Thoughts on Democracy and Voting

From a very young age, I have sometimes been interested in politics.

My first memory of political awareness and interest was from the second house that I remember living in. Almost everyone in my city had gardeners, and we did too. We had a few sculpted bushes in our front yard. "LOOK!" I'd tell someone, probably my parents (but maybe anyone who would listen). "PRESIDENT BUSH IS IN OUR FRONT YARD!" They would pretend to be interested, and I would lead them outside to one of the tall sculpted bushes. "See," I'd say. "President Bush." I would have been in first or second grade, and I remember thinking it was a clever joke, because Bush was the President's name, and we had one in our yard.

I remember some major political events, but the only other time I remember being especially interested was for my senior year of high school. I had an extremely liberal civics teacher, and I would correct him when he stated his opinions as facts. Most of my classmates were also very liberal (or didn't know or care, or care to know), so someone had to do it. [Dr. R agreed that he was doing it, anyway, and started drawing attention to the times when he didn't. "That is a fact, Ms. Mylastname," he would announce.] I was in that class for the 2000 election, and it was no secret that Dr. Ramp. did not want Bush to win. I was also 17, and could not vote. (Oh, the misery!) When Bush did win, I brought Republican BUSH cupcakes for my whole class, in celebration. They had red dots inside, and red sprinkles on top and said BUSH on each cupcake. I think I've blogged about that before, actually. But honestly, I don't think I knew too much about what Bush wanted for our country. Not really.

For my first year of college, I did student government, and was one of the senators. It was fun enough. I helped people register to vote, and I was moderately interested in politics for a little while.

And then, I completely lost interest in politics, and the news. On my mission, we were not supposed to discuss politics with people or follow the news, so that made it easier to be disinterested. But when I got back, I really wasn't interested either.

I think the main reasons were:
1. It takes a long time to follow the news and really have a good idea of what is going on. Reading up on issues and candidates is just very time consuming.
2. I got tired of hearing about the same things over and over again. I knew that September 11th had been something important for our country. I knew that people were dying in Iraq, and I knew that we were looking for Bin Laden, and I didn't want to hear the same things every day for months and years on end.
3. So much of the news and politics is negative. I have enough problems in my life without having to feel bad for even more people. It wasn't that I meant to be insensitive, just that watching the news made me sad, and I didn't want to feel sad about stuff that I couldn't really do anything about.
4. It seems like a lot of news and politics are subjective, and it's hard to predict what America really needs, or what will really work. Or how important integrity is among politicians, or how big of a role government ought to have. Everyone has such different feelings about it, and they all feel strongly about it, and I can kind of see where everyone is coming from. Since I can relate to most of the sides, it's hard to make a decision (especially without having taken the time to really understand the issues.)

There were probably other reasons, too. But I became really moderate, and stopped voting in local elections, and didn't read newspapers or watch the news on TV. I became really, really uninformed.

And then, for some reason, I became really interested in this presidential election. And politics in general. And when I visited DC, and took a tour of the Capitol, I became fascinated. It made me want to serve in the House of Representatives. It made me want to know what is going on, and do something. I've been following the news all day, every day since my trip. And I find it really dynamic and interesting.

Plus, I've been reading things that really talk a lot about how inactive my generation is, politically, and I can completely understand that, but I can also understand why we need to participate.

It is not our responsibility to put flag bumper stickers on our minivans, or to buy lots of fireworks for the Fourth of July, or to attend our American History classes just because we have to. But we do need to vote. We do need to learn about issues, and vote based on what we really feel or know to be right. And not for who or what our friends or families vote for, or for who we think would be cool for no reason. And if it's time consuming, or boring, or sad, that doesn't mean that we don't need to be responsible citizens anymore.

Democracy depends on people being informed and voting.

Digging!

"Digging" really is the perfect subject for this post, because I have two stories related to digging, and that's about the only thing they have in common.

The first thing is a story from a book that I'm reading.

"One summer, she helped me create a fantasy world in a large cardboard box. We used mirrors for lakes and twigs for trees, and I made up fairy-tale stories for my dolls to act out. Another summer, she encouraged my younger brother Tony to pursue his dream of digging a hole all the way to China. She started reading to him about China and every day he spent time digging his hole right next to our house. Occasionally, he found a chopstick or fortune cookie my mother had hidden there." (pg. 10, Living History, Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2003.)

How awesome is that?! I love that her mom hid fortune cookies and chopsticks for her brother. I bet the kid was totally delighted and felt like he was actually getting closer. I bet he was super excited about it. That's terrific. Every time I share that part with someone, it makes me laugh.

My other story about digging isn't really a story at all. It's just news: MY PLANTS HAVE SPROUTED! I am so happy! Today I noticed a bean sprout, a zucchini sprout, and two carrot sprouts. Also, my strawberry plants grew another berry that looks ready-ish and a few green ones.

The carrots kind of surprise me, because they come from seeds that are so so tiny. How can whole big green sprouts come from something so little? (Someday when I get married and have kids, I'll probably be fascinated with that too. It's just like life comes from nothing.) A carrot sprout is kind of a miracle, and it's amazing that all of the blades of grass, and trees, even just leaves on trees...all of that stuff, it's really incredible. Because scientists can grow seeds, and manipulate stuff sometimes, but I sure doubt they could pick the perfectly right molecules and assemble DNA and pack that stuff all together into a scientifically made seed. Every time they do something, they start with something that God has already made a miracle for.

Anyhow, there are miracles all around us. It's just a matter of watching for them. (This all reminds me of that scripture that says that everything bears witness of God.)

Here are some pictures of my lovely garden.


The End.

OBVIOUSLY, English is Different in the UK

I’ve noticed something funny about British speech that doesn’t really carry over into American English. People in the UK use the word “obviously” different than we do here.

In the United States, we use ‘obviously’ to mean “anyone can immediately tell”. For example, “Her hair is really obviously green.” It doesn’t matter if you know her or not, it’s REALLY green, and anyone can tell. Or, “obviously it’s a bad idea to run a red light.” Running a red light is dangerous, and everyone knows this. “Obviously, she made chicken for dinner.” It’s not beef tonight, it’s chicken, and I can smell it.

In the UK, people very often use ‘obviously’ to mean “It has become clear to me now.” “Obviously, I was at the hospital, and that’s why I forgot to cancel my account.” It becomes clear to me now that I forgot to cancel, because oh, right, of course, I was at the hospital. “Obviously, I entered my card for my mum, and she’s forgotten to cancel it.” “I hadn’t realized my mum forgot to cancel it, and you certainly would have had no way of knowing, but it’s become clear to me now.” “I’ve come to the end of my free time, so obviously I want to cancel.” None of these things are obvious to me at all (as someone who does not know them personally), nor do the people expect me to know. Interesting.

It’s kind of funny, because obviously, I’ve started to use ‘obviously’ when I talk to them. (See, that wouldn’t be obvious to you, the reader, at all.) And nobody ever says “That’s not obvious at all!” It’s just fine because it’s kind of like an interjection.

In the US, ‘obviously’ often confirms a common understanding between people talking, and in the UK, the understanding is not implied or expected, and ‘obviously’ is frequently a simple transition in conversation.

[Also, many, many men call me “my love” the same way many Italians call random people beautiful (“Hello, beautiful!”), and the same way that old American ladies call people “sweetie.” “My love” sounds less diminutive, though.]

Planting Seeds!

Yesterday I started planting my garden! I had purchased seeds on Friday, and planned to plant them on Monday. Monday came, and I trekked to Smith’s to start buying soil. Unfortunately, I encountered two problems. First, I had to walk through January to get to the store, and second, Smith’s only had one kind of soil, and it said multipurpose, but the picture was only of flowers.

Since I had to walk through a snow storm, I wondered if planting seeds and baby plants outside was such a good idea. I decided that starting the seeds indoors would be an acceptable solution, because the seed packets described the process in the instructions. (Also, I’m already afraid that I’ll kill the plants by giving them too much or not enough water, or too much or not enough sunlight, or too much or not enough fertilizer, or the wrong kind of fertilizer. Or by planting the seeds too deep. Adding snow to the equation didn’t seem like a good idea.)

And then, the soil that Smith’s has doesn’t say “vegetables” on it. And the picture is just of flowers. So I started talking with the florist lady who works there. “Ummmmm, look, I’m starting a garden,” I told her. “Will this stuff work?” I pointed to the soil. “Because it doesn’t say vegetables on it, but it does say multi-purpose. But the pictures are all of flowers. And I don’t want to eat chemicals.”

She looked at the package. “You’re trying to grow them organically? Well, this has Miracle Grow, so it probably has chemicals….but it does say multi-purpose….I think it would be fine. I use it for my herb garden.”

“Hm. Okay,” I said.

“And if you’re transplanting them anyway, you should be fine.”

“About that. Do you just use little plastic cups or Tupperware? Or what do you grow them in if you start them inside?”

“You can. Actually! There are these things that you can get, they’re pellets, and you can grow them indoors and the roots just go through, so then you just take the little things and plant them directly when you’re ready…Do you know where IFA is?”

“No…wait, so what are they…?”

And the lady told me all about these little things for starting seeds indoors. As soon as I heard about them I knew I had to have them. She told me where the store was.

Yesterday I went. I got an indoor greenhouse for starting 50 seeds. AND! I bought strawberry plants. I love strawberries! I really liked the store a lot. I actually just like country stores in general. Every time I visit a country store or ranch store, I wish I had a ranch. I want to take chicks home, and have a big garden, and horses, and wear a cowboy hat and boots.

But anyhow, I got home with my loot and planted the seeds. The way that the pellets worked is, they came in a tray. They started out hard, and looked like chocolate cookies. Then I added warm water, and they became little pots of soil wrapped in…well…something roots can go through.

I poked seeds into them. I planted cantaloupe, zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, and carrots. Hm. Fun. The seeds for the carrots and tomatoes were especially tiny, which will make them even more impressive plants.

And now I have to wait for them to grow. The package says they’re guaranteed to grow. I am less confident than that, but I hope it‘s true.

I just know this project is going to teach me loads of patience. My roommates and I went out to dinner last night, and when we came home, I wanted them to have sprouted already. They hadn’t.

Oh, and: here is a link to the blog post on FrugalDad that Erin shared to begin with. I wanted to post it yesterday, but my computer was not cooperating.

And, here is a link to Uffish’s post yesterday about gardening. I’m kind of excited about her and I both doing gardens this year. We can probably like…trade fresh vegetables or something.

In Which I Start a Garden

I have a new project!
(When don't I have a new project?)

A little before my trip, Erin shared a blog post about square foot gardening on Google Reader. Basically, the idea is: only use the amount of space that it actually takes to garden, use really rich soil, and you can grow a garden! So it's perfect for people who don't have time to weed/ have bad soil/ only have a balcony, etc; people can grow a garden even in 1ft square pieces.

This appealed to me for a few reasons:
1. I've been trying to eat more fresh/healthy food lately.
2. Organic stuff is appealing to me.
3. The price is right. (You start with seeds, which are basically wooden pebbles, and wind up with fresh vegetables!)
4. I had a plant on my mission since I couldn't have a pet. It was kind of cool to see it grow towards light and stuff. And get bigger. So I guess I like watching plants grow.

So I decided that I would build a garden!

On Friday I went to the man mall to get supplies. It was tricky. I learned how to tell the difference between treated and untreated wood. A nice thing about Home Depot is, though, the people who work there are suuuuuper helpful. A guy saw me looking at lumber and asked if I needed help. "YES!" I was like, "Okay...I need to get these things, and I don't know what they are..." He helped me go through my whole list. And he even helped me pick a good drill. (I was like "Look: I'm sure someday I'll get married and he'll have tools, and how often will I even use this anyway, so it doesn't need to be some $500 drill...but I don't want it to break in the middle of the project either." He understood.)

And THEN, another Home Depot guy carried huge heavy long boards for me, and cut them into the sizes I wanted. He even used the huge saw to cut me six little blocks to be feet underneath my garden. Nice.

The only problem was, I was supposed to get side boards that were 6" tall. And I thought, wait a minute, it's square FOOT gardening. So I wanted sides that were twice as tall. And I got them, but they were daaaang heavy. But fine, whatever. So I thought I would carry them and take the bus back home...except that I couldn't walk with the stuff at all. I had way too much heavy wood.

I ended up taking the bus and taking things in trips. It took me three trips to load everything onto and off of the bus. But it worked. And I wanted to build it the same day, because I was excited.

So I got everything ready...and realized that even though the display drill said it came with a 20 piece accessory kit (including drill bits), mine actually wasn't quite the same because it came with nothing of the sort, and didn't even mention an accessory kit on the package. I went and bought drill bits from a nearby store. And I bought vegetable garden seeds.

BUT! Nowhere had the right kind of soil!

And then Saturday, in between Conference sessions I constructed my garden. I was so proud of myself. Aside from having no dirt, it looks fantastic!

It is also very heavy, so I don't know how I'll move it in August. But whatever. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

NEXT POST: Planting seeds!

[NOTE: I'm not sure how I wound up with all of my pictures sideways. They started out right-side-up. I'll try and fix them tomorrow. EDIT: pictures corrected.]

Impossible Hobbies and Cross-Dressing

This afternoon I went to print something at the library. It's part of my unending quest to prove my residency to the University of Utah. And that's fine.

On the way to the library, I passed The Cotton Shop, which I know carries Amy Butler stuff. Which I like. I decided to go in and see they had any new fabrics from her lines. I stepped in the door and it was insanely busy. A girl handed me a ticket. "You'll want to hold onto this for the raffle," she said. I pretended I knew what she was talking about, and walked in. All over the store there were signs 'EVERYTHING 20% OFF' (unless marked with another sale). I had unwittingly stepped into Moonlight Madness! which is TONIGHT ONLY, from 5-9. Huh. Cool.

So I found a couple Amy Butler patterns that I wanted. I bought sophia carry-all and weekender travel bag. I also got fabric for the sophia carry-all, and interfacing. I still have to buy other stuff for it. I need lining, cording, a zipper, template plastic (whatever that is), etc, etc, etc. The bags are soooo cute though. And Amy Butler is trendy to people (my age anyhow) who sew. It never goes on sale.

I don't have a sewing machine, though. I don't know how to do zippers. Or piping on the edges. So it's a project that will probably have to wait until whenever I visit my mom. Too bad. I love my Amy Butler bag that I made before (the swing bag), and I think as soon as I finish these, I'll want to take them everywhere.

The girl behind me in the superlong line to have things cut recognized my bag. "Is that an Amy Butler bag?" "Mhmm" "It's so cute." "I love it. It was super easy, too." We had a whole conversation about it. She bought Amy Butler patterns and fabric, too. It isn't just me.

[That's the impossible hobby part of this post.]

I went to the library, and printed my thing. And got books! I'm going to read Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Strapped by Tamara Draut.

Then I went to the grocery store because Smith's has strawberries for $1.50/lb. And I picked up a few other things while I was there, but nothing really exciting. I started my walk home.

A couple blocks away from my house, I heard someone behind me as I was about to cross the street. The light changed. We crossed. "Can I help you carry your groceries?" a guy asked me. "Nah," I said without looking up. "They're actually not that heavy. It's just bread and stuff." (True.) "Okay," he said. It was nice of him to offer, anyway. And we took two separate paths, that both went the same way, and were about 5 feet apart.

I noticed that it seemed to be a guy, but he was wearing a light pink shirt. A fitted, woman's light pink shirt that had one of those empire-waist seams. It tied around the neck, with a bow. It was a very womanly shirt. I couldn't understand why a guy would wear something so obviously feminine. He was definitely a guy, though.

Our paths met up, and he kept talking to me. "It's a nice night," he said. "It is," I agreed. "It's nice that it's starting to get warmer." We talked about the weather for a few minutes, and about being from southern California. He was from the city next to mine. But had moved up to Utah quite a long time ago.

And he said it: "I hope I don't make you uncomfortable. Some people wouldn't want to walk with a cross-dresser." Aha. Things made more sense. "Nah. You can wear whatever you want," I told him.

And then we talked about whether or not I was attending BYU, which he doesn't care for.

And I got to my apartment, so I told him to have a great night, and we said goodbye. And that just goes to show that stereotypes are often unfounded. The guy offered to help me carry groceries, without even knowing me, and under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn't have started a friendly conversation with him. There is good in everyone.

Where in the World is Emily Sandiego?

Here's something fun and easy that will make you feel as smart as Chloe O'Brien:

I made my phone trackable. Any time you want, you can see where I am. For free!

Today I'll be going up to Salt Lake City. Then tonight I'm flying out to the Newark, and I'll be spending the next 9 days in New York City, Washington DC, and a little bit of VA.

If you want to watch me move around, go to Navizon.com and register. It's free, and they don't send you junk. Click on "Buddies/Groups" and then "Add Buddy" and my username is "emi255".

[NOTE: As I was typing this I realized I have a referral code. It is 5B5B5C5A5D5B . If you want to enter it, that's great. I get referral points. If you don't want to, that's okay too, because that wasn't the reason I was telling you all about this.]

It will ask me if I approve of you adding me, and I'll approve anyone who adds me. And then, whenever you want, you can click "View" to see where I am. It uses cellphone towers to track where I am through my cellphone. I've been watching it track me on my phone over the past few days and it seems like it's usually accurate within 5 blocks or so. I think that's close enough for it to be fun to watch, but far enough for me to feel entirely unconcerned about being trackable.

My phone has another feature that is really cool. If you want to talk to me, it will find where I am, wherever I happen to be, and it will let you talk with me instantly! Amazing. And you don't even have to register at all for that. Phones these days!

Taxes (reprise), Commercialism, and My Life (in general)

I was going to say that this has been a good week, but really it's only been a halfway decent week. That's fine. Not every week has to be the best week. It wasn't a bad week, anyway.

On Monday I went to file my taxes at BYU. The accounting department at BYU has a service that they offer during tax season, and they'll file your taxes for free. One of my friends told me about it last year, and it worked out well for me last year, so I went again this year. EXCEPT, last year they didn't accept appointments, and this year they started accepting appointments. Which I didn't realize. So everything fills up way faster because they have fewer "stand by" openings. And even though I went as soon as I could, they were done accepting people. Too bad.

I went back on Tuesday, and put my paper on the stack of papers before they were even open. Even though I left my house right after work, and got there pretty early, my little paper (which I had pre-filled-out) was nowhere near the top. It said that the estimated wait was about 3 hours, so I grabbed a sandwich from Subway. I sloooowwwlllyy ate my lunch, and then I went back to the accounting lab on the first floor of the library to wait and wait and wait.

Every really not so often, a girl would come out of the lab, look at the list of appointments, go to the bottom of the stack of standby papers, and call the next person. And then! She kept coming out of the lab(!) and ended up calling a few people instead of just one!

And the last time she came out, she looked at the appointments, and rifled through the stack of standbys, and she just stopped and stood there looking kind of confused.

A girl near me started laughing. (We were about 25 feet away, I'd guess.) The girl near me had gotten up and walked past the stack of papers (and the people waiting over there) about 20 minutes ago. "He put a paper in there to ask her on a date!" she told the people at her table. The girl calling people turned around and started talking to the guy waiting there. I couldn't hear what they were saying. After about four minutes or so, she went back to the stack of standbys again. "Samuel?" she called, grinning. She looked around at all of us who were waiting. "Sorry about the delay." AWESOME. It made me happy. It also made me wonder a lot: did she know him already? She was pretty. It could have been some random guy. Did she actually accept and go out with him? Who knows.

And then on Thursday something else happened that was wonderful. I passed by a Goodbye! party for Thirdmango. While I was there, Optimistic told me about a blog that I needed to be reading but had never heard of. And when he told me about it, everyone else was like "Emily doesn't read it? OHH." And everyone started telling me the basic idea behind it. It's called The Leila Texts, and it turns out, it actually is something that I love. Basically, it's this girl who-- by some random Verizon technology twist-- receives tons of texts meant for other people with her name. If you have never read it, you should. It's really excellent. She copies all of the texts she receives onto her blog and then writes really funny comments along with them. And if it had happened to, like, a grandma, it probably would have been less funny, but it's this 23 year old girl. Super.

AND, at the same party, I saw Mr. Keith. He was the first person I knew to get an iphone. And he let me play with it at Happy Pirates when it was still really new. Anyway, he had seen my Gchat status (16GB of AWESOME!) and had guessed that I had one too, and we talked iphones for a little while. Fun! He really strongly recommended me getting an Invisible Shield on my phone.

Now here's the thing about Invisible Shields: I really didn't know much about them before my chat with Mr. Keith. I knew that my mall has one of those like, carts in the middle of the walkway for Invisible Shields, but frankly, I always sort of thought they were lame. I kind of compared Invisible Shields with Ab Rollers and Magnet Bracelets and other Infomercial treasures.

Mr. Keith told me all about them though. They make phones grippy, instead of super slippery. I've worried about that since I got my phone. He let me look at his. Hm. Grippy is good. AND, they protect the phone. Mr. Keith said he didn't want any scratches on his phone at all, so that was important to him. He could slide his iphone across the floor and with the Invisible Shield it wouldn't be scratched at all. You wouldn't even be able to tell. No way, I told him. He said he'd done it before. And his phone wasn't scratched. Hm. He said it was worth every penny, and that I should get one. So I (of course) immediately wanted one.

And I got one on Saturday. So far I really like it. Another benefit of the Invisible Shield: my phone fits better in my pocket, since it isn't a bulky case.

I can think of a few things that people have strongly recommended to me: Tilex (which is a bathroom cleaner, and WORKS), and The Magic Eraser (which is another cleaning product). I haven't bought any Magic Erasers yet, but I have had multiple people strongly recommend them to me. And I promise, I really don't go around talking about cleaning products with me. So for them to come into random conversation with someone my age, from multiple people, I expect them to be amazing. Also, pork salads from Cafe Rio. I used to get steak. Now I only get pork salads there. Someone strongly encouraged me to try that, and there has been no going back.

I asked one of my coworkers if she had ever bought something because someone else had really talked it up. She couldn't think anything at first, and then she said that she went to MAC because I recommended it. It's true. I do recommend MAC. Whenever people compliment my complexion, I always tell them it's actually just that I do a good job with my makeup. Which is also true. I hadn't realized that she went though.

So I have a question for all three of my readers: What have you bought because someone else made it sound like you should really get it?

I realize that people have had experiences like the one that LJ had with her Jambalaya, but surely you've bought something good because someone recommended it.

Done with CERT

Last Friday we had our final CERT meeting. It was actually our mock-disaster, and it was excellent!

It was held on Friday evening because the in-charge-ish captain from the Fire Department wanted to be there and couldn't come at our normal Tuesday night class time.

He picked four group leaders, and they each stood in corners of the room and took turns picking people from our class to be on their teams. I am proud to report that I was the second person picked out of our entire class. It was like public school physical education classes, where people from the class are chosen one by one. I used to always be picked last for that stuff, because I don't have an athletic bone in my body. Or muscle either. So I felt kind of bad for the last people picked, because I would have been happy to have any of them on our team. And being picked last sucks.

And now, an aside: something funny about our class is that there have been some funny issues with people's names. One lady who almost always sat in front of me was named Diane. (She still is, actually.) We had a fire fighter who started calling her Dinae (rhymes with Janae), though. And he didn't just do it once or twice, either. He name-dropped like crazy, as though he was trying to make her feel good because he was using her name, except that he had it wrong. And she corrected him once, and he made some excuse, and winked to keep it light-hearted. But then he went back to accidentally calling her that. So for the last few classes, a lot of us have called the lady Dinae, just because it's funny. She smiles about it too.

The other funny name thing is, we had a guy named Jeffrey. Jeffrey's an interesting guy. Anyway, our fire guy (for several weeks) was called Jeff. And before Jeff's second class, we had a conversation about names. (The firefighter Jeff remembered my name, because his wife is also an Emily (whose isn't?), but I hadn't remembered his name from the week before.) And Jeffrey from our class started talking about how he likes to be called Jeffrey and not Jeff, because his name isn't Jeff, and people shouldn't be lazy and shorten it. And the firefighter Jeff (who was actually really a Jeffrey but goes by Jeff), couldn't understand why Jeffrey was making a big deal about it, but even if it was kind of weird, Jeffrey was really clear about it anyway. AND THEN! Our firefighter Jeff obviously forgot all about it, because he shortened the guy in our class's name every time. It was really funny, because he wasn't doing it on purpose, but it obviously bothered Jeffrey even though he didn't mention it again.

Anyway, same guy in our class, Jeffrey, has also been really odd. He's from the singles ward that participated in our CERT. He's told us a few times about how he didn't kiss anyone until he was 29. And he has made a lot of winning comments like, "What if I can't touch anyone? Am I going to be able to do this in an emergency if I can't touch anyone? Because I really can't touch people. This one time, a lady was having [I forget what emergency] and I was right there, but someone else had to help her because I couldn't touch her." Or, "Last year, I made $9000, and I was only homeless for three days!... I lived with my girlfriend a lot that year. She was my fiance, but we didn't get married." Or, "I paid a lot of money to DeVry, but they wouldn't give me a degree because I'd never heard of algebra. Since when are numbers letters? Numbers should just be numbers. I was in special ed, and we never did algebra. I'd never heard of algebra before. So it was a waste of money. I have a high IQ, I just don't see things like other people do." Or, another time, someone asked everyone in class how they were doing, and he said "I have high blood sugar!" It was really very funny. The other people from his ward had heard all of his stories about 15 times, so they rolled their eyes a lot, I think. He was a nice guy, anyway.

Anyway, so the fire guy in charge of our CERT event picked four people, and he picked Dinae, and Jeffrey, and two other random people from the class. And of course Jeffrey picked me first for his team. So the whole event was really exciting. Jeffrey was supposed to be our team leader, and he didn't really do anything, because he was nervous about it all. Poor guy. At one point, he used special ed as an excuse. I told him, though, "Jeffrey. There is no special ed here. It's just CERT. And you're on CERT, and I'm on CERT, and we're all part of CERT, and we're all equal. And we just do our best, and don't worry too much, and you can do this. " So we had a little pep talk and kept going.

Basically, the way that the event worked, was, there were volunteers (mostly youth) who had fake injuries. Really good makeup fake injuries. So they looked like burn victims, and bruised, and bloody, and they were hidden all around the church building. And we had to find them, and organize things as though there were a real emergency and we were responding. There was search and rescue, and medical stuff, and so on. So we had 12 minutes to respond, and then the whole situation reset, and our group switched to a different responsibility. The first time, our organization was awful, and we totally didn't find all of the people, and were not very efficient, etc. By the fourth rotation, we did a pretty good job. I think in a real emergency, we would get the hang of it, even if we weren't completely organized until 15 or 20 minutes into the emergency.

My favorite part of the whole thing was using fire extinguishers. Which we finally did.

We took our pictures for our cards, had some final conversation about how things went, and CERT ended. Now I have a green backpack full of emergency response stuff, some interesting friends, a bunch of memories, a little bit of preparation for if there were (or when there is) an emergency, and free Tuesday nights.

New Music! (To me.)

Suppose you order something out of stupidity. You forget to cancel something that renews. You click the wrong button. Whatever. And then you think that an easy to get out of having to pay is by contesting it with your credit card company. Well, you can do that, and they can try to process a chargeback, but you really did order it (we have your name correct and your address correct, and your email address, and your cellphone number etc etc etc) and so you lose anyway. To be nice, some card companies will call to check into things before they process a chargeback. It's cheaper for us and for the card company, and for you the consumer. And the card company will ask if we're willing to set up a refund for you, since you didn't mean to order it, and usually we are, and things are ok even though you're not the brightest.

So for my job, I every few weeks or so will speak to someone from a card company. And usually they talk to me about it, and have our customer on hold, and they switch between talking to them and me, and then connect the two of us. Fine.

Today I talked to someone from American Express. And while they had me on hold for a little bit, I heard a song that I really liked. So I Googled the part that I remembered, "someday you're going to realise" "right up" and found it! It's "Fill My Little World" by "The Feeling", which is a British band from Sussex. I didn't think I had ever heard of them until I listened to one of their other songs, "Sewn," which was massively popular. And I did know that one.

So now today, I am just loving "The Feeling". Fun. Hooray for British hold music as a way for me to discover music.

Another Story Involving Police

Today I worked at my mall job. Partway through the day, a couple of girls from our store went to get soda. They had to go to the food court, because one of the places offers 'mall drinks', which are the huge size of cups, for $1 instead of like $3 or whatever large mall sodas cost.

They were gone for quite a while, and when they came back, they came from the wrong direction. We asked about it and they said there were a bunch of police out in front of our store (well, to the side a little). They said we should go peek. They were really curious about it.

I went out and walked around the whole scene and came back to report. There was a blond lady sitting on a mall bench, and one police guy was standing kind of near her. There was a group of police talking with a guy in a polo shirt, and another policeman with a Hispanic man. The incident stretched around half of a cellphone sales kiosk in the middle of the walkway.

What could it be, we wondered. Maybe sexual harassment, one of my coworkers thought.

We saw one of the policemen start questioning the lady. A little while later, they all left. They walked all kind of in a line, with the Hispanic guy in front, wearing handcuffs.

And like that, the situation dissolved. My coworkers kept wondering aloud what it was all about. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is not curious at all and 1o is extremely curious, I think I was probably at about a 2.5, and my coworkers were at about a 7.5 or an 8.) My coworker suggested I go out and ask the guy in the phone kiosk. And so I did.

What had happened was, the guy tried to steal shoes from a popular athletic shoe store in the mall. There had been someone following him, though, so they caught him. He was taken to jail for it. And get this: the blond lady was his girlfriend?/wife? and she's pregnant with his kid. Due-in-five-days pregnant with his kid. And he's in jail now.

So here's the moral of the story, kids: don't steal. Especially if your girlfriend is about to have a baby. Because that's just sad. If you can't afford shoes, buy some at DI. Or steal them from somewhere that isn't in a mall. (Have I written about how I feel about malls in that regard? I don't think so. I'll have to do that sometime.)

Also, this week I gave notice that I'll be finishing my work at the mall. This month marks one year of mall-working thrill and I think I've had my fun. I'm just too busy for it these days. I have three shifts left as of today.

Entertainment brought to you by the IRS: Tax Quotes!

I'm working on a special, top secret project which I find very interesting. (What else is new?) Because of this project, I discovered that the IRS has on their own website a list of Tax Quotes. And by 'quotes' I don't mean estimates. I mean things that people have said about taxes.

I'm shocked. I thought the IRS would be far too boring and serious of an entity to poke fun at themselves. Huh. Who knew.

My favorite quote from the list is: Actually, I have two favorites. They are:

“I am proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is – I could be just as proud for half the money.” — Arthur Godfrey, entertainer

“People who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.”
— Unknown

Go on, see for yourself.

Fascinating, eh? Next thing you know, the IRS will be coming out with its own record label.
They can include this stuff on the first one:

1. The Taxes Song from the YT Debates <--- not bad.
2. Money (That's What I Want) The Flying Lizards<-- of course
3. TurboTax: The Rap <--- WOW!
4. Money Money Money; ABBA <-- also, of course
5. The guy done with his taxes music video. <-- huh?

Our food will make you 7% smarter. And nicer.

Something about healthy food, which kind of makes me laugh, is that there are quotes all over the place. Maybe they think that if you’re thoughtful enough to not be eating foods that hurt the environment, you’re a pretty thoughtful person, and they want to encourage that. I really don’t know. The brand names are exciting, and they put quotes on things.

Here is a quote from my box of wholesome, whole-wheat, vegetarian brownies:

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

And another one from my vegan breakfast cereal (which, by the way, is delicious):

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” - Baba Dioum, Senegalese conservationist

And the fun doesn’t stop there. Brownies have that quote, but the chocolate chip cookie box has a different one. And Wild Berry Crisp has Baba’s quote, but the Mango cereal has a totally different quote. And these are the only two I have on hand to blog about. Every day, all I have to do is eat, and I nourish my body AND mind. (Psh. And some people think they’re lucky to have word searches on the back of their cereal…)

Someone called the police.

Yesterday Erin and I went geocaching. [I'm so sorry that all of my blog posts are about caching lately! I promise that I actually do still have other hobbies! After this I have one more story to blog about that is half geocaching related, and then I'm done.]

I got a new phone which is really awesome because it lets me access the normal Internet from anywhere. Great! So the idea was that we would go to an area that I hadn't found much in, and then just look up stuff to find as we went.

We decided to go out by the Provo Town-ey Centre. And since we drove up behind it, we chose a particular cache in back to look for, and started looking. It was a BYOP cache (Bring Your Own Pen), which means that it's usually small enough for there to be no pen inside. Great. So it was probably going to be tiny.

The coordinates led us to a big power box out in the back of the mall parking lot, next to a kind-of busy road. There were also a couple trees the cache could be in, if it was really small, and really camouflaged, and the coordinates were a bit off, so we searched them too. Mostly we searched the power box, though, because it just had to be there somewhere. The difficulty was rated 4/5, which meant it was pretty hard, and someone had commented that it was clever.

We looked and looked, and didn't find it. And finally, right before we were about to give up, Erin found it. And it was clever.

And we walked back to the car, and I pulled up some nearby caches on my phone. And then we saw a police car going around the bend. "Oh, great," we thought. The police car pulled up near us, and the policeman got out and came up to our car. "What are you up to today," he asked after I opened the door. The mall security police van pulled up next to the police car. "Geocaching!" I told the policeman, and I held up my GPS and phone. He didn't say anything for a few seconds. "If it would make you feel better, I can show you where the cache is, " I offered, grinning.

He did want to see it. It was lucky that we'd found it, because otherwise I couldn't have shown him. He and I walked across back to the power box, and I showed him. "Do you get a lot of calls for geocaching?" "Quite a few. We had someone leave one in front of the police station, and of course if people leave a box in front of the police station, you don't just wonder about it. You call the bomb squad...." He told me about one time there was a cache out at Utah Lake where they had opened the box and were really confused with the contents "there's a deck of cards...and some papers and..." It was pretty funny. The police seemed to have gotten a big kick out of it just being geocaching.

Someone had reported us tampering with the power box, and they thought that maybe we were trying to turn out the power for the whole mall.

(Why would anyone even want to do that?)


Our final cache that we found yesterday was also exciting. It was one that required hiking. It took us about an hour to find it and get back to the car. Mostly because we didn't realize that there was parking about 50 feet from the cache. So we hiked a long way up the dried, rocky creek. About when we reached a big, fresh, bloody, furry deer carcass that smelled awful, we realized there was a paved road right along the creek on the south side. But it was too hard to climb out of the creek on the south side, so we climbed out on the north side instead. And then to cross the creek we had to hike up to a trail about 100 feet above us, at a very-upward angle. Then back down and across the whole thing at a part with a real trail.

I think if we had parked at the right spot it would have probably taken us 10-15 minutes total. Ah well. Hiking is good. And the weather was great.

Another Geocaching Post, Sort of.

Jess and Mitch have a geocaching joke. To humor my mom and I, they pretend that they're really interested in geocaching.

The joke is especially funny when Jess texts me.

9:00pm 1/18/08 From: Jess
Em, we've gotten like six geocaches on our way to Rexburg. I mean ten. Wish you were here.

11:17pm 2/12/08 From: Jess
Mitch said he's super sad that he's going to miss geocaching when youre here. Stupid trip to Chicago. OH WAIT! Ill bet there are geocaches in Chicago!

AND THEN! While I was actually visiting Jess, she and Mitch had a text message conversation that was similar:

11:13am 2/23/08 FROM: JESS TO: MITCH
We're still looking up geocaches. [sigh]

11:14am 2/23/08 FROM: MITCH TO: JESS
Oh... You love spending 55 hours looking for geocaches. Make sure you collect lots of geocoins. I have allready found 12 in Chicago so you will have to beat me.

11:15am 2/23/08 FROM: JESS TO: MITCH
Really? Well, we are finding a bunch of travel bugs so that we can move them.

11:16am 2/23/08 FROM: MITCH TO: JESS
Oh yeah I uh did 17 of those too... I am the best geocacher ever.

11:17am 2/23/08 FROM: JESS TO: MITCH
Gosh, youre a way better geocacher than me. Are you letting all your work friends help find them too?

11:17am 2/23/08 FROM: MITCH TO: JESS [no, her husband isn't texting me love messages.]
Yeah we have been skipping lunches and breaks to find them. Love you pretty girl.


So, that was the conversation that they had, which Jessica read to me as it happened. AWESOME. I had her forward them to me so that I could post about this.

The thing that's really funny about it all is, they don't geocache at all. Ever.

Geocaching in Sacramento

This weekend I went to San Francisco to visit Jess.

We didn't actually go to San Francisco because I've already been. I went there when my choir went on tour in 2001, and when I went with them we did all of the touristy stuff.

Instead, Jess and I went to Sacramento. I thought I had never been before, except that Jess reminded me that we drove through Sacramento on the way back from Canada one time when we were little. Oh, right. I guess we did. It was worth visiting again, though.

I wanted us to go geocaching in Sacramento, but we didn't have a ton of time, and most of the ones where we were going to be were teeny tiny, so I chose a virtual one for us to do instead.

Virtual caches are things where there's no tupperware to find, and instead you find a "treasure" that is already there. For example, the Golden Gate Bridge probably has a virtual geocache. It's stuff that's just cool to see, without you needing to be enticed by plastic soldiers, marbles, and old Christmas ornaments. Usually with a normal geocache there is a "log" to sign. You write your name on a piece of paper, and that proves that you found it. With virtual caches, since you're not going to graffiti someone else's treasure, you prove that you found it by answering a question from a historical plaque or by posting a picture of you in front of the cool thing.

The virtual cache I chose was "California's Treasures" which was right across from the capitol building. The cache was a building that had two statues of California's treasures, and when you were walking to look at them you were also standing above a 280 ton concrete and steel vault with millions and millions of dollars worth of stuff in it.

Jess and I used the GPS to find the right spot. (Across the fountain was another building with two statues; it was dedicated to fallen officers.) Jess was really confused by the whole thing. Especially because the statues were naked.

"Naked treasures?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said, nonchalantly.
"That's weird."
"Not really." Providence is often represented by a naked woman.

We went up and found out who the building was dedicated to, and Jess and I kept talking about money and stuff, because of the vault. And how weird she thought it was that they would have naked treasures. I wrote down the name of one of the treasures represented, "Mineral Wealth" and had her take my picture with him. And I think that was about when we realized that she had misunderstood-- she thought the statues were supposed to be of treasurers.

AWESOME.

So our conversation had actually gone like this:

"Naked treasurers?" she asked me.
"Yeah," I said, nonchalantly.
"That's weird." (Treasurers are usually dignified people that would not be sculpted naked to be put in front of a building. Even one with a big vault.)
"Not really." (?!!)

It still makes me laugh.

Mall Job Entertainment

I've been sorting papers this evening. I tend to save wayyy more stuff than I need to. (But! What if I need the receipt for my hairspray that I bought in London almost a year ago and have since thrown away because it was crappy and cost less than a dollar for the whole can??)

Anyhow, I did find something kind of funny. (Actually, I've found several funny things, but this is one that I think I meant to post about a while ago.)

Back before the flood at the mall, when in our old location and business was hopping, there used to always be at least a few of us working at once. It was sometimes kind of boring, and I came up with a game. I was planning on playing it solitaire-style, but my coworkers wanted to participate too.

The way it worked was, I made a list of things to watch for. (It was kind of like a situation scavenger hunt crossed with the game Phase 10.) Once you saw the first thing, you initialed it, and then you could start watching for the second thing. Whoever observed all ten items first won.

Here's the list:

1. Someone who speaks Spanish. [Super easy.]
2. Someone whose shoes match their outfit really well. [And the shoes had to match more than just their purse.]
3. Two girls trying on sunglasses.
4. "This is so cute."
5. Full price item on the sale rack. [The sale rack is near the fitting rooms, so people sometimes hang their stuff that they don't want there. It's really annoying, because we try to pull out the stuff that's full price, and all of the sale items have SALE stickers on their tags, but sometimes we miss stuff and then people are mad at us when they discover at the register that the cute new thing they fell in love with isn't really half price.]
6. Someone wearing glasses who wants to get into a dressing room.
7. Someone who asks what the exchange policy is. [It is posted EVERYWHERE, and we tell every single person who buys something.]
8. Someone who asks where something is from on a mannequin.
9. Someone who asks to get down an aqua jacket. [This was a tricky one. It required someone to ask us to use a pole to get down a specific thing.]
10. Someone who asks us to hold 'till Monday. [We only hold things until closing...]

In which the progatonist gets to know her hot UPS guy better on Valentine's Day.

Something kind of funny and disappointing just happened this morning.

See, I've been working at my mall job for almost a year now. Eleven months, actually.

I had an early meeting at my real job, so on the way home, I stopped by the mall to hang out with my manager. I adore her. She and I would be friends in real life except that we're both always intensely busy.

Anyway, the UPS guy brought a huge delivery today. He needed me to write a couple checks and he wondered if we had a cashier's check for another delivery which he had let us know about yesterday. (I didn't know anything about it, and my manager had gone Valentinesing, so I told him sorry, we didn't have it.)

He left. My manager came back. I told her about the cashier's check and she called the owner, who said that we actually did have the cashier's check. So my manager went to look for the UPS guy at his truck, and while she was gone, I totally saw Apollo go past the front of our store with his half-empty cart. I stopped him and let him know that oh, wait, it turned out we actually did have it. He said he'd bring the box back.

While we were waiting for him to bring the box back, my manager talked about him shamelessly. It's really no secret that our UPS guy is hot. He has an amazing smile. (Who doesn't have a hot UPS guy?) And then my manager said something about us calling him Apollo because of that. Wait. So his name isn't really Apollo? I've worked there for almost a year and we've always called him Apollo. Too bad. I asked her what his real name was and she didn't know. WHAT. Turns out, she'd seen him every day for two years, and she didn't know his name.

So when he came back, we asked his name. He has a totally normal guy name.

As he left, my manager looked over at me solemnly and said "I liked Apollo better." "Me too," I agreed.

I totally always thought his real name was Apollo. Disappointing!

Oh, good.

I registered to vote a couple months ago and my voter registration card came in the mail. Today.

That's helpful.

Gelato

A couple nights ago I went for sushi with Uffish and a couple other girls.

Afterwards we decided to go up a block for gelato from Maestro's. Their gelato is excellent.

"Do you have any ginger?" Uffish asked the guys behind the counter.

"No..." one of them said, "We do have crepes, though."

Uffish looked at him for a few seconds and then said "OH! You misheard me! I asked if you had any ginger flavored gelato."

"Oh," the guy said "Yeah, sometimes we have that but we don't right now."

He had totally thought she asked if they served dinner. Which I still giggle about because who goes to a gelato store for dinner?

Then we ordered our gelato and it was delicious. The end.

Today is Official "Read the Terms and Conditions" Day!

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, as of September 30, 2007, 1.244 billion people use the Internet according to Internet World Stats; and

WHEREAS, E-commerce product sales totaled $146.4 billion in the United States in 2006, representing about 6% of retail product sales in the country (http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/14/news/economy/online_retailing/); and

WHEREAS, credit cards are the most common form of payment for Internet shopping; and

WHEREAS, if you enter your credit card number, your billing address, and your security code online, it is highly likely that you will be charged for the service that you are registering for; and

WHEREAS, most websites have posted terms and conditions that you must agree to in order to use the services of the websites or make purchases; and

WHEREAS, the purpose of having people agree to the terms and conditions is so that people are aware of the terms and conditions; and

WHEREAS, you cannot claim "unauthorized charges" and have fees reversed for items that you have actually ordered simply because you didn't read or remember what you agreed to; and

WHEREAS, not reading the "terms and conditions", especially when you are entering personal information online is a very very bad idea; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the Writer of this Blog, That the twenty-fifth day of January, in 2008 and in each succeeding year, be designated as “Official 'Read The Terms and Conditions' Day" everywhere; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Writer of this Blog hereby recognizes the importance of reading contracts before you agree to them; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Writer of this Blog calls upon all readers of the blog to reflect upon the significant roles and many contributions of Terms and Conditions to the nation and all people throughout history and today, and to celebrate this day with appropriate activities and events that honor this rich legacy, like reading Terms and Conditions; and, be it

RESOLVED FINALLY, That the Writer of this Blog will post the designation of this day on her own blog.


There you have it! Go nuts, everyone. I challenge each of you to read the terms and conditions for anything that you register for today.

Extra Credit Assignment: Read all bold writing on the pages of your registration. (Hint: bold writing will often contain important information about what you are registering for!)

Second CERT Class

One time, when I worked at the little Italian restaurant, our big extinguisher exploded and coated EVERYTHING in the kitchen and food prep rooms in the white powder. The restaurant was closed for two days while the mess was cleaned. Those days happened to be days that I didn't have work. So I only heard about it. Before CERT, this was my only experience (if that can even count at all) with fire extinguishers. I was definitely excited for last night's class, for which we had been instructed to wear appropriate clothing, and bring eye protection and leather gloves for putting out fires.

I have been extremely busy over the past two weeks. Most days I'm getting 4-6 hours of sleep, because I've been working a lot of overtime. Jess and Mitch stopped by, and I asked them to pretty-please go purchase gloves for me. And they did, and it was funny because Jess brought the gloves back, and we looked at them, and I tried one on, and set it aside when I got a call for work. And then I picked up the gloves again after the call, to realize that even though Jess and I had really looked at the gloves, there were actually three instead of two! They were rubber banded together as a triplet instead of a pair. Excellent. I was extra prepared to put out fires, because if anything happened to my left glove I had a spare (I had one left? ha ha.).

And it ended up being all for nothing, because when we got to our class, the fire marshall started by telling us that the weather created a hazard and we would be unable to use the fire extinguishers today. Too bad.

He promised that we would definitely get to do the activity before our class finishes in March, though.

Here are some interesting things that I learned during my class, anyway:

- In fires, some hazardous materials deflagrate and some detonate. "It's not something we're going to sit around and figure it out," the fire marshall said. "Wow, is this going to deflagrate or detonate? One changes four zip codes, the other changes eight. " (He said that when he teaches police and fire people, he tells them one means you could possibly have an open casket funeral, and the other means they'll never find you.)

- It is unlawful to store more than 1 gallon of gasoline in an enclosed building. Sooo, even if you had a ton of money and wanted to be super emergency prepared, the most gas you can have in your garage in case of an emergency is 1 gallon.

- Pine and gas burn at the same heat - about 600 degrees.

- "Something about going into Meth labs... Tweakers are funny people. If it says 'go to Albertsons and get Red Devil Lye', will they go to Smiths? No way."

- Latex paint is a hazard when it's wet, but not when it's dry. So you can let it dry and then just throw it away with normal trash. With oil paint, you should paint a board and let it dry, repeatedly, and then just throw the board away with normal trash.

- Multi cord adapters are often illegal. ("You go to the discount store, get some multi-cord adapters in a bag, we call those 'fire in a bag.' Go somewhere nicer and it comes in a box, we call that 'fire in a box.'")

- 90% of all kitchen fires happen when the cook is away from the kitchen.

- NEVER pour flour on a fire. It is extremely flammable and will not put out the fire.

- When you walk into a building, know where the exits are. The closest exit is not always the one that you came in.

All fire is is rapid decomposition.

I'm still busy with things. It seems these days I'm going back and forth between being pleased about certain things and quite frustrated about other things.

For example, I'm done with winter. I've had my fun, and I'm ready for spring. I hate the snow, I hate the cold. And I'm not exaggerating, either. I do exaggerate some times, but last night I waited an hour for my stupid bus, and spent it taking inventory of all of me that was frozen. (My ears were frozen. My legs were frozen. My arms were frozen. My eyeball fluid was frozen. My cells were frozen, etc.) And that was when I decided I've had enough of this weather.

I've had enough of walking, too. I've walked so many miles this week.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Qwest said they would have my phone line connected at my new apartment today. I can work from home again. I hope it doesn't bother my roommates. Guess I'll find out soon enough.

Also positive news, I started my CERT classes last night. I feel really good about doing that. Our class has about thirty people participating. It's a stake thing for a stake near the Provo temple. They do these trainings in groups of like 25-40 people, and it turns out that the reason is so that they can have pockets of like...prepared people that can work as a team to do a bunch of stuff to respond to a disaster before the real emergency people can come.

So I'm becoming a team with a group of people that I don't really live by. AND! They're from like, two family wards, so everyone knows everyone (or half of everyone). But it's still definitely worthwhile training. We're going to come up with team assignments, though, and that's going to be interesting, because I probably won't be anywhere near here the next time I'm in a disaster. But I guess with disasters probably a few people from the group would die or be unable to help anyway...

It makes me want to get everyone around me all emergency prepared. I want my ward to do CERT. I want my workplace to have us all do CERT. Ah well.

Here are some nice tips for you:

- When you go into buildings (especially ones you work in, or spend a lot of time in), notice where the breakers and shut off valves are, and where the fire extinguishers are. It turns out to be kind of important.

- If you're in an emergency, they used to fish for your driver license and haul you off to the hospital trying to figure out who you were. Now, they'll look in your cellphone to see who you've spoken with recently. If you label people in your phone as ICE (which is for "In Case of Emergency"), they'll call them first.

- Presented with the choice, stack your firewood uphill from your house instead of next to your house. Fire burns uphill. It'll take a lot longer for the fire to get to your house if the wood catches fire.

And then, as part of our homework assignment for this week, our book says:

"Wear appropriate clothes to the next session (no shorts or open-toed shoes), because you will practice putting out a small fire with an extinguisher."

AWESOME.

Eavesdropper Extraordinaire

In a previous post I mentioned that I recently passed the test and got my ham radio license. Having been assigned my callsign, the FCC now lets me use certain frequencies to talk to people. Neat. In order to pass the test, I needed to know how to use a ham radio, so I should be fine and having conversations with people all over the world, right? Right?

I finally decided to buy a ham radio. A nice thing about them is that you can get ham radios that do different things and cost different amounts of money. So if you want the best of the best, you can spend your $6000 or whatever, and get yourself a station that is really good. And you can transmit on lots of different frequencies and your signal is clear so people can hear you, and all that.

Or, back in the day, people used to make their own radios. Really, it's all just electronics, so if you know what you're doing, you can. And that works too. I just listened to a conversation about guys who used to make their own 160m antennas out of stacked beer cans. (You just drink the beer, stack the cans, and solder them together...) They said the reception wasn't excellent, but hey, it worked.

And then, if you're like me and just getting started, you can get a little handheld thing that looks like an intense walkie-talkie, and still talk to people but mostly nearby-ish. And not have to solder anything. Or pay thousands.

I had my eye on the IC-T90A, which has 3 bands for transmitting instead of just 1 or 2, and still looks supercute. Well, cute for a radio.

I'd been watching them online, and knew about what they were going for (about $200 on eBay), and was ready to buy one. I was watching the auction near closing and at 7 minutes before, I decided it was time to bid. I decided my first bid would be $185, and typed that in while I was talking to a customer on the phone for work. And I confirmed my bid, only to notice that I had absent-mindedly bid up to $785 for it. Because I had entered the 7 because of the 7 minutes left. I think my heart about stopped beating when I realized what I'd entered. If anyone tried to outbid me at all, I would automatically outbid them. I was buying the radio at ANY cost. The seven minutes ticked away, and someone made a wild bid to beat me. The price jumped about $100, but I definitely thwarted the guy's efforts to steal my auction during the last 6 seconds. I'm sure the other guy was surprised to lose. In the end, I got an average to not-excellent deal, and I was very thankful to not be paying $785.

So I won my radio.

And they shipped it quickly, and now I have my radio. And at first I couldn't find anything to listen to, except the Provo Airport and some TV stations.

Buuut I figured it out. Now, a few times a day, I scan the 2 meter band and listen to random people's conversations. The thing is, having never seen anyone else ever use a ham radio, I'm sort of afraid of messing up. Even though I have my license, I feel kind of like someone had handed me a book, Surgery for Dummies, and then after I'd shown reasonable proficiency they handed me a white coat and scalpel and pointed me to the emergency room. Obviously this radio stuff isn't a matter of life and death, but I'm just not quite sure about the practical application of everything.

So for now, I'm listening. I think that after I hear someone actually initiate a conversation then I'll try. So far I've just found middles and ends of conversations.

And with ham radio, everyone knows that people are listening. There are rules about what you can say on the radio because everyone knows that people are listening. (Like, you can't say someone's medical condition, even in an emergency, etc.) Also, I sometimes hear conversations where partway through someone else joins in, and they're like "I'm here listening too" and their friends are happy about it. So eavesdropping is normal with this stuff.

Here are some things that I've heard people talking about:
- Issues with wood from forests.
- Issues with routers. (Actually, this was funny. It was two old guys, and one was like, "We bought my wife a laptop to use for writing. And she hasn't touched it in six months. So I started using it and she said "I was going to use that." And I said "Well! Use it!" She hadn't touched it in six months and then when I pull it out that's when she wants to use it...")
- Discussion about third degree burns.
- An interesting club officer meeting where they talked about trips they were thinking of doing and fundraising activities, among other things.
- Several conversations about weather or driving conditions.
- Many morse code transmissions, which I definitely don't understand.

But my favorite thing I've listened to so far, absolutely was something I found Sunday evening. It was called "This week in Amateur Radio" and it was a 1 hour news program with different reports and stories and stuff. It was awesome. I felt like I was back in the 1940s or whenever, sitting in front of the radio, listening to the program.

Anyway, The End. (I'll share exciting stories of people that I talk to when I actually start talking to people.)