I have a confession to make. If you've been reading my blog, you may already know this.
I'm sort of a closet Lady Gaga fan.
Kind of.
That is, I would be a fan of hers if she were more virtuous. But she's not virtuous, which leaves me occasionally downloading her songs, occasionally listening to her on Pandora, and avoiding watching her music videos. It was Presidents' Day weekend last year when I first heard "Born This Way" on the radio. I thought it was really weird and I didn't care for it. But I kept hearing it, and it would get stuck in my head, and I liked it more and more. It's been stuck in my head for a year now. On May 3, I broke down and downloaded the song, hoping it would make it get stuck in my head less. It actually made it worse. But it's better now.
In August I downloaded "The Edge of Glory" and in September I downloaded "Hair." The latter song is one you've probably not heard of; it's not very popular. It's kind of a dumb song, but I like it. But that I would have it is rather unlikely. First of all, it's unlikely I would like Lady Gaga in the first place. Second, it's especially unlikely I would have such an obscure song when I only have a few of hers. But what makes it most unlikely is the subject matter.
I don't like talking about hair.
I think this aversion to talking about hair comes from the fact that I am unstylish and I don't know how to do my hair. I have ideas of what I want it to look like, but I don't know how to do those ideas, or else my hair doesn't cooperate. I often end up with two curved horns in the front and a claw on top of my head. I'm not a Little Monster, and even if I were, I don't think that's what Mother Monster had in mind.
There are some styles I could probably do, but they are Christmas ornaments. If you put a Christmas ornament on a verdant evergreen tree, it looks good. But if you put that same Christmas ornament on a black, dead, ugly Halloween tree, it does not look good. Halloween trees need Halloween ornaments. I'm a Halloween tree, so I can't have Christmas ornaments.
As a result of my hair problems, I've started hoping that people don't pay attention to or notice my hair. Which has led me to believe it's invisible.
So when my TA told me and a classmate that the only way she tells us apart is by our hair color, it kind of freaked me out.
I hate doing things that might draw attention to my hair. Thus I hate talking about getting haircuts or buying shampoo. I hate talking about hair in general, especially men's hair. For me, hair has become like underwear--everyone has it, but it's not something you talk about. I hate describing someone by their hair. I hate saying they have light or dark hair, curly or straight hair, or long or short hair. I even hate saying someone is bald, because that implies they might otherwise have hair.
In fact, I would rather talk about hair elsewhere on my body (since I am a very hirsute individual) than the hair on my head. This week I pulled a splendid hair out of my nose, so thick and black it looked like it was plastic. But body hair is not quite the same thing. In French there are two separate words, cheveux referring to the hair on your head and poil referring to the hair on your body.
But references to hair aren't even anything new. In the Bible we read that Nazarites (such as Samson) were forbidden to cut their hair. And who could forget about the two she-bears who killed the youths for calling Elisha bald? So I know my disdain for talking about hair is ridiculous--but it still exists.
Which means this has been a very painful post to write.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Green days
It's time for another memory post! I'm going to write as many details as I can possibly remember about all of the St. Patrick's Days of my life.
2011--I wore green socks, a green shirt with Snoopy on it that says "Lucky Dog," and green glasses. On this day I especially remember realizing how old my green glasses prescription was. I attended my CHum 250 (Internet Publishing) class. I wondered if anyone would comment on my green glasses, but no one did. After that I went in the library to study and pick up a book. I was reading Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug near some of the offices near the computers on the main floor. My green socks were sticking out and I wondered if anyone noticed them. I walked out of the library and saw a few other green-clad people and couldn't believe it was already St. Patrick's Day. Not that the holiday really has any meaning. For lunch that day, I put green food coloring with rice in my rice cooker and made gravy with whole wheat flour for Hawaiian haystacks. I remember thinking the rice looked Eastery. I put all sorts of things on the haystacks, such as almonds, coconut, raisins, and celery. I watched the "Leprechaun" episode of Bewitched on my computer. Then I went up to campus to see if I could participate on a student journal called Schwa. On the way I stopped at South End Market and got a donut (I don't care if people say that's spelled wrong) with green frosting. I got to the JKB and found the room where the journal was meeting, but I chickened out and decided not to try to get on it because there was only a month left in the semester. (I'm on the journal this semester.) I stopped in a restroom and found something I found funny on the shelf.
It was an assignment about a taco dish that talked about how it was served with brussels sprouts, which could have been sliced and put in the taco, but were better on the side. But the person missed four out of five points for not having the veggie in the dish. I thought it was a really random thing to find in the JKB restroom, so I took a picture to post on my CHum 250 website project. I went home, had some more Hawaiian haystacks, and went in my room on my computer. My roommate Zach came in to talk to me, and commented about my green glasses--he was the only one all day. He said, "I was like, 'Mark doesn't wear glasses!'" and I told him that I indeed did wear glasses, just not green ones. I was so surprised that he didn't know I wore glasses that the next day a made a Facebook status about the incident.
2010--I wore my green glasses, green Snoopy shirt, and 34/34 jeans. After my morning classes, which would have been math and music, I came home for lunch and cooked spaghetti. I put green food coloring in the water, hoping it would turn the noodles green, but it didn't. Then I realized why in 2004 my seminary class's spaghetti wasn't green. While I was cooking the spaghetti my roommate Jeff Clegg was home and was talking to me and I wondered if he'd comment about the green water but he didn't. The spaghetti tasted kind of funny--I think it was a combination of the food coloring and the fact that I had burned broccoli in the pan the previous week. I ate the last piece of the Key lime pie I had made the week before while watching Bewitched's "Leprechaun" episode. Then I went back to campus for my Book of Mormon class. A skater guy who usually sat in front of me commented about my green glasses. While we were singing the hymn, I realized how old my prescription was because it was hard to see the words on the projector screen. After that class I went to my history class. That day I was giving a small presentation about the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which made "separate but equal" legal. I put my stuff at a desk in the back of the room and went up to the computer. As I was setting up, the students were talking about a girl's silly green hat, and someone said it reminded her of the girl mouse on The Great Mouse Detective. In my presentation I told the class that Homer Plessy was actually born on March 17, so that day was his birthday, which was why I put his birth date in green on the Powerpoint. My professor said "cool" to the fact that it was his birthday. Then I sat down after I was done and the girl sitting by me, Tara, gave me a high-five. After class, I was biking home. I got on the sidewalk by the Widtsoe Building and my bike got in the dirt patch on the side. I tried to get out of the dirt at the wrong angle; the sidewalk was an inch or so higher than the dirt, so I came off my bike and landed on my knee. This put a hole in my pants and hurt bad. There was a guy coming up the hill and I wondered if he would ask about my welfare but he didn't. I biked back home with my knee hurting, which also hurt as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I went to my dinner group and wondered if anyone would mention my green clothes, but no one did. I folded up my quilt and used it to prop up my knee. I wondered if my roommate James would ask why I did that, but he hated all people (including me) so he didn't.
2009--I wore my greenish suit and my green-and-white striped tie I had bought a few weeks earlier. Elder Betenson and I taught Derrick and Sylvia, some recent converts. As we were leaving, Elder Betenson told Derrick he needed to pinch Sylvia for him, since she wasn't wearing any green. Then we went and visited an active member, Sister Bishop, whose laugh was eerily like my mom's. She told us about all her holiday toys that she put out. Elder Betenson helped her with a Nintendo DS program. We were there way too long, but while we were there, there was a sudden blizzard, so we waited until it was over before we left. The snow had stopped, but everything was wet. We might have taught the Youngs that night, but I don't know.
2008--I wore my greenish suit. I had asked my family to send me a tie that was unquestionably green, and what did they do? They sent me a tie of which even they questioned the greenness. So I wore this hardly green tie. We went with the members we lived with, the Welshes, to Costco, because Elder Condie wanted to go there. On the way there, I was looking at an old issue of The Ensign that the Welshes had in their van, and Sister Welsh told us that they only kept the magazines in the church libraries for ten years. At Costco we saw an inactive family, the Cunninghams, but there had been some hard feelings there, so I didn't talk to them. I saw some St. Patrick's Day cakes and debated getting one for our P-day, but didn't. I bought some bagel bites and toothpaste. Elder Condie bought a giant block of cream cheese, some organic Pop-tart wannabes, and bagels. That Costco didn't allow credit cards unless you used the PIN with it. Elder Condie didn't remember his pin so he had to use his home card. I remembered mine, but for some reason I payed with my home card. After we got home I went outside to try to find some plant I could wear so I could have some green, but I think whatever I found wouldn't stick in the slot on my lapel. Later that day we went with the elders of our district to the Marxes', where some other missionaries lived, to wash our cars, since we were having an inspection that week. I remember a neighboring house had a flag of Snoopy on a pot of gold. The zone leaders drove their red Corolla into the low garage to clean out their car's interior. They had some Book of Mormons in bad shape, and Elder Gammon asked if anyone wanted them, because he felt so bad throwing away the Book of Mormon. That night Elder Condie and I went to visit the McKeevers, a struggling newlywed couple. They weren't home, but while we were standing outside their apartment, Elder Condie told me that in that light my suit looked green--the whole day he didn't believe my suit was green.
2007--That morning my parents and I got up early and got in the Suburban because we were going to my late grandparents' house to pick up furniture. We rented a U-Haul trailer, and picked up my cousins Tommy and Michael. As we were getting on the freeway, Michael started talking like a hillbilly and telling jokes. I thought it was a one-time thing, but he did it the whole ride to Fillmore. Some of his material was funny, but it was kind of strange that he was telling his jokes the whole time. The only one I remember wasn't so funny; he said "depends," meaning "it depends," but then turned that into a joke about old-people diapers. I was sitting in the very back and Tommy and Michael were sitting in the middle seat. My parents had set the air to auxiliary, meaning we had control in the back. The back was set very hot, and I was terribly shy so I hoped my cousins would figure it out, but finally I asked them if they could turn the heat off. They said they didn't know they had control and said they thought my parents sure liked it toasty in the car. I needed to read Their Eyes Were Watching God for my English class, but I have a hard time reading in cars, and I was especially distracted by Michael's jokes. One of these cousins started a conversation about black water being used as an energy source. At my grandparents' house, I discovered a yellow jelly bean that had been behind a couch. I picked it up and found that some ants had hollowed it out and were currently inside it. I threw it outside. On our way back we were suspicious about the trailer, so we got off the freeway and someone went out and looked. The trailer door was entirely open, so we were glad we checked. Then we went to my aunt Peggy's complex. My cousin Martha met us there, and she was wearing green. When we took the piano up to Peggy's apartment (thankfully there was an elevator), she put a rug over the base of the doorway to help us get the piano in, but it would have made it harder, so Tommy told her it needed to be moved. Then we went home. We had an adult session of stake conference to attend that night. I think I kept my green socks and green glasses on, and wore my shamrock tie. There was discussion at the meeting about missionary work. Laura Anderson from our ward got up and expressed a concern. She said missionary work was great, but that "we claim the privilege of worshiping almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." She told a story of a little non-LDS boy who came home and begged his mom for a CTR ring because the other kids made fun of him for not having one. After the meeting my mom and I watched the "Leprechaun" episode of Bewitched. My mom had never seen it but liked it. I told her I liked it too, but that its rating on TV.com was rather low. I went through all the season guides on TV.com to see how many episodes had worse ratings. I found the one with the worst rating and read the description to my mom. It talked about Aunt Clara pretending to be a Japanese lady. She said that was ridiculous, because there was no Japanese lady, and I realized she thought it was the description for "The Leprechaun," so I had to tell her it was describing a different episode.
2006--I remember that the student teacher for my drama class was wearing a green shirt. After school I was "napping" and watching the news, and there was an article about how St. Patrick's Day had become a really bad day for DUIs, which made me angry. I watched "The Leprechaun" of Bewitched, and my mom's friend Jackie was there. I was disappointed that my mom wasn't going to make any green dinner, which was quite ungrateful of me. I think she ended up making fake mashed potatoes with green food coloring. I looked for green Kool-Aid, but we only had lemonade Kool-Aid, so I put green food coloring in it.
2005--I wore a T-shirt that has Snoopy in an Irish hat sitting in front of an Irish flag with a caption that says, "It's cool to be Irish." I went to seminary that morning and my teacher, Brother Morrill, was standing outside the classroom to see if we had green. Someone in my class (whose name I can't remember) had a soccer shirt with vertical green and white stripes. A kid named Daniel was wearing a tan shirt, and Brother Morrill said, "Kind of green." I thought it wasn't green at all, but a year or so later was when I discovered I'm kind of colorblind with certain shades of green. Brother Morrill saw my shirt and emphatically said "Green!" Since the Relief Society was established on March 17, a video my class had made was broadcast to all the classes. It was the first time we had seen the final product. I realized it really wasn't as clever as we had thought it was. Daniel took a green whiteboard marker and wrote on his hands because he was annoyed no one considered his shirt green. We rotated with all the seminary classes and heard from different teachers. When we were in Brother Lomu's class, he called on me to read, calling me Snoopy. Brother Lomu was wearing a green jacket. After seminary I went to my chemistry class, where the guy with the soccer shirt also had class. After that I had gym, and I kept my holey green socks on. The football team was moving the weight room and getting new weight equipment, and they had us help them, since our class met at the same time as they did. I remember being outside when it was overcast and someone said the word "funner" and one Paul Castleberry said "funner" wasn't a word. I was a little jealous--I thought only smart English people like me knew that wasn't a word! (Now that I'm even smarter, I would say it actually is a word.) In my history class at the end of the day, a girl brought a small Care Bear--the green one with the clover on its belly.
2004--I was wearing my Snoopy "Cool to be Irish" shirt. I went up to seminary, where we were having an "extended devotional" (party). They had put rainbow crepe paper in the doorway. They had put crepe paper on the wall in the form of a rainbow and put Rolos all over it. Our teacher, Brother Heaston, told us we couldn't eat the Rolos, but a girl ate one from the floor. One Carson Giles was wearing a shirt with a skull in front of a four-leaf shamrock. I was giving the devotional. I don't remember what I said, but it was some ridiculous thing about luck and I had a keychain with a four-leaf clover. When I was done my teacher and a girl said "good job" but I doubt it really was. There was a table with lots of green food. I put the cookies I had brought (sugar cookies with green sugar) on the table. There was spaghetti, and I wondered why they had it if it wasn't green. My English class that day was in the computer lab, and my teacher, Mrs. Steed, said that I had the greatest shirts. She might have asked where I got it. That evening we had dinner at the table (a rare occurrence). I don't remember what the main course was, but we had bread with green swirls. I had to go across the street to the Reeds' house, and I talked to Nicole at the door. I had green chocolate milk because we had some green syrup from when one of the Hulk movies came out. My mom talked with my brother David on the phone, and he told her someone had showed up to class in full leprechaun garb. When I was a kid, my great-grandma had sent a homemade green cover for toilet paper. I decided to use it as a hat. Keep this in mind; it will be important for many years. This night I put the "hat" on my niece Allie, since she was the size of a leprechaun. We took pictures. My mom called her a leprechauness.
2003--I had a strange outfit of a white dress shirt with a shamrock tie and orange shorts. My English teacher, Mrs. Hadley, commented about my orange. I think I used a hall pass to get something from my locker, and the principal commented about my outfit. That day members of the band had to dress up, so I wasn't the only one in a tie. I was in line for lunch and I heard someone in front of me talk about how so many people were wearing ties.
2002--I wore my new shamrock tie with an Irish Snoopy pinned to it, and Ryan Jones also had the same tie. I had to pass the sacrament to the stand. After sacrament meeting we went to the farewell of my cousin Hyrum. We went to his dad's house afterward. There was someone there on oxygen. We had brought two kinds of cookies. One kind was regular chocolate chip cookies dyed green. The other was cookies that weren't dyed green but had green mint chips. We expected the non-dyed ones to be eaten more, but we were surprised when it was the opposite.
2001--It was a Saturday. I had slept in a green shirt, and when I got up, my mom said I could wear it that day. We went to the Conference Center. In those days you could freely go up on the roof. I had been for mutual and told my parents it was better at night. My mom talked about how my aunt Sue liked to make a magic jello salad that turned green by putting pistachio pudding in it. My mom made this salad.
2000--I wore the toilet-paper hat. I wore a green sweater vest over a white T-shirt. The vest covered up the red writing. I had aqua-colored socks on. My teacher, Mrs. Call, picked me as one of the best hats. She had me tell one of the other fifth-grade teachers, Mrs. Cowan, what the hat was meant for. One of the girls who had been selected for her hat had the Mad Hatter's hat. I think Carson Giles was trying to give his pants grass stains since he wasn't wearing green, but Morgan Smith told him that didn't count. After school I played with my friend David Christensen. He had brought two green Airheads, which were kind of stale. I had two plastic pots with chocolate gold coins and had my mom hide them for us to find. We had a hard time finding them. My mom said she put them someplace she associated with leprechauns. They were in a tree stump. We jumped on the trampoline. David said, "Cool, you have blue socks!" I wore them because they were green, but I realized they did look blue compared to my other green.
1999--I wore the toilet paper hat and the green vest over a yellow T-shirt. I went up to the board to do a math problem and my teacher commented on my outfit. After school I played with my friend Cody Zesiger and we pretended to be leprechauns. My mom had sparkly pipe cleaners. I smushed a gold one and gave it to him, pretending it was gold. Then I gave him a silver one. And then I smushed a blue one and a silver one together and told him it was a mushed-up mushroom. There were two episodes of The Simpsons, one of which was the St. Patrick's Day episode when Springfield reinstated Prohibition. My brother said it was a good day because there were two good episodes of The Simpsons, and I said it was a good day also because it was St. Patrick's Day.
1998--I had planned on not wearing any green except for a CTR ring so that people would pinch me and then I could pinch them ten times back. But I had the mindset of "I don't have to find something green" instead of "I have to find something with no green," so I picked a blue Samoa shirt that had green on it. My mom pointed that out to me, but I thought people wouldn't notice anyway. But they did. For March of that year I was going a month without sugar so my mom would give me $20, but my mom let me put green sugar on my cereal. I remember standing outside my class's portable before school. I told Hillary Ulmer she could pinch me, even though I was wearing green. So she did. But then I pinched her ten times back, since I was wearing green. She got mad because I had given her permission. When I told my mom and brother about that, they both told me what I did was wrong.
1996--It was stake conference and I wore the only tie I owned that was not a clip-on. It had some green elements in it. When we came home, my dad made brussels sprouts, which I was not at all interested in.
1995--I remember Hillary Ulmer had a fancy green hat with a red feather. I wore a plastic green hat. Mrs. Nakaya, a worker at the school, had the same hat, but she had put a little cloth ribbon around it. My mom was making pizza with green crust. I helped put the pepperoni on and I put it on in the shape of clovers. But it didn't matter because the cheese went on top of it anyway.
1994--David Christensen was at my house and we were both wearing green. We went up to my mom and pinched her because she wasn't wearing green. She showed us she was wearing green, because she had small flowers on her shirt that had green stems. We said it had to be a lot of green, but she said it didn't have to be.
Other posts in this series:
The Ghost of Independence Days Past
A Pillowcase Full of Trick-or-treat Memories
Remember Every Detail, Volume 3: Thanksgiving
Yuletide by the Fireside, and Joyful Memories There
Auld Lang Syne
Remember Every Detail, Volume 6: Valentine's Day
2011--I wore green socks, a green shirt with Snoopy on it that says "Lucky Dog," and green glasses. On this day I especially remember realizing how old my green glasses prescription was. I attended my CHum 250 (Internet Publishing) class. I wondered if anyone would comment on my green glasses, but no one did. After that I went in the library to study and pick up a book. I was reading Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug near some of the offices near the computers on the main floor. My green socks were sticking out and I wondered if anyone noticed them. I walked out of the library and saw a few other green-clad people and couldn't believe it was already St. Patrick's Day. Not that the holiday really has any meaning. For lunch that day, I put green food coloring with rice in my rice cooker and made gravy with whole wheat flour for Hawaiian haystacks. I remember thinking the rice looked Eastery. I put all sorts of things on the haystacks, such as almonds, coconut, raisins, and celery. I watched the "Leprechaun" episode of Bewitched on my computer. Then I went up to campus to see if I could participate on a student journal called Schwa. On the way I stopped at South End Market and got a donut (I don't care if people say that's spelled wrong) with green frosting. I got to the JKB and found the room where the journal was meeting, but I chickened out and decided not to try to get on it because there was only a month left in the semester. (I'm on the journal this semester.) I stopped in a restroom and found something I found funny on the shelf.
It was an assignment about a taco dish that talked about how it was served with brussels sprouts, which could have been sliced and put in the taco, but were better on the side. But the person missed four out of five points for not having the veggie in the dish. I thought it was a really random thing to find in the JKB restroom, so I took a picture to post on my CHum 250 website project. I went home, had some more Hawaiian haystacks, and went in my room on my computer. My roommate Zach came in to talk to me, and commented about my green glasses--he was the only one all day. He said, "I was like, 'Mark doesn't wear glasses!'" and I told him that I indeed did wear glasses, just not green ones. I was so surprised that he didn't know I wore glasses that the next day a made a Facebook status about the incident.
2010--I wore my green glasses, green Snoopy shirt, and 34/34 jeans. After my morning classes, which would have been math and music, I came home for lunch and cooked spaghetti. I put green food coloring in the water, hoping it would turn the noodles green, but it didn't. Then I realized why in 2004 my seminary class's spaghetti wasn't green. While I was cooking the spaghetti my roommate Jeff Clegg was home and was talking to me and I wondered if he'd comment about the green water but he didn't. The spaghetti tasted kind of funny--I think it was a combination of the food coloring and the fact that I had burned broccoli in the pan the previous week. I ate the last piece of the Key lime pie I had made the week before while watching Bewitched's "Leprechaun" episode. Then I went back to campus for my Book of Mormon class. A skater guy who usually sat in front of me commented about my green glasses. While we were singing the hymn, I realized how old my prescription was because it was hard to see the words on the projector screen. After that class I went to my history class. That day I was giving a small presentation about the Plessy v. Ferguson case, which made "separate but equal" legal. I put my stuff at a desk in the back of the room and went up to the computer. As I was setting up, the students were talking about a girl's silly green hat, and someone said it reminded her of the girl mouse on The Great Mouse Detective. In my presentation I told the class that Homer Plessy was actually born on March 17, so that day was his birthday, which was why I put his birth date in green on the Powerpoint. My professor said "cool" to the fact that it was his birthday. Then I sat down after I was done and the girl sitting by me, Tara, gave me a high-five. After class, I was biking home. I got on the sidewalk by the Widtsoe Building and my bike got in the dirt patch on the side. I tried to get out of the dirt at the wrong angle; the sidewalk was an inch or so higher than the dirt, so I came off my bike and landed on my knee. This put a hole in my pants and hurt bad. There was a guy coming up the hill and I wondered if he would ask about my welfare but he didn't. I biked back home with my knee hurting, which also hurt as I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I went to my dinner group and wondered if anyone would mention my green clothes, but no one did. I folded up my quilt and used it to prop up my knee. I wondered if my roommate James would ask why I did that, but he hated all people (including me) so he didn't.
2009--I wore my greenish suit and my green-and-white striped tie I had bought a few weeks earlier. Elder Betenson and I taught Derrick and Sylvia, some recent converts. As we were leaving, Elder Betenson told Derrick he needed to pinch Sylvia for him, since she wasn't wearing any green. Then we went and visited an active member, Sister Bishop, whose laugh was eerily like my mom's. She told us about all her holiday toys that she put out. Elder Betenson helped her with a Nintendo DS program. We were there way too long, but while we were there, there was a sudden blizzard, so we waited until it was over before we left. The snow had stopped, but everything was wet. We might have taught the Youngs that night, but I don't know.
2008--I wore my greenish suit. I had asked my family to send me a tie that was unquestionably green, and what did they do? They sent me a tie of which even they questioned the greenness. So I wore this hardly green tie. We went with the members we lived with, the Welshes, to Costco, because Elder Condie wanted to go there. On the way there, I was looking at an old issue of The Ensign that the Welshes had in their van, and Sister Welsh told us that they only kept the magazines in the church libraries for ten years. At Costco we saw an inactive family, the Cunninghams, but there had been some hard feelings there, so I didn't talk to them. I saw some St. Patrick's Day cakes and debated getting one for our P-day, but didn't. I bought some bagel bites and toothpaste. Elder Condie bought a giant block of cream cheese, some organic Pop-tart wannabes, and bagels. That Costco didn't allow credit cards unless you used the PIN with it. Elder Condie didn't remember his pin so he had to use his home card. I remembered mine, but for some reason I payed with my home card. After we got home I went outside to try to find some plant I could wear so I could have some green, but I think whatever I found wouldn't stick in the slot on my lapel. Later that day we went with the elders of our district to the Marxes', where some other missionaries lived, to wash our cars, since we were having an inspection that week. I remember a neighboring house had a flag of Snoopy on a pot of gold. The zone leaders drove their red Corolla into the low garage to clean out their car's interior. They had some Book of Mormons in bad shape, and Elder Gammon asked if anyone wanted them, because he felt so bad throwing away the Book of Mormon. That night Elder Condie and I went to visit the McKeevers, a struggling newlywed couple. They weren't home, but while we were standing outside their apartment, Elder Condie told me that in that light my suit looked green--the whole day he didn't believe my suit was green.
2007--That morning my parents and I got up early and got in the Suburban because we were going to my late grandparents' house to pick up furniture. We rented a U-Haul trailer, and picked up my cousins Tommy and Michael. As we were getting on the freeway, Michael started talking like a hillbilly and telling jokes. I thought it was a one-time thing, but he did it the whole ride to Fillmore. Some of his material was funny, but it was kind of strange that he was telling his jokes the whole time. The only one I remember wasn't so funny; he said "depends," meaning "it depends," but then turned that into a joke about old-people diapers. I was sitting in the very back and Tommy and Michael were sitting in the middle seat. My parents had set the air to auxiliary, meaning we had control in the back. The back was set very hot, and I was terribly shy so I hoped my cousins would figure it out, but finally I asked them if they could turn the heat off. They said they didn't know they had control and said they thought my parents sure liked it toasty in the car. I needed to read Their Eyes Were Watching God for my English class, but I have a hard time reading in cars, and I was especially distracted by Michael's jokes. One of these cousins started a conversation about black water being used as an energy source. At my grandparents' house, I discovered a yellow jelly bean that had been behind a couch. I picked it up and found that some ants had hollowed it out and were currently inside it. I threw it outside. On our way back we were suspicious about the trailer, so we got off the freeway and someone went out and looked. The trailer door was entirely open, so we were glad we checked. Then we went to my aunt Peggy's complex. My cousin Martha met us there, and she was wearing green. When we took the piano up to Peggy's apartment (thankfully there was an elevator), she put a rug over the base of the doorway to help us get the piano in, but it would have made it harder, so Tommy told her it needed to be moved. Then we went home. We had an adult session of stake conference to attend that night. I think I kept my green socks and green glasses on, and wore my shamrock tie. There was discussion at the meeting about missionary work. Laura Anderson from our ward got up and expressed a concern. She said missionary work was great, but that "we claim the privilege of worshiping almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." She told a story of a little non-LDS boy who came home and begged his mom for a CTR ring because the other kids made fun of him for not having one. After the meeting my mom and I watched the "Leprechaun" episode of Bewitched. My mom had never seen it but liked it. I told her I liked it too, but that its rating on TV.com was rather low. I went through all the season guides on TV.com to see how many episodes had worse ratings. I found the one with the worst rating and read the description to my mom. It talked about Aunt Clara pretending to be a Japanese lady. She said that was ridiculous, because there was no Japanese lady, and I realized she thought it was the description for "The Leprechaun," so I had to tell her it was describing a different episode.
2006--I remember that the student teacher for my drama class was wearing a green shirt. After school I was "napping" and watching the news, and there was an article about how St. Patrick's Day had become a really bad day for DUIs, which made me angry. I watched "The Leprechaun" of Bewitched, and my mom's friend Jackie was there. I was disappointed that my mom wasn't going to make any green dinner, which was quite ungrateful of me. I think she ended up making fake mashed potatoes with green food coloring. I looked for green Kool-Aid, but we only had lemonade Kool-Aid, so I put green food coloring in it.
2005--I wore a T-shirt that has Snoopy in an Irish hat sitting in front of an Irish flag with a caption that says, "It's cool to be Irish." I went to seminary that morning and my teacher, Brother Morrill, was standing outside the classroom to see if we had green. Someone in my class (whose name I can't remember) had a soccer shirt with vertical green and white stripes. A kid named Daniel was wearing a tan shirt, and Brother Morrill said, "Kind of green." I thought it wasn't green at all, but a year or so later was when I discovered I'm kind of colorblind with certain shades of green. Brother Morrill saw my shirt and emphatically said "Green!" Since the Relief Society was established on March 17, a video my class had made was broadcast to all the classes. It was the first time we had seen the final product. I realized it really wasn't as clever as we had thought it was. Daniel took a green whiteboard marker and wrote on his hands because he was annoyed no one considered his shirt green. We rotated with all the seminary classes and heard from different teachers. When we were in Brother Lomu's class, he called on me to read, calling me Snoopy. Brother Lomu was wearing a green jacket. After seminary I went to my chemistry class, where the guy with the soccer shirt also had class. After that I had gym, and I kept my holey green socks on. The football team was moving the weight room and getting new weight equipment, and they had us help them, since our class met at the same time as they did. I remember being outside when it was overcast and someone said the word "funner" and one Paul Castleberry said "funner" wasn't a word. I was a little jealous--I thought only smart English people like me knew that wasn't a word! (Now that I'm even smarter, I would say it actually is a word.) In my history class at the end of the day, a girl brought a small Care Bear--the green one with the clover on its belly.
2004--I was wearing my Snoopy "Cool to be Irish" shirt. I went up to seminary, where we were having an "extended devotional" (party). They had put rainbow crepe paper in the doorway. They had put crepe paper on the wall in the form of a rainbow and put Rolos all over it. Our teacher, Brother Heaston, told us we couldn't eat the Rolos, but a girl ate one from the floor. One Carson Giles was wearing a shirt with a skull in front of a four-leaf shamrock. I was giving the devotional. I don't remember what I said, but it was some ridiculous thing about luck and I had a keychain with a four-leaf clover. When I was done my teacher and a girl said "good job" but I doubt it really was. There was a table with lots of green food. I put the cookies I had brought (sugar cookies with green sugar) on the table. There was spaghetti, and I wondered why they had it if it wasn't green. My English class that day was in the computer lab, and my teacher, Mrs. Steed, said that I had the greatest shirts. She might have asked where I got it. That evening we had dinner at the table (a rare occurrence). I don't remember what the main course was, but we had bread with green swirls. I had to go across the street to the Reeds' house, and I talked to Nicole at the door. I had green chocolate milk because we had some green syrup from when one of the Hulk movies came out. My mom talked with my brother David on the phone, and he told her someone had showed up to class in full leprechaun garb. When I was a kid, my great-grandma had sent a homemade green cover for toilet paper. I decided to use it as a hat. Keep this in mind; it will be important for many years. This night I put the "hat" on my niece Allie, since she was the size of a leprechaun. We took pictures. My mom called her a leprechauness.
2003--I had a strange outfit of a white dress shirt with a shamrock tie and orange shorts. My English teacher, Mrs. Hadley, commented about my orange. I think I used a hall pass to get something from my locker, and the principal commented about my outfit. That day members of the band had to dress up, so I wasn't the only one in a tie. I was in line for lunch and I heard someone in front of me talk about how so many people were wearing ties.
2002--I wore my new shamrock tie with an Irish Snoopy pinned to it, and Ryan Jones also had the same tie. I had to pass the sacrament to the stand. After sacrament meeting we went to the farewell of my cousin Hyrum. We went to his dad's house afterward. There was someone there on oxygen. We had brought two kinds of cookies. One kind was regular chocolate chip cookies dyed green. The other was cookies that weren't dyed green but had green mint chips. We expected the non-dyed ones to be eaten more, but we were surprised when it was the opposite.
2001--It was a Saturday. I had slept in a green shirt, and when I got up, my mom said I could wear it that day. We went to the Conference Center. In those days you could freely go up on the roof. I had been for mutual and told my parents it was better at night. My mom talked about how my aunt Sue liked to make a magic jello salad that turned green by putting pistachio pudding in it. My mom made this salad.
2000--I wore the toilet-paper hat. I wore a green sweater vest over a white T-shirt. The vest covered up the red writing. I had aqua-colored socks on. My teacher, Mrs. Call, picked me as one of the best hats. She had me tell one of the other fifth-grade teachers, Mrs. Cowan, what the hat was meant for. One of the girls who had been selected for her hat had the Mad Hatter's hat. I think Carson Giles was trying to give his pants grass stains since he wasn't wearing green, but Morgan Smith told him that didn't count. After school I played with my friend David Christensen. He had brought two green Airheads, which were kind of stale. I had two plastic pots with chocolate gold coins and had my mom hide them for us to find. We had a hard time finding them. My mom said she put them someplace she associated with leprechauns. They were in a tree stump. We jumped on the trampoline. David said, "Cool, you have blue socks!" I wore them because they were green, but I realized they did look blue compared to my other green.
1999--I wore the toilet paper hat and the green vest over a yellow T-shirt. I went up to the board to do a math problem and my teacher commented on my outfit. After school I played with my friend Cody Zesiger and we pretended to be leprechauns. My mom had sparkly pipe cleaners. I smushed a gold one and gave it to him, pretending it was gold. Then I gave him a silver one. And then I smushed a blue one and a silver one together and told him it was a mushed-up mushroom. There were two episodes of The Simpsons, one of which was the St. Patrick's Day episode when Springfield reinstated Prohibition. My brother said it was a good day because there were two good episodes of The Simpsons, and I said it was a good day also because it was St. Patrick's Day.
1998--I had planned on not wearing any green except for a CTR ring so that people would pinch me and then I could pinch them ten times back. But I had the mindset of "I don't have to find something green" instead of "I have to find something with no green," so I picked a blue Samoa shirt that had green on it. My mom pointed that out to me, but I thought people wouldn't notice anyway. But they did. For March of that year I was going a month without sugar so my mom would give me $20, but my mom let me put green sugar on my cereal. I remember standing outside my class's portable before school. I told Hillary Ulmer she could pinch me, even though I was wearing green. So she did. But then I pinched her ten times back, since I was wearing green. She got mad because I had given her permission. When I told my mom and brother about that, they both told me what I did was wrong.
1997--We arrived at school and there were small green shoeprints all over our desks, as well as chocolate gold coins. My mom came to school with me and was wearing a necklace that consisted of beads on a green ribbon. Jonathan Martin wasn't wearing any green, so my mom took the beads off and gave him the ribbon. Later that day our teacher made us clean the leprechaun footprints off our desks with a smelly cleaning solution. We were all mad because we weren't responsible for the paint. I think this was the year when
my mom had made scrambled eggs with ham and put green food coloring
in it. The food coloring colored the eggs but not the ham. I remember
my brother saying, “It's green eggs and ham,” obviously referring
to Dr. Seuss. But I said that it wasn't, because only the eggs were
green. But he pointed out that “green eggs and ham” doesn't mean
that the ham has to be green. I was still unconvinced, since the
pictures in Green Eggs
and Ham
had both the eggs and the ham as green.
1996--It was stake conference and I wore the only tie I owned that was not a clip-on. It had some green elements in it. When we came home, my dad made brussels sprouts, which I was not at all interested in.
1995--I remember Hillary Ulmer had a fancy green hat with a red feather. I wore a plastic green hat. Mrs. Nakaya, a worker at the school, had the same hat, but she had put a little cloth ribbon around it. My mom was making pizza with green crust. I helped put the pepperoni on and I put it on in the shape of clovers. But it didn't matter because the cheese went on top of it anyway.
1994--David Christensen was at my house and we were both wearing green. We went up to my mom and pinched her because she wasn't wearing green. She showed us she was wearing green, because she had small flowers on her shirt that had green stems. We said it had to be a lot of green, but she said it didn't have to be.
Other posts in this series:
The Ghost of Independence Days Past
A Pillowcase Full of Trick-or-treat Memories
Remember Every Detail, Volume 3: Thanksgiving
Yuletide by the Fireside, and Joyful Memories There
Auld Lang Syne
Remember Every Detail, Volume 6: Valentine's Day
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Lemits time is here
It's Wednesday night, so I can stay up late. And I don't feel like doing my homework right now, so I decided to blog.
Yesterday was Valentine's Day. It was rather uneventful. I was feeling a little sad that the only Valentine candy I had was the end of my conversation hearts, but my roommate came home and gave me a jar of cinnamon lips his mom gave him, since he doesn't like candy that much. Valentine's Day is pretty pointless.
But it's no more pointless than the next holiday. There are eight holidays I formally celebrate, and of these eight, St. Patrick's Day is the most pointless one. I mean, it's a day to wear green, eat green food, and think about Ireland. Which is so ironic because no one in Ireland even cares. If you're not a Mormon it's a day for drinking. And drinking is purely idiotic--what's the point of having a holiday if you can't even remember it?
St. Patrick's Day is the only holiday for which I have no music. The only show I have is a leprechaun-themed episode of Bewitched that aired on March 17, 1966. Most of the candies and desserts I eat are available year round, and usually consist of mint things, but also include pistachio, lime, and green apple. I also eat gold-wrapped candies, like Rolos, Werther'ses, and chocolate with almonds. There's not much uniquely St. Patrick's Day.
This is a really weird time of year, and it's not just because of this green-themed holiday. Ever since I was eleven, I've found I always have weird feelings at this time of year.
I came up with a word to describe the weirdness of this time of year: lemits [LEE-mits]. You know how when you are almost but not quite asleep you think nonsensical things that sometimes strangely make sense? A few weeks ago I had one such incident when I thought of this word. Don't ask for an etymology. There is none. It just coined itself in my head.
Lemits usually starts after Valentine's Day (although in recent years there have been hints of it before then), climaxes around St. Patrick's Day, and diminishes by Easter. It comes with intermediate temperatures, unpredictable weather, sunsets that are later than they were but are still relatively early, and stresses usually with nothing else to look forward to. Here in college the projects start piling up even though there's still another month of school. In high school you had to start preparing hard for tests, but the tests were still too far to look forward to them being over.
Lemits often manifests itself in the form of depression. Even though it is getting warmer and the days are getting longer, it is more depressing than full-blown winter. My mom is convinced it's because you've been a long time without sunlight. Maybe for other people, but I don't think this is the case for me, because it is often sunlight that compounds the lemits depression. In recent years, it hasn't been so depressing. One of my professors said that February is the month with the most suicides of college students. I'm not at all suicidal, but I can see how this could be, since it is the onset of lemits.
Lemits, however, is not always depressing. But lemits is, by definition, always weird. I don't know how to describe it. There's just something about the shadows, the air, and the smells that says, "This is sure a weird time of year." It's not always depressing, but it's never completely positive. There's always some bit of uneasiness or unhappiness associated with it. I don't know how many people feel these lemits feelings. Because of that, I really wish I could describe them. But I can't! I know it when I feel it, but I can't describe it.
It's time to brace myself for lemits!
Yesterday was Valentine's Day. It was rather uneventful. I was feeling a little sad that the only Valentine candy I had was the end of my conversation hearts, but my roommate came home and gave me a jar of cinnamon lips his mom gave him, since he doesn't like candy that much. Valentine's Day is pretty pointless.
But it's no more pointless than the next holiday. There are eight holidays I formally celebrate, and of these eight, St. Patrick's Day is the most pointless one. I mean, it's a day to wear green, eat green food, and think about Ireland. Which is so ironic because no one in Ireland even cares. If you're not a Mormon it's a day for drinking. And drinking is purely idiotic--what's the point of having a holiday if you can't even remember it?
St. Patrick's Day is the only holiday for which I have no music. The only show I have is a leprechaun-themed episode of Bewitched that aired on March 17, 1966. Most of the candies and desserts I eat are available year round, and usually consist of mint things, but also include pistachio, lime, and green apple. I also eat gold-wrapped candies, like Rolos, Werther'ses, and chocolate with almonds. There's not much uniquely St. Patrick's Day.
This is a really weird time of year, and it's not just because of this green-themed holiday. Ever since I was eleven, I've found I always have weird feelings at this time of year.
I came up with a word to describe the weirdness of this time of year: lemits [LEE-mits]. You know how when you are almost but not quite asleep you think nonsensical things that sometimes strangely make sense? A few weeks ago I had one such incident when I thought of this word. Don't ask for an etymology. There is none. It just coined itself in my head.
Lemits usually starts after Valentine's Day (although in recent years there have been hints of it before then), climaxes around St. Patrick's Day, and diminishes by Easter. It comes with intermediate temperatures, unpredictable weather, sunsets that are later than they were but are still relatively early, and stresses usually with nothing else to look forward to. Here in college the projects start piling up even though there's still another month of school. In high school you had to start preparing hard for tests, but the tests were still too far to look forward to them being over.
Lemits often manifests itself in the form of depression. Even though it is getting warmer and the days are getting longer, it is more depressing than full-blown winter. My mom is convinced it's because you've been a long time without sunlight. Maybe for other people, but I don't think this is the case for me, because it is often sunlight that compounds the lemits depression. In recent years, it hasn't been so depressing. One of my professors said that February is the month with the most suicides of college students. I'm not at all suicidal, but I can see how this could be, since it is the onset of lemits.
Lemits, however, is not always depressing. But lemits is, by definition, always weird. I don't know how to describe it. There's just something about the shadows, the air, and the smells that says, "This is sure a weird time of year." It's not always depressing, but it's never completely positive. There's always some bit of uneasiness or unhappiness associated with it. I don't know how many people feel these lemits feelings. Because of that, I really wish I could describe them. But I can't! I know it when I feel it, but I can't describe it.
It's time to brace myself for lemits!
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Valentine's Day: Winter's Halloween
I was just polishing off my blog post last week when I got a text from KSL telling me about the horrendous, awful, terrible, wicked, nefarious, despicable, deplorable, horrible, satanic, diabolical, detestable, devilish, and downright evil act of Josh Powell. It wasn't until later in the week that I learned he used a hatchet on his children. If he were alive, I would like to see him hang by his toenails above a vat of boiling oil. When his nails eventually ripped off, he'd plunge into the oil, which would then empty into ice water. Then, while his skin was still raw from the oil, he would be tied by one ankle to the back of a pickup truck and dragged at freeway speeds down a gravel road.
I know a lot of people also feel this way. But that is just the natural man in us; our Father in Heaven doesn't feel that way, which is why the stereotypical notion of Hell as a place where flames scorch you and satyrs poke you with pitchforks is false. Josh will have to answer for his deeds, but he won't be eternally tormented. Charlie and Braden, on the other hand, are guaranteed a spot in the Celestial Kingdom--which is where I hope their mother will be, as well. (I have a hard time imagining Josh in anything but the Telestial. But I'm not the one to judge, which is a good thing.)
What frustrates me is that people are compounding the heartache by pointing fingers. The West Valley police didn't work hard enough, they say, or the judge shouldn't have let Josh have visits, or the child agency should have sent more than one person, or the 911 dispatcher should have taken it more seriously. None of these people killed Charlie or Braden or Susan. None of these people suspected it to end this way. Passing blame will not bring anyone back. I'm sure all of those people already feel bad enough without people blaming them. I'm not saying improvements can't be made; I just think we need to look at things from their perspective. The "if onlys" will only hurt.
Moving on to happier things...
Valentine's Day is in two days. As you can tell from my blog decorations, I don't care for the subject matter of the holiday. (Unless you're reading this after Valentine's Day. Then you won't see them.) I just happen to like all holidays, and Valentine's Day is just another one. I try to focus mainly on the candy and the red and pink colors.
I find it interesting that in the fall and winter we have three major holidays in a row, and this pattern repeats in winter and spring. The first member of these trios is pointless but pretty popular. The last member of these trios is a religious holiday that has been largely secularized and features a fictitious gift-bearing being. These secularized holidays have become so big that they overpower the preceding holiday.
These comparisons can't be taken too far; Thanksgiving is actually a meaningful holiday, while St. Patrick's Day most definitely is not. But I think there are significant parallels between Halloween and Valentine's Day.
They are both ancient holidays that somehow have survived into the twenty-first century. They both don't really have much meaning (although you could argue that for V-day), but they are popular. For kids, they are the only holidays that are small enough that we still have to go to school yet big enough that we have class parties. They both involve large amounts of candy.
When I was in third grade, I had a dream that combined the two days. We had given out our little valentine cards, but we were in costumes. We would give a solitary orange or black M&M to anyone who entered the classroom. Our school librarian was dressed as a spiderweb (meaning she had a fake spiderweb draped around her), and she was super excited to get the M&M. I went out to recess and was playing with a friend when some wolves arrived via small tornadoes. This last part had nothing to do with either holiday, but it was implied that it was Valentine's Day.
I have heard that in the early twentieth century, Halloween was kind of a lovers' day.
This week I looked at the definition for Valentine in The Oxford English Dictionary, and came across this interesting entry from 1854: "Valentining, children going from house to house, the morning of St. Valentine's day, soliciting small gratuities." They went trick-or-treating on Valentine's Day!
This week I wanted to buy some Valentine's candy, and there wasn't too big of a selection at the store. I bought some to try. I had only had it once, and that was when I got it in my trick-or-treat bag. At the time I thought I got a stale box, but no, they're made that way. The candy? Jujyfruits. When I first started eating them, I wondered how they could possibly still make them. They're very weird and very sticky. Normal Jujyfruits come (I think) in five flavors, but the Valentine ones come in three--raspberry (red), cherry (pink), and strawberry (white). Even though these weren't the greatest candies, I found myself just popping one in after another.
Not only are the textures and flavors odd, the shapes are really weird. So weird, in fact, that the candy's own website makes fun of them. They have some moderately normal shapes, such as a raspberry and a cluster of grapes. They have a fish-like pineapple and a banana with the brand name Heide on it. Then they have one that looks like a flower. Only it's not a flower. It's a tomato. Yes, a tomato. And the other shapes? A peapod and asparagus. Not only are vegetables weird shapes for candy, they're not even convincing vegetable shapes.
Anyway, I was comparing Halloween and Valentine's Day. Even though I'd only had Jujyfruits once before, there were times when I was chewing (and chewing and chewing) that it really felt like it could be October 31.
These are just some observations. What did I do this week?
Well, this week there was a tri-ward dance. I'm anti-dancing, but my other choice was to sit alone in my apartment on Friday night doing homework, so I decided to go. It was supposed to be a formal event, but it was a weeknight, so I wore my blue Converse shoes along with my blue dress shirt, black slacks, and pink Snoopy Valentine tie. Fortunately, they had lots of goodies and tables set up so it wasn't too awkward to be a wall weed. Before lots of people showed up, I went to talk to some girls from another ward. One of them seemed genuinely freaked out by me. I decided maybe that wasn't a good idea, but then more people came and I was able to visit with members of my ward. Since I was just sitting there and it's hard to carry on a conversation at a dance party, after an hour or so a girl told me we should do something spontaneous. She had some CDs she wanted to break. We tried rocks, but those didn't work well. We ended up putting them in sandwich bags and breaking them by hand.
Yesterday was a warm day, so I went running. I ran for 56 minutes, and my goal was 51. I'm only four minutes shy of my eventual hour goal. But a lot of my time was spent stopped at stoplights. Part of it was spent fixing my shoe. I spent good money on running shoes back in September. One of the pairs has an insole that never stays in place, and yesterday it was actually sticking out the back of my shoe. I hate these shoes. They kill my feet. I want to use them so that they will get worn out and I won't have to wear them anymore, but I can't wear them often because wearing them even just a little bit gives me blood blisters or something.
Then I changed my plans when my roommate invited me to do baptisms for the dead. There's a lady who's done a lot of work with Cheyenne Indian names, so I had names like Low Dog and Young Wolf Tooth. Then I made cookies for my home teachees.
If you've been reading my blog lately, you may be wondering when I'm going to mention geology. Here it is. This week we're studying sedimentary rocks. I get to use my mouth again. Halite has returned as rock salt. And the way to determine between shale and siltstone is that shale dissolves in your mouth while siltstone is just grainy. I don't plan on practicing this too much (I'll probably only do it for the quiz). It's hard to break off small pieces (I don't dare bite the rocks), and shale tastes terrible. But the other night I dreamed that I ate an entire bag of rocks.
I know a lot of people also feel this way. But that is just the natural man in us; our Father in Heaven doesn't feel that way, which is why the stereotypical notion of Hell as a place where flames scorch you and satyrs poke you with pitchforks is false. Josh will have to answer for his deeds, but he won't be eternally tormented. Charlie and Braden, on the other hand, are guaranteed a spot in the Celestial Kingdom--which is where I hope their mother will be, as well. (I have a hard time imagining Josh in anything but the Telestial. But I'm not the one to judge, which is a good thing.)
What frustrates me is that people are compounding the heartache by pointing fingers. The West Valley police didn't work hard enough, they say, or the judge shouldn't have let Josh have visits, or the child agency should have sent more than one person, or the 911 dispatcher should have taken it more seriously. None of these people killed Charlie or Braden or Susan. None of these people suspected it to end this way. Passing blame will not bring anyone back. I'm sure all of those people already feel bad enough without people blaming them. I'm not saying improvements can't be made; I just think we need to look at things from their perspective. The "if onlys" will only hurt.
Moving on to happier things...
Valentine's Day is in two days. As you can tell from my blog decorations, I don't care for the subject matter of the holiday. (Unless you're reading this after Valentine's Day. Then you won't see them.) I just happen to like all holidays, and Valentine's Day is just another one. I try to focus mainly on the candy and the red and pink colors.
I find it interesting that in the fall and winter we have three major holidays in a row, and this pattern repeats in winter and spring. The first member of these trios is pointless but pretty popular. The last member of these trios is a religious holiday that has been largely secularized and features a fictitious gift-bearing being. These secularized holidays have become so big that they overpower the preceding holiday.
These comparisons can't be taken too far; Thanksgiving is actually a meaningful holiday, while St. Patrick's Day most definitely is not. But I think there are significant parallels between Halloween and Valentine's Day.
They are both ancient holidays that somehow have survived into the twenty-first century. They both don't really have much meaning (although you could argue that for V-day), but they are popular. For kids, they are the only holidays that are small enough that we still have to go to school yet big enough that we have class parties. They both involve large amounts of candy.
When I was in third grade, I had a dream that combined the two days. We had given out our little valentine cards, but we were in costumes. We would give a solitary orange or black M&M to anyone who entered the classroom. Our school librarian was dressed as a spiderweb (meaning she had a fake spiderweb draped around her), and she was super excited to get the M&M. I went out to recess and was playing with a friend when some wolves arrived via small tornadoes. This last part had nothing to do with either holiday, but it was implied that it was Valentine's Day.
I have heard that in the early twentieth century, Halloween was kind of a lovers' day.
This week I looked at the definition for Valentine in The Oxford English Dictionary, and came across this interesting entry from 1854: "Valentining, children going from house to house, the morning of St. Valentine's day, soliciting small gratuities." They went trick-or-treating on Valentine's Day!
This week I wanted to buy some Valentine's candy, and there wasn't too big of a selection at the store. I bought some to try. I had only had it once, and that was when I got it in my trick-or-treat bag. At the time I thought I got a stale box, but no, they're made that way. The candy? Jujyfruits. When I first started eating them, I wondered how they could possibly still make them. They're very weird and very sticky. Normal Jujyfruits come (I think) in five flavors, but the Valentine ones come in three--raspberry (red), cherry (pink), and strawberry (white). Even though these weren't the greatest candies, I found myself just popping one in after another.
Not only are the textures and flavors odd, the shapes are really weird. So weird, in fact, that the candy's own website makes fun of them. They have some moderately normal shapes, such as a raspberry and a cluster of grapes. They have a fish-like pineapple and a banana with the brand name Heide on it. Then they have one that looks like a flower. Only it's not a flower. It's a tomato. Yes, a tomato. And the other shapes? A peapod and asparagus. Not only are vegetables weird shapes for candy, they're not even convincing vegetable shapes.
Anyway, I was comparing Halloween and Valentine's Day. Even though I'd only had Jujyfruits once before, there were times when I was chewing (and chewing and chewing) that it really felt like it could be October 31.
These are just some observations. What did I do this week?
Well, this week there was a tri-ward dance. I'm anti-dancing, but my other choice was to sit alone in my apartment on Friday night doing homework, so I decided to go. It was supposed to be a formal event, but it was a weeknight, so I wore my blue Converse shoes along with my blue dress shirt, black slacks, and pink Snoopy Valentine tie. Fortunately, they had lots of goodies and tables set up so it wasn't too awkward to be a wall weed. Before lots of people showed up, I went to talk to some girls from another ward. One of them seemed genuinely freaked out by me. I decided maybe that wasn't a good idea, but then more people came and I was able to visit with members of my ward. Since I was just sitting there and it's hard to carry on a conversation at a dance party, after an hour or so a girl told me we should do something spontaneous. She had some CDs she wanted to break. We tried rocks, but those didn't work well. We ended up putting them in sandwich bags and breaking them by hand.
Yesterday was a warm day, so I went running. I ran for 56 minutes, and my goal was 51. I'm only four minutes shy of my eventual hour goal. But a lot of my time was spent stopped at stoplights. Part of it was spent fixing my shoe. I spent good money on running shoes back in September. One of the pairs has an insole that never stays in place, and yesterday it was actually sticking out the back of my shoe. I hate these shoes. They kill my feet. I want to use them so that they will get worn out and I won't have to wear them anymore, but I can't wear them often because wearing them even just a little bit gives me blood blisters or something.
Then I changed my plans when my roommate invited me to do baptisms for the dead. There's a lady who's done a lot of work with Cheyenne Indian names, so I had names like Low Dog and Young Wolf Tooth. Then I made cookies for my home teachees.
If you've been reading my blog lately, you may be wondering when I'm going to mention geology. Here it is. This week we're studying sedimentary rocks. I get to use my mouth again. Halite has returned as rock salt. And the way to determine between shale and siltstone is that shale dissolves in your mouth while siltstone is just grainy. I don't plan on practicing this too much (I'll probably only do it for the quiz). It's hard to break off small pieces (I don't dare bite the rocks), and shale tastes terrible. But the other night I dreamed that I ate an entire bag of rocks.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
My class rocks!
This week was my busiest week of the semester so far.
On Monday I spent a long time studying minerals for geology. On Tuesday we had a quiz. I thought I got all the specimens right, but when I looked at my grades I didn't get full credit. Either my descriptions for how I recognized them were inadequate, or else maybe I confused quartz and plagioclase. It was fun to test the minerals. Magnetite is magnetic. Gypsum scratches easily. Calcite fizzes with HCl. Halite tastes salty. Kaolinite sticks to your tongue. Usually I'm rather grossed out by sharing straws and spoons and the like, but for some reason I wasn't so uncomfortable licking minerals that countless other students have also licked and handled. I ended up licking more than just the halite and the kaolinite, because I tested some other minerals to see whether or not they were the halite. I handed in my quiz and then second guessed myself. I put one mineral as halite simply because it was the only one left, but then I realized it wasn't salty, so one of the ones had been mislabeled. The TA gave me back my quiz and I was able to identify the real halite (by licking it, of course).
After the quiz we looked at igneous rocks. These don't involve any licking. I hardly got to study them this week because whenever I went to the lab/classroom, someone was in there. I went yesterday (Saturday) thinking that surely no one would be there. I was right about that, but no one was in there because it was locked. I'm going to have to study them a lot tomorrow. Fortunately, I think the igneous rocks will be easier than the minerals. I think I already know how to identify pumice, obsidian, granite, tuff, peridotite, and maybe rhyolite, and that's half of the rocks we have to know.
On Wednesday night I had to write a short paper for my D&C class. We had to spend five hours studying a topic and then write a one-page, double-spaced paper on it. Mine was choppy so I'll have to refine it today and tomorrow. My topic was love for mankind/charity, since I struggle with that. I'm pretty good at keeping most of the commandments, except for that one. Paul said if you have not charity, you are nothing. I guess I'm almost nothing.
This week I also had to worry about not one but two tests, one for geology and one for editing. I haven't taken the editing one yet (I have until Wednesday) because I spent most of the time studying for geology. I have found that for me the best way to study is to fill out a Google doc. Whoever creates it (usually me, anymore) emails everyone in the class and invites them. Then we can all go into the document and add information. It helps me study as I look over the material to add, and I don't feel like it's a waste of my time because I'm doing it for other people. I'm glad I did it because there was a lot on the test that I knew only because I put it on the Google doc. I went to the testing center and the line was long, which I didn't expect. It was the longest I've personally ever seen it. I got 92% on the test. Since I'm not a science major and the professor said that you'd be in good shape if you got 80%, I'm satisfied with that score.
On Friday night my parents and Allie came down and took me to dinner. That night I was able to go running. It was the only night I got to go running all week, since I've had so much homework. But I meant to run 48 minutes and I ended up running 51, so I'm glad that my one run was one when I got to increase the time. My running has seriously suffered this semester. (And when I say it's suffered, I mean it's not as much as I would like it to be, but it's better than it was when I was working all day in November and December.)
I have to do a content edit (which I don't know how to do!) on an article for the student journal I'm on. I wasn't able to do any work for the journal at all this past week, and I hope I'll have time to this week. I hope I don't get too far behind in my hours.
This week I also discovered that I never got paid for my last three days of work. I had told my supervisor, "It's not official, but it's very likely my last day will be December 23rd," but then later told him, "You know how I said my last day would be December 23rd? It'll actually be the 29th." But somehow HR had my last day as the 23rd, even though I worked December 27, 28, and 29. I was able to call and get that fixed so a check should be arriving soon.
I hope I have time to do everything this week!
On Monday I spent a long time studying minerals for geology. On Tuesday we had a quiz. I thought I got all the specimens right, but when I looked at my grades I didn't get full credit. Either my descriptions for how I recognized them were inadequate, or else maybe I confused quartz and plagioclase. It was fun to test the minerals. Magnetite is magnetic. Gypsum scratches easily. Calcite fizzes with HCl. Halite tastes salty. Kaolinite sticks to your tongue. Usually I'm rather grossed out by sharing straws and spoons and the like, but for some reason I wasn't so uncomfortable licking minerals that countless other students have also licked and handled. I ended up licking more than just the halite and the kaolinite, because I tested some other minerals to see whether or not they were the halite. I handed in my quiz and then second guessed myself. I put one mineral as halite simply because it was the only one left, but then I realized it wasn't salty, so one of the ones had been mislabeled. The TA gave me back my quiz and I was able to identify the real halite (by licking it, of course).
After the quiz we looked at igneous rocks. These don't involve any licking. I hardly got to study them this week because whenever I went to the lab/classroom, someone was in there. I went yesterday (Saturday) thinking that surely no one would be there. I was right about that, but no one was in there because it was locked. I'm going to have to study them a lot tomorrow. Fortunately, I think the igneous rocks will be easier than the minerals. I think I already know how to identify pumice, obsidian, granite, tuff, peridotite, and maybe rhyolite, and that's half of the rocks we have to know.
On Wednesday night I had to write a short paper for my D&C class. We had to spend five hours studying a topic and then write a one-page, double-spaced paper on it. Mine was choppy so I'll have to refine it today and tomorrow. My topic was love for mankind/charity, since I struggle with that. I'm pretty good at keeping most of the commandments, except for that one. Paul said if you have not charity, you are nothing. I guess I'm almost nothing.
This week I also had to worry about not one but two tests, one for geology and one for editing. I haven't taken the editing one yet (I have until Wednesday) because I spent most of the time studying for geology. I have found that for me the best way to study is to fill out a Google doc. Whoever creates it (usually me, anymore) emails everyone in the class and invites them. Then we can all go into the document and add information. It helps me study as I look over the material to add, and I don't feel like it's a waste of my time because I'm doing it for other people. I'm glad I did it because there was a lot on the test that I knew only because I put it on the Google doc. I went to the testing center and the line was long, which I didn't expect. It was the longest I've personally ever seen it. I got 92% on the test. Since I'm not a science major and the professor said that you'd be in good shape if you got 80%, I'm satisfied with that score.
On Friday night my parents and Allie came down and took me to dinner. That night I was able to go running. It was the only night I got to go running all week, since I've had so much homework. But I meant to run 48 minutes and I ended up running 51, so I'm glad that my one run was one when I got to increase the time. My running has seriously suffered this semester. (And when I say it's suffered, I mean it's not as much as I would like it to be, but it's better than it was when I was working all day in November and December.)
I have to do a content edit (which I don't know how to do!) on an article for the student journal I'm on. I wasn't able to do any work for the journal at all this past week, and I hope I'll have time to this week. I hope I don't get too far behind in my hours.
This week I also discovered that I never got paid for my last three days of work. I had told my supervisor, "It's not official, but it's very likely my last day will be December 23rd," but then later told him, "You know how I said my last day would be December 23rd? It'll actually be the 29th." But somehow HR had my last day as the 23rd, even though I worked December 27, 28, and 29. I was able to call and get that fixed so a check should be arriving soon.
I hope I have time to do everything this week!
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