Dec 28, 2007

K-Bull 93 FM...Utah's New Country Leader!

As Linda has been out of the office this week and she is the only one who puts up a huge fuss about listening to country music, we've been listening to country at work. The songs always get stuck in my head because they're simple enough that they just do that. It's kind of irritating.

It's interesting to hear the political discussion on that station. They don't have a ton, but it leaks out and is always amusing. I'm pretty sure country music listeners in the state of Utah are the only people on earth who still think George W. Bush is a truly great president.

On Thursday, they were having a discussion about making US flags mandatory for every public school classroom (you can read about the push to do this in Utah here). Not a single person that called in had anything bad to say about this. The main arguments seemed to be something like: Is it more important to have flags in schools because it teaches them to support our troops or because it teaches them to vote for people with strong Christian morals? I have no idea how these are even related to having a flag in the classroom, but K-Bull listeners seemed to connect these all easily.

I was tempted to call in and say something like "Are you kidding me? Don't you think Utah lawmakers should have something better to do with their time and taxpayer money than push useless bills like this that are clearly only made to win the votes of people like the kind of people who listen to this radio station? And do you people honestly think having lots of flags around equals patriotism? How about we make a rule that we hang science books in every classroom to make kids get better test scores? How about encouraging something that helps children actually learn about their country in school to instill real patriotism, not this 'support America like it's a sports team' mentality?" But, of course, I just continued working and let it fester until it became the blog post you have before you now.

Dec 22, 2007

Two Things:

1) "Wake Up Call" by Maroon 5 is one of the absolute dumbest songs I've ever heard. When it comes on the radio at work, I go to the bathroom whether I need to or not.

2) It's fun to look at the search engine statistics on this blog and see some of the random things that I'll get hits from. Out of the 48 hits I've gotten from search engines this month, these were the five most amusing keywords:
  • photos of the inside of photoautotroph
  • flexing the butt, singing
  • how many children does kurt bestor have
  • how is going these days
  • brother kills sister wrestling
For the people who searched hoping to find information on photoatuotrophs, Kurt Bestor, or accidental deaths of a sibling, it's just a shame what they didn't get the information they needed, but crazy that they got to this site. For the other two...who the heck searches "flexing the butt, singing" or "how is going these days" (I can't even imagine what they were looking for when searching this)?

Dec 20, 2007

50 Things About Me

An ex-boyfriend's friend's wife who I always really liked did this on her blog once upon a time (you can see it here, if you're interested), and I always thought it was a good idea.

Anyone who knows me well will know most of these, but I don't think anybody knows all of them and it's random enough that it shouldn't be too boring of a read for even those that do know most. If I'm wrong, I apologize.
  1. I prefer sad endings to happy ones.
  2. I am courageous when it comes to things where the worst that could happen is getting caught and punished or embarrassing myself, but spineless when the worst that could happen involves physical pain.
  3. I can play Minesweeper for hours and be perfectly content.
  4. When I'm walking somewhere and see a cat nearby, I always stop to pet it and am very disappointed when it runs away from me.
  5. I hate when the clothes have the brand printed prominently on them.
  6. I love moving.
  7. When presented with any sort of artsy career (poet, painter, ballerina, playwright...you name it), I spend the next hour or so horribly jealous that I don't have a job like that.
  8. I wear a skirt or dress roughly three times a week.
  9. My greatest fear is to be called down on The Price Is Right. I know I'd never put myself in a situation where that would be a possibility, but still...I would do horribly on that game.
  10. My favorite ice cream flavors are always chocolate-based.
  11. I love nearly anything involving lace because it's so feminine.
  12. I wish I had the time and talent to always sew my own clothes, cut my own hair, make my own make-up, etc.
  13. One of my greatest faults is I let myself get pushed around a lot and I hate it.
  14. Often when I get my blood pressure taken, the person taking it will comment on how low it is and I'm always proud of it even though it's almost entirely my gene's fault.
  15. When living with roommates, I always forget to do the dishes on my day.
  16. Most days I drink a lot more water than the recommended 8ish glasses/day.
  17. I wish there were more opportunities to dance in this world.
  18. I have believed in love at first sight since my Senior year of high school because my English teacher, Mrs. Helton, told us she has experienced it and I trust her.
  19. I cannot get up out of bed right when I wake up. I prefer a good half-an-hour of lie there and think time, and hate that I don't get that often.
  20. I'm a romantic, but tend to date guys who are more romantic than I am.
  21. I've have a bear that I've had since I was a baby that I still sleep with because it feels more comfortable to hold something against my breast when I'm falling asleep.
  22. The think I miss most from high school is playing in band, as nerdy as that is.
  23. I love hanging out with my siblings more than any other group of people.
  24. People are often impressed with how much I can eat for a girl of my build.
  25. I constantly feel the yearning to travel but never have answers for questions that start with something like "If you could visit anywhere in the world...".
  26. When I was in elementary school and junior high, I would sometime pretend to have crushes on boys so that nobody would find out who I really had a crush on. Now I have no idea what the use of keeping it so secret was.
  27. I don't like having to follow recipes or patterns or instructions of any kind to do something because then you're making it exactly like how someone else has made it.
  28. I like shopping alone far better than with someone.
  29. I have a very hard time asking for help.
  30. I despise picky eaters and instantly judge people when I hear "I don't like pickles," or the like.
  31. My blood type is B Negative.
  32. I've been in love with 3.5 men in my lifetime and it got much better with each one.
  33. The thing that has shaped my character more than any other factor is being born and raised in the Mormon church and I'm perfectly okay with it.
  34. I like veggie-lovers pizza the best.
  35. In all cases I can think of, I prefer the British spelling of words to American, though will often still use the American so nobody thinks I'm trying to impress anyone.
  36. I've never thought of someone as an enemy and find the concept very hard to grasp.
  37. My favorite sport to watch is football and my favorite to play is soccer.
  38. I'll eat every last thing I have before I go grocery shopping and wear every last article of clothing I own before I do laundry even though I like grocery shopping and laundry.
  39. My two favorite states for my feet: barefoot or in heels.
  40. Isaac Mizrahi once said something about buying things that are either very cheap or very expensive and nothing in between and I immediately decided this is how I would live my life.
  41. I don't have the patience to play a full game of chess.
  42. My favorite numbers = y in the equation y=x^2 when x is a whole number.
  43. The people who are dearest to me are those that I can spend time with and not say a thing but not be bored in the slightest.
  44. When the weather is nice I walk anywhere I can and experiment with different routes to find the most interesting one.
  45. When I was a child, I often judged how much I liked a fictional character solely by how pretty they were. Personality had nearly no play in who my favorite Planeteer was or whatever the case may be.
  46. The only food I don't like is mandarin oranges.
  47. I rarely sneeze just once; it always comes in sets. Normal is three to six sneezes in quick succession. My record is thirteen.
  48. One of my goals in life is to vote for a 3rd party candidate, but I doubt the right one will come along.
  49. I get mad at myself when I sleep past noon on Saturday mornings, not because I've wasted half the day sleeping, but because I've missed Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, my favorite radio program and, unfortunately, one of the few news sources of late.
  50. I like my meat rare and my baked goods slightly undercooked. (and feel like I've had too many food-related facts about me here, but oh well.

Dec 17, 2007

One of the guys

My entire life, my friend groups have always been primarily female, with a few males sprinkled in there. This semester has been different. My female friends all moved to foreign countries (or, in some cases, the other side of Provo, which is somehow almost equally hard to deal with) or got married or in some other way abandoned me, and we already know how I feel with the current girls I'm surrounded with. So I've spent lots of time hanging out with Trevor's friends, because they're generally awesome and don't seem to mind having me around.

Some effects of this:
  • I say "dude" far more often than I would like.
  • Saying things like "my uterus hurts" prompts all sorts of uncomfortableness, followed by several timid questions that begin with, "While we're on the subject, I've always wondered..."
  • I know far more about video games than I ever expected to in my life. Especially if it's Super Smash Bros. I spend an embarrassing amount of time with that game.
  • I will still never like action films or think penis jokes are that funny.
  • The people I hang out with the most are "Heffy", "James the Healer", "Crigger", "The Gimp", etc. I occasionally forget these people have real names.
  • I thought stealing the reserved parking sign that says "Zarbock" on it was a brilliant idea because his name sounds like he should be an goblin king or an orc warlord.
  • Occasionally I have to say things like "I know I'm wearing two different houndstooth pattern things at the same time and they aren't really coordinated but...please don't judge me," to nobody in particular to remind everyone (mostly myself) that I am a girl.
  • I participated in the 24-inch challenge at Sensuous Sandwich.

Dec 16, 2007

Hymn Pet Peeves

Today we sang "Behold, The Great Redeemer Die" in sacrament meeting and it has prompted a post that has been brewing for years, as posts about pet peeves often do, festering and eating me away until I finally must expose it to the eyes of others, in hopes that this will somehow ease the pain. For some reason, and I know this is ridiculous, I have more pet peeves when it comes to the singing of hymns than with nearly any other subject. Here is my list of grievances:

1. First, I must discuss the leaving off of the last verses simply because they are not in the actual music part of the page, as this prompted this post. Those of you who are not familiar with the way hymns are set up in a typical Mormon hymnal, you can view a page here. As you can see, four of the verses are in the music, but then, to save space, two of the verses are down below. Unfortunately, people often only sing (as happened in our sacrament meeting today) the verses that are in the music, as if the ones below are optional. This makes no sense whatsoever. Do people read the first four stanzas of a poem and figures that's good enough to get the message because the other two stanzas are on the next page in the book? No. Especially as the last stanza is often the most important. In the case of "Behold the Great Redeemer Die" all of the verses are about Christ's death until the last, which starts out "He lives--he lives." The whole point of Christ's death is that it wasn't the end and he saved mankind by conquering death. It makes so much more sense to end the hymn with the expression of desire "to do his will and live his praise," than more about death (Christ saying to the Father, "receive my spirit unto thee"). Now, I can understand cutting out verses occasionally to save time. For example, "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" with its seven verses, can sometimes be a little cumbersome. However, if you look at the words, the last verse is by far the most important. It would make more sense to say, for example, "Let's sing verse one, then five through seven"...or whatever. Singing just the first three verses of this hymn is ridiculous. I've seen it done several times, though.

2. In every ward, somehow, there is always a Descant Girl. Single's wards often have several of them. This girl makes a huge production of her singing and sings some sort of harmony above everyone else. It drives me nuts. The point is not to show off your range. Nobody is impressed, just uncomfortable when you do this, Descant Girl. Please, for yourself and the sake of others, just sing the normal soprano line. Thank you.

3. I hate when people say, "Well, I know the words, so I'm not going to open up the hymnal." This is often accompanied by looks of disdain at those that are looking at the music. I personally have a hard time appreciating the hymn without looking at the lyrics and notes on the page. I know this one shouldn't bother me as much as it does, as it's generally people being lazy rather than snooty, but nonetheless, it irks me every time

4. People sing in parts all the time when the music says "Unison". There are always people who try. Nobody's impressed with your attempts at harmony. Even if it fits well, which is most of the time, as there'll be music in the alto, tenor, and bass areas to work with in this case (unlike in the case of Descant Girl) , the music says "Unison". I'm rarely a stickler for rules like this, but, again, as hymns are inexplicably just a horribly touchy subject for me, this drives me berserk.

5. I hate when people close the hymnal before the end of the song. Often, when it's a song where everyone knows the last chorus, or if they've just read the last line and know they can sing that last bit without needing the book in front of them, you hear people all around you putting their hymnals away during the last bit of the song. This distracts from the spirit of the hymn and kills the last bit, which as we've discussed before, often includes the most meaningful lines in the song.

It seems like there are more, but I can't think of any at the moment and my fiancé apparently needs attention, as he keeps peeking around the corner and making faces at me.

Edit: Rachael brought to my attention the most important one except perhaps the last verse skipping thing, and it was definitely one I was thinking of when I said "It seems like there are more...", but I just didn't think of it at the moment. See her comment for more on the all important hating of people who say "page number" instead of "hymn number". I always want to count the pages and see what song is on the page number they said and start singing that loudly over whatever the hymn they actually meant was, but a) it's far too much effort, and b) I'm not quite that much of a jerk.

Dec 11, 2007

Updates

Update #1: We have found an apartment. We'll have to build a ramp, but it's just a few steps up and it'll be fine. A two-bedroom place a few blocks south of BYU. And the toilet and bathtub are pink. And Trevor and I have a good time arguing about what to do with the 2nd bedroom. ("You are not putting a sewing machine in our guitar/sword room." "Stop calling it that; there's no such thing as a guitar/sword room!")

Update #2: Wedding dates have changed. Money and housing and family and traveling and whatever-the-heck-else just would be simpler with a couple more weeks. So we'll be getting married and having the Provo reception on Jan 12th and the Ridgecrest reception will be either Jan 18th or 19th, depending on when we can schedule the building. This is the last time things will change, I promise.

Dec 8, 2007

I'm still alive...

Doing well. Things are good. Stressed a bit with wedding things, but nothing that I can't conquer. Wheelchair-accessible non-single student housing is impossible to find in the Provo/Orem area, but I can't complain. And it's very snowy, which is awesome/miserable. And I don't have that much to say, which you think I would because I never post here anymore, but that actually makes it harder because then I feel like I need to recap everything, which is impossible or have something massively clever, which is difficult.

I've decided the roommates aren't that bad. Here is proof (sorry for those that don't have facebook, it's the only place the video is available without more work than I'm willing to put into this). Sure it's not...well, I could list forever the glorious things that happened last year, but it was a fun time. Nate's reaction: "I'm not surprised at all. In fact, I bet you even if I hadn't seen this video, I'd sometime be listening to 'Eye of the Tiger' and think to myself, 'I bet Andrea has made a leg-kicking routine to this song'."

Oh, and for those that need to know, the wedding schedule looks something like this (invitations will be out shortly, but I know some want to make travel plans now):

Wedding: Dec 29th, noon
Provo Reception: Dec 29th, evening
Ridgecrest Reception: Jan 5th, evening