A crazy week

I'd say this week was the craziest week of the semester so far. I was really jumping around like a house on fire, trying to get everything done. There were lots of things demanding my attention--and it looks like this coming week is also going to be quite busy, although hopefully it will be less busy.

Monday was a pretty good start to the week. I went on a miniature shopping spree and ended up buying a strange little movie called Mad Monster Party?:



My movie and TV tastes are pretty juvenile, so this is the kind of thing I like. I'm trying to decide whether or not to classify it as a Halloween movie. On the one hand, it was originally released in March of 1967, it makes no references to Halloween, and in the '60s they really liked their monsters, giving us things like The Munsters and "The Monster Mash." On the other hand, it definitely has a Halloweeny theme going on, and early in the movie there's a calendar that says October 9, indicating that the story would take place at Halloween time (I don't think they tell us how long the story lasts, just approximately when it starts). Today it's definitely marketed as a Halloween movie, complete with an orange and black DVD case. It was made by Rankin/Bass, and they really loved their holidays, giving us things like Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July and Rudolph's Shiny New Year. The background music for the Halloween sequence in Here Comes Peter Cottontail is taken directly from Mad Monster Party?, as are the skull chairs and perhaps some other props. And some of the release information makes me wonder if it was intended for Halloween but got pushed away. So I don't know how to count it. If I don't count it as a Halloween movie, I don't know if I'll ever watch it again, but if I do count it, then I'll watch it every year. I can't believe I am so immature that I just wrote an entire paragraph about an obscure kid movie (although I find it a bit surprising it's a kid movie--it's more violent than The Nightmare Before Christmas).

Anyway, having just bought the movie, I wanted to watch it on Monday night. So I took my computer out to the living room so that I could do homework while watching it. I looked at the upcoming assignments, and I discovered that on Wednesday I had an assignment due that involved surveying ten people about their speech. I hadn't even started!

So Tuesday was spent scrambling to find ten people to survey. It was made even harder because I had a stake meeting for all the ward clerks that I had to go to. That cut into my surveying time. But I did eventually get ten people--twelve, actually. (To all of you who participated, I thank you.) I finished my homework at 12:30 or 1:00 a.m., which is pretty late for me.

But that wasn't all this week. I had to conduct an experiment for a different class. I had to find twelve people to participate in the experiment. On Wednesday, the other ward clerk and I went around and tried to get the information of people whose records aren't in the ward. In the process, I invited as many people as I could to participate. (We were supposed to find a fairly random sample, which meant we couldn't simply invite people who were convenient to find or simply ask for volunteers.) I promised cookies for my participants, so Thursday I made some mediocre pumpkin-shaped, orange-flavored cookies. I was scrambling to get them done when my participants started arriving. To get my twelve people, I had to go knocking on random doors to find last-minute volunteers. It reminded me why I hated tracting so much on my mission. These are people who are, like me, young single college students, and it was uncomfortable asking them to do something for me. My social awkwardness was especially obvious. But I got a few people who were willing to participate. (Again, I thank all people who helped me out, although I don't think any of them read this blog.) I had a living room full of people waiting to start the experiment, so eventually I decided ten was good enough and I proceeded with the experiment. (For my survey I needed ten but got twelve; for my experiment I needed twelve but got ten.) With some projects, when I'm done I feel relieved. With this one, I felt stressed even after it was done because I felt bad for the people I had inconvenienced and I was embarrassed by my mediocre cookies and messy kitchen. Oh well. I probably worry too much.

Yesterday I had a field trip for my editing class. We went to the Crandall Printing Museum, which I had often heard about but never been to. It sounds boring, but it's really quite interesting. They have a working replica of Gutenberg's press. It amazes me that not only did Gutenberg invent his press, but he also had to invent ink, ink balls, and other things to make his press work. The museum talked some about Benjamin Franklin and then about the printing of the Book of Mormon. The little museum struggles financially, so I think you should visit them. But I would recommend them even if they weren't struggling.

This morning was the Brigham City Temple dedication; we all went up to watch it broadcast in the Marriott Center. I was amused by some speakers' errors. The first speaker quoted Proverbs 22:6, but he said he was quoting Psalms. Then Elder Perry said his ancestors were buried in the Brigham City Temple. I don't know if he meant near instead of in or if he meant Cemetery instead of Temple. No wonder people think we Mormons are wacky...