Only in August

Despite my former disdain for the month, August is actually a decent time of the year. While 90 degree weather isn't great, August has the best thunderstorms, which may be the best kind of weather there is.

Last Monday, some of our ward went to the home of the Jensens, Brother Jensen being our first counselor. The Jensens are the most generous people I know, and Sister Jensen gave us a bunch of vegetables from their garden. Not being a cook, I had to try to figure out what to do with them. I did manage to use most of them and make them edible, but a real cook would still do a better job. I don't eat enough vegetables, so it was good to have them and have to use them. Yesterday I cooked the beets. I think the most interesting thing about beets is the way they turn everything red or magenta. And I mean everything.

This weekend was my roommate Jordan's birthday, so on Friday he did a night-time Capture the Flag game with glowsticks. I can play that one because it doesn't involve a ball. It was kind of pleasant playing out under the moon, even though my team lost. The last time I played Capture the Flag, I fainted that night after running. But I didn't faint this time.

After we moved back into our apartment last week, I realized that the storage space is greatly diminished. But this week I learned that the kitchen storage space is diminished as well. I think the cupboards are shallower. The cupboard above the sink is half as tall as the old one. Worst of all, the bottom cupboards don't really have shelves. They have shelves that only take up half of the depth of the cupboard. And one of the cupboards just has a giant lazy Susan in it. The amount of wasted space in the kitchen now is crazy. Like I said last week, the renovations make me glad to be moving out. Because there was nothing wrong with the old counter and cupboards, and these are just poorly designed.

I've been wasting some of my free time by watching Hulu. This week I finished Green Acres, which was a great show, but the last couple of seasons were sorely lacking. Then with my interest in cheesy, poor-quality but clean 1960s sitcoms, I began watching another show, My Mother the Car, which has sometimes been rated as the worst TV show ever. I'm sure there are worse shows, and this one is watchable, but it's definitely a so-bad-it's-good thing. The premise is that David Crabtree's mother is reincarnated as a car. But she only talks to him, and even his wife doesn't believe it. Of the three episodes I've watched so far, there have been some severe leaps in logic that make you think, "How did that work?" In one episode, his mother gets drunk from antifreeze and drives erratically, so then he puts coffee and tomato juice in the engine, first to relieve the drunkenness and then to relieve the hangover. I'm pretty sure my interest in 1960s sitcoms stems from the same root that makes me like Jan Terri.

Our washing machine quit working this week. It's always something.