Day by Day

This week was characterized by lots of Otter Pops (apparently my AC wasn't fixed this week because they can't get a hold of anyone to let the AC man on the roof) and wasting time online, since my archaeology class was cancelled this week. Oh yeah, and reading boring books about Islam. It's not that Islam's boring. It's just that these books are. But that wasn't all I did. Each day was unique this week.

Monday. I spent a lot of time reading in the library, which was thankfully open, since it was a campus holiday. I went home teaching, and then our ward went to a big fireworks block party our first counselor invited us to. It was pouring rain, which probably helped prevent any potential problems. (That alliteration was not intentional, really!) I wonder how long aerial fireworks will be legal.

Tuesday. I went to the BYU Forum. It was this professor talking about raising teenagers. I thought this was a strange topic for a university forum. There was a Q and A afterward, and since I didn't have anything better to do, I stuck around. But almost everyone else left, and those who stayed sat near the front, but I was in the middle. I realized that all the people who stayed were older people who actually have to worry about having teenagers as children or grandchildren. I had to get out of there!

Wednesday. I stayed on campus a long time reading before going to institute. It was raining crazy hard. At one point I looked outside some glass doors and the ground looked foggy--not because it was foggy, but because there was so much rain splashing a few inches above the ground.

Thursday. After class, I went to the temple. When I came home, I saw that my sister had texted me, inviting me to go to Seven Peaks. But my phone was off in the morning and I didn't take it to the temple, so it was too late. But I met her for lunch at Brick Oven, where both her friend's thirteen-year-old son and my niece had meltdowns of sorts over food.

That night I went running. I saw what I thought was a bird flying through the air, but then I realized it was probably past bird curfew, and it changed directions (almost 180 degrees) very suddenly, and it was flying very erratically. This made me deduce it was probably not a bird, but a bat! I get to see bats so rarely, it made me happy. Although I did see a bat last summer, hanging above the door of another apartment in my complex for quite a while:


Friday. I wasted most of Friday day since I had absolutely no classes. But that evening I went on a group date with the apartment below me, where I've been sleeping. We had dinner there, and then made boats out of popsicle sticks and went to campus to race them in a stream. Ours won.

Saturday. I went grocery shopping and wasted time. Then one of my home teachees had a little concert so I went to that, as did many people in my ward. Before she sang there was a singer who it seemed like might be still in high school. That was all right but...interesting. I have my home teachee's CD, so it was good to hear live versions of her songs, as well as some new ones.

Sunday (today). I went to church. For third hour, the bishop and a member of the stake presidency answered questions. I think my bishop called me Will. I just hope that he did, and that there wasn't a real Will who wanted to ask a question that I prevented him from asking. I asked about how to forgive. We always hear about how to be forgiven we have to forgive, and how it takes a burden off our shoulders, and all that, so I know why to forgive, but I don't know how to forgive. There is a certain vile companion I had whom two years later I still have a hard time forgiving. (I've blocked him on Facebook, so if you're reading this, you're not him.) He is as ugly as sin, and I think it's because of this Roald Dahl quote: "If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it." (You see? This is exactly why I asked about forgiveness!) I got some good insights on forgiveness, but I don't think it was quite what I was looking for. But I don't think an easy answer exists, so it's just as well.

Tests, an eight-year-old, and presidents

Let's see, what happened this week?

First, there was testing. On Wednesday I got a test back that I had taken the previous Friday for my archaeology class. It wasn't a hard test and the professor is lenient (which was helpful when it came to the short answers), but I was still surprised I got 100, because there were some that were just guesses. I also took a test for my history class. It was entirely short answer and essay. The professor said the average time to take it is 90 minutes, but the longest was four hours. It took me a little over three hours. The essays were pretty terrible. I just hope it was decent.

I also got my hopes up about getting my AC fixed. The AC man told me my landlord had given him a key to get in so I didn't need to be there. I went home on Friday, when he was coming. Then he called me and said the landlord had given him the wrong key, but not only that, the roof access, where he would also need to work, was locked. That part has nothing to do with my landlord. So even if he had the right key, he couldn't have fixed it.

As I mentioned, I went home. It was my niece's birthday. Allie turned eight. At eight she's not as hilarious as she was as a toddler--but she still says some funny things:

• She wanted to play Apples to Apples. Which is strange because she doesn't really get what's going on. Anyway, when it was her turn to be the judge, her green card was "Nasty." Someone put "AIDS." She picked a different card, and then shortly after said, "I was going to pick AIDS but I had to pick this one. 'Cause we all know what that's like." My sister and cousin and I were all laughing hysterically, as quietly as possible.
• I discovered an entertaining website called "Not Always Right." I was reading this, and came across this not-so-funny comic strip:
  
  I had been reading some of the anecdotes aloud to my mom, and Allie insisted that I read this to her because it was funny. I told her, "I don't think you get it." So she told her herself. I still don't think she gets it. At least, I hope not.
• I turned on Hogan's Heroes. She said to me, "I wish this were Pollyanna." Then in the episode they brought in a small Nazi flag, complete with the swastika. She said something like, "I knew they were in another country. Australia!" This made me laugh, so she "corrected" herself: "Austria!" My mom caught on that she had seen the Nazi flag on The Sound of Music--hence thinking it was Austria's flag.
• I was attempting to play "Linus and Lucy" on the piano. I thought I was doing reasonably well with just the left hand, but then I heard her say, "Mark you need to fix that do better or you'll need to take piano lessons, too!"

I was also amused when I looked at the cover for the August issue of The Friend. It has a bunch of primary-kid drawings of Thomas S. Monson on the cover. But one of them doesn't look so much like the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Rather, I think it looks more like the President of the United States of America:
I posted this on the Seen @ BYU Facebook page, even though I didn't see it at BYU ;)

Hopefully the next time I blog, I will do it in an air-conditioned apartment.

If I weren't a muggle, none of this would have happened.

Like millions of others, I saw Harry Potter this week.

But, unlike everyone else, I did not go to a theater, or watch Harry's victory over Voldemort. Instead, it was my first time watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I saw the first two movies when they came out when I was in junior high, but since that time, I try not to watch any TV or movies with profanity, so I haven't seen the others. (I have made no such guidelines with books, so I have read all of the Harry Potter series.)

So what made me watch those two this week? Well, some people in my ward were watching one movie a night up to the new premiere. Ordinarily I would just ignore this, but it just so happened that they were watching them in the apartment where I've been sleeping until my AC gets fixed. (My landlord got my hopes up this week with an email, but it still hasn't been fixed. Tomorrow will be three weeks from the time it first went out.) For the first few nights I waited until I thought the movies were over to go there, because I didn't want to be in the awkward position of being there but not watching the movie, but on Tuesday and Wednesday I didn't like the idea of sitting in my hot apartment, so I decided to go. Besides, I figured if I didn't watch those movies, I'd probably be gallivanting all over YouTube, and potentially encountering worse content--especially if I read the comments.

Did I like them? I guess so. Will I watch any more? Good question.

On Thursday, I had a very embarrassing experience. I was in the library, working on a Google doc study guide I had made, listening to a Pandora station on my headphones/ear buds/whatever. Suddenly, Katy Perry's "Firework" came on. At this point I remembered having heard stories of people listening to music on computers in the library, but their headphones weren't plugged in all the way, so they actually heard the music coming out of the computer speakers, not their headphones, which meant everyone else heard it too. I could tell that I was actually hearing my music from my headphones, but just to be safe, I decided to try to push them in further.

Well, my headphones had been plugged in, but not all the way, so when I touched them, it bumped them out just enough so that it did indeed start coming out of the speakers! I made the thing I feared happen by trying to prevent it! It did not seem to be working to plug the headphones in (at this point I am panicking and very embarrassed), so I just decided to close the Pandora tab. From the time I closed the tab to the time the music stopped was just a split second, but it seemed like a micro eternity.

It could have been a lot worse. It could have been a more embarrassing song, the library could have been busier, and something else could have knocked my headphones out, leaving me unprepared to stop the music.

Who knows--considering that the song was "Firework," the location was BYU, and the week was this Harry Potter week, maybe people thought I was listening to this:


Last evening I had a surprise. I heard a knock on the door (which I had strangely just opened to cool it down), and when I answered, there was a guy with a box. "Does Mark Melville live here?" he asked. I was confused because all packages I had ordered recently had already arrived. He told me that this package had been delivered to their address "a while back." This "a while back" was nearly three months ago! When my textbooks for spring term never arrived, I emailed the seller I bought them from. They never responded, so I filed a claim with Amazon and got my money back. In the meantime, I had been kicked out of the BYU Bookstore for reading, read similar (but different) books in the library, did terribly on a quiz because I had not read the right book, and ultimately had to return to that rip-off Bookstore to buy the books.

I don't know who the dumbest person was in this story. I feel bad for the seller, but they should have known that if they didn't respond to my emails and didn't have tracking info, the blame would go to them. I don't know how the mailman delivered it to the wrong address. It is very clearly the right address, in big letters, bigger than most other packages I get. All my other packages have successfully made it to my apartment, even if the writing was smaller. And I don't understand the people who actually did get it. Most places around me are BYU-approved housing, and he looked like a college student himself. So why did they wait so long to get it to me--either by giving it back to the mail man or bringing it over when it arrived? A letter is one thing, but I know I would feel uncomfortable with a package that didn't belong to me sitting in my apartment for months. Spring classes ended a month ago! There are a lot of people who do spring classes but not summer--I could have been gone before they got it to me!

I've been charged once again for the books because I'm honest. Now I'll have to wait for the end of the term to sell them to the ridiculous Bookstore. (How can an institution run by the Church have such nefarious business practices?)

UP

So if you're expecting me to talk about the Fourth of July, you're late. I talked about that on Thursday.

It is now that time of year where there is nothing to look forward to. I hate heat (although I'm beginning to hate it less than I used to), and there's not a major holiday until Halloween, and I can't even start thinking about that for over two months. But there still can be fun things to do.

BYU had a free outdoor screening of Up. I went with some fellow ward members. They gave out free ice cream, so we went over to get some. We realized afterward that we had totally not seen the line and cut in front of tons of people! I felt like such a jerk! It made me realize I can't always judge people, because some probably thought I was a jerk, but it was an honest mistake--I would never consciously do that.

We were also baffled at a shirt we saw a girl wearing:Are you allowed to wear shirts like that at BYU?

I was worried I wouldn't be able to see or hear the movie, but I was able to. It was only the second time I had seen it, the previous time being December 2009, in that first month of being home from my mission. Everyone hyped it up so much for me that it didn't quite meet my expectations the first time, but this time around I thought about how great a movie it is. (If you haven't seen it, there might be some spoilers in this blog.)

I think what bothers me the most is that it's not presented so much as a fantasy story, yet it is clearly impossible. I suppose this is a strange perspective from a fan of such ridiculous TV shows as Gilligan's Island and The Flying Nun, but some things do bother me--how could balloons carry a house? (I know National Geographic lifted a house with balloons, but still.) Even if collars could make dogs talk, how could they form such coherent thoughts? And how come Russell couldn't climb up the rope to the house when he and Carl were walking, but when he was perilously hanging on the rope hundreds of feet in the air, how come he could climb up so easily, and how could he hold on so well as it was swinging all around? I know it's just a movie, but the non-fantasy impossible elements throw me for a loop.

The first time I watched it, when the villain falls off the blimp, my then-six-year-old niece proclaimed "Yes!" just like I would have at that age. Is it appropriate for kids' movies to have such violent endings, or would it be better if the bad guys just went to jail? Some of you may wonder how I, of all people, would say this, when I want criminals to be boiled in oil and thrown off of cliffs and all that stuff. But when Snow White's stepmother falls off a cliff and the vultures circle, and Gaston falls off the side of the castle--can you really blame only me for having these ideas, considering the kinds of stuff I was exposed to as a kid? (Incidentally, I would like to contend that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was not intended to be a kids' movie. If Disney went through the effort of making the first full-length animated movie, would they brand it for just little girls? Definitely not! Yet the only time you ever hear of Snow White anymore is in association with princess items for girls. Most of these girls would probably find the original movie too scary anyway, what with the thirsty skeletons, terrifying woods, and glass coffin--not to mention the evil queen.)

Overall, however, I consider Up a very clever, inventive, and enjoyable movie. The only Pixar movies I have issues with are The Incredibles and Cars. (I haven't seen Cars 2 yet.)

Thursday Edition, or, The Best Fourth of July Ever.

When I started blogging last term, I decided to blog on Sundays because those were the only days I was likely to have free time. Well, summer term is considerably more laid back than spring term, so I decided there's not much of a better way to spend an uneventful Thursday evening than blogging about my holiday this week. Will I still post on Sunday? Probably.

Anyway, as I said in my last post, the Fourth of July hasn't been my favorite holiday, but this year's was unusually enjoyable.

The most eventful part was the 5k I ran. It was more fun than I expected. I'm not sure exactly what it was I liked--whether it was running with thousands of people, being able to run in the road without fear of being run over, having all kinds of spectators cheering us on, or running through the finish line and getting a finisher's medal and a water bottle and free food.

They had all of us line up according to pace. I had no idea how fast I run, so I stood in the 10 minute (per mile) pace. Bad idea. This was way too slow for me, and I had to wait a while before I could pass these people. Because there were so many people, we wore little timing chips on our shoes that started when we went past the starting line and ended when we finished. Since this was my first organized run I don't know if that's standard for most races or not.

So, how did I do? Well, I completed it in 26:36.77. I was 61 out of 107 for my age group (males 20-24) and 465 out of 2836 overall. So not fantastic--I was in the lower half for my age group. But I was stuck for a while in a slow group, and I treated it like a run and not so much like a race--I didn't really push myself harder than I ordinarily do.

I'm not too disappointed, considering that in high school I couldn't run a mile and a half without stopping, and I underestimated myself thinking I ran at a 10 minute pace. I actually ran at an 8:35 pace--and that's with being stuck in the 10 minute group. I never would have expected I would run a 5k. Then again, I also would have never imagined being so fond of an English-speaking mission, doing a geology minor, or having a Lady Gaga song saved on my computer.

There were a bunch of us from my ward who did the run, and I was with many of them for most of the day. We went to the parade at 9:00. Parades are weird things, but it was kind of enjoyable. I'm not a Star Wars person--for all intents and purposes I've never seen any of the movies--but I was amused by the storm troopers carrying a flag. I also was a little surprised that the Utah Provo Mission got to be in the parade.

Now why couldn't Spokane have done that?

After that I donated some pancake mix that has been in my cupboards since before I moved in to an impromptu ward breakfast, and then we went swimming at the girls' apartment complex. Swimming was a little awkward because they were playing different games. One involved catching a football and I can't catch at all (so I didn't really even try) and I can't see a thing without my glasses. Another involved swimming from one side of the pool to the other (the narrow way) and I can't really swim, especially since I'm less buoyant than I used to be.

A little later there was a ward barbecue. I ate too much there. As always, I was a little socially awkward. Then that night there were a bunch of fireworks my wardies were lighting. I must say, I have found out I'm a scaredy cat. I got way nervous with all the aerial fireworks while everyone else loved them. I was also surprised at the amount of near catastrophes that were treated so lightly.

Then that night I spent the night in the apartment below me since they have an extra bed and I have no AC. I have now spent three nights there and will likely spend more, since I don't know when my AC will be fixed and I told my landlord it wasn't an emergency. Oh, well.

And It's Hotter than the Fourth of July

For some reason, Independence Day has never really been one of my favorite holidays, and I'm not sure why. I like holidays, so I like the Fourth of July because of that, but as far as holidays go, it's just not the greatest in my opinion. I don't know if it's because I come from a family where we don't do a whole lot, or if it's my aversion to heat, or if I just simply don't like it that much.

But since this year I'm living alone, and I hate being bored on holidays, I decided this year to make the most of it.

Last Sunday evening, I went to a patriotic service in the Marriott Center. I'm usually only a patriotic person around the Fourth of July, so I found parts of it a little hokey. I don't think that had so much to do with my lack of patriotism as it did with the production itself. They had little skit things with actors in costumes and then someone would sing a song that was supposed to go with the scene. There were numerous anachronisms--for the skit with John and Abigail Adams someone sang a contemporary love song; for the skit of the mother of WWII victims they had her sing "Bring Him Home" from Les Mis. Some of the performers were talented, others were...meh. I especially find myself unpatriotic when it comes to things relating to the military and war and all that, and I usually tune all that out. So I was quite surprised to find myself choked up when they honored the mother of a fallen soldier and presented her with a memorial flag. It takes a lot to penetrate this heart of ice.

Now, when I say I'm not patriotic, that might not actually be quite true. You probably won't find me sporting red, white and blue during August through April, and I probably won't put an American flag bumper sticker on my car. But I do appreciate this country--I think I take it for granted more than I'm actually unpatriotic. It amazes me to think that we are only 235 years old, yet we have risen to lead the world in so many ways, when all the others have been around for thousands of years. This alone is a testament to Mormonism's doctrine of the Constitution being an inspired document and the Lord raising this nation up. I can sit in an air-conditioned apartment (thanks to some generous fellows in my ward) and write on this blog using the wireless internet from my own apartment to communicate with everyone everywhere. I'm pretty privileged.

The reason I say I can sit in an air-conditioned apartment thanks to the generosity of some wardies is because this week my air conditioning quit working properly. I noticed Monday night that it seemed unusually warm, even though the AC was on, and when I woke up Tuesday morning, I didn't recall the AC having shut off for quite some time. I turned it off to see if it was frozen and needed to thaw, but it was just as hot when I turned it back on. The AC is a little better than nothing at all, but still not good. I told my landlord and he came down on Thursday to show me "the tricks of the AC." He told me I can't adjust the temperature because they did a poor installation job, that I should just keep it cold and turn it off instead of adjusting it. This made sense to me because I had been adjusting it all over the place. But, alas, this did not fix it. I told him I was able to tell it wasn't working right in this email:

"Ever since we turned it on yesterday at 1:30, it has not (to my knowledge) shut off even once. It is also warmer in here than it was before, even though it's set to a lower temperature and yesterday was a cooler day.

I have determined this by, among other things, making the following observations:
Previously, the bathroom tended to be the coolest room, so I shut the vent halfway. I reopened it fully, but the bathroom is not now noticeably cooler than any other room. Oddly, if any room is cooler than the others, it is probably the kitchen, which previously seemed to be the warmest.
Sometimes I would get a little chilly at night with the AC on. Last night I had to sleep with no blanket and a fan blowing on me.
I like to listen to music on my computer, and sometimes I have to adjust it when the AC kicks off or on. I have not had to adjust my music. "

I figured that it's probably a good thing for me to spend less time alone in my apartment, and since having the AC on is better than just leaving it off, I told him it wasn't an emergency. I wish I had said it was urgent, now. He said he'll have someone look at it. When I came home from church today, someone in my ward I barely know started talking to me and I mentioned that my AC was broken. He left but gave me the key to his apartment, where I am sitting at the moment. And AC sure is nice.

I spent part of Friday and all of Saturday chez moi. My almost-eight-year-old niece Allie was there and, as always, said some funny things and scowled or mock hit me whenever I chuckled. We were talking about holidays, and I said, "Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring." Allie said, "Sounds like someone is a know-it-all." This is ironic because she acts like she knows everything. Every. single. time. you tell her something, she says, "I know" or "Yeah." Even if she asks a question and you answer her, she'll still say "Yeah." Walking home from fireworks, she was telling her step-dad Matt the names of the people in all the houses--she is strangely obsessed with people. When Matt repeated one of the names, she said, "It's kind of an awkward name." "Awkward" and "creepy" are two words she throws around like they're going out of style, yet it is clear she doesn't really know what they mean.

Before driving my parents to the airport at midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning, we went to North Salt Lake's annual fireworks show. I had not been since 2004. In seven years, it has gotten considerably bigger and busier. Even those of us who had been there more recently said it was busier than they could remember. It seemed quite familiar, yet it was weird to think that the last time I had been I was only 15!

Last night I had weird dreams about the 5k I'm running tomorrow morning. I dreamed I slept in, and later on I dreamed that I thought I was attending a practice run but it was the real thing and I'd forgotten my timing chip and I was running in the wrong places. It was a relatively complicated dream that has left me feeling a little nervous about the run tomorrow.

But I won't know what it's really like until tomorrow morning.