Two boring stories

This week I happened to meet up with people in the most random places.

There is this girl named Mariah who is a geology major. Back in 2010, when I was taking my Dinosaurs! class, I went with my professor out to Dinosaur National Monument to assist with his fossil excavation. Mariah was working there that summer, and I met her there.

Then during winter semester earlier this year, I sat next to her in my piano class. I knew she seemed familiar, but it took a while for it to click how I knew her. I'm really surprised it did click, because although I have a good memory, I have a really hard time remembering faces. (There's a girl in my ward whom I met probably ten times in two or three months because I never remembered her face.)

Then this semester I found out she's kind of a big shot in the geology department. One day in class, our professor showed pictures from a geology trip and several students in the class recognized Mariah in the picture. Except that it wasn't Mariah, it was just another student who wore a similar hat. And then the geology computer lab had a sign on the door having people guess where she was going to be called on her mission.

I was surprised that people knew her because of geology, but I knew her through other means. The first time I met her it was because of geology, but it was before I took it seriously. And then my piano class of course had nothing to do with geology.

This week I was in the geology computer lab, starting my final project. I really don't like having to do this project. I've really liked Geomorphology, except for this project. I have to look at a picture of a volcano, Mt. Etna, and analyze it and measure things and provide images and write a paper about it. I can analyze images (I correctly guessed that it started out as a silicic volcano but has changed to be basaltic) and I can write papers, but I don't know how to do this project. Anyway, Mariah came in to the lab that day and said hi to all the geology people. But I didn't say hi because I didn't think she'd remember me, and because I'm kind of an outsider in geology. The major is so small that everyone knows each other, especially since they've gone to labs and field trips with each other. (I actually wrote a short linguistics paper about the pragmatics of the geology department.)

On Thursday I had to go to the English Learning Center to administer a test/experiment to an ESL student (I conducted an experiment about transition words--I think too many ESL students are taught to use them without quite understanding how to use them). It's fairly far away from the useful buildings on campus (and by useful, I mean the buildings most people use), but I had to walk, because I didn't know if I would be able to park there, and because I don't dare own a bike in Provo. (I wish bicycle thieves would get run over by cars, preferably with the wheel going over their head.) After I left the building, I happened to see this Mariah coming from the Museum of Paleontology. We were both heading the same direction, so I talked to her about geology classes. I hope she wasn't creeped out that I knew her name when she didn't know me; she didn't seem creeped out, and I did, of course, explain how I knew her.

Then last night I went into the geology computer lab. She was the only one in there at the time, although many more jolly geology people came later. I worked for three hours on my project. I didn't do the project itself, but I did lots of research (and wrote about it) so that I filled up an entire page of references. Our project has to be five single-spaced pages, but other things count for the five pages, so having a page full of references means one less page to write! Maybe that's a lazy way to go about it. But I did have to work hard to get that page full of references.

Since my window for eating Christmas desserts is so narrow, I try to take advantage of it while it lasts, and I learned that Arby's has these peppermint shakes, so when I was out doing my errands yesterday, I decided to go there for lunch. When I paid, I remembered why I don't go there. I can get cheaper food and better food and healthier(ish) food and closer food by going to Subway or J-Dawgs. But Subway and J-Dawgs don't have peppermint shakes, so there I was at Arby's, the only time I've ever been to that one, when my former roommate Jeff Clegg walked in! We were flatmates my first year here. He has now graduated and is married, but his wife still goes to school, so he still lives in Provo and works in Salt Lake. He happened to be getting his car fixed right then, and it just so happened that Arby's was one of the closest places to walk while his car was getting fixed. He said he was surprised that I ate there, but I told him that it was the first time I'd ever been there, and he said he doesn't eat there often either. It sure was surprising we both happened to be there at the same time.

It sure took me a long time to tell two uninteresting stories...