What I have going on these days:

• I had a dream that me, Trevor, Mike, and Britt (Mike and Britt are the housemates) were doing a Backstreet Boys routine for a ward talent show (naturally) and Britt moved out of the house for like a month because she and her husband were fighting over which of them got to be Nick. (I was AJ, for those wondering). Inspired by this dream, I have been singing along to Backstreet music videos all afternoon, something that hasn't really happened since the day approximately a year ago when Allison, Valerie and I sang along to "I Want It That Way" several times in a row in our living room for no explicable reason.
  
• Okay, in this bullet-point, I am going to confess one of my deepest, darkest secrets. I understand that many of my friends and family will disown me for this, but I ask you to just try to understand. This is me. That's as much as I want to say about it for now.
• Here is the bullet-point where I try to redeem myself by introducing you to one of the greatest pictures/articles ever created: right here.
  
• Two days ago, I called the temp agency that I'm working with to try to find work and they sure had something for me, and I worked in a industrial/factory job for the first and last time in my life for the day. My job was to put the boxes of Lucerne Kreme Koolers into bigger boxes for shipping and then babysit them as they came down the conveyor belt. It was really fun for the first hour or so because you're a part of that one segment on Mr. Rodgers when they show you how things are made, but the second hour or so was the most miserable I've been in a long time. It was so hot and loud and I had to wear a hairnet and serial killer guy kept on talking to me but I couldn't understand anything he said and I was on my feet for so long and all I had eaten all day was part of a protein bar hours earlier. But after sitting down for a bit in the freezer to cool off and rest (which somehow smelled exactly like the Matterhorn and Disneyland...something about cold old machinery...I couldn't quite put my finger on it) and eating a couple of the popsicles we were packaging, I felt just fine and the rest of the time flew by. My feet hurt at the end and I got a wound on my shoulder from crawling under some of the machinery, but it wasn't too bad. Trevor doesn't want me to work in that kind of environment again, so I'm not doing it again unless we're ever really desperate for money, but it was a good experience. The most amazing part to me was how incredibly wasteful the process was. I saw literally thousands and thousands of reject popsicles get thrown away or fall off the machinery. I don't think I could ever have a job in a quality control kind of position, because I'm definitely the sort that thinks "I'd still eat that" to essentially anything that hasn't been like...pooped on.
• Another confession: I didn't post the link to my WoW character until I was level 32 because that gave me until level 37 before I was another prime number, and everyone would have looked at it by then. I hate when my level is a prime number.
  

At Money Train Title Loans! Whoo whoo whoo!

Every once in a while we have those moments in life where you wish for something impossible, and then get it. These times are rare and forever cherished. Allow me to share my joy with you:

Those that know me will know, I'm kind of a lyric Nazi. If I like a song, it's likely that I know all of the words. Even if I don't like a song, but hear a song often enough, it's likely that I know all of the words. This is due in part to my superb memory when it comes to remembering useless information (which, if I were to truly be honest with myself, is the category that the lyrics to every single Will Smith song falls into), but also due to the fact that I'm just a little obsessive about it and will look up the lyrics to any song that I'm unsure about. I love being able to sing along and not have to break into the "I don't know what to do; I'm always in the dark; We're something nanananana and duhduhduhduh! I really need you tonight!" Or be the authority when the important questions in life ("Is it 'I went to the danger zone' or 'highway to the danger zone'?") come up.

It is very difficult for me when confronted with a song that I can't figure out what they are saying and there is no way to look up the lyrics. Case in point: the money train commercial that would come on the radio all the time back in the Heritage days (I realize there are so many posts on this blog that discuss the radio when I worked at Heritage, it's just a really important part of my life, okay?). I always wanted to be able to sing along to it for three reasons: 1) it was very catchy, and would get stuck in my head, but then I didn't know more than a few words to repeat over and over; 2) the words were so not understandable that I kept on hearing things that didn't make sense and knew weren't right; 3) it would be pretty much guaranteed to make someone laugh, most likely Erin.

I definitely wished for some way to look up the words, and tried googling it a few times in a desperate attempt to bring peace to my soul. Then one day, a modern-day miracle occurred. I was innocently watching the television, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but this:



Why they choose to have the words posted at the bottom, we can only guess. But as for me (and Grandpa), we believe in miracles (where you from? you sexy thing).

Life Update

For those that need the update:

I'm living in American Fork. Trevor is doing tech support for Dell in Lindon. I was doing collections for a law firm in Midvale for a couple weeks, but recently quit because there's no way to get Trevor to work with my schedule and it wasn't that great of a job, so am back on the job hunt. I will be attending UVU in the fall, probably just part-time, though. Mike and Brittany's cat, Nilla, is in heat and getting a little too friendly as I type this. That's about all we've got going on.

What Have I Done?

1) A strap on the trash purse (found in a trashcan while doing custodial work for BYU two years ago) broke a few days ago and I finally had to find a new all-purpose handbag. I found a solid replacement at Target the next day, so major crisis was avoided. However, when I took this new purse home, I noticed it had a peculiar 24" by 15 " polyethylene foam pad included in it. I suspiciously laid it on the floor, wondering what it could be for when with horror I figured it out: this is for changing a baby on. I had unwittingly purchased a diaper bag. It looks like a normal purse, but now I hold it self-consciously--what if someone sees through my ruse?

2) I realized only today the greatest drawback of losing my job at Heritage. I was, over the course of about two months, in the process of writing one of my greatest blog posts ever, and it was only saved on my work computer and is surely erased now. It was a review of the radio stations we would listen to at work. I would have brilliant thoughts come to me while listening to, say, Movin' 100.7 and take a second to jot down a quick line about how great it was that at least one station in this town can recognize the brilliance of the complete works of Will Smith, etc. It was a really great post and it is lost forever, so please take a moment to imagine reading it and how great it would be and then pretend it really happened and think I'm a genius. Thank you.

TV Time

The television (like radio, but you can see as well as hear what's happening!) has come back into my life of late as cable was hooked up in my house a couple weeks ago. I've never had a lot of TV in my life, so it has always felt like a treat to sit down and watch it. When I was a kid, we were always really excited to stay in hotels on vacation because they had all of these channels with endless programming. It didn't matter if the beach or some museum or national park was nearby, vacations were great because the TV was constantly going when we were in the hotel. It didn't even really matter what we were watching. It was just an exciting source of 24-hour entertainment.

These days, I stick almost entirely to "educational" programs. I put "educational" in quotes because my husband and some others in this world somehow don't view "What Not To Wear" as an educational program even thought I've definitely gotten a lot of ideas out of it and it is non-fiction. The channels that I have memorized what station they are thus far are: 10-History, 35- HGTV, 40-Food, 53-VH1, 59-E!, 60-Style, 271-Investigation Discovery, 272-National Geographic, 275-Biography, 276- History International. That'll give you a rough idea of what I watch.

Things I keep on watching programs about and shouldn't because they make me lie in bed at night terrified: serial killers, UFOs, haunted places. I can't help it because they're so fascinating and they aren't that scary when you're watching them, but man, when the lights are out in the house and I hear a bush scraping on the window in the bedroom...uhuhulllll (that's approximately the sound I make when scared, give me a break). It's very nice to have a husband sleeping next to you at these times, but they're still horrible.

On a completely unrelated note: I hate that on U-Hauls they always have some sort of factoid written on the side of them about the place that's pictured in a full paragraph of small print that is impossible to read if you ever see a U-Haul on the road. I always try, but never get farther than "Did you know...Toronto is one of only two cities that" before it's too late and then I wonder for the rest of my life what interesting thing I could have known about Toronto (for as we all know, I'm kind of a trivia junkie).

Changes

So things are doing okay now. I've had some time to read some books (more on this later) and concentrate on moving details (we're moving to American Fork, more on this later) and work out other things and life is decent enough. I plan on going to UVSC starting in the fall and hopefully finding full-time work for this summer.

And I just wanted to apologize for the ugly state of things on my blog the last few days. I've had some technical difficulties and limited internet access lately. I've just changed over to a new template for now and when I have the time I'll tweak it into something that suits me better (Trapper, I'm still interested in doing background fun with you).

The Day I Got Fired

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I did pretty well with my collections, stayed pretty busy, looked pretty. Until around 5:30 pm. My dear manager asked me to come with her to speak with HR and there were the termination papers and here's a box with the contents of your desk and your insurance is still good until the end of the month and I was out before I even knew what was going on.

I went to go pick up the car (we bought a car a little bit ago, still getting everything insured and registered on it) from the shop where it was being worked on with my box of belongings and just cried for a good long time. I was so shocked. I had to wait for 20 minutes or so at the car place, so I turned on the TV and flipped through the numerous program options until I found the most depressing channel I could (CSpan2) and stuck with that. I don't remember anything that happened on the TV, but do remember that that one "life's like an hour glass glued to the table, no one can find the rewind button now, so cradle your head in your hands" song was playing on the radio where the mechanics were working.

Now most people have never been fired from a job (at least most people who read this blog) so let me explain how it feels. It's exactly like being dumped. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's still how it is. It hurts and you wonder what you could've done differently to fix things and you don't want to find someone/somewhere else and you think about all the future plans that now will never happen and you knew there were problems but thought they were work-out-able and you listen to sad songs and purchase a huge ol' bad of Berry Colossal Crunch and forget which exit is yours when driving because you're so preoccupied with thoughts of loss and loneliness and you read Tess of the D'Ubervilles in one sitting and it's horrible. Well, slightly relieving, but horrible.

I was too sad to go home right away and have to speak to my darling husband about it so after I left the auto shop, I went to the pet store and held a little brown tabby kitten until I calmed down.

So maybe I'll go back to school...ugh, but I hate school. Or maybe I'll get another job...except I hate job searching. Or maybe I'll just sit around and live off the government...but I'll hate been unoccupied.

I was fired for tardiness/attendance issues. And had been so excited because having a car would help that so much. It's easy to be late to work when taking the bus. You miss the bus by a few seconds and it means you have to wait another 15 minutes. I wanted to drive the car to work every day.

I just really loved my job and was planning on staying there for the next couple years and had very little idea this was coming. That's all. Thanks for letting me cry to you.

Someone's little princess is hungry...will you help?

At my place of employment, we are currently participating in a food drive because we of course need to give back to the community that has provided so many suckers who want cheap websites throughout the years. In order to encourage us to donate food to this drive, numerous posters have been posted around the building with sad looking people and messages about how we need to help feed them. I noticed yesterday that, as far as I could tell, every person featured in these posters is white. I'm not really a racial equality activist sort (not that I don't think racial equality is important, it's just not an issue I personally get worked up about often), but I felt for a moment outraged that there were no other races featured on these posters.

I later realized, however, that as noble as my outrage may sound, they reason I even noticed was this: In my subconscious, I was just surprised that the hungry people aren't mostly Hispanic and black. Those are the poor people aren't they?

So apparently I'm the racist here.

Defining Childhood Moment #18

In November 1996, I was a public elementary school student learning to be a good United States citizen by having a mock presidential election. We learned tidbits about Bill Clinton and Bob Dole and then went into the little booths and selected who we wanted to be president of our great nation.

I proudly came home and told my parents that I had voted for Clinton. They told me they had voted for Dole and gave a little speech that was essentially about Republicans being better than Democrats. My parents probably don't remember giving this speech, but it was important to me. It was the first time I recall seriously thinking about politics. I learned that there were people who live solely off the government ("So paying taxes is kind of like fast offerings, that isn't bad is it?"); I learned that there are people who kill their babies before they are born ("There's no way that's legal; it's too sad."); I learned that there are people given jobs or college entrance because they were a race that was needed to meet quotas ("I didn't know anyone was racist anymore..."); I learned that there were males who wanted to marry males and females who wanted to marry females ("I don't know anyone like that, are you sure?"); I learned that some people want drug laws to be more lax ("But everyone knows drugs are bad, right?"). All sorts of things that I had never thought about before.

As my parents are fair people and rarely speak ill of anyone, I don't think this speech was as harsh as I remember it, but it seemed to me at the time that people who vote Democrat are bad people. I was ashamed. I also wondered about the prospects for eternal salvation for the next door neighbors who had an anti-Dole poster on their house. My parents had assured me that they were good people even though the mother was Jewish and the father was Unitarian or something and they didn't go to church much, so I knew they must have something going for them, but perhaps being Democrats would push them over the edge into the category of bad people.

Years down the road, the feelings of shame turned to feelings of pride. I had chosen on my own and gone against my own upbringing to choose who I personally thought was the best candidate. I was in elementary school and already establishing myself as a liberal thinker. Hooray for me!

But when I think about it seriously, I'm not kidding anyone. The reasons I remember picking Clinton over Dole are as follows:

1) He was the incumbent. I had seen President Clinton on TV several times while Dole was just some guy that I hadn't heard of until a few days before the election. I knew life was good at the time, and assumed that Clinton had something to do with that, so I didn't mind keeping him around.

2) I couldn't disassociate Bob Dole from Dole pineapples and one of the girls in our ballet carpool had once spilled Dole pineapple juice on the way to class and it was sticky and the back seat of the station wagon smelled really gross for a long time afterward. (I still can't drink pineapple juice, even though I have returned to my love of pineapple in general.) I could never vote for the horrible-smelling back seat of the station wagon.

God Concept

The other day I was listening to This American Life (excellent program, every time I listen to it I'm like, "Why don't I listen to this more often?") and they had this story about an Orthodox Jew who left the beliefs he'd grown up with because his hockey team lost a game that he had walked 14 miles to go see because it was on the Sabbath and he couldn't drive to get there. It was a pretty good tale, but the part that stuck with me was a conversation he and the person interviewing him had. It went something like this (and I'm completely paraphrasing because I couldn't find transcripts, but you'll get the idea):

Jew guy - I came from a kind of dysfunctional family with an over-bearing father, so when I'd go to Hebrew school and hear "Our Father who art in heaven", I'd be like "Don't tell me there's another one in heaven, he's bad enough at home!"

Interviewer - Interesting, as you say that, and I've never put this together in my life before, but my image of God is exactly like my image of my father, except bigger. Which is: he's usually not around; he'll sometimes take an interest; he means well; but mostly he's kind of like "you're on your own".

Jew guy - That's not mine; I wish that was mine. Mine was a God in Heaven lumbering around half-drunk, yelling at you and making rules that didn't make any sense.

As I was listening to this, I had a moment exactly like the one the interviewer had. I hadn't ever thought of it before, but my image of God is very close to my image of my father, but bigger. He's caring and loving, but sometimes over-bearing. Smart. Sense of humor. Plenty of rules, most of which turn out being good for me in the long run and some of which still don't make sense, but are mostly kept because I know I'll get in trouble. And for some reason, though there is no scriptural evidence for this whatsoever, I've always imagined God as a little stressed out all the time, and I'm pretty sure it's because that's how my dear father is.

I wanted to post this thought because I want to ask a question of you readers: Is your idea of God a pretty close match to your father? It seems to me that most people would find this true, but I need a wider pool to test this out.