Monday, Monday, so good to me, was Labor Day, and my last day before classes started. My parents came by in the morning and took me out to brunch. Then I had to finish up my field notebook for Geology 210. I bought some roast turkey socks that I plan to use for Thanksgiving, and then I had to shave. This was the final result of my beard:
I am allowed to have a mustache at BYU. But this, folks, is why I do not.
Then Tuesday was back in classes. After turning in my 210 notebook, I first went to Groundwater. Last year I had to choose between taking Groundwater and Geomorphology. If I took Groundwater, I could have taken Middle English, but I decided on Groundwater. I'm glad I did that, because apparently last fall was the first time that professor taught, and he's toned down the workload now. Groundwater is a 400-level class, and I'm not sure but I suspect that once again I'm the only geology minor in the class. It even has two of the TAs from 210. Geology is a really small department (and I don't understand why, because it's awesome), so there are a lot of people that I've had other classes with. One member of my class used to be in my ward, but even though he moved out, his records stayed in the ward, and he never responded to my emails or texts. Now I will be able to accost him to get his records out of the ward. (There are several such people in my ward who moved out a long time ago but never moved their records and never responded to my requests. That really irks me. It makes me question their testimony and their integrity as human beings that they can't even be polite enough to respond. One such person is a famous athlete, and it really annoys me when I hear him on news reports talking about the Church. If you really like the Church, why aren't your records in your ward yet? </ soapbox>)
I also went to my first class of Swimming for Nonswimmers, but we didn't do any swimming that day.
Tuesday afternoon I went to get a new parking permit. When I went in to Aspen Ridge Management, there was a middle-aged man with a mustache. Walmart and my mission taught me that middle-aged mustached men are usually mean. There are exceptions, of course, but they're generally scary. (Young mustached men are just hipsters or wannabe hipsters. Mustached women are socially awkward.) Well, this guy was ornery. I don't know who we was, or why he was mad, but he was ornery. He kept asking to see a manager. People who insist on seeing managers are never up to any good. At one point the receptionist told him that her boss probably wouldn't want to talk to him with the way he was acting. We don't need any mean people. They should become nice instead. And if they are incapable of becoming nice, they should cease to exist.
On Wednesday I went to more classes. The senior course for my major differs every semester, depending on the professor. This professor is Mark Davies, who is the master behind the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the other corpora. Corpora are large bodies of text that you can look at to see how language is used or see how it changes.Our class will be focused on corpus work, which is exciting for me, because I sometimes use the corpora for fun.
Then I went to Old English. Our professor is actually from the English department, rather than from the Linguistics and English Language department. I'm kind of a snob, so I don't always trust English people. But hopefully it will be all right. Old English is nothing like Present-Day English, so it will be like taking another foreign language. (But it's only a three-credit class, whereas most language classes are four credits.)
In the afternoon I have technical writing. This is a class I have to take (well, I have to take some writing class), and it actually is an English class. Once again, there are some trust issues there, but I think I'll do pretty well, since most of my classmates are doing engineering or health. (I'm more trusting of English people who are into writing than I am of English people who are into literature.)
On Thursday we actually did swimming in my swimming class. We put on flippers and got kickboards and practiced kicking in the water. I didn't realize how exhausting swimming could be. (My main form of exercise is running. I had weird running this week. On Monday it started pouring right after I left. It was dark, so I didn't think it was safe to run in the rain, and after only ten or fifteen minutes I was completely soaked. On Tuesday I ran past a house where water was flooding into the gutter. I even had the nerve to go knock on the door to see if they knew what was going on, but no one answered.)
Then Friday night I went to the Rooftop Concert Series. I had advertised it on my ward's Facebook page, but I never heard from anyone. I went all by myself. It was lonely. I couldn't help thinking, "What is wrong with me, that I'm a quarter of a century old, and I'm at a concert all by myself?" I later learned that other people I knew went, but I didn't know they were there.
Then Saturday--what a day! In the morning I drove some people up to Alpine to the home of Brother Jensen, the second counselor in my ward. We ate pizza and had fun. And then the rain clouds came. We watched some clouds swirl and descend. It was cool. They said the sky was green, but I'm kind of colorblind with certain shades of green, so it just looked gray to me. (It's also a problem on geology field trips when people talk about green shale--it just looks gray to me.)
I didn't want to drive in driving rain, so we waited a bit before leaving. But eventually we left.
It was pretty wet. Driving wasn't too bad. But then at one point a car totally cut me off. They didn't just cut me off; they nearly rammed into me. I didn't have time to think; I could only react. I swerved and slammed on the brakes. Fortunately no one was to the side. I honked at them. I think they were driving pretty irresponsibly. Meanies!
As we got to Orem and Provo, it got really slow. I thought it was game traffic, but I think it was probably police clearing debris in the road from all the wind. At one point I went on a side street to get out of slow traffic. The street was all muddy, and there were rocks, some of them with at least a six-inch diameter, strewn all over the road. It was crazy. In geology, I have heard of streams carrying big rocks, but here I saw it for myself--and it was rain that did it, not regular streams! There were lots of broken trees.
Then after buying a journal at Deseret Book and two Halloween CDs at Barnes and Noble, I went to do my grocery shopping. As I was driving by Zupa's and Olive Garden, I was surprised to see waves on the parking lot. Waves in the parking lot! I had to stop my car to look. All I had with me was my phone, so I couldn't get pictures. But it was crazy. People were up to their knees in water. In a parking lot! I have never seen any weather like this before!
Then today was a busy Sunday. The executive secretary told me we had meetings at 7 a.m., but they were actually at 8. Then after church I had to go to ward council, count tithing, update callings, and pull people's records in. But I'm getting assistants, so that should relieve me of some of the burden. I did clerk stuff while I watched the CES broadcast, but I didn't pay very good attention.
I wonder if any of the rain will be discussed in my groundwater class!
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