Sunday, January 28, 2018

What about the egg house?

I have returned home from California.

The week mostly consisted of attending class with my nephew Franklin, who turned 10 this week. I mostly tried to act as though I wasn't there in his class, just trying to be out of the way. His teacher is a month older than I am, but I wonder if she thought I was a useless person.

One day, one student's English grandmother visited and shared her childhood memories of World War II and the ensuing years. I found it fascinating to hear the British side of things, since I mostly hear the American perspective. She brought WWII British foods of Spam (6/10), digestive biscuits (7/10), and Marmite (2/10), which I was able to sample after all the students. (I was excited to sample digestive biscuits, because I remember an episode of Arthur that referenced them: "I guess it's like Reader's Digest or something." "What a weird flavor.") The grandmother talked about "Mickey Mouse" gas masks, bomb shelters, and rations. Then there was a Q&A session. Some of the questions were very good. Some of them were unimportant or irrelevant: "I'm part Scottish." (Cool story, bro.) "We watched this movie where..." I found myself with the same impatient feeling I get when the various autistic people in my ward go on and on during Sunday School. Franklin is very shy and quiet, so he doesn't speak up a lot in class.

He's a silly kid. One morning on the way to school, he kept saying, "What about the egg house? I don't know!" over and over again. One day during lunch, he drew a unicorn slug, a shooting car (make a wish!), and a rainbow walrus.


One day his parents took him to see a doctor for his headaches, so I was home with Preston (13) and Nathaniel (8). Preston put a picture of a creepy face on their sliding door. (I Googled "creepy face" to try to find the picture. I didn't find it, but I found all sorts of weird things.) Then he said to Nathaniel, "Can you open the blinds? I'm not good at it." So Nathaniel opened the blinds and saw the creepy face grinning at him. He yelled and ran away from it. It was pretty funny, actually, but he took it much too seriously. He began crying and told Preston, "You scared me! You need to lose all your game time." He cried for a long time. It was a great overreaction.

I looked at their grocery store's clearance section, and I have to make an out-of-season pumpkinundation paragraph. These Boulder Canyon Pumpkin Pie Flavored Kettle Cooked Potato Chips (whew!) are sweeter than typical potato chips. Mostly they're just sweet, but when I concentrate, I think, "Whoa, this really does taste like pumpkin pie." 8/10. (I can eat them out of season because they're potato chips, not candy or dessert.)

On Friday, Nathaniel found this rock at school. He said he thought it was granite, but it's too dark for that. I'm 90 percent certain it's a mafic intrusive igneous rock, so it might be gabbro or maybe even peridotite. It looks like it could be mostly pyroxene, but I'm no mineralogist.

Franklin had three friends over for a sleepover on Friday for his birthday celebration. One was from America, one was from Russia, and one was from Korea. The Bay Area is certainly more cosmopolitan than Utah. Franklin's class not only had a lot of non-white kids, but a lot of white kids with foreign names.

Saturday morning, it was time to leave. I hugged my nephews goodbye. Then they started giving me all sorts of stuffed animals ("fluffies"), pillows, blankets, toys, and even garbage to hug. I will miss them, even though all they talk about is video games, Legos, and fluffies.

On the plane ride home, I had what I thought was a waterproof water bottle. (I don't get water from the flight attendants, because it's wasteful to use bottled water and plastic cups.) I have yet to find a bottle that doesn't leak. With this bottle, the water somehow collects in empty spaces in the straw--not in the straw itself, but in the plastic straw structure. Then, somehow, a substantial amount of water leaked on me, and I was soaked. I worried people would think I was incontinent. [EDIT: I looked up "incontinent" when I made this post to make sure I was using it right. Now I keep getting ads for Depends. True story.]

I got home and found my parents mildly annoyed with my cat--my mom because of how needy and kneady he is, my dad because of the clumps of fur he leaves all over the house.

Today at church I mentioned I was searching for a job. A new guy asked me if I was willing to go out of my comfort zone and go door to door.

Big old NOPE. I ain't no bro.

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Yadiloh Nhoj

Since I am unemployed, I figured there was no better time to go visit my nephews in California. So on Monday, I boarded a plane.

Monday was the birthday of my youngest nephew, Nathaniel, who turned eight. I remember so much about him as a little kid that it's weird he's getting older now. He was the most adorable, perfectly mild-mannered three-year-old you ever met.

One of the purposes of my coming to California was to help out with Franklin, who is turning ten this week. Franklin is a hilarious kid and says all sorts of funny things. When they visited at Christmastime, he saw me wearing a Christmas sweater and coined a nickname for me: Holiday John. (The "John" was just a generic name with no meaning. I bet you can guess why "Holiday.")

For a few months, Franklin has had bad headaches, so he usually goes to school late, and going to recess and lunch exacerbates his headaches. Therefore, one of his parents will go to school with him, and I was filling in at school this week. I couldn't be a grade-school teacher, because I get super stressed out when people interrupt conversations with irrelevant/unimportant tangents.

On Wednesday, his teacher was sick, so she sent an email saying he could just stay home, since the sub was only showing the movie Goodnight Mister Tom. So we found it on YouTube and watched it. I was surprised she was showing it to the class, as many of the themes seemed a bit mature for fourth grade, including child abuse, suicide, mental illness, and theodicy. Later the teacher sent a frantic email saying that the sub had stopped it because it wasn't age-appropriate, that Franklin shouldn't watch it. Too late, he already did. But he said he didn't really pay attention.

Somehow my nephews learned that I could speak backwards, and they were very amused. Nathaniel almost seemed hurt that I had never told them before. Oh, you didn't know that either? OK. When I was in elementary school, I trained myself to speak backwards. All the words would be in the same order in the sentence, but I would pronounce them as if they were spelled backwards. I became quite fluent at it, but I've become rusty (and my brain tries to revert to French or Spanish when it's not speaking English). But it remains a hidden talent of mine. At one point they set a timer and said I could only speak backwards for fifty minutes. I slipped once when I responded "What?," but otherwise I did it. (It helped that a lot of it was just watching YouTube.)

One day in Franklin's class, their teacher instructed them to think of a person and then brainstorm facts about that person. Guess who Franklin chose?
He told his whole class about me speaking backwards and cooking pillows. (As a toddler, I pretended I was a baker and pretended that couch pillows were cakes, so I put them in the oven. Then my mom unknowingly preheated the oven.)

 Franklin was delighted by his early birthday gift of ear plugs, and they have been a great source of contention among his brothers, as they all want to play with them. (Preston got a toilet plunger for Christmas, and Nathaniel got a laundry basket--both gifts that they requested.)

 Even though I'm in CA, I've been keeping up on Utah news. I read an article on KSL about how even though it's January, some people in Bountiful turn on their Christmas lights in the snow. The next morning I woke up and thought, "That was a vivid dream, since they wouldn't actually make a dumb article like that and publish it online." But then I was surprised to see it wasn't a dream, they really did write that dumb story! People can do what they want, but to me, Christmas lights in January are just a sad reminder that Christmas is eleven months away. (They also aren't newsworthy.)

I love my Utah (I'm even wearing my 801 beehive shirt), but it's always nice to see a new place and culture. The Berkeley area is certainly more diverse than what I'm used to. I've enjoyed trying pho and pomelos.

I also like that my brother lives within close walking distance of both Trader Joe's and See's Candies, which are very holiday-friendly stores.

I attended a Berkeley student singles ward (even though I'm not a student). I like that I can go anywhere and it all seems familiar, even if the building is different.

We took Preston and Nathaniel to the Berkeley Adventure Playground, a hippie locale where you can help build the playground, which is made of old wood scraps. You know it's a hippie locale because they have a slackline.
Preston.

Nathaniel. Somehow I don't have any pictures of Franklin, even though he's the one I've been around the most this trip. ðŸ¤·‍♂️
My nephews are pretty different from me. Their favorite things are video games and Legos, which aren't my cup of tea. Nathaniel doesn't even know what St. Patrick's Day is. But I love being with them.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Random odds and ends

This week was full of random odds and ends.

On Monday I got a new phone, a Moto Z2 Force. I mainly got it because my last phone was very particular about how it was plugged in. I never felt like I could charge it in my car, because the slightest bump would disconnect it, and I didn't know if it would be dead or charged when I woke up in the morning. Every time you get a new piece of technology, it's a new adjustment. I've been annoyed by some things that I thought have been pointless, but as I think about it, I realize they might have a purpose. For example, I was mad that I didn't have a headphone jack. But then I learned that it did come with a headphone jack adapter; and on my last phone, the jack quit working, so at least I won't have to worry about that now. I am bugged, though, that the charging cord is not universal, working only with my phone, and it's short. Oh well. Nothing is perfect.

I went to the Midway Ice Castles for my first time this week. They were fun and I'm glad I went, but I don't think they're worth the drive more than once.

I also had my review for Hot & Spicy Cinnamon Oreos go up this week. I was nervous, because Oreos tend to be some of the highest-profile reviews, and I knew my 10/10 would be controversial. But most comments have been more supportive than I expected. Most.
"Just because you may not agree with the flavor of the cookie doesn’t mean they should dump the writer lol, but thanks for playing."
Perhaps most exciting this week, I had an interview at BYU on Friday. I thought it went pretty well, but we'll see. I spent some time walking around campus. Much of it seemed so familiar to me, yet I graduated nearly four years ago. Few, if any, people I knew would still be there. I went through the Life Sciences Building, which I consider to be a new building, because it wasn't finished (well, wasn't used) until after I left. But it has been in use for more than three years now! I walked past my old apartments, including my very first one. If we ever got locked out, it was easy to break in the apartment through the kitchen window. It looked like the window is the same after all these years, and I heard some typical college banter as I walked past. And I thought, "What if I stopped in and said I used to live here--eight years ago?" And I imagined the reaction would be, "Who's this old guy!?!?" 

If I did happen to move to Provo, the saddest thing is that I probably wouldn't take Jimmy with me, at least not initially. He hangs out with me on my bed while I'm applying to jobs. Sometimes he comes on my lap, which makes it hard to work on my laptop, so when he does that, I've been switching to watching Marlo Thomas in That Girl online. Is that how binge-watching works? 
I learned that the guest star in this episode was my grandpa's second cousin.

Thanks to my cat, I have a hairy chest even with my shirt on.
I should end, because I'm short on time, since I just literally spent an hour in line for hot chocolate, only to find it was all gone. Not one of my wisest moves. #LDSDevo

But I just want to say something else that perhaps isn't really nice. Of my eleven mission companions, ten of them are good people. There's one I blocked on Facebook years ago because I wanted to block out all the emotional anguish he had caused me. But last week I happened to be on a computer where my mom was signed in, so I used the opportunity to Facebook stalk him. As I scrolled through his posts, I realized why I found him so reprehensible: He has the exact personality of Donald Trump, just with different interests. Racist, misogynistic, Obama-hating, hypocritical, arrogant to the extreme, vulgar. It just bugs me that people I otherwise respect would be friends with him. He's one of the most horrible human beings I have ever known.

On that note: Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Merry. Happy. Blah.

If anyone ever tells you that January is their favorite month, either they are lying, or they are a stupid person. Either way, you shouldn't hang out with them.

I think part of January's problem is its place in the calendar next to December. Christmas can make even the most horrible things seem quaint. If it weren't for Christmastime, January wouldn't seem so bleak in comparison.

Anyway, since last week I was just reviewing the entire year, I thought I'd reflect on some of the merrier times of the last two weeks before describing my boring January.

On Christmas Eve, my mom's family all came over. Her family has gotten so large that it was very crowded. After everyone left, it was a very peaceful Christmas Eve. I was delighted that it was our fourth snowy Christmas in a row.

It was great to have my nephews here on Christmas morning. That hadn't happened since 2009, before the youngest was even born. They had fun opening presents. For me, I care less about the presents these days (even though, as I previously said, the joy of Christmas ultimately stems from the nostalgia of getting presents). I got bluetooth earbuds, a car first-aid kit, a headlamp, and a knock-off NES system. You remember a while back when Nintendo made a little NES device that had lots of games preloaded on it? Well, my sister got me an Asian fake version. They are actually pretty accurate with the Super Mario and Super Mario 3 games, but they had to take "Mario" out of the title. They have a game called "Mario 6" which is just a Tiny Toons game with Mario as the main character. I looked through all the games preloaded and found a Christmas one, which of course I had to play that night. It was one of the most basic games imaginable. I rarely play video games, but it's fun to have random gadgets and devices around, even if I don't use them much.

One of the last uses of this TV.

I wanted to have a turkey dinner for Christmas. I wanted to cook a turkey, since I personally haven't before; and since Thanksgiving's turkey wasn't cooked to my liking, I felt kind of cheated out of turkey. Well, my mom was cutting up the celery to go in the stuffing, and she cut her finger fairly badly--not bad enough for stitches or anything, but not good. I don't do well with blood and pain and medical emergencies, so I began to feel woozy just thinking about it. As my nephews came out and said "Grandma's thumb lost so much blood it's flat," it just made it worse. I think the fact that I was really tired was part of why I got so woozy.

But that wasn't the end of it. After my mom recovered, she told me I needed to take out the turkey neck and giblets. And after my tiredness, and my experience with my mom's thumb, I just couldn't do it. I felt too woozy and disgusted. I'll have to try again a different year when I haven't just seen blood. Hats off to all the doctors and nurses out there, because I couldn't do it.

I still had to go caroling, but no one else wanted to, so I walked around the block singing quietly to myself.

It really was a lovely Christmas, probably the best I can remember.

On Boxing Day, I tried to go sledding with my nephews again, but the snow had become so hard and icy that it was no longer ideal. I went sledding down just on my coat, not even with a sled, and I was going fast enough that I couldn't stop myself. Then I had to climb back up the hill, and I was on my hands and knees doing so. At one point, Nathaniel (7) was coming up, and he slipped and slid all the way back down again.

My three nephews got little drones for Christmas. We went to a mall to look at the Lego Store, while I went to get 2018 calendars. Afterwards, we went to a park's parking lot so they could play with their drones, which were controlled by a phone app. Nathaniel's drone had a glitch where it flew out of range of the phone--and since the app could no longer control it, it kept going up and up and up. It went out of sight, and we never found it. Nathaniel was sad/mad and was plotting to get everyone to write one-star reviews of the company.
My cat likes my calendars. My dad, not so much.
 My parents decided to get an enormous TV for our exercise room. So enormous that I'm embarrassed to tell you the size. The giant box was a marvel to behold, but we had to cut it to get the TV out.

I had a few New Year's events to go to. My stake rented the Bountiful rec center the Friday before New Year's, and I went down the water slide a few dozen times. On New Year's Eve Eve, I saw BYU Vocal Point downtown at the Tabernacle.

As for New Year's Eve itself, it was pretty boring. No one invited me to their party (jerks!), and my family just put together a (difficult) puzzle. I lit some fireworks, but my family was generally somewhat apathetic, though they made it to midnight. The only thing on my New Year's bucket list that I didn't do was to use one of those noisemakers that's a flat piece on the end of a stick, and you spin it around and it makes clicky noises. I couldn't find one. (I do not have holiday bucket lists for 2018.)

On New Year's Day, we had my mom's family's traditional out-to-eat celebration of their first date six decades ago.

And then, all the holidays were over, and January returned with all its nastiness. My hands literally have cracks all over them because of winter dry skin.

Not only have the holidays ended, so has the life I knew. December 29, 2017, was my last day working for the Church History Department. I had been there since March 2014, and I had squeezed every last drop out of my contract.

So I have to spend these dreary January days looking for jobs and otherwise doing whatever I want, which isn't as fun or glamorous as it sounds. The trails are too snowy, so I've been running on the streets when the air has been clean enough. But I ran the eleven miles to and from the temple one day, and then I was too exhausted to run more than six miles the rest of the week.

One consolation is that since Christmastime, my kitty, Jimmy, has warmed up to me some more. I think I've trained him not to sit on my laptop anymore--it's hilarious and adorable when he does so, but also annoying. He sleeps on my bed while I'm doing stuff on my computer. But when he sees a speck of light reflected from my watch or computer screen, he goes after it.
When he sits on my computer, he opens new tabs and types things.

I love how much he sleeps on my bed. I do not love how much he sheds on my bed.
Anyway, this week looks to be more of the same, with job searching and hopefully reviewing more Valentine's candy for The Impulsive Buy. Next week I'll be going to California.

Because heaven knows Utah has nothing to offer me during January.