Sunday, March 25, 2012

Running, reruns, and runny jam

This week I was finally able to meet one of my New Year's resolutions. I ran for an hour straight. This semester has been busy to the point that I haven't had time to do much running, so I was glad I was finally able to do it. Ideally I'd run every day, but it doesn't work out.

I don't like running. But I love the feeling I get afterward--I physically feel good, and there's mental satisfaction knowing I did it. This time of year is really good for running. I find my ideal running temperature is between 40 and 50 degrees--so it's actually starting to get a little warm.

I estimate that I run about seven miles when I run. I go based on time more than on distance, which is why I'm not sure how many miles it is. I'm not a serious runner. It amazes me when people talk casually about running marathons--I'm not even close to being capable of doing a half-marathon! I think my hour run is a good place to cap off. Considering that five years ago I weighed 250 pounds and I couldn't even run a mile and a half without stopping, I'm satisfied with an hour.

I went home this weekend just for fun. Both Friday night (there at home) and last night (here in Provo) I watched episodes of Green Acres. For my semantics class we have to find examples of speech that we can analyze from a semantic perspective. Green Acres makes extensive use of linguistically based humor. I think if people gave it a chance, instead of disregarding it because it's old, Green Acres could be wildly popular. It's hilarious. Consider this gem:
Oliver: Oh, that stupid festival...
Mr. Kimball: No, this is the spring festival. Stupid festival is next month.
Oliver (sarcastically): Yes, and you're gonna be king.
Mr. Kimball: I am? Gosh, that makes three years in a row!

Or this one, when Eb is taking correspondence barber school classes from MIT, the Middle Indiana Tonsorial College:
Oliver: For a minute I thought you were talking about the MIT in Massachusetts.
Eb: Oh, you mean Massachusetts Institute of Terpsichore.
Oliver (sarcastically): Yeah, that's the one.
Eb: I'm not interested in terpsichore for two reasons. One, I don't think there's much of a future in it. And two, I don't know what terpsichore is!

And these are actually kind of mild in the realm of Green Acres.

I was mildly amused by three things yesterday.

I went with my parents to eat at Chuck-a-Rama, which seems to be my dad's favorite place. My mom was eating a scone with jam at the time the waitress-like lady was passing by. My mom had just spilled some jam on her shirt. The lady asked if everything was good, and my mom said, "Yeah, if I could do it right!" The lady said "Oh!" What my mom didn't realize was that she had a trail of jam that was literally three or four inches long running down her chin. There was probably enough jam on her face to spread on a piece of bread, if you don't mind flakes of skin in your jam. I'm sure you had to be there, but I found it quite funny.

Then we were at Walmart and there was a middle aged couple dressed up and looking at step ladders. There they were, all gussied up, standing on step ladders in the middle of Walmart. I don't know why I thought it was so funny.

And last night I was driving back to Provo through Utah County construction. I had to laugh that the sign on the side of the road had not one but two typos: HEAVY TRCFFIC. USE CANTION.

I'm sorry this post is so scatterbrained. (Well, I guess it's not scatterbrained--it doesn't have a brain!)

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Those Easter Morns

Well, I've done seven memory posts in which I remember as many details as possible about all the holidays I've experienced--and now it's time for the eighth! But Easter is a bit of an unusual holiday. In my family, a lot of the Easter traditions actually occur on the Saturday and sometimes Friday before Easter. The purpose of this blog is to remember only Easter Sunday, which means that some of my memories are vaguer than they are for other holidays.

2011--I think Allie and I made Easter sugar cookies in the morning, before church. Then after church we put blue frosting and Eastery sprinkles on them before going to my grandparents' house. We took the green Taurus. We got to their house at about the same time as my cousin Joey. I was taking the cookies out of the trunk when Joey was talking to Allie. Allie had brought her Disney Princess Squinkies, which Sue said she really liked. (I only remember this because Allie reminded me.) We had a traditional ham dinner (I ate a lot of deviled eggs), and then we brought out the cookies. My mom told everyone that Allie and I had made them, although I think there was something in that statement that wasn't quite accurate, but I can't remember what it was. (It might have been that my mom had actually made the dough.) I remember Debbie and Renee saying they wanted big cookies. They said that I did a good job, which I thought wasn't really accurate. I'm sure we talked about our Disneyland trip. Then we went home, and I watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie while trying to finish up all of my Easter candy, including my egg-shaped Almond Joys. Both of my parents watched at least part of the movie.

2010--It was conference weekend. My parents were going out of town since it was my mom's spring break. Our home teacher had brought us donuts the day before, and my mom wanted me to eat a quarter of the last one, a glazed one. I didn't want to, since it didn't have any Easter frosting or sprinkles, but she insisted. I told her that I would have to do ten pushups for it. She told me I was a slave driver (against myself) and said that she wouldn't have made me eat it if she knew I would have to do pushups for it. I told her it was OK. They left, and I watched the afternoon session of conference. Elder Nelson spoke and showed pictures of his grandkids. I thought about how my parents wouldn't see those pictures, since they were listening on the car radio. Then I was texting my cousin Jesse about how I would be coming to their house. It took me a long time to get ready to go back to Provo, and before I left I played "That Easter Morn" on the piano. In the car I was listening to Messiah as performed by the MoTab. I think Jesse texted me while I was driving, asking when I'd be there. I got to the Thompsons' house and they had a banner across their door that said "Welcome Home Elder Mark" that they had taken when I came home. I had been home for four months at this point, and I had actually seen the banner on the floor in their house on a previous visit in December. When I told them this they seemed disappointed. When I went inside I was standing, waiting for them to invite me to sit down (as I had become accustomed to doing on my mission), but I could tell they weren't going to invite me, so I sat down anyway. They told me that Joey had objected to putting the banner across the door because it would make them look like white trash. He didn't mind it being in the window, but he didn't like it across the door. I said that I didn't know how having it across the door was worse than having it in the window, and Sue agreed with me. Sue talked about watching conference, and mentioned the speaker who showed pictures of his family. I said, "Wasn't that Elder Nelson?" They were watching a sports game of some sort. After some small talk, Jesse asked me if I wanted to play Nintendo. I told him that I preferred not to play video games or watch TV on Sunday. I didn't think about the fact that they were watching TV. I didn't mean for them to turn off the TV, but they started to. Sue told me she agreed with me. But Peter insisted on keeping the TV on. I remember Jesse eating his Easter candy and I was a little sad that I had eaten all of mine. Jesse and Peter talked about how they wanted to get a pet penguin, and I started talking about how puffins are better than penguins because they can swim and fly. Sue said, "Penguins can fly." Peter and Jesse said, "No they can't!" and Sue realized her folly. They talked about how they wanted to buy an island for exotic pets, and how our uncle Paul could probably finance such a purchase. We talked about an individual we don't care for. We talked about the mysterious, creepy phone calls my aunt Debbie had received many years previously. Sue said that Wayne had put someone up to it, but she wouldn't say who the caller was because it was someone Peter and Jesse liked. After some coaxing, Sue told them who the caller was, and they assured her they didn't like that person. Throughout all our conversations Joey was in and out of the room. He would say the initial of a swear word, forbearing saying the word itself. He said he hated his dad and anyone associated with him. Sue told him he couldn't hate his dad. After he had left, Jesse was talking about how people believed Obama was a Muslim and that Joey probably believed that too. Sue said that Jesse and Peter believed dumb things too, "like evolution." Jesse retorted about evolution being fact-based. I could have spoken up with my views on evolution, but I figured it wouldn't have done much good, and I didn't want to open a can of worms. Eventually I left. I parked in my parking lot by the storage sheds. Lots of people had Facebook links to the Church's YouTube clip adapted from Elder Holland's talk the previous year. I made a status that said "Handel's Messiah is awesome," but no one commented on it.

2009--After church, Elder Kitchen and I went out in the rainy weather for our proselyting. We walked instead of biked, due to the weather. We walked to our dinner appointment with the Isaksens, who had bought us a bunch of Easter candy. We arranged so that they would drop it off at our house so we didn't have to carry it around with us. It was rainy, and I felt bad for all the little worms on the sidewalk, fearing they would get caught there when the rain went away and they would dry up in the sun. Elder Kitchen tried to get me to move them. This was uncharacteristic of him, since he would usually nag me for doing silly things like that. On Chateaux Drive, I picked up one worm, but when I did its internal fluids came out. Elder Kitchen told me I killed it, but I told him I had noticed some of those fluids coming out even before I picked it up. I still felt bad though. We saw a less-active family we had been trying to contact forever. The man was cordial enough, but didn't seem excited we were there on Easter, and in fact remarked about us having to "work" on Easter. It was for that reason (people not being excited about us being there on a holiday) I didn't want to do any tracting. We might have stopped to say hello to the Williamses, a family we were teaching, but I can't remember. We tried to see a potential investigator who I think lived on Hayden Avenue, but there was something weird there and I think we didn't end up knocking on the door (we later learned he had moved, anyway). I think there was a small girl in the yard who was yelling something. With all the rain and worms, I took this silly video:

We stopped at the Van Ettens', a member family, but I can't remember why we went in the first place. Sister Van Etten told us about how she had forgotten it was Easter until late the night before, so she went to the dollar store to get candy. They were all out of Easter candy, so she had to get generic candy. She bought Mike and Ikes and said they were like jelly beans if you smushed them. Because it was raining and because people weren't going to be too happy to see us on Easter, we asked Brother Van Etten to drive us home. He obliged. When we got home, the Isaksens' basket of candy was on our doorstep. We went down into our study area so I could do some paperwork. I tried to eat as much of the Easter candy as possible. They had given us a lot. There were chocolate-covered marshmallow bunnies and Lifesavers jelly beans that were really yummy. I was craving string cheese (my mouth was sick of candy)--I can't remember if I went upstairs to get some or not, knowing that that was my last chance to legally eat Easter (and, in fact, any) candy.

2008--We first had church in the Greenbluff Ward. We were really excited about the people who attended. The Vaughans, a less-active family we were working with, were there, as was Richard Swinkels, a man who hadn't been to church for a very long time. He was wearing a leather jacket. Our investigators Heather and Matt might have been there, but I'm not sure. The Greenbluff Ward choir sang "That Easter Morn." After the Greenbluff Ward's meetings, we were in choir practice for the Northpointe Ward. We were practicing "That Easter Morn," and Elder Condie told everyone that the Greenbluff Ward had sung the song and that it sounded great. We were also pleased at the people who attended the Northpointe Ward. There were several related inactive families, the Carlsens, who all came. So did Nikki Carter, a less-active, and her three kids, whom we were teaching. They sat behind us, but Jonathan sat with us. But they left right after sacrament meeting. I think they had expected there to be some egg hunt or something--I figured that out when I got their voice mail after church. We had dinner with the Fullmers from the Greenbluff Ward. Before dinner some of the kids showed us their rooms. One girl showed us the picture she drew of Jesus's cross, including a crown of thorns. The Fullmers' teenage daughter said the blessing on the food, and referred to us as "Elders Condie and Melville." I knew that that family prayed for us by name. After dinner they had us participate in their family tradition of breaking confetti-filled eggs over each other's heads:


(Sorry that the video is sideways...)
We were almost out of gas, and since it was Easter and it was Sunday (meaning we couldn't buy gas), Elder Condie asked if we should just go home. Unfortunately, that's what we decided to do--that was a dark time of my mission.

2007--My sister had to work and my parents were still in Tennessee, so I watched Allie that day. In the morning we watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie on my sister's bed. At one point I was in the bathroom with Allie and she was scared of a spider she saw. I was figuring out what to do with it, but then she shrieked and I noticed that she was actually looking at a different spider, one that had just crawled over her toothbrush. I don't remember what I ended up doing with (or to) the two spiders. At one point I tried to tell her the true meaning of Easter. But she wouldn't have anything to do with it--talking about dying made her freak out. "I don't want her to die 'cause then she won't live with us anymore!" I decided to forgo getting her to understand. We went to church and we sat at our bench. People made comments to me about what a good uncle I was. We were shorthanded on Aaronic priesthood holders, but I didn't think it would be good for me to help out with sacrament because I didn't want to leave Allie alone. I think Brad Byington thought the same thing, because he got his brother Greg to help bless the sacrament instead of talking to me. But then I was singing in the ward choir, so I did leave Allie for that, and I felt guilty--if I could leave her to sing, I could have left her to help with sacrament. I was glad to see that the Taylors, who sat behind us, had invited her to sit with them. After the block was over, I went downstairs to get Allie. Her sunbeam teacher, Sister Willard, told me that she had said to Allie, "Let's go find your grandma," and Allie said, "I didn't bring my grandma." Since I was a loser eighteen-year-old who didn't drive on the freeway, my grandparents came and picked us up to go to their house for Easter dinner. Chancey had a girlfriend there, and he said something to Allie about "Grandmamother," the name she had previously given to my mom. Chancey's girlfriend thought "Grandmamother" was funny. Susanne met us there, and Allie told her about how she sat with Rebecca at church. At one point I told Nan about my experience telling Allie about Easter, and she told me that she should have warned me--that ever since Grandma Judy died, Allie had an aversion to talking about death.

2006--After church I watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie with Allie. Before we went to my grandparents' house, we stopped at the Taylors' house, but I'm not sure why. When we got to my grandparents' house, Allie was looking at their collection of Lladros. There was one that was a girl with a basket of bright flowers, and Allie said, "Someone got a visit from the Easter Bunny!" That night, I watched the songs from Here Comes Peter Cottontail: The Movie. After everyone else went to bed, I read my scriptures in the computer room with all the lights off except for the lamp in which I had put an orange light bulb. After I read the scriptures, I got online and did my typical time wasting on TV.com and TVLand.com, which resulted in me getting to bed late.

2005--I don't remember a lot about this year. I remember seeing a comic strip that had the Easter Bunny saying "I hate it when Easter is in March" because he was up to his ears in snow. We had Easter dinner at our house, and I went downstairs and watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail. I had the closed captioning on, and I discovered that Antoine was swearing in French. (I don't think it's considered swearing in French culture as it would be in American culture.)

2004--I think David and Ya-ping and I were late for church, and I think we were the only ones who went to our church for some reason. I was wearing my Easter Bunny tie and aqua-colored socks. That afternoon we went to my grandparents'. We had a gospel discussion. We sang "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" to start it off, and I would have preferred to sing "I Believe in Christ." Part of it was kind of an open testimony meeting, and I talked about having read in Isaiah 9 about how the Lord says he is angry but his hand is stretched out still. Sue agreed with me and really liked that scripture. She talked about reading her scriptures and talked about how she went through a time where she read every cross reference, but that sometimes it was better to just read through. I remember thinking that reading all the cross references wasn't the greatest idea (I sometimes do this, but I still think this way--many of the cross references aren't very good). My grandparents had lots of jelly beans. The white ones were peppermint, so I ate a lot of them. That night I stayed up late working on an Isaiah project for my seminary class, since I had an abominable seminary teacher. I remember capitalizing all the instances of "LORD," as they do in the Old Testament. I think I actually formatted the font size so that the L was bigger than the ORD.

2003--All I seem to remember is that I watched It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown before church, and my mom wasn't too happy about that because she thought it was taking away from the true meaning of Easter.

2002--In Sunday school, our teacher, Sterling Parker, gave us a handout that was bright orange, and there were comments about it being an appropriate color for the day. (At that point I didn't consider orange an Easter color, but that made me reconsider.) I think there were those Whopper eggs with the shells, and my classmates introduced me to licking them and using them as lipstick. (It's possible all this happened in 2001.) My cousin April was coming to our house, and my mom told me not to bring my Easter candy out, but I ended up doing so anyway. That night I watched Here Comes Peter Cottontail, and my dad came downstairs at the part when Peter was talking to the witch on Halloween.

2001--Easter dinner was chez nous (for those of you who don't speak French, that means it was at our house). I remember turning on my Easter lights, including my Easter swag lights. I think I jumped on the trampoline with my cousins. They had brought a croquet set they got for Easter, which we played in the front yard.

2000--Easter dinner was at our house this year, as well. It was supposed to be at 5:00. My mom told me and David she wanted to have a discussion on the true meaning of Easter before everyone came. But before it was even 4:00, the Thompsons all pulled up in their van. I said, "What are they doing here!?" I think I remember wondering why Sue was driving instead of Wayne, because my dad was always the one to drive in my family. Because they arrived early, we didn't get to have our Easter discussion.

1999--It was conference weekend, and we were in Fillmore. My uncle (or maybe my grandma) had thrown jelly beans all over the living room for my small cousins. They told me there were some hidden especially for me. They gave me a hint--it had to do with a piano. I kept looking around the piano. There was a shoe lying haphazardly on the floor near the piano, and there was a jelly bean behind it. I asked if it was the one behind the shoe, and my grandma said, "I'm not telling." Eventually I looked up and looked at the painting on the wall of a woman playing a piano. The jelly beans were stuck in the decorative holes on the frame. I pulled them out and ate them. Then we went to my other grandparents' house. I remember talking with Jesse about this commercial:

Jesse really liked it. I don't remember what I thought of it.

1998--I remember looking at all the Easter-themed comic strips in the paper. I remember Ask Shagg had a chick-themed strip (chick meaning a baby chicken). I asked my mom what comic strips she read, and she said she read a lot of them but not all of them. That afternoon we made an Easter cake like my Grandma Judy used to make. We used a mix for a strawberry cake, so it was pink. We made coconut flakes green for grass, and we cut marshmallows to make them look like bunnies. My mom told me my grandma would use a marker to put faces on the marshmallows, but I didn't like the idea of eating marker, so I think we tried to use food coloring and toothpicks. The Thompsons came, and I remember jumping on the trampoline. Jesse was talking about that day's Foxtrot strip: The mom reprimanded Peter and Jason for eating their candy before church, and told them that Paige had left all of her candy untouched, including her entire hollow chocolate bunny. Jason said, "Hollow? These bunnies are solid," and the mom yelled, "Paige! Get down here!" That night I went home with the Thompsons for a sleepover. I even took all my plush bunnies. We stayed up too late and I was very tired the next day.

1997--I don't remember anything about this year :(

1996--My primary teacher, Caroline Weight, told us she had something to give us, but that she didn't have it with her. I told her I would go up to her house and get it. And I did--thus starting a weekly tradition of going to her house for candy. What she gave me was a yellow plastic bunny with candy inside. Then my grandma picked us up to take us to her house. I'm not sure why. I always thought it was cool to ride in this car because it had a telephone. (My, how times have changed...) There was a big crack in the windshield, and my mom--or maybe my brother, or both--asked what happened.

1995--I don't remember anything about this year, either :(

1994--I remember a lot of girls at church had fancy dresses and hats for Easter. One girl, Alicia Steagall, was sitting on the stand and she had a hat. I remember seeing the shadow of her hat and thinking, "Ooh, she has home darkness." (I should probably describe what home darkness is, although it has nothing to do with Easter. I was once at my grandparents' house and many of the lights were turned off. For some reason the darkness really excited me and made me feel as if I was at home. After that, I used the term "home darkness" to refer to darkness that wasn't completely dark. I loved home darkness--hence thinking Alicia Steagall was lucky. I suppose home darkness was the first term I coined--long before lemits.)

Well, folks, this is it. I have now finished writing memory posts for all major holidays. What should I do next?

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
Green Days

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The most overhyped pointless day of the year.

This week was busy again. I had to do a geology writing assignment (which wasn't too hard or long, it was just getting it done) and study for a semantics test (which I think I did pretty well on, thanks to the Google doc I filled out almost entirely by myself). One of the few good things about lemits is the weather. That's actually a hard thing to say, because lemits is characterized by unpredictable weather. Right now it's snowing, which I like. But this week it was sunny and warm, which, surprisingly, made me happy too. Unfortunately, I had to spend so much time inside studying. I was able to run once this week. That was good because my goal was to run 55 minutes and I ran 57. I only have to run three more minutes to get to my goal of an hour. But I will also be busy this week (due to my student journal wrapping up). I have already planned out the hours for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I won't be able to run until Thursday, unless I run late on Wednesday night (which I used to do all the time).

Wednesday was Pi Day. It surprises me how popular this is. BYU did a big event; I didn't participate because I was busy and because I would have felt guilty since I'm not even in any math classes. But I was surprised by all the comments on Facebook by non-BYU people about Pi Day. It's really a silly day. I know pi itself is very important, but the day is just a day that happens to be 3/14, so it might just as well be 22/7 day. (I remember once seeing the stupid comic strip B.C. have a strip in which there was a pumpkin that said "22/7=π." Which is veritably false. 22/7=3.14, but 3.14 is NOT pi. I sure hope the cartoonist got a lot of hate mail for that. But what can you expect from someone who thinks dinosaurs and humans coexisted?) And we eat pie. I wonder if they eat pie in non-English speaking countries--on the one hand, pies are round, but on the other hand, there wouldn't be the same homophony in other languages. I don't dislike Pi Day. I just find it funny it's so popular.

Thursday was the Ides of March. Which people only care about because of Julius Caesar. Well, I should say that's the only reason they know about it. Nobody cares.

Friday night I went home and went to five stores to find green pants and green shoes for the pointless day we had Saturday, St. Patrick's Day. I was unsuccessful at finding shoes, but I did find green pants. I don't know how much I'll wear them (they're a little big, and green), but they were on clearance.

St. Patrick's Day is really a pointless holiday. It's a day honoring Ireland's patron saint, which isn't bad, but it's really got nothing to do with that now. Suddenly anything Irish becomes relevant. And beer becomes glorified. And green becomes popular. None of this is bad (well, except for the beer part), but it leaves me wondering--why don't we have days that glorify blue or England? Well, I'm sure we do, but they aren't as big as St. Patrick's Day.

You may wonder why I even bothered buying green pants and celebrating the day if I'm so cynical about it. I wonder the same thing. I'm especially confused at why I wanted to go to the Salt Lake City parade yesterday, since I'm also cynical about parades.

But I talked my parents into going. I wore green glasses, a green shirt, green pants, green socks, and shoes with green on them (since I couldn't find all-green shoes). The last time I went to the St. Patrick's Day parade was in 1996, when I still falsely believed that all holidays were created equal. It was moderately enjoyable for a time, but it was way too long for such a meaningless holiday.

Like all parades, there were some weird things. There were lots of kilts. Which are weird in the first place, but they're traditional Scottish clothing, not Irish. There were, of course, lots of bagpipes, which are annoying instruments. And lots of dogs. I don't mind the dogs in the parade, but I find it weird when people take their dogs everywhere. Though I adore dogs individually, I think that as a group they're rather stupid.

Like all parades, there were firetrucks that blared their sirens, and muscle cars and motorcycles that revved their engines. Like there isn't already enough noise! I hope those people go deaf. OK, maybe not. But they should pipe down.

There were painted dogs and painted horses.
The radio station X96 had a theme entirely about beer. Now, if people want to drink responsibly, whatever--although I think the term "drink responsibly" is an oxymoron. But there were children among the group! There was even one young person dressed as a beer bottle! One of the children was a boy my mom recognized from her school--a boy who has behavior problems. That explains a lot of things! I suppose that could be considered a post hoc argument (I was tested about logical fallacies this week), but nevertheless I know about alcoholic families, having seen them firsthand. I hope all these drunkards get in crashes and kill each other. OK, maybe not. But they should keep the kids away from the alc-y.

There was a group called "Mutts Against Mitt" that was devoted to making fun of Mitt Romney. I found this to be in rather poor taste. Not because they disagree with Mitt, but because they were attacking someone in a parade! I don't follow politics; I would have been equally enraged if they were against Obama or anyone else. Campaigning in a parade is one thing--but campaigning against someone? Those people should be dipped in boiling oil. OK, maybe not. But they should be banned from parades.

There were lots of Catholic churches and schools. I'm glad of this, even though I'm not Catholic. But I feel bad for them. We Mormons have our Pioneer Day parade. These Catholics have to share with souses and other idiots.

Now we have a holiday coming up that actually means something: Easter!

And I'm excited that in six months from now the Halloween season will be starting. Not that that holiday is any less pointless than St. Patrick's Day. But it sure is a lot more fun.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

One Weird Dude

I am a very strange person.

I have memories of being eleven years old, rolling around the yard at my cousins' house, putting a shoe on my head, and singing, "I'm weird, I'm weird, and I'm proud to be weird." I don't think I'm that weird anymore.

But I'm still very weird. And if you don't believe that already, you will.

First of all, you can just tell by looking at me that I'm weird. Although I can't be that weird looking, since last Sunday I was watching the CES broadcast with some members of my ward and they pointed out to me that one of the members of the BYU-Idaho choir looked just like me:
But we actually don't know how much this guy looks like me. He looks like me when he's singing in a choir, but we don't know how he dresses or how he walks or what his voice sounds like. And it's doubtful he's as weird as I am.

I love holidays. I suppose that's not that weird. But what I do with them is. They influence the way I decorate, the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, the shows I watch, and the colors I put on my blog.

But what is perhaps weirdest is the way they influence what I eat. When it comes to candies and desserts, I only eat sweet things when they are in season. So right now, with it being almost St. Patrick's Day, I can eat the shamrock taffies I bought and the gold-wrapped Werther's candies I have. Yesterday I bought a donut with shamrock sprinkles. I couldn't buy any without sprinkles. Last night there was a stake mingle with brownies. I gorged myself on the mint brownies with the green streak, but I didn't touch the plain brownies. Last fall I was telling my coworkers about these eating habits, and they seemed quite intrigued by it. They asked if I could eat any candy in April. I told them that I could eat Easter candy until Easter was over. They asked if I could eat anything in May. I told them that I couldn't for most of May, but that the Friday before Memorial Day, I start the Fourth of July season, so I could have patriotic desserts. This seemed especially funny to them.

I have made allusions on my blog to music I listen to that could be considered normal. But that is a bit misleading. The two musicians who contribute the most to my shuffle playlist are Cherie Call and Vince Guaraldi. Cherie Call is a local LDS artist. Her most famous songs are hardly famous, but they are "It Passes All My Understanding," "Where Faith Lives," and "The Ocean in Me." I have all of her albums, and love all but her first one. Vince Guaraldi is the mastermind jazz pianist behind the Peanuts TV specials.

At twenty-three years old, I still watch the Peanuts TV specials and I even wear Snoopy on t-shirts, pajamas, and ties.

Whenever someone talks about a movie, chances are I haven't seen it. For all intents and purposes, I've never seen the Star Wars movies. (I saw a few as a kid, but I don't remember anything about them.) I saw four movies in theaters last year: the last Harry Potter movie, Puss in Boots, Hugo, and Arthur Christmas. The last two are the only ones I'll likely watch again.

I rarely watch TV anymore. When I was in high school I loved to watch TV. Now I have a guideline that I generally don't watch TV unless I am doing something more productive while I am watching it. My choice in shows is weird. Occasionally I dabble in news or Animal Planet, but most of the shows I watch haven't had a new episode for more than forty years. Part of my fondness for old TV shows is that they're the only ones clean enough to fit my standards, but that's not the only reason. Before I raised my standards eight years ago, I liked Gilligan's Island even more than I liked The Simpsons. I love 1960s sitcoms. Most shows from the 70s and later aren't clean enough, and most of the 50s shows I've seen are somewhat boring (with the exception of I Love Lucy). I'm currently slowly working through DVD sets for three shows, Green Acres, Bewitched, and The Addams Family.

One relic I have maintained from my mission is that I plan my days in a planner the night before.

I dislike physical contact. Especially hugs. When someone tries to hug me, I panic.

I don't like sunlight. It makes me uncomfortable, nervous, and sometimes even depressed. I have preferred overcast and rainy days for as long as I can remember.

I am painfully socially awkward. Everyone who knows me knows that I am no good at starting or carrying on conversations. I tend to stutter a lot.

Whenever someone asks me what my hobbies are, I tell them I don't have any. When they ask me what I do for fun, I tell them I don't have fun. In high school I said my hobby was watching TV, but I don't do that anymore. Mostly I just do homework. When I have free time I waste it online, but it's not a hobby. I like reading when I'm reading, but I have to force myself to read. I go running, but I don't like it.

When I run, I think about jelly beans and socks. (In that sentence, jelly is modifying beans but not socks.) Yesterday when I went running I thought about Thanksgiving and Christmas jelly beans. (Thanksgiving is modifying jelly beans in that sentence.) I think about these things to keep my mind off of the fact that I hate running.

I have weird dreams. I've had a weird dream pretty much every night for the last two months. Last night I dreamed I was with a team of different people: my cousins Joey and Quin, my editing professor, a large coworker from my BYU job last year, a person whose first name was Pilgrim (who does not exist in the real world), a mission companion, and some others. We were by a forest while there was lightning, and someone was explaining how lightning travels among trees. We took a co-ed shower. I told Joey that I was surprised they did that at BYU, but that in real life I didn't think they did that. (I don't know if the shower was a dream within a dream or if I knew I was dreaming.) Then we were playing a video game in which we had to move headless skeletons so that their skulls would fall on them. (That's actually not a bad idea for a game, if you ask me.) Another part of the game involved shaking the console in order to knock out a scorpion so that an ogre could eat it live (knocked out, but alive).

I am a nerd; of that there is no question. But I'm not a very good one. I'm not into fantasy dragons or sci-fi spaceships. I'm not good with computers. I don't really read much, as mentioned above. I hate chess. And the most I get into video games is by occasionally playing Mario or Kirby on the ol' Super Nintendo.

The fact that I write this blog is weird. Other people blog about their vacations or the funny things their kids do. My posts go like this: "I had to study a lot for a geology test this week. I didn't do as well as I would have liked. On the first test I got 92% but on this one I got 87%, even though the professor said people usually do better on the second test than on the first. I would have studied more, but I couldn't. I had to get some editing done for my student journal, and then I had a big project for my editing class. I finished the project just before 1:00 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning. Now I have to study for a semantics test on Wednesday." (All of those statements happen to be true this week.)

I have zero interest in sports. If it involves a ball, I can't do it. I inherit this from my family. But what I don't inherit from my family is that I don't like even watching sports. Last year I got paid to watch volleyball. It was moderately entertaining, but definitely not what I'd normally choose to do. I know nothing about sports; I can't tell a touchdown from a layup.

I hate dancing. I refuse to dance.

And part of this is because I think certain things about my body, things that would make me a superhero, except that they are neither super nor heroic. I think that the members of my body--my legs, my knees, my neck, my arms, etc.--are somehow different from everyone else's. Or else I think I'm invisible. Sometimes I worry when I cross the street. Or I think that if people can tell that I'm there, they can't see what I look like. I was once at institute and I raised my hand. The teacher, Sheri Dew, called on me by saying, "The brother in the back." I thought, How does she know I'm a brother? But my hair most definitely is invisible.

I suppose all of this explains why I don't make friends. Once on my mission my zone leader asked me something about what I did with my friends. I told him I didn't have any friends. He didn't believe me. "Everyone has friends," he said. So I asked for his definition of a friend. He gave it to me, and I could very honestly tell him that by his definition I didn't have any friends. In high school I thought it was because something was wrong with me. Now I realize it's just because I don't make friends. I'm no good at forming relationships. I may make casual friends for a time, but once they're out of my life, they're out of my life.

There are lots of things from my past that are weird. Like how I sucked my thumb until I was six. Or how when I was eleven I was obsessed with chess even though I never won a single game. Or how in high school I wanted to be a vampire. But these are all in my past, so they don't count.

I'm sure there are lots of other things even today that make me weird. What are they?

Sunday, March 4, 2012

March Midterm Madness

The last day of winter semester classes is in one month and one week from today. The semester started two months ago today. I'm glad we're more than halfway through the term. I have fond memories of the other two winter semester finals weeks I've experienced. Finals aren't too fun (unless you get 100%), but it's nice knowing there's no more homework, and you don't have to get up early to go to class, and all that jazz.

But the problem is that to get to that point, you have to wade through midterms. I was supposed to be done with all that by now--but alas, 'twas not to be.

A week or so ago, I had my Doctrine and Covenants test. I only missed one of the twenty-five questions, so I was pleased with that.

I had to practice and submit pieces for my piano class. It always amazes me how I can start with a piece that sounds so clunky but I can practice it to the point that it sounds decent. I recorded my pieces this week. They're not great, but hopefully they're good enough. If I had had more time, I would have practiced more.

I was supposed to have a geology test this week, but our professor moved it back to this week. I would have preferred to have it over with by now, but oh well. After doing so well on the last geology test, I'm nervous about living up to my own high expectations. I don't know if I'll be able to do as much studying this time around.

I may also have a semantics test this week. It was supposed to be a while ago, but our professor, Dallin D. Oaks, loves teaching and he gets on tangents, so we're behind. Which means it will likely fall in the same week as my geology test.

And these two tests also fall within the same week in which I have a big project for my editing class. We have to create a style guide, which is due on Friday. As of yesterday, I had only barely started it. So last night I spent four or five hours working on it. It requires thirty paragraphs. I have twenty-nine, so I only need one more, but I still have to find illustrative examples for all of them. I'm also not sure if all of the paragraphs count. I'm sure glad I spent so much time on it yesterday. Yesterday I also took a test for that class. I had originally planned on taking it later, but I realized that with everything else I have, I probably wouldn't have done much extra studying anyway, so I decided to just get it out of the way.

For my student journal, we are starting the proofreading process. This will be a good opportunity for me to do some extra work and get ahead on my mandatory hours for credit. But I don't know if I'll be able to, since I have two tests and a project to juggle.

But I think I'm probably in better shape than I was last year. On Saturday, March 12, last year, I had a day in which I had a million things come up all in one day. I worked many hours getting soaked while cleaning tennis courts. I had an appointment with a TA to get help for my internet publishing class (that whole class was a headache). My parents came down to see me because my dad was working in Chicago and he only got to come home every other week. I felt bad because they had to wait so long for me while I was working. And it was stake conference.

But this year won't be that crazy. We have stake conference, but my dad has a regular job, I'm not working, and my classes are such that I don't have to meet with TAs--I understand the material.

Last week I got a new roommate named Cameron. I now have two roommates named Cameron. New Cameron got off his mission February 1, and started second-block classes this week. Last Sunday we went with the ward to sing at a nursing home (I drove four other people--I'm usually self-conscious about driving other people, but it was all right). That night I corrupted Cameron with the things he'd missed, such as Rebecca Black's "Friday," Tonje L--whatever's "I Don't Wanna Be A Crappy Housewife," and Divine Comedy's "Provo Utah Girls." I also showed him Seen @ BYU while listening to my 2011 music--Christina Perri, Ladies Gaga and Antebellum, Owl City, and even Michael Buble's Christmas album (putting in the accent on the "e" is too much trouble on my laptop). The only one he was familiar with was the Grammy-winning Own the Night album (Lady A). I also played the Black Eyed Peas' "The Time (Dirty Bit)" (2010) and Katy Perry's "Part of Me" (currently my only 2012 song).

Wednesday was Leap Day. It got me thinking. I'm a very time-oriented person. I like thinking about what I did at a particular time of year at some point in the past (hence my recollection of March 12, and all of my memory posts). My life practically revolves around holidays and the arbitrary seasons I assign to them. But Leap Day made me realize how man-made time is, that we can just add an extra day every four years, and that February 29 could just as easily have been March 1. If we had no calendars, the world would still go on with seasons and snowstorms and day lengths and heat and cold.

But coming back to our world, namely one in which we use calendars, March started this week, which I consider to be the start of spring. (I think most meteorologists, although not astronomers, would agree with me.) But the first three days of March were colder than most of February. However, today and the rest of the week is looking to be a little warmer and much more March-like.

Which means it's going to get very lemitsy very quickly.