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.