Canterbury Tales

First of all, I must apologize if my dream post last week was very strange. I just never had so many strange dreams all at once. (This week I had a dream involving a dog that was like a plecostomus [a sucking fish] and a dream involving thirty and forty-five dollar bills, featuring Disney characters--but I won't bore you again with another dream post.)

Last Sunday night (after my last blog post), I went to a revival of "Culture Night"--a tradition started last summer by a girl in my ward, Lori. That ended when I moved out (and later she did). Last week's revival was held in Orem at the residence of one of Lori's previous roommates, Sara. I read a new poem I wrote, "I Wish I Were a Vampire," and then upon request, I told them the violent "Thoughts of Retail Employees Toward Unnecessarily Irate Customers."

Last Sunday I also had to plan the next three days so I could make sure I put in enough hours for projects for my History of the English Language class. We had to research and do Powerpoints on two English counties, spending ten hours on each. My counties were Norfolk and Kent. Spending most of my free time on the bottom floor of the library, where the sun doesn't shine and phones get no service, I did finish eventually. I found that for Kent County, there was such a rich history that I couldn't do it justice--but I did put in my ten hours.

For Wednesday I had purchased tickets to see The Diary of Anne Frank on campus. I seldom get any culture (especially with no more culture night), but I got a really good deal if I bought two (it was just a dress rehearsal). So I invited one of my coworkers (who isn't a coworker anymore, as I had my last night of work on Tuesday) to go with me. I texted her, asking her if she wanted to go to a play. She is from Mexico, working on her English, so when I picked her up, she asked me, "What game are we seeing?" She didn't understand the word play. She was fine with it, but it was a bit of a strange evening. But the play was good.

I stayed up late Wednesday to finish my Powerpoints, and emailed them to my professor. When I got up on Thursday, I had emails from her and the TA saying that my presentation about Kent was lacking in information. The presentations were supposed to talk about how these county histories affected the English language. In the email the professor asked why I didn't talk about World War II (when English was already established), Dover (which I could only deduce was famous because of its white cliffs, which don't speak English at all), or Canterbury. I actually did talk about Canterbury--I mentioned it being the setting for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and went into detail about St. Augustine's mission and the importance of the Archbishop of Canterbury. She also asked why I didn't talk about the Norman invasion. I emailed back, saying that there was too rich of a history to cover in such a short time, so I just stuck to what was pertinent to Kent itself.

In class on Thursday, I gave my presentation on Kent, and I did feel like it was lacking. Then she talked about the Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings and told me I had to add a slide about that. I was wondering how I could have missed that, because it certainly was important. I went running Thursday night, and when I got home, I was locked out, so I went up to the library. I looked up on Wikipedia, and found out why I didn't see any of that stuff in my research of Kent: The Battle of Hastings and all that did not happen in that county! So, I will make a slide about the effects of the Norman invasion on Kent--but I will make it clear in the slide that the events happened in East Sussex (and hope that it will make them feel guilty for reproving me so much)! When we turned in our notes, we accounted for the hours we spent, and I hope that she'll accept my ten hours to boost my grade...but I don't know if she will...

A week ago, my roommate, Chase, and I were going home teaching. I got Chase's number from the home teaching slip, not knowing it was wrong on there, so as it was getting close to time and he wasn't home yet, I sent a text to this wrong Chase, asking if he would be back in time for home teaching.

This week, it got a lot more awkward. We were going to be home teaching again, but Chase was going somewhere before, so he got my number. Later on he called, and I thought, "That's funny, I thought I had him saved in here, but his name doesn't show up. Maybe I didn't save it." He asked me if I could give him our home teachees' numbers to see if it was OK if we were late, so I told him I would text them to him. Then I saved his number, and I thought it was weird when it told me it was already saved, and asked me if I wanted to save again. I said yes, thinking it would replace the old number.

So I immediately texted the names and numbers of our home teachees to Chase--not knowing it was the wrong Chase. A little later, I still hadn't heard from him, so I sent the wrong Chase a text saying, "Did you reschedule or will you be here?" The wrong Chase responded, "We will be here." I didn't know if "here" meant my apartment or where he was, so I sent another text: "Where is here?" and a little later, "Who is we?" Then, the right Chase texted me and asked me what was going on, if I had texted him the numbers, and if I had talked to our home teachees. I looked at my text history and thought it was strange that this latest text wasn't part of the same conversation, but I responded to the right Chase that I had sent him the numbers at 6:11 p.m. He said he never received it. Anyway, we ended up home teaching a little late. When we came back, I looked at my phone, and saw this text from the wrong Chase: "Are you he [sic] person that wants to see our float tube if not you sent the orig message." I'm sure the last part was referring to the fact that I had said "Who is we?" I looked at Chase and asked him what he was talking about. When he said he didn't send that, I finally figured everything out, and immediately deleted the wrong Chase from my phone, and sent a text to these strangers apologizing that I had the wrong number. And I sure felt dumb.