A Character-Driven Description of My Week

This has been a very interesting week, full of some interesting characters. Rather than just describe events, I'm going to describe characters to describe events. In no particular order.

Dr. Brooks Britt is the professor of my Historical Geology class. He's quite a character. I had him for my Dinosaurs! class back in 2010. In fact, he is the reason I'm a geology minor, because I loved that class. I've heard that other professors of this class prefer microorganisms and invertebrates, so I'm glad I got one who teaches about dinosaurs. It's going to be a great semester!

Brother Andrew Skinner is the professor of my Old Testament class. For this class, we're supposed to look at the student manual published by the Church. Reading the commentary for Genesis 1-3 in the manual really frustrated me. We have to write a little summary about what we read in the readings, so this is what I wrote for Genesis 1-3:
"As I learn about science from geology and astronomy classes, I am often surprised at how much science strengthens my testimony of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe that God created worlds without number from unorganized matter. This goes along with the vastness of the universe and the idea of solar nebulae being created from past stars and being formed into new ones. We believe that God created plants and animals so that the world would be prepared for man. Believe it or not, this goes along with the theory of evolution; we humans are newcomers to the world. We believe in embracing truth no matter where it comes from. The author of Jesus the Christ, one of the seminal scholarly works in the Church, was written by a science-loving geologist. Alma said that all things denote there is a God, and I believe this includes science. However, when I read the Old Testament student manual, I get the impression that the manual was compiled by a bunch of old, biased science haters who find statements to support their views but conveniently regard statements of neutrality. I feel like this is the attitude of many antievolutionists and antiscience people. They pick and choose what parts of science they will believe. I suppose this is reasonable to an extent, since  scientific studies are not perfect (and sometimes contradictory), but sometimes it's silly. Some people are willing to accept that the Earth is billions of years old, and they can accept the idea of plate tectonics. But they cannot accept the two together and insist that Pangaea existed until the days of Peleg, even though the Earth is billions of years old. This idea is frankly ridiculous!When Genesis says that the earth was divided, there are numerous possible interpretations for that passage, and I think the dividing up of continents is one of the most far fetched interpretations. Some people insist that you can't believe in evolution and in God. I agree that our creation is so miraculous for it to have occurred by chance, but I think there's still room to believe in evolution. Taking an all-or-nothing approach is likely to lead people away from the gospel, rather than to it. Science is a beautiful thing, and it is not opposed to religion."
Fortunately, our professor didn't even bring up the issue in class.


President Dieter F. Uchtdorf is the second counselor in the First Presidency, and he gave a great fireside tonight about truth, that we unfortunately are often reluctant to accept truth if it goes against long-held beliefs or seems to contradict what we know. I don't know how he was intending it, but I certainly was thinking of science as one interpretation. I was feeling guilty for not going to see it at the Marriott Center, since I've never been there for a CES broadcast, but then I realized it was just President Uchtdorf. He's one of my favorite speakers, but I've seen him numerous times walking with his wife in Bountiful. I've even seen him at Costco!

Dr. Jani Radebaugh teaches my Geology of Planets class. I had her for Geomorphology last semester, and there are several of the Geomorph folks in my class now. I'm excited about this class; it's my fun class for the semester. It's simply fascinating! Partly in honor of this class, yesterday I bought a clearance t-shirt for $3. It has a cat in an astronaut suit.

Interplanet Janet is a galaxy girl whose video I watched this week in honor of the above class.



Jan Terri is a singer who brings me joy and whose video I also watched because of the above class.

This week on Facebook she said she is writing "a ualtine day song," which I am excited for. "Get Down Goblin" and "Excuse My Christmas" really made my holidays, so I hope she gets her new song out in time for Ualtine Day.

Dirk Elzinga is my Phonetics and Phonology professor. It seems like the class may be more boring than I expected, but it'll probably be my easiest class.

Dr. Cynthia Hallen is one of my favorite professors. I had her for History of the English Language, and now I have her for Early Modern English. She is so sweet and so happy and enthusiastic. Her happiness is contagious; I think I'm smiling the whole class period. We have time-consuming assignments due every class, but they're not difficult, and--get this--we will have no projects or midterms! And our final will be writing a hymn (since the KJV is all EME)!

Christopher Barlow is the name of a creeper who's been on my ward's Facebook page. Earlier this week he posted a testimony about how he once was in the ward, but he's not now and is going to UVU, and how he loves the gospel and was reading Moroni 10, and how he loves all of us. None of us know this guy. Then he posted that he needed a ride. Then he posted that he needed a blessing. My roommate Scott agreed to that and started communicating through a Facebook message with him. He recruited my roommate Bryton to go with him, but I said it seemed suspicious. There's this guy no one in the ward knows, suddenly bearing his testimony and asking for things. So at Bryton's suggestion, Scott sent Mr. Barlow a message asking for his phone number. Well, Chris forgot his phone. So he asked for the number of a relative or something so he could confirm his identity. At which point Chris said not to worry about it. But the next day, he asked on the page for a blessing again. He asked like five times! Also, during all this time, I kept thinking the name and the scenario sounded familiar. I looked through old posts but couldn't find anything, but fortunately Bryton found an email from Facebook from November in which this same guy did the same thing but with a different profile. So if you Provo people see a Christopher Barlow asking for things online--don't trust him!

Roger Terry is one of the editors at BYU Studies and one of my bosses. I had heard about a work dinner party we were having, so when I turned in a source check to him, I asked him about it. He told me it was our Christmas party. I figured he meant that it was to replace the Christmas party we didn't have in December. (We actually had a Christmas party in December, but it was just our little office. It was a YouTube party. They could only handle half of "Rock N Roll Santa.") But when I went to the party on Friday, I learned it really was a Christmas party, complete with red and green tablecloths and napkins and chiming Christmas carols! Most of the people there were religious scholars who contribute to the journal; it was weird to have all these PhDs there chiming "White Christmas" in January and watching an animated Christmas clip. It was supposed to be an Epiphany party, but Epiphany was on Sunday and the party was Friday. Christmas is 11 months away.  They should have had a Ualtine party instead.

Peace on Earth Man is an elderly foreign man in a power chair whom I met at the grocery store. I was looking at a cart of clearance Christmas potato chips when he approached me. He showed me a card that had a dove on it that said "Peace." He told me to read it (it said "Peace on Earth" inside) and said, "Give me a dollar, please!" in his European accent. It was really random. I took pity on him, since he didn't have any legs, and gave him a dollar. But it was really strange.

Jack Frost is the weirdo who's been nipping at my nose and ears and fingers all week. He's the one responsible for the frigid temperatures, which led to the smog, which led to me not running since before Christmas. On Thursday (I think) a snowstorm blew out the smog, but then it snowed, so I couldn't run. But I was finally able to run again yesterday (Saturday). It was between 14 and 17 degrees. That's not my ideal running temperature (I had to wear pants, gloves, a jacket, and earmuffs), but I still like it better than 80 degrees!

What new characters will I meet this week?