Various and sundry things

I have noticed that my history professor says "various and sundry" a lot. In my editing class we learned to edit out things like that because they are redundant. That is one rule that I don't like and one that I ignore--but I can see how it could be really annoying. I feel like he only says it to sound pedantic (I realize the irony of using the word pedantic). Terms like various and sundry were coined a long time ago for people to show off their knowledge because various is a Latinate word and sundry is a Germanic word. But they mean the same thing. Maybe I object to my professor's use of it because of my general distrust of historians.

At least he's better than my first AP U.S. History teacher in high school, who said "again" all the time. It was so bad that I started counting how many times he said it. His technical numbers-only record was 92 times in a 90-hour period. But there was a time when class was only an hour and he said it 90 times!

On Monday of this week, I did a fair bit of driving around. First I drove to Shopko because I wanted to buy a new CD; I bought Adele's 21 album. (That makes it so that I own five songs that are presently on the Billboard 100: Katy Perry's "Part of Me," Adele's "Rumour Has It" and "Set Fire to the Rain," Lady Antebellum's "Dancing Away with My Heart," and Neon Trees' "Everybody Talks.") Then I bought some new shirts from Kohl's. I came home, and then I drove my roommates to our ward FHE. We were nearly an hour late because we waited for my roommate Bryton, but it was good we did because we would have gotten lost, since we had a wrong address. My roommate Cameron let it slip that I don't like physical contact, so one girl, Suzy, purposely starting touching me.Then on our way back, Bryton suggested we could go see The Lorax at the dollar theater (it was more than a dollar because it was 3D; we missed the 2D one). So we went home and recruited some people and went. Suzy rode in my car and sat behind me; she rubbed my earlobes while I was driving and was quite amused when I pointed out that my earlobes don't match.There were six of us and we had the theater all to ourselves (it started after 10:00). It was a mediocre movie. I feel like in the early 2000s there were some pretty terrible CGI movies that tried too hard, but in recent years it's gotten better. The Lorax was one that I thought tried too hard. There was an unintentionally funny part in which Taylor Swift's character said dramatically, "It's called photosynthesis!" It was laughable. I also found it ironic that the movie was full of songs but Taylor Swift didn't do any singing. (I resent famous people being cast in movies simply because they're famous.)

On Friday night I started my memory blog. So if you don't like my memory posts, you won't have to be bothered by them over here again.

This week I learned that there was an Astrofest on campus where they would be giving out glasses to look at the eclipse. I thought that since I live a five-minute walk away from the Eyring Science Center, h**k yes I was going to go get some glasses! So I picked some up before working on a group project for four hours for my Print Publishing class. 

Then today I went home teaching. I have a very enthusiastic and talkative companion (since there are only three people in my apartment, he's from a different one), and we ended up doing our home teaching over the course of four hours. After that got over, I made dinner and went outside with my glasses to look at the eclipse. Bryton came with me. There was another person in my ward who had glasses and he came out too. Various and sundry people walked by and we invited them to look with us. Some strangers stopped and asked where we got glasses, so we shared our glasses with them. I got to explain solar eclipses to some people. At one point I think I accidentally swallowed a bug. A lot of snarky people drove by yelling "Eclipse!" and even "The sky is falling!" I must say, the eclipse was pretty d**g awesome. I managed to get a half-decent photo of the eclipse, using just my point-and-shoot camera and my solar glasses:

Unfortunately, the malevolent clouds spoiled a lot of the fun. Those bullies covered up the sun at the climax of the eclipse! And they ended it early. But at least they let us look at it for a good portion of the time. After the sun and the moon went behind the clouds (usually I love clouds, as long as they're being considerate), we were looking at the rosebushes outside my apartment. A girl and I each ate a petal from a rose. The petal wasn't too bad. It was kind of like an apple peel but bitterer. But I don't need to eat another one for a while.

I will certainly have to go to north Idaho in December 2017 to see the total solar eclipse. There are not many better excuses to visit a mission!