It's Thursday Today

For some reason it was impossible for me to convince myself yesterday that it was not Thursday. I told at least two debtors that had payment arragements for Friday, "Make sure that gets in tomorrow," and then hear them go, "I can't do it tomorrow, I said I could pay Friday," and then have to appologize and say I meant Friday.

And all morning I was anticipating watching BYU play TCU in the afternoon and had to keep telling myself that it was tomorrow. But all that telling myself didn't stop me from having a brief freak out moment at 16:30 when I looked at the clock and thought "We've been playing for half-an-hour already and I haven't even looked at the score!" And then AGAIN walking home from work I felt like I needed to get home quickly because a game was going on. I knew it wasn't if I thought about it logically, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to be watching football right then.

And I was surprised to see Emilee home last night because I knew she had an orchestra concert Thursday.

So today feels Groundhog Day-ish. I've already had a Thursday this week. But today I really will watch BYU beat TCU (hey, I'm believing, and if they lose it's because you're not believing) and attend Emilee's orchestra concert and wait on my debtors that get paid Fridays...instead of just thinking that I should be.

Falling

Two days ago was the first official day of fall. The trees haven't started turning yet and the weather hasn't decided to be cold yet (she flirts with the idea, but apparently isn't ready to make any sort of commitment), but that's all coming and it's a glorious time.

Autumn is most definitely my favorite season and here is why (in no particular order):

• Clothes: I'm always very tired of my summer clothes by the time fall gets around, and it's the best to finally break out the sweaters and jackets that I've been missing for several months. It's really the cutest season to dress for: spring and summer you dress for comfort, winter you dress for warmth, but fall you dress to look good. Fall is time to get back to business after summer, so the dress is less casual and that's great. Casual clothes are comfortable, but never quite as flattering and are rarely as interesting as nicer clothes. And all of those classic neutral colors that will always be my favorite to wear fit with the season better than any other.
• Football: By far my favorite sport to watch. I'm not a fanatic, but that doesn't mean that every year about mid-summer I don't start counting down the weeks until kickoff. It's really a great time of the year. It gives something to talk about to many a male and provides plenty of entertainment.
• My birthday: Even though these days it's not as exciting as it used to be, it's certainly a good thing to have a day when everybody feels obligated to be nice to you and wish you a happy day. And it's always good to be one year older. Especially for me, as I'm young for my age (meaning basically everybody I associate with is older than me). It's always a feeling of catching up to turn another year. This year it'll be good to be not nineteen. I know it's just a number and technically not that big of a deal, but twenty is a big one to me. All of my friends are in their twenties and I'm still an infernal teenager.
• Leaves: I love the colors and the rustling and the big piles. So pretty and so fun. Towards the tops of the mountains the colors are changing and slowly creeping down. I can't wait for them to get into the valley.
• Thanksgiving: What better holiday than the one where you get to stuff your face guiltlessly? I love pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. And I love being in Grandma's kitchen with five thousand other woman working on something or another. And I love lying around groaning about how much I ate but still slowly consuming a piece of pecan pie. I love turkey sandwiches for the next week or so every meal. I love the beginning of the holiday season and listening to Christmas music for the first time for the year (the music that I'll of course be dying to get turned off by the end of the holidays, but breaking it out for the first time is still a treat).
• School: Now I don't really like school, but I like being in school better than the summer (summer's only good for two weeks and then I start needing a purpose in life again). And the first couple months of school are nice because I'm still in the motivated stage of things (the rest of the year is unfortunately a big slack-off). I like the structure of school and it's not feeling old until about late October, but then soon enough Thanksgiving break comes along and I'm revitalized until the end of the semester. I don't like the second semester of school ever, except maybe the first week. (And of course I'm not really doing school this particular fall, but it's still a good part of the general autumn experience.)

Would You Do It?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/21/eat.roach.ap/index.html

I keep on changing my mind whether I would eat a roach to cut in line or not. I'm very brave when it comes to eating things and when it comes to bugs. Best I've ever done was a choclate-covered cricket, but I'm certainly willing to step that up. And I'm certainly into doing things that not many people have done. I'd be almost worth it simply for the sake of telling people that I've eaten a live hissing cockroach, forget the cutting in line reward. It's just the live thing that gets me...I couldn't kill it in my mouth. Matter of fact, I can't kill cockroaches in my house with a shoe. I'm a total sissy when it comes to killing anything other than a mosquito (I'm pretty good at flies as well, but it still kind of makes me sick). And it's not that I personally can't do it...it's tough to see my father kill a spider, for crying out loud.

But I still think it's a brilliant idea on the part of Six Flags. I've spent enough time waiting in amusement park ride lines in my life that I'm in favor of any way people can earn a spot to the front that doesn't involve a faked handicap.

Thomas Prays

My little brother Thomas is a doll. And he's at that really fun age where he's learning a few words every day and just getting the concept of this whole talking thing. I just got an email from my mother that included this little tale:

"We were eating a bowl of cereal when unpromted, he said with his eyes closed the way he does for prayer, 'Guba guba Daddy, Daddy, Mommy, guba guba Jesus, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Amen.' Then he opened his eyes and proceeded to eat his cereal."

Man, what a cutie.

Les Amoureux aux Poireaux

I've been attempting to decorate my cubicle of late and having a grand time with it. Yesterday I put up a print of this photograph. Yes, I realize it's your typical mid-century cutesy couple photo that adorns every girl on the planet's space, but I can't help loving that sort of thing, okay? It's part of that second X-chromosome and can't be fought. And having something like this up makes me automatically friends with all my female coworkers. When I was hanging it up one came by, "Oh that's such a cute picture! Are you in love or are you married?" It wasn't meant to be an "either you're one or the other" thing, but it sounded so much like it that we laughed and then she sighed, because she's not in love with her husband. And for the record, I'm not especially in love with anyone this week. I'm mostly just in love with the idea of being in love in Paris in 1950, which I assure you is not an abnormal sentiment.

Most Boring News Story Of All Time Sweeps The Nation

Nice to know that with all the things going on in the world, including a breaking story in Thailand (which I'll admit is far more interesting than the same ol' Mideast issues and the same ol' US politics scene), the most popular story on cnn.com is "No suicide or homicide in Anna Nicole son death".

Clap For Him!

Good news for those Isaac fans out there: Isaac Mizrahi was on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me this weekend to play "Not My Job" the game where you take experts in one field and ask them questions about a totally different field (like asking fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi about the sport of tractor pulling). And besides the joy of hearing Isaac's voice again and the joy of hearing him on the best NPR program of all time (yeah, it's even passed up A Prairie Home Companion in my esteem), we found out that Isaac's show is going to be starting a new season on Style in October. Oh how I've missed him!

Filming for the show starts tomorrow and runs through October 13th...anybody want to go to New York with me sometime during the next few weeks? Oh man, the dream is either a) he sees me in the audience and says "I love your shoes." or b) he answers my question during "Sketches and Answers" (still trying to think of a good question, but I'll have a good one, I assure you).

Comparision Essays and Why They Should Not Be Assigned

I'm a slow writer and it's killing me on this freaking term paper. Perhaps I'm too critical: I'll type a page, then delete a page, then type another page, then decide that I hate the way I've organized the whole paper and spend the next hour changing everything around and re-writing and re-writing. And I've been working on this for so long and the only part I like is the introductory paragraph.

I hate comparison essays. They always feel so forced. How can you organize one, anyway? I really can't figure out a way to do it without sounding strained. And I do not want mine to come out feeling like the sample papers that my professor posted for us. I know they're the sample papers, so supposedly that's what I should shoot for, but they both suck beyond reason. They sound like comparision essays, and though I realize that's what this is supposed to be, comparision essays take a whole lot of disguising to keep from sounding like a fifth grader is writing. An actual sample will show you what I mean:

"Although Abigail Adams and Mary Todd Lincoln each had ancestors who were landowners and politicians, and though they each grew up in a well-to-do family, their backgrounds were more dissimilar than alike. They lived in a different era and region, and a whole different family environment."

Now the ideas aren't necessarily bad (not brilliant, but not bad), but you read that and think "Oh, I'm reading something that's comparing Abigail Adams and Mary Todd Lincoln." much like you would think "Oh, I'm reading a Christmas wish list." So obvious and so elementary school. It's the list of things similar and then the list of things different and then the list of things similar and then the list of things different format...it's awful. And when every single sentence has the "Person A and Person B both did whatever, however, Person A did this, while Person B did that" structure to it...it's awful. And when it's just a listing of facts about the two parties organized into what's similar and what's different and no analysis at all...it's awful.

I realized about mid-day today, though, the true reason why the sample papers sucked and why my paper sucked at the time: no thesis. Or at least no real thesis, because "Henry Knox and Joseph E. Johnston had many similarities, but also many differences," is not a thesis. So I've luckily remedied that problem in my paper ("Understanding the lives of Ann Lee and Mary Baker Eddy reveals how and why their respective movements came about and how they fit into the greater American religious experience." which isn't amazing, I'll admit, but work-able) ...which I really ought to get back to...

Patricia

Sometimes I wonder why nobody hangs out with my immediate family at extended family functions. And other times it's blatantly obvious: If you wanted to recreate basically the entire weekend we spent together in St. George for my grandparent's 50th anniversary, you simply need to:

1. Find a little girl's shoe covered in mud and leather butterflies and name it Patricia.
2. Throw Patricia into the creek.
3. Run down the creek shouting "Patricia! I'm a'comin'!", etc.
4. Rescue Patricia ("Oh no, she's not breathing!", etc.).
5. Sole/soul puns.
6. Rinse.
7. Repeat steps 2-6. Endlessly.

Though we of course worried that Patricia was either the favorite shoe of a little girl who can't sleep because she misses her shoe or evidence in a missing child case, she was a good playmate.

One downfall about Patricia, however, is she violates a law that I've long campaigned to be put on the books: I believe that people should not be allowed to wear more than twelve minus their age butterflies in one outfit. For every butterfly over the allowed limit, they must pay a fine of $100, but not be required to remove it. So perhaps the two or three butterflies that are pulled off tastefully every five years will be worn, just with an extra price attached. But really, think of the fashion crimes that would be stopped and the revenue that could be garnered from Mariah Carey alone! (especially considering that the twelve minus age puts her starting out well into the negatives).

But now that I think about it, it's more that my immediate family doesn't choose to hang out with our extended family than the other way around. We have our own specific brand of fun that we believe is superior to all others. But it seems better to be a little odd than to be snobs, so I'll stick with the untruth that nobody wants to play with us.

Football Season Is Upon Us

It's a good time of the year. School starts and we're all strapped for entertainment and an excuse to yell at the TV that doesn't involve Jay Manuel's hair (this is probably just my apartment). I had to work all day Saturday and it was definitely a good thing to be able to have the Purdue game going in the morning and the BYU game going in the afternoon to keep me from being bored to death. Last week's BYU game was more fun, though (despite losing).

There is little in this world more entertaining than watching BYU football with my Grandma Winona. That woman when she's excited about something...just imagine an old woman in a muumuu sitting tensely in her seat with the occasional (every minute or so) jump out of the seat and the occasional cheer or yelled advice to the team ("Tighten up boys! Tighten up!"). Hilarious. And after we changed to the mid-field camera (I'll explain in a second) and she couldn't see what was going on anymore, she decided to go to bed and listen to the rest of the game on the radio, but we could still hear her occasionally cheering alone from her bedroom.

My grandparents do not subscribe to TBS, the station that the game was broadcast from. We were worried we'd have to do the game by radio, which, of course, sucks. However...and I'm not exactly sure how this worked, after some investigative channel surfing by Jared, we discovered that we had access to several TBS back-channels. Each channel was just one camera, but we got the commentary as if it were the normal game. It was kind of irritating when they'd be like, "let's look at that again," and all we get is a shot of the stands or something, but it had it's benefits as well. For example, during a commercial break, we get the camera trying to get a good shot of the moon to come back to and listen to the main commentator tell his buddies about this time he interviewed Ozzy Osbourne. Granted, they weren't talking into the microphones during the commercial break, so we had to strain to hear it, but we did get bits and pieces ("At the end I was like, 'You know, I really loved Black Sabbath.' And he was like 'Friends don't shake hands, friends hug.'"). And instead of a halftime report, we did get to watch the Pride of Arizona march, which in my family, is quite the benefit. Even if we could hear them just well enough that I could determine that they were playing "something that sounds familiar", which I eventually determined was a Radiohead show. I'm sorry to say that nobody in my family could back me up on that one, but I looked it up later, and it was in fact Radiohead, in case anyone was doubting me. We started out watching a camera at one end of the field who was aparently also in charge of getting shots of Bronco Mendenhall looking grim. But that camera tended to chase people running down the field while the play was happening on the line, so we switched eventually to the midfield camera, which always had everything covered, though it was small. The only downside to this camera is it was in charge of fan shots, so we saw a whole lot of fans. But it was kind of fun because whenever there was a field goal we'd have to look at the fans reactions to see if it was made or not (because obviously the mid-field camera guy wasn't going to have a good shot of the kick).

And that's all I have to say, but I feel compelled to write something here because a) that last sentence does not feel like a concluding sentence, and b) I don't like it when I end with the longest paragraph of something I've written...it just bothers me, I couldn't tell you why...even in a three-paragraph-little-something, I just can't do it.

Post-Happy

I don't know why I've felt compelled to post a gazillion times today. I guess it's just a little treat for umm...all of you that check my blog every half hour. And considering my readership consists of approximately .2 people, I'm sure there are a lot of those out there. Okay, so it's more a good way to pass time at work.

Bus People

Bus people are an interesting bunch. I take the bus to work every morning. Until I hit the BYU stop, it's mostly students, but after that, the true bus people are all that's left. And I got to experience an even better case of bus people on the Greyhound Monday. I have a hard time fighting the "I'm better than you" ideas in these cases.

Guy next to me on Greyhound: Oh, so do you like reading, then?
Me: Yes.
Guy next to me on Greyhound: I don't.
Me: Not any?
Guy next to me on Greyhound: Nope, not at all.

I hear things like this and cringe. But really, he was a nice guy. I had some good conversation with him and he loves his kids and is living a life that he enjoys, what more could you want?

Same for the guy sitting behind me, who had some of the worst grammar on the planet and mentioned that he'd spent some time in prison, but then was talking about how much the world needs discipline and how he learned discipline too late, but at least he's got it now and then he was talking about this girl he's with and he is so in love with her ("Man, you knows, I tell her alls the times, 'If you were to leave me, I'd need at least three women to get even close to what I gots with you, baby.' And it's the truth.") and this man is happy with his life and trying to build something with it, and I have a hard time saying that myself.

Happy Birthday Google!

On September 7th, 1998, Google Inc. was founded. Google Cooperate History reveals why this happened after a meeting with a possible investor:

We gave him a quick demo. He had to run off somewhere, so he said, 'Instead of us discussing all the details, why don't I just write you a check?' It was made out to Google Inc. and was for $100,000. The investment created a small dilemma. Since there was no legal entity known as 'Google Inc.,' there was no way to deposit the check. It sat in Larry's desk drawer for a couple of weeks while he and Sergey scrambled to set up a corporation and locate other funders among family, friends, and acquaintances...In September 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. The door came with a remote control, as it was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation's staff of three. The office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub.

The nice thing about Google is they take satisfying their customers seriously, and very little else. They have changed your life. They have changed mine. Some may think they're out to take over the internet...I say go ahead and do it Google, because I love you.

Counting Calories

I think it would be fun to be a calorie counter. This has long been a dream of mine, that I don't think I've ever shared with a soul. Wouldn't it be fun, though? I would obviously set up a spreadsheet and enter the calories consumed during four 6-hour blocks throughout the day. And then I'd keep track of records for most and least calories consumed during a day or a week. The fun ones to try and break would be least calories in a week (though it's risky that I'd eventually try zero in a week and that's a little dangerous) and most calories in a day (what better excuse than trying to break a record to eat completely out of control for one day?). Least calories in a day would be too easy, because I'm sure I'd do zero first try. And Most calories in a week kind of makes me sick, and seems like it would lead to wasted money and binging just gets old after a while. Nonetheless...keeping track of the calories I eat would provide hours of entertainment. The only reason I don't do it is it's so much work to keep track of some things...when I eat an apple or anything at all that isn't labelled with nutrition facts, I'd have to look up somewhere how many calories are in it. And I'd have to count weird things like how many crackers I eat out of a box. Almost worth it, though.

Is it weird to want to go on a diet for the sole reason that I think I'd be good at it and I like the sense of accomplishment? Or maybe it's because I have a deep love of spreadsheets. But I wouldn't do it really, though, because it's annoying to have friends who are on a diet.

I Deserve It Today

I believe that every human being is entitled to one day a week when they are allowed to look like crap. More than one day equals sloppiness, but one is perfectly okay in my book. And, for the record, I claim today for this week. I've been good for several days here, let me wear the old tee and put my hair up wet here. And just to clarify: one day in a week does not mean every 7 days. It's okay to look like trash on a Friday and then again on a Monday...it just needs to be different weeks. I'm not sure why that's the way it works, but that's definitely the rule.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Wheat Thins are healthy because they have the word "thin" and the word "wheat" in their name. The same rule applies to Thin Mints. And last I heard mint was a plant which means a vegetable.

Whistle While You Work

"She has a new ringback tone every single day but can't afford to make payments." Oh the people you get to deal with in collections. Fascinating, really.

Instant Information At The World's Fingertips

The first reaction when I want to know something is of course to look it up on the internet. So it's not that weird that I was sitting here wondering if I need to buy milk on the way home and opened up my web browser to look up my current milk's expiration date before I even thought, right? Then sheepishly closed it, glad that nobody saw me and could read my thoughts at that moment.

The story naturally ends with me instant messaging a roommate to have her check on the expiration date.

How did people live before the internet?

Warren Jeffs: Prophet

People keep on calling Warren Jeffs a charismatic leader. From what I can see, though, there's very little charisma involved. He's not an especially charming or persuasive man by any accounts. It's the prophet position he inherited that gives him the power. It's hard for the media to grasp that. They expect him to be David Koresh. How else can a man get so many people to live completely under his control?

Looking at it from the Mormon perspective, however, where I believe that there is a prophet on the earth today who truly is the mouthpiece of God, it's easier to understand the power that someone who perverts that concept can gain. When a direction is seemingly coming from God, there's no denying it. It doesn't matter what hardships that means, because God gave us all and there's nothing that isn't worth sacrificing for Him.

I believe Warren Jeffs is an evil man, but I admire those followers of his that aren't corrupt and are simply trying to please God in their own way (which I expect are many, despite the many cases of rape and molestation and abuse). It's such a sacrifice to live a secluded life like that and deal with those huge families and have everything you own under the direct control of the church. And I'm easily annoyed by all the people in Colorado City and elsewhere that refuse to speak to reporters. But these people are just doing what their prophet has told them to do. It's impressive really that they're willing to go through that trouble.