Heroics

When I was in third grade, there was a kid in my class, Eddie, who was even more of a nerd than I was. He had super thick glasses, super skinny arms, and he went around saying things like "Do you know what the cubed root of 64 is?" When we had a class assignment to memorize the first paragraph of the Gettysburg Address, Eddie memorized the whole thing. I don't remember him having any friends really, though I do remember going to his house once to play Acquire. I suspect that his existence is one of the main reasons that I survived that year relatively unscathed when school bullies came looking for the weakest prey to pick on.

I remember one day after class, he came running out ahead of me, pursued by one of the bigger kids in the class. I don't remember what exactly went through my head, but I chased the bigger kid down and squeezed the back of his neck so he fell to the ground, giving Eddie the chance to get away. I then bravely ran away myself before this bigger kid had the chance to get back up. This was probably the most heroic thing I've ever done.

I am not sure what has happened since then.

Several years ago, I remember walking through town, and I saw something happening about 100 feet away on a side street. There was a kid with a bike, backed up against a wall and surrounded by 3 other kids. The kid with the bike looked terrified. I was much larger than any of the kids there; probably if I even just shouted something, the three other kids would've cleared out and the Bike Kid would have been able to get home safe that day. Instead I walked by quietly. I still picture that kid's face every once in a while. Doing nothing in that circumstance is probably one of my biggest regrets.

I think that as one who was at high-risk for teasing and bullying in elementary school, I learned to blend into the background and not make waves; you don't bully someone you don't think about. I do remember the "tougher" kids kicking down my snowmen I would make during recess, but I can't remember any other particular instances when I was the victim of targeted bullying. I stayed out of their way for a few years, and by high school I could almost completely avoid them by taking honors courses. Even now, however, certain sorts of people still really intimidate me, which I think is why I did nothing to help the Bike Kid years later.

I recently read The Help, and it got me thinking about these issues again. This book tells the story of several courageous women who risk everything for the cause of civil rights. I think that I'm at an age now where I have fewer chances to chase down and tackle people who are victimizing those weaker than them, but I do think that there are several instances still where I can stand up for other people and for principles that are important to me. Many of these instances may not be as dramatic as putting life and limb on the line, but they may be just as heroic.

Introspection

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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)

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.