most offensive things that I had ever written. Unfortunately, I had a few people respond to this post saying that I made a few good points. I was shocked! Rather than leave a legacy of racial hatred behind me, I decided to write this as a response and hopefully partially redeem myself:

"While it is one thing to say that it is dark outside, it is another to call an immigration bill "dark and ugly," and make pretty direct reference to a tar baby. (I left out the other part to help strengthen my argument.)

"Even if this comment weren't supposed to be a racial reference, I believe that we should be careful about what we say. I think that part of becoming a "perfect man" by taming our tongue, as James says, is by knowing when it is appropriate to use certain language. I think that "speaking with the tongue of angels," like in the talk by Elder Holland, is learning to respect others through our language.

"I had a friend in high school from England who let out an occasional 'damn' and 'hell.' He would claim that because it didn't mean anything to him, it was OK. I explained to him, however, that we should be careful with our words, not because of what they mean to us, but because of what they mean to others.

"While perhaps we all could learn to not be offended, I think that it is yet more noble to learn to not offend."

Deon Turley is blogging

2008-03-06T14:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to Deon Turley's blog. She is great.

Clutter Therapy

2008-03-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

I was looking my friends blog tonight and came across a post of him lamenting over the impermanent nature of the cleanliness of his room. I chuckled to myself, realizing that I gave up the battle of permanence long ago.

Don't get me wrong though: I am a generally clean person. I like having a clean room and an uncluttered desk; however, I know that when life gets cluttered itself, a clean desk comes after passing my classes and sleeping at night on my list of priorities.

Actually, I think there is something deeply meaningful about a messy room. I’ve recently noticed the the state of my desk parallels the state of my life; when I notice that my desk is getting too cluttered to do anything useful with it, it’s time for a change. (On my desk and in my life.)

If my room were consistently clean, then I’d have no way to tell that my life is a clutter. I would be unknowingly simmering in stressful living and wouldn’t think to get out until I ended up spontaneously bursting into tears of frustration in the JFSB Quad someday.

And furthermore, I think that using psychology to justify my bad habits is among the most genius ideas ever!

A response to the crowded DMV

2008-02-18T13:50:00.000-08:00

I'm here sitting grading econ papers, and I had this idea. We are talking about the good and bad that the governments can do and the book we are reading makes a point that it is necessary to have the government distribute driver's licenses because otherwise private license companies would just give licenses out to everyone who wanted one and it would make the roads less safe.

But what if we made the issuers responsible for the havoc wreaked by the people they license. They would essentially be insurance companies, and if a certain firm thinks that a person will be too expensive to insure, then that person won't be licensed. If we made it so that fines for speeding had to be paid by the licensing company, those that speed and are a menace on the road will have to pay for it. Similarly those that drink and drive.

And the infrastructure of insurance companies is already there.

I think that there are probably big problems with this line of thought, but I thought that it was an amusing idea nevertheless, and one that is based on "sound" introductory economics.

Deon Turley for Utah State Legislature

2008-02-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

I think that this is an impressive woman!

Provo Explodes

2008-02-17T23:21:00.000-08:00

So this evening just after 9:30, I heard a big boom from outside. I thought at first that it might be a gun shot, but my roommate have been playing a lot of James Bond recently, so I ruled that out; I'm getting pretty good at recognizing gunshots. Thunder maybe? Nope. The skies are clear and it didn't have that zingy or extended thunder sound. Dragon? No scorch marks; usually they're linked. I decided that the SWKT had probably fallen down and I continued reading.

Ten minutes later, I got a phone call from my friend around the corner asking if I had heard it as well. I told her that I had and informed her of my conclusion. We decided to go questing to see if we could find out what had happened.

We hopped into my car (which still runs fabulously) and started driving around. After about 24 seconds, we decided that we felt a little silly driving around to who knows where we weren't even sure whence the sound came.

We took a loop on campus drive along the side of the hill to see if we could see anything in the city smoking and to make sure the SWKT was still there, and we didn't see anything fishy, so we went home.

I noticed just now online that it was an explosion at some steel plant in South Provo. There's not much news yet, but I'm way impressed with this explosion. It was almost 5 miles away and it shook my windows.

Tada!

2008-02-16T17:46:00.001-08:00

Well the day has come. I'm almost officially an adult. I bought a car.

Highlights: I have a button on my key that pops the trunk. The seats move back and forth electronically (but only when I want them to). It is shiny.

That last one is the most important.

Thanks to Portia's husband (Bassanio) who once again saved the day.

Here's another one for good measure:

Deceiving appearances

2008-02-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

I make it a point to never read a book with a boring cover. Unless I have to for a class, that is.

I just read a book for my writing class whose cover bears a striking resemblance to this:

It's called Judgments Over Time: The Interplay of Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors. Such a “fascinating” title only made it lose more points.

Upon flipping through the book, you would realize that it is in fact a collection of psychology articles about how a person changes (or doesn't change) the way they think, feel, and behave over time. Almost twenty percent of the book is reference pages. You might come across an occasional nonsensical diagram that seems to be trying to graph a person's life with a sinusoidal curve representing non-quantified high and low coherence levels. It is titled “Potential Life Niches,” and you might even sit for a moment to try and figure out what all the arrows mean before taking a deep breath and turning to the front of the book to begin a part of your life that is likely to be one of those low coherence pits in the graph you just gave up on.

You would be pleasantly surprised however. The foreword is written by some guy named George Lowenstein, and he's a bit like David Letterman in that he's pretty funny and makes you feel smart. I sort of had that sophisticated smile-and-adjust-your-bow-tie reaction when he quoted Pangloss from Voltaire's Candide and I recognized it. I also chuckled to myself when he referred to the “mild-mannered office-mate [who] entertains fantasies of murdering you.”

At this point, I may need to remind you that this book is not about the criminally insane but rather how impressions, memories, and expectations adjust over time. And I think that it was pretty well-put-together. Lowenstein's humor doesn't continue through all of the articles, but they are engaging enough to keep my attention once I realized that they could read my mind, including my violent fantasies.

In fact, they seem to know quite a bit about me. There is a whole article on defensive pessimism, a condition where people set their expectation low because it drives them to work harder and achieve more. I always think it's a little odd when I realize that my disorders have names.

In general though, I really enjoyed my little self-exploration through this book. Then again, perhaps you should ask one of the authors how much I really enjoyed it. They might just tell you that I've reconstructed my memory just because I'm happy to be done.

My Run-in with the Law

2008-02-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

So it finally happened. My worst fears have been realized. Now I officially have a police record.

Yesterday, I went to the library to find a book for my English class. Not any book in particular. It actually could have been a great many books. With so many options, one would think that I would be able to find something suitable in less than 30 minutes. Instead it took me about two hours.

By the time that I found something that I thought might work, I had a headache and was exhausted. I trudged up the two flights of stairs and turned to head out the door.

A second later, the alarms were sounding and I scurried back through the security gate. Fortunately, the guard at the desk was my friend from choir. Unfortunately, my friend has an impressive sense of duty. I guess the library policy is that if anyone walks through the gate with a contraband library book they have to call police dispatch and do a background check.

It turns out the BYU Police already know all sorts of things about me. Now they know that I steal books.

After I had been reported and my thieving nature had been permanantly recorded, I went to circulation to mend my ways and check out the book honestly. They informed me that before I could check out any book, I had to pay a fine. To make matter worse, they made me go up the LRC to do so.

I eventually escaped with my book, but 30 minutes, two dollars, and a trip up the stairs later. Oh, yes. And one more thing. An official criminal record.

There go my chances of ever being in the FBI.

And then there was one

2008-01-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

Today marks the one year anniversary of my return from my mission. It has both come and gone quietly. I didn't even realize that it was here until this morning actually.

I think that these are really the best moments to think about progress and life in general. I know that there are holidays in place for these sorts of things but they tend to get swallowed up in celebration. At New Years, we are supposed to look forward to how we will improve in the next year. At Thanksgiving, we are supposed to look backwards to what we have been given. Even birthdays have a bit of reflection involved, but I have a rotten habit of ignoring that part in the rumbling of food, games, and family.

Not that any of those things are bad things, but I'm certainly grateful for days like today that I just get to think about what I've become. It isn't exactly what I wished that I would, but quiet reflection has reminded me that I am moving forward. And I'm just fine with that. Celebrating alone allows for remorse and joy, and both feed a dedication for continued efforts.

In any case, happy anniversary to me, and good night to all those who have patiently put up with my little reflection.

locked

2008-01-25T11:10:00.000-08:00

I've been locked out of my email account. I don't understand what is going on. One moment I was just sending emails, and the next it told me I wasn't allowed to any more.

I'm actually in a state of mild panic. What if someone wants to contact me? Not that I'm expecting anything in particular, but when there's a campus emergency, don't they notify everyone by email. What if someone accidentally hit the campus self-destruct button and the whole thing is going to blow in 20 minutes or less and so they send out an email to warn us but I don't get it because I'm sitting here in the library complaining that I've been locked out.

Mostly it's just irritating. If anyone wants to get a hold of me, you may just have to rely on the good old US Postal Service.

Pahree, Frahnce

2008-01-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

Today a certain member of Men's Chorus stood up to say the prayer and he gave the usual introduction before he prayed: his name, his major, how long he had been in Men's Chorus, and where his served his mission. This man had apparently served in "Cheelay."

It occurred to me that whenever return missionaries who serve their mission in South America speak about where they served, they pronounce it with the pronunciation of the mission-language. This is also true about "tone-gah." I don't think that this is true for any other places. I have never told someone that I served in "Pahree, Frahnce" but that's just probably because they might worry that I'm strangling if I used the real French pronunciation. People don't say they served in "Doich-land" or "Espanya" or "Jong-gwoa" either though.

I have on occasion told people that I served in "Gay Pahree."

I thought at first that maybe it was just because Americans are notorious for the rotten geography skills, and maybe the first time they ever heard someone say the name of the country where they served was when they got there. If this were the case though, we'd probably be getting a lot more reports of people who served in "Ahrlund" for example.

I guess this is just one of those mysteries that we will just have to wait until the other side to get answered.

Life's little paradoxes

2008-01-04T14:21:00.000-08:00

Or is it paradoces?

So I'm a bit stuck here. I have a big project that I need to get done over the break and I have tons of time. I even have the project out and would love to work on it more than just about any other reasonable thing that I could be doing right now. I have one problem though. I am at work and don't have the resources here to get it done.

During Christmas break, we have needed to cover the office just it case some decides to call. I supposed it's great that I'm here taking the time to make sure that a few people are taken care of, but in the 20 hours that I have worked over the last 2 weeks, I have received perhaps 6 phone calls. That comes to about 25 dollars a phone call. I think that it's kind of my office to be willing to spend so much as a campus service.

I guess I have directed about 20 people to the traffic office down the hall while I have been here as well.

It's not so bad though. As it turns out, the computer lab that has the programs I need to move forward is also closed for Christmas break and it will be open again when classes start on Monday.

Once I no longer have time any more.

Wowie!

2007-12-21T00:27:00.000-08:00

So after almost 19 hours straight in the library, I've learned that staying this long in one place can make a person a little loopy. I've been doing alright all day long, however about a hour ago, I was standing talking to my brother when I, all of a sudden, felt really dizzy. I sat down and felt better, but I still have a bit of a headache (not unlike the headaches I get when I'm not getting enough sleep).

In any case, I'm well prepared for my test tomorrow as long as I can stay awake and focused for the thing. Luckily, I only need a 80 percent or so to get a good grade.

On your mark, Get set. . .

2007-12-20T06:28:00.000-08:00

Library!

So today is the day of the library marathon. I arrived here at 7:00 this morning as they opened and I plan to stay all day till they close at 2am tonight. (Tomorrow morning?) I'm not sure what I will be doing all day yet, but I have a few ideas.

My first is to find some corner somewhere and sleep a little.

Poorly prepared

2007-12-17T05:17:00.001-08:00

I'm about to go take a final that I haven't prepared for hardly at all. I'm feeling a bit better now because I woke up ridiculously early to study, and I think it was relatively effective, but we will see.

I also did laundry this morning.

And I have chocolate milk.

This hasn't been such a bad morning after all.

Thoroughly confused

2007-12-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

This is Portia's level:

I think that something fishy is going on here.

Readability

2007-12-14T11:38:00.001-08:00

So I was looking BranMuff's post about blog readability, and I says that a person would need to be a post-grad to interpret his blog while mine was just:

I was thinking it was because he uses bigger words, but I just checked the readability of Annie's blog:

I don't understand why it makes hers more difficult. Hmm.

Many ideas

2007-12-11T21:46:00.001-08:00

It is occurring to me as people are responding to my blogging post that it perhaps wasn't wise to create a forum for people to give me ideas of other nasty things that I could do to people. I mean, I eat sandwiches all the time. What's to stop me one of these days in a moment of forgetfulness to paint my room mates' faces with them? Just today I said that someone was the sort of person that deserves to be pushed into a pool. . . or I referred to my final preparations as taking out small people with ballistic missiles.

I really should work on this whole pleasant thoughts thing.

Things I just never quite got down in my youth

2007-12-07T13:27:00.001-08:00

Left vs. right
Cardinal directions
Telling time on a clock with hands
Alfredo vs. Marinara sauce
Writing with down- and not up-strokes
Multiplying by 7

Violence and me

2007-12-01T16:14:00.000-08:00

So I was talking to my room mates the other day about how, sometimes when I'm just sitting and thinking, I have these strong urges to do mean things. For example, yesterday I was sitting listening to B-Rob play expertly on the piano while drinking a large cup and raspberry lemonade when all of a sudden, I really wanted to run up and dump the cup down his back. Perhaps it would've been funny for a little bit, but mostly it would've been mean.

It doesn't necessarily have to be me doing the mean things in my imagination though. Every Tuesday, a few friends and I do our econ homework on the balcony of the Terrace in the Wilk, and every week, they announce the Terrace is closing that everyone needs to leave. Without fail, there are always several people who have to be told several times and that they need to leave. Last Tuesday, I thought it would be a much more effecting technique to hire a squad of BB-gun snipers to encourage sluggish deserters to gather up their things a little quicker.

I don't think that I'm a very violent person. The only time I can remember losing control and hitting someone was once when I hit my younger brother after he dropped a really big book on my bare foot. (Sorry about that.) I don't even like violent movies (unless it's artistic choreographed violence, like West Side Story). The most violent game I played growing up was WarCraft, which really isn't that bad I think.

I used to think that it was normal; you know, one of the manly urges when you just gotta kill something, (fix things, cook outdoors, . . .) but after talking to my roommates, I'm beginning to think otherwise. They seem to have imaginations about what they would do if someone broke into the house or jumped them spontaneously (which is good that they exists when there are people like me who just might).

In any case, it turns out that I'm an awful person. Oh, well. As long as I don't actually do any of those things, I don't think anyone is allowed to throw me in jail.

"The goose is getting fat."

2007-11-25T12:06:00.000-08:00

So my dad asked me a couple days ago what I wanted for Christmas. I didn't occur to me that any had even started thinking about Christmas shopping. I guess most people are a lot more responsible than I am. I often don't start thinking about Christmas presents until after finals week.

I should've seen it coming though. We started Christmas music in my choir about two weeks ago.

So I've decided that I'm going to stick a little wishlist on the side of my blog here. Then anyone who wants to access it can and I can edit it whenever and where ever I want. Genius!

A retort

2007-11-24T17:50:00.000-08:00

Today I am sickly and therefore can reply to branmuff sickly post with a voice of experience.

Pros:

Jamba Juice: Although I didn't make it up to campus today to buy a Jamba Juice, I'm certain that I would've loved it. Instead I've been slurping up cup-fulls of 7-up. It actually works wonders for an upset stomach as it turns out. I threw up 3 times this morning between the hours of 4 and 7, but then I got some 7-up and I'm feeling much better. When my stomach starts to churn, I start sipping a very small cup-full and by the time I'm done with the cup, my stomach feels better. I'd highly recommend it. (Word of warning: I can imagine that drinking too much to quick though might actually make things worse. I claim no responsibility for a person who tries out this method and has rotten things happen to them.)

Naps: Again, I would've loved to take a nap, but I'm aching all over and have been unable to fall asleep. Oh well. I guess that the option was there.

People take care of you: I've had lots of people do lots of nice things for me, or at least offer to. I thought that it was really great of people to take care of me even if I might be really crabby.

Cons:

It's unpleasant: Here, here.

Throwing up: I'd have to say that this is where I disagree most with Branmuff. As much as I'd like to maintain my girlish figure, vomiting is painful. I think that it's the worse when there is nothing in your stomach and you vomit anyways. If I hadn't thought that it would be really messy and incredibly unsanitary, I probably would've just given up on the toilet and laid out flat on the bathroom floor. I was exhausted and sweaty and smelly and unhappy.

I'm happy to report though that I'm feeling a lot better now than I was this morning thanks to my loving family and a bottle of 7-up. I'm hoping to be on my feet again tomorrow.

"Are you serious?"

2007-11-23T09:39:00.000-08:00

Another excerpt of a chat with Crolace:

Crolace: I am the queen of multiple choice.

me: I do really poorly on multiple choice
I much prefer short answer

Crolace: Unfortunately, it's not a useful skill once you leave school.

me: Unless you are on "The Price is Right"

Crolace: Or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

me: Yep
Maybe you should do that
I'm more of a Jeopardy sort of guy
Except that I'm no good at that either

Crolace: Jeopardy is short answer.
Short Question.

me: Short hard question

Crolace: Have you ever noticed that the questions never REALLY go with the answers?

me: I think they do a little bit

Crolace: Like, if I said to you, "Who is George Washington?"
Would you say, "This 18th century military leader had wooden teeth."?
I don't think you would.

me: If I didn't know anything else about him I might

Crolace: Would you say it in that way though?

me: Not so much

Crolace: They should phrase the clues more like, "He was the guy with the wooden teeth."

me: But then it could be Pinocchio

Crolace: Yeah, then they could accept either answer.

me: It would become a little more like family feud
except for no family

Crolace: Actually, if I asked someone, "Who is George Washington?"
They'd probably say, "Are you serious?"
They should have a jeopardy clue that just says, "Are you serious?"

me: Then it could still be Pinocchio

Crolace: And the person who says the most ridiculous question wins.
It would be for that round where everyone writes their answer on that blue thing.

me: I think it's a good idea

Children's rights

2007-11-23T09:02:00.000-08:00

An exerpt from a chat with Crolace:

Crolace: I think he just needs to think about what he wants to do.
It might almost be a good thing for him to go on academic probation.
Maybe he could join the circus.

me: He is very small.

Crolace: Ask him if he wants to be a lion tamer.

me: He could probably hide in a bottle
or a carpet.

Crolace: Tell him if he doesn't start going to class, you'll wrap him in a carpet, stuff him in a bottle, and feed him to the lions.
That'll light a fire under him.
Not literally.

me: I think that that is the best plan yet
Perhaps the fire would be a good idea too though.

Crolace: Whatever it takes.

me: Children don't have the same rights as normal people do
I think that I could get away with it

Crolace: I think the laws are such that you can get away with less stuff with children than with adults.
Ask Portia, she the criminal defense lawyer.

me: Good idea

Crolace: Say, "Is it illegal to feed someone to a lion, even if they're just a minor?"
"What if you wrap them in a carpet first?"

me: I wonder if she ever came across any cases of Peer Mentors putting children into rugs and then bottles then feeding them to a lion and then lighting the lion on fire.
Do you think you'd get in more trouble for feeding the kid to a lion...
or lighting a lion on fire?

Crolace: If there isn't any precedent, then I think anything goes.
I think you get in the most trouble for doing stuff to kids.
Animals come next,
then regular people,
then criminals.

me: Even if it helps the lion?

Crolace: Doesn't matter if it helps the lion,
Kids are at the top of the totem pole.
Again, not literally.

me: If they were, probably someone would get it trouble

Crolace: So true.

me: but not as much trouble if they had put a lion on the totem pole

Crolace: No, more trouble with the kid.
That's what I'm saying.

me: I should've written "as if"
the other way sounds like it's OK to put the kid up there if there is a lion there too

Crolace: Nothing could be further from the truth.
It's bad to put a kid up there,
but it's worse if you leave him up there with a lion.
If you're going to put someone on the top of a literal totem pole, it should be a criminal, because they are at the bottom of the figurative totem pole.

Registration

2007-10-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

So here we are again at registration time, and the next 5 months of my life are planned out. I guess I shouldn't be so set in what I've laid out. Currently, my schedule puts me in class from 12:00 to 6:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays, but from 4-5 on Tuesday and Thursday's and from 3:00 to 5:00 on Fridays. It would make for a really odd life I think, but in principle, I could sleep in till 2:30 pm once a week.

If only I felt like I could survive those Mondays.

The meaning

2007-10-21T21:19:00.001-07:00

This week I wrote a paper on how teachers can find the right level of sternness in there teaching to be effective. After I had printed it our and was walking to class, I realized that the topic of my paper was then in fact:

the means of finding the mean of meanness.

I thought it was just great.

Scadalous Comments

2007-10-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

So this afternoon I was so excited to notice that many people have commented on my blog. Full of anticipation, I clicked on the link to read the comments on all the interesting people who wanted to say interesting things about me.

Unfortunately, by filter blocked your comments. As it turns out, one of you used the words "free" and "sex" in the same paragraph. I managed to eventually bypass the filter and add my blog to the list of exceptions. It turns out that the perpetrator was mlh who said:

Not that this has anything to do with impressing members of the opposite sex, but do you want to come be in the test audience for DC? It's free and on Wednesday.

Scandalous! It's a good thing my filter protects me from such risqué comments.

Look, a poll

2007-10-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

You too can participate in Xisters's research by adding your input to this poll I just added. It's simple and economical. (I'm actually not so sure about the simple thing. I just added it.)

Much data

2007-10-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

So I've officially started the hair gel experiment (see ORCA ideas) and we have been receiveing a wealth of positive data. Before I started wearing gel, I received no comments about my looks. Since I've started it last Friday, I've received the following:

"Are you doing your hair differently?"
"You look really good today."
And the best one, referring to my new do, "It looks really hot."

To another girl, I was explaining my current experiment and mentioned that eventually no girl will be able to keep her hands off of me, and she said "I'm already struggling," and then she stroked my shoulder. (I think though that this data point might be a bit biased since I brought it up myself, so I can't include it with the other 3.)

This has been going so well that I've decided to start working out too and I'll see how that goes for me. I went jogging on Tuesday and played racquetball today. Oh, the things we do to secure a woman.

More info coming later. . .

Our irrational fears

2007-10-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I left the JKB exactly on the hour. I know this because as I opened the door to leave, a bell started sounding. I think that the bells in the JKB should sound a little less like fire/burglary alarms. It really made me jump.

It doesn't help that I have in intense fear of alarms and the things that set them off. This especially applies to those detector things that you walk through. Every time I enter the library, I pretty much have to close my eyes and run through the sensors if I intend to get past the security guards. It's worse when I know I'm carrying around a pocket knife or something (I know they are not metal detectors, but just the same. . .) If I'm leaving a building and one of the doors has written on it that after hours, an alarm will sound, I'll use the other door. Even in the middle of day. Even if I saw someone walk out the door a second before. I think that I would probably never fly if I thought there was a reasonable alternative.

I think that this stems from an early childhood experience at the library where I unknowingly passed through one of these sensors into an area that seemingly had no exit. The alarm screamed for a few seconds and then stopped, and then I found myself stuck with my contraband library book in an abandoned hallway. I didn't know what to do. If I walked through the passage, the alarm would sound again, but there was no way out. Eventually, a kind librarian showed up and rescued me, and now I find myself terrified of setting off alarms at every moment.

I guess it may seem irrational, but someday when I walk our of some grocery store with a forgotten pack of gum in the bottom of my cart, and as the alarm is set off, I get tackled and dragged off to prison, they perhaps you will understand. Meanwhile, I'll keep running through the entrance of the library.

Enlightening quote

2007-10-05T08:45:00.001-07:00

"A man is scarcely happy if he is very ugly to look at."

Aristotle
The Nicomachean Ethics

Look, I read too

2007-10-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

So I noticed how cool some of the things are that Crolace puts on her sidebar of her blog and so I decided to try and figure out how too. I seems like it was successful. Now people will know that I read and if they don't know me, they might think that I read smart stuff.

Perhaps I should put some more things on my list. If I read the first page of several lengthy Russian novels, that might add to my growing reputation.

ORCA ideas

2007-09-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking that the idea of getting someone to pay me lots of money for thinking of other great research ideas is a great idea in and of itself. I've been thinking about all sorts of good ideas. I think I will keep a big list of them:

What sorts of applesauces mold the fastest?
Why don't people eat lungs?
Women over 60 on the crusades.
Frequency and causes of in/near-bed fatalities.
The effect of hair gel on social life.

Bran Muffin Goodness

2007-09-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

No, this is not about home cookin'. It's dedicated to my roommates blog branmuff.blogspot.com. Any of you reading this one should immediately go look at his. It's much more amusing and interesting.

Thank you and good night.

Sing, sing, sing

2007-09-19T16:55:00.001-07:00

This post is to inform you all of my choir concert next week, Sept. 28 and 29. It's the BYU Choral Showcase and I think that all the choirs will be singing. If I can manage to memorize all of my music before then, it's likely to be really good.

Dancing and destruction

2007-09-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

So I really like dances. More than normal people. I perhaps shouldn't as much. If any of you have been to a dance with me, you know how I really get into it. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I figure I kinda swing my arms (and my whole body) around in time to the music.

In any case, I was perhaps a little too aggressive last night. I managed to shatter the face of my watch and slice my arm open. Oddly enough, I don't know how I did either of them or if they are related. I was just standing there and felt that there was a crack on the front of my watch, and all of a sudden the whole face crumbled into my fingers.

I didn't even notice that I was injured until I got home and saw blood trickling down my arm. I guess that makes it sound more violent than it in fact was; there was only a little bit, but I like that fact that I have battle wounds from the dance floor.

Perhaps I should be more careful.

Here it comes

2007-09-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

So my birthday is really soon. I have no idea what I will do or what I want even. I need a few things, but I think that birthday presents in general should be things that a person wouldn't ever buy themselves if they could. One problem that I have is that recently I buy the things that I want. If it's less than 15 or 20 dollars, I just go and get it. That means that the sorts of things that I want that I don't have are all over 20 bucks, and I feel bad asking for anything over 5. Hmm.

I guess the good thing about all of this is that I have no expectations. I'll be happy with pretty much anything.

Oh, the bitter irony

2007-08-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

So any of you that may be reading this may probably already know that I recently broke up with my girlfriend. Most of you don't know the many circumstances surrounding this break-up.

I had been considering calling things off for a while before it actually happened. I was enjoying myself, but I was also realizing that it wasn't really going anywhere. In the long-term, it just wouldn't have worked out.

In any case, last Sunday my roommate came home thoroughly depressed. He had been dating a certain girl for a while who he was relatively sure he wanted to marry, and she had broken up with him. I felt bad for the chap and offered to take him out to dinner that week. It actually turned out to be Tuesday's lunch, and as he thanked me for buying his food, I said mostly in jest, "Don't worry. My girlfriend will probably break up with me tonight and you can buy me lunch sometime."

A few hours later, I was walking home with her, and she turned to me and said "There's something that I need to talk to you about." Really not that surprised, I responded "I know." More surprised than me I suppose, she said "You do?" And a few minutes later, we were no more.

At the time, it didn't really have an effect on me. It's only be recently that I've been looking back and noticing how attached I was even though I didn't really realize it. The biggest sign of any sort of abnormality is that I've been doing more things on whims and especially buying things. I've had some lonely times, but I sure that I'll be relieved and back to normal pretty quick.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here alone on a quiet Saturday night.

Oh where, oh where has my sister's bike gone...

2007-07-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

You know what's great about running in circles? You find things that you lost along the way.

Yesterday was one of those busy days where you wake up and don't stop running until you go to bed at 12:30 or thereabouts. In the midst of this whirlwind, I had a voice lesson. It's a good 20 minutes away on foot, so I planned on biking there which is about 5 to 10 minutes away. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the bike rack where I park my bike, I could not find it. To make matters worse, it is not actually my bike but the bike of my sister that I am borrow for the summer while she is away.

I looked around for the remains of the lock that perhaps had been cut through and abandonned. It would've taken some heafty clippers because I had locked it up with a heafty U-lock. Finding no trace, I started racing to my voice teacher's home and called my dad to see if he had a car on campus that I could borrow. He didn't, but he had his bike and kindly let me borrow it. I sped to my lesson arriving only 5 minutes late.

Afterwards, I had my dance class and so rather than return the bike right away, I took to my class and locked it up in the racks there. As I gathered my stuff together after locking the bike up again, I noticed something not so far away: I saw my sister's bike locked up and forgotten from last week when I road my bike to my lesson and dance class, and then didn't think about it again till yesterday.

right vs. wrong vs. ...

2007-07-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

So at what age do you think that a child begins to understand the idea that there is more to life than just right and wrong, true and false, and good and evil?

What prompted this question was a conversation with a friend about whether it's appropriate to teach kids physics that we know is false even if it relatively accurately describes how things are. She is convinced that it should be laid out as it is from the start, but I'm not so sure. I don't think that young kids can really grasp the idea of several rights or answers that are close enough to the truth that they are useful.

The fact is that there are very few absolute truths in the world, but children don't yet have the tools or experience to really grasp that. Neither do many adults though. Hmm.

Food glorious food

2007-07-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

This week I've reaffirmed my awful eating habits. Especially with my current schedule. I think perhaps deep down inside I feel like I can't be a true college student unless I'm a starving college student. Most students though fall into this catagory by default because they don't have any money. Financially, I'm doing alright though. I probably even have the time eat and stuff, but I'm incredibly lazy.

My classes start early in the morning, so to avoid waking up earlier than necessary, I eat just a little really quickly. I was unkind to myself this term, and I usually am in classes or meetings straight until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. If I remember, I bring a nectarine with me and eat it between classes, but in the end, it happens about 50% of the time. Last semester I was alright though because I was part of a dinner group. I could at least be sure of getting one good meal a day. Last week due to finals week, all dinner groups were canceled. Because many people moved out of the complex, they haven't started back up yet. I try to eat something in the evening, but proabably three quarters of the time that I make anything at all, I just make chips and cheese.

I do drink lots of chocolate milk though.

"It fits!" "It fits?"

2007-06-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

So I bought some amazing shoes today. They are black and shiny and comfortable. They also have leather soles which is the best part because I got them principally for my dance class.

I started this quest at DI trying to find something cheap but made for dancing. As one might expect, there wasn't anything particullarly helpful there. I decided that rather than spend a bunch of money on dance shoes that I might never use again, I'd spend lots of money of dress shoes that I could use for my class and then for special occasions after that.

Something I've learned: shoes are pricey! Especially dress shoes with leather soles. I wandered around a few department and shoe stores not really finding anything, but then I saw Mr Mac and decided to try it out. The Shoe Man was busy helping some prospective missionary so I mosied a bit looking at what they had. There were a few that looked nice, but at similar prices to what I had seen before. After a few minutes, I noticed a clearance table and wondered if there was anything interesting.

Kinda tucked into the middle of everything there, I saw a pair that was my size and that looked nice. I tried them on and they even fit well. (This is particularly amazing, because very few shoes actually fit comfortably.) I decided to discretely practice some of the Fox Trot moves that I had learned and at one point as I brought my feet together, there was a sharp clack. I can click my heels with these new shoes! And it's not just a wimpy click; it's a hearty, bright click. I was immediately sold and now they are sitting here in front of me at home. It was a pretty exciting moment.

I odd thing that I'm realizing now though is that I have more pairs of shoes that I have pairs of pants. I don't think that I have an excess of shoes because they are all for very practical purposes, but maybe I have too few pairs of pants. Or perhaps I've never really considered the pants/shoes ratio and in fact it about right. Hmm.