It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown

My vacation has come to an end.

My second week of vacation was pretty fun. Normally I plan out my days the night before, but I didn't plan a single day while I was on vacation. Which left plenty of time for leisure and semi-productive things.

Since she got me plane tickets so that I didn't have to take the train home from California, my mom asked me to help her at her school. So on Tuesday and Thursday, I classified and organized books. It was kind of weird being in an elementary school at the start of a school year--it made it seem like I could have been going to grade school again. Colleges certainly don't have as many colors as elementary schools.

One of the things I wanted to do on vacation was finish Moby Dick. I did it! I started it two years ago when I moved home for fall. It took me so long for several reasons: 1) It is a very long book, 2) I don't read very often, and 3) it's not a book that calls my name. Some people might just read an abridged version. That's all right, but I don't think Moby Dick is so much about the story. It's a full treatise on whales. There's a chapter about a whale's tail, a chapter about a whale's eye, a chapter about a whale's mouth--seriously. I wish this Melville could be as smart as that Melville. Ol' Herman was obviously very intelligent, with all he knew about whales, and all the big words he knew, and the book is packed with biblical and historical allusions. I opted not to start or bring another book because I know at this point I'll only do sporadic reading.

I also spent some time cleaning up my room. It's not clean, but it's cleaner. I haven't really cleaned much in it since I lived at home last fall, and even then I didn't do enough.

One of my goals was to finish my Rudolph blanket. Alas, I didn't finish it; I only got to work on it one night (while watching the Frozen Planet documentary series, which is excellent). But I was able to finish a St. Patrick's Day rug I've been working on for twelve years. One day in fifth grade we had a pioneer day and they showed us pioneer things, such as making candles. One thing they showed us was corking, making rope-like things to make rugs, and suddenly corking became a fifth-grade fad. I hopped in on the bandwagon and made Christmas and Valentine's Day rugs. Then I started a green, white, and orange one, but the fad died and I lost interest and it took me ten years to finish it. They're not very good rugs, and this one is the worst yet. But what else will I do with a long chain of Irish-colored yarn?

I was able to buy a new seat for my bicycle. It cost $40 for the post and $20 for the seat. It was a used seat with some scratches but the store guy said it's usually worth around $90, so I got a good deal. I'm just sad it's black instead of white like the original one. I hate thieves. I wish we could just throw thieves off of cliffs and forget about them forever. I didn't bring my bike back down; I'm going to see what the new semester is like to see if I'll have time to do biking. Provo is a very dangerous place for bikes (just read any Police Beat and you'll see what I mean), so it's not worth having a bike down here if I won't use it. (I would have used my bike more this summer if the seat hadn't been stolen! If I find the thief, he should have to pay not only for the seat but also compensation for my getting fat--I couldn't run this summer, so biking was going to be the replacement. I gained ten pounds!)

I was able to run 43 minutes this week, the longest I've run since the night I fainted. I feel like I'm back in the running game, which makes me quite pleased. It's just in time, too, since I start a jogging class this week.

Yesterday (Saturday) I went to Lagoon with my parents, since it was my dad's work's day there. I rode Rattlesnake Rapids, the Log Flume, the Sky Ride, and the Skyscraper with my parents, but I had to ride a lot of rides by myself: the white Roller Coaster, the Wild Mouse, the Spider, Wicked, Colossus, Tidal Wave, Turn of the Century, and the new Air Race. That was all we had time for. Lagoon really is inferior to Disneyland, even though it's almost as much money.

I'm back in Provo, and today I was given a new calling. I am an assistant ward clerk, which means I have my work cut out for me, getting the records of all the new people in the ward. I suppose this will be a good thing for me, since I'm so introverted.

Classes start tomorrow. I'm taking 15.5 credit hours, the most I've ever taken. I'm taking Empirical Methods in English Linguistics, Varieties of English, Genre and Substantive Editing, Environmental Biology, Jogging, and Geomorphology. I'm probably most excited about geomorphology, even if it's going to make me miss four classes on November 2. (I've never missed a college class before.)

It's hard for me to believe that we're starting to get into my favorite time of year. My second-favorite month starts on Saturday. In three weeks, I'll start getting ready for Halloween. And when it's finals week, it will be Christmastime. Christmastime! It's crazy. Leaves are already falling from their trees. This will be an entirely unique fall for me. But as I was walking home from church at 6:30 (I had to stay late because of my calling) and it was raining, it got me thinking. I'm excited for cooler weather. I'm ready for longer nights. I'm looking forward to chilly rains and snow. (But not ice.) Wow. It's really here.

(Incidentally, I accidentally published this on my other blog, so I had to copy and paste and delete it from there!)

You inky!

As I read blogs, I have found that vacation posts tend to be a little more boring. People write them because vacations themselves are interesting, but the posts are not usually. I'm sorry to tell you that this is a vacation post. But I hope it won't be too boring, because it wasn't a very touristy vacation. And because I don't post pictures of food.

If you read my last post, you know that I was in the Bay Area of California, visiting my brother David and his wife Ya-ping. But really I was there to visit my nephews, Preston Xiang-an, Franklin Ze-an, and Nathaniel Qi-en. I actually don't know how to spell Nathaniel's Chinese name (it's pronounced chee un), and no one calls him Nathaniel. It's such a cumbersome name that we all just call him Baby.

My last post talked about going to the Golden Gate Bridge and Muir Woods. The only other touristy thing we did was on Sunday (yes, we were apostates) we went to a beach. It was a chilly beach, but still enjoyable. I'm ashamed to admit that I took my shirt off to go swimming for the first time since June 9, 2001. We did also explore a Chinatown or two, since Ya-ping is from Taiwan.

The weather felt more like September or October, which is good because I hate August. But overall I was unimpressed with the state. Everyone always complains about Utah drivers, but I don't think they're any worse than California drivers. And California roads are ridiculous. Lanes end and merge all over the place and roads don't make sense and it's all very confusing--which is not helpful when there is such a continual stream of traffic. Also, Preston's school gave the parents a list of things they have to buy for school. When I was in elementary school, the school gave us our crayons and our pencils and our glue. Not so in California. I thought public education was supposed to be free.

Another thing I was not impressed with was Ikea. I have heard everyone rave about the store, but I'd never been until this trip. Frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about. I found it to be a terrible store, so terrible that I want it to go out of business. I don't know what things are like in Sweden, but in America we like our stores to make sense. My opinion of it went down even further when an expensive couch that had been purchased there just a month and a half ago broke, and Ikea would only give store credit that couldn't be used on food.

One day we were just sitting in the living room when the house started shaking. A large truck had driven past and apparently caught the overhead telephone line and ripped it from the house. Not only did it rip the phone line, it ripped the rain gutter half off:

How does that happen!? Unfortunately, we weren't able to catch the truck.

Mostly we just stayed home with the boys. Baby seemed to be most open to me. Isn't he cute?

His two-year-old speech is adorable. In June, something happened so that the boys started calling my cousin Peter (who's now, oddly enough, living with them) Stinky Pete. I'm not sure why--a Toy Story 2 reference perhaps? Baby has held on to that more than anyone, and he has also extended it to more people. If you look at him for long enough, he will proclaim, "You inky!" He leaves off a lot of consonants, and the cluster st of stinky is no exception. He says it to Peter, to me, and sometimes to others. Sometimes he even says, "I inky!" He likes to ride his bike. But he mostly rides it only if he's on the pavement in the back. Otherwise he just likes to walk the bike, with his helmet on.

(Thanks to Ya-ping for the picture!)

One day Franklin and Preston were playing with homemade play dough. I made a jack-o-lantern with the orange dough I made, so they were inspired to make Halloween-themed Angry Birds. Then they made green pigs and Preston even started using a spoon to hurl the bird at the pigs. (I've actually never played Angry Birds, but pop culture has given me an idea of what it is.)

Baby likes to have people pretend to be slides so that he can slide down them. Once he even made me slide down him. On another occasion, Baby and Franklin took turns being slides for each other.
 I got exposed to some culture. I got to watch Citizen Kane because my brother's a movie nerd. I rarely watch TV, but one night after the boys were in bed I was able to watch some Get Smart which I've never watched on TV before. Then one night we watched some YouTube videos and I was exposed to this hilarious video:
 But Saturday eventually came and it was time to say adieu and come home. I was hoping to be able to finish Moby Dick on the way home but the plane ride was too short. The train may have been more comfortable than the plane, but the plane made up for it because it was about 1/18 the length.

Take the last train to Emeryville

I am so glad summer term is over! Finally a break!

I think I did pretty well on my Book of Mormon and French tests. My Isaiah test...not so much. It was the first time for this professor to teach the class, and I think the midterm ended up too easy, so he wanted to make the final harder. But he made it too much harder. He added "None of the above" options to all of the questions, and those were often the correct answer. I knew the test would be comprehensive, but I didn't think the questions from the first half of class would be so specific. He sent an email saying that he curved everyone's test scores up. I guess I got my wish that he feel like a terrible person.

Thursday night I boarded a train to come visit my brother in Berkeley, CA. The train left Salt Lake at 11:30 p.m. and arrived at 5:40 p.m. the following day. I brought my laptop to use on the train, but my adapter quit working, so it was a waste to bring it. But I read about 100 pages of Moby Dick. My goal is to get it finished before Fall starts, since I started it two years ago (I don't read often). I think I'll do it. I did not like sleeping on the train, and I don't think the bathrooms were cleaned once in the eighteen hours I was on the train. Gross.

I've been enjoying seeing my three nephews, Preston (7), Franklin (4), and "Baby" (2). Yesterday we went to the Golden Gate Bridge and Muir Woods. I hijacked this picture of me and Baby from my sister-in-law's Facebook:

Today we went to church at my brother's ward. It was the weirdest meeting I've ever been to. It started with Sunday School, in which the comments included that schools ruin kids and that people are depressed because they are wicked. Then in sacrament meeting we sang the most depressing version of "There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today" that I've ever sung. The organ player must have been wicked.

Not aghast at August

August has traditionally been my least favorite month. It's hot, it's the end of summer break, and there's usually not anything going on. For the last two years it meant I had to sacrifice my BYU life for a few months.

But this year I don't dislike it so much. It is indeed the end of my summer break--but it's also the beginning of my summer break. Finals are this week and I'm so excited--not for the finals but for the term to be over. And August is better than most of July because it's closer to September. August means I will start my first fall semester ever (in college). I kind of miss my fall breaks, but I'm excited for something new. Everyone tells me that fall semester is better than winter, and I believe it. Winter is just so blah and lemitsy.

This week was full of randomness and spontaneity. On Tuesday I had a wedding reception to go to in Taylorsville, but I didn't want to drive all the way up there just for the reception. I think I only spent five minutes at the reception; I spent longer in line to say hi to my former companion than I did after seeing him. There weren't any suitable desserts (i.e. there weren't any popsicles), so I left early. I went and visited my aunt and cousins, since they were close by. I don't usually see family on weeknights!

In my French class on Wednesday, our teacher was gone, and we were discussing how we still needed to do a cultural activity. Everyone wanted to go to the French bakery here (to buy French goods and speak French), and they asked who had a car. I said I had a car if we could be back by 1:00. So five other people went with me and we walked down to my parking lot and drove to the pâtisserie. There weren't any suitable desserts there (i.e. there weren't any popsicles), but they had lunch items and I bought a demie baguette (the sign at the pâtisserie was actually wrong--they left the last e off of demie) and a croque monsieur (embarrassingly, I said une instead of un). A croque monsieur ("Mister Crunchy") is a hot sandwich with ham and cheese. It was as greasy as something off of the McDonald's breakfast menu. When we got back from the pâtisserie, I didn't have time to eat it before class, so I stuffed it in a plastic bag in my backpack and went to campus. After class, I went to eat it, but it had gotten cold, and the microwave in the SWKT didn't work, so I had to eat it cold. I think it would have been good warm, but since it was cold, it got progressively nastier with each bite. Fortunately, the baguette was still good when I got home, since it doesn't matter what temperature you eat it at. Usually I stay on campus all day until classes are over, but that day I went home twice between classes--once because of the pâtisserie, and once to say goodbye to Hanna, one of the horses I got to know this summer.

On Friday, I did perhaps the most unusual thing I've done all summer (and maybe all year!). A girl in my ward, Michelle, invited as many people as she could invite to some event she was super excited about. It was Harry and the Potters, a rock group that sings songs about Harry Potter, and the Potter Puppet Pals, which you may have seen on YouTube:
After her frequent invitations, I decided to just go for it and go. We drove up to this ghetto venue in some alley in Salt Lake where the two groups were performing. There were tons of people crammed inside a little shack with the smells of bodies and Word of Wisdom violations all around. There we were all sitting on the floor watching a puppet show. It was funny, but I personally found it inappropriate for a puppet show; if it were a movie, I wouldn't watch it.

After the puppet show, Harry and the Potters set up. They're just two guys, dressed somewhat like Harry Potter, and a drummer, and they sing short songs about different things from the books. I like Harry Potter as much as anyone else (the books--I don't watch the movies), but I'm not a fanatic, and I felt pretty out of place among all the people who not only were enormous Harry Potter fans but knew all the words to all of the Harry and the Potters songs. It didn't help issues that I'm generally unenthusiastic about everything and that I don't like noise. One of their songs was in honor of Hermione's organization S.P.E.W., and the whole song consisted of them going in the audience and putting microphones to people's mouths and having them say spew. (Yeah, they're not going to win a Grammy anytime soon.)  I knew from the start that they were going to have me say it, because I was surrounded by girls, which meant I was taller than most of them, and because my emotionless state was quite obvious. But I was a good boy and said "Spew!" when they put the mike to my face. During their playing, the Puppet Pals went through the audience, and one touched my head. This summer I got Jan Terri's autograph and the Harry Potter Potter Puppet Pal touched my head. What YouTube star will I have an interaction with next? Harry and the Potters had put up a banner with the Hogwarts logo on it, and during the last song, they were playing so loud that it fell off the wall. Kind of like this:

I'm glad that I went, because if I hadn't, I would have wondered what I missed. But did I enjoy it? That question is harder to answer.