Big things: Graduation!

This past month has been incredibly busy for us!

As I mentioned in my last post, I wrote A LOT for a few days and then I graduated. My mom came up from California to attend my graduation. (I love spending time with her!) J and his parents came for the ceremony, too. I was such a grump that day, because I was so sleep deprived from [nearly-]all-nighters as I finished my finals.


Commencement was [mostly] GREAT!

Our professors and people all wore their robes and hoods. I thought it was SO cool. I wanted one! Actually, I wanted more than one. I thought it sounded like a great challenge to collect all of the different hoods in all of the different colors. Wouldn't that be the most amazing collection?*

Our student speaker was awesome. It was this lady who had returned to school and was finally finishing her degree after years of being a mom and doing other things. It was actually a really good speech, too. I was moved to tears a couple times.

Ambassador Huntsman gave our commencement address. I liked him a lot. His speech also made me teary. I don't remember all of what he said, but there were a couple parts that stood out to me:

The first was, he was talking about how they had taken his adopted daughter back to China to see the place where she had been abandoned as an infant. Huntsman talked about how while he was there he thought of the birth mother and how much she must have loved their daughter, because she left the baby somewhere that she would be found. When he talked about it, his comments took me by surprise. (How could he think that someone who [literally!] abandoned her own baby could love the girl as much as Ambassador Huntsman and his wife love her?) But as I thought about it, I decided it was really neat. [I don't know much about any of this, but] I think a lot of girl babies are aborted (or killed after they're born) in China because of policies there. So actually, for the mother to leave her somewhere that she could be found probably was an act of love. The other thing I liked about it was, I think some adopted kids have to deal with the feeling that their biological parents didn't love them or want them.* I think sometimes that's true and sometimes times it's not. (And often it doesn't actually matter, because the kid has adoptive parents that really, really wanted them.) I thought it was pretty neat that Huntsman's daughter will grow up hearing a story of how much her birth mother must have loved her.

A big portion of Ambassador Huntsman's address was a list of F's that we needed to get in order to have a good life. They were:
1. Find yourself. - Your unique pathway in life. "Life is a journey, not the destination."
2. Find a cause. - And speak out! Take action, and never let it be said that you were an anonymous blogger.
3. Face failure. - Failure only hurts if you were unable to turn it into a learning experience and make you stronger.
4. Find someone to love. - There are people all around us who need it. There are people who need friends / hope.
5. Find meaning. - (1) Always have goals. (2) Create an intellectual framework or personal philosophy to value the world and people around you. (3) Remember experience is most valuable training grounds; learn from experiences.

[If you want to read the whole thing, it looks like Huntsman's address is online here.]

After commencement finished, my college (Humanities) had convocation in the same building. I switched seats, and sat with some friends from one of my classes.

Convocation was about the most boring thing I've ever attended in my life. It was like, every time they needed to introduce someone it just never ended. The introductions were about as long (or longer!) than actual speeches. It went like this: "Mary is graduating with a ___ degree from the ____ department. Her thesis was about collecting seashells. After graduating, Mary plans to collect seashells from X Beach, from Y Beach, and Z Beach, between the hours of 8:17 am and 4:09 pm. Mary also likes to braid her hair, garden--but not with sea shells! Ha, Ha! [they love cheesy jokes]--and she likes to eat ice cream. When Mary was two, Mary used to always sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and her first words were... [... ] ...On a typical day, Mary wakes up early, but she usually presses snooze twice..." It seriously just went on and on. And then they would do it again for someone else. And someone else. And someone else, etc.

Our college's main student speaker was terrible! She spent like 10 minutes having people from different honor societies stand up. There were probably like 40 or 50 on her list. Don't most people know those are fake? There are only a few honor societies that are actually prestigious. Most of them are like, you get a letter that says: "CONGRATULATIONS AND WELCOME TO OUR SPECIAL CLUB PLEASE SEND US $80 TO ACCEPT."*** Doesn't everyone get those letters? So I was pretty embarrassed for our little speaker.

But all of that finally finished, and they called our names, and I got my special diploma cover!

And then, my guests put up with my terrible attitude, and we went out to lunch together, and had a great time. Then I went home and slept.


I'm still waiting to receive my diploma, but my transcript shows that my requirements are all met (and my grades were good for this last semester) so I should be in good shape. They told us it takes a couple months.

I'm so glad to be done****!



* Can you imagine? It would be impossible! Nobody could ever possibly get all of the possible advanced degrees from every university. But it would be such a pretty collection! And if anyone could do it, it would mean they were really something. I decided the only way to do that would be to do something really incredible so that many universities awarded me honorary degrees. But that would still probably only be in one field...
** According to movies and TV shows.
*** It's like when people are all excited that they were invited to be in the Who's Who book. Or when people think they win a poetry contest and their poem is really something because it's going in an anthology that costs only $100. At first it seems cool, but then you realize everyone "wins" and the only real winners are the companies because they're collecting money for nothing.
**** [-ish]

Update #1

We're married!

We were married at the Jordan River temple on 20 March!

This is the only picture I have so far from our wedding.* It is a picture of us arriving at the temple, taken on my phone, by someone we don't know, as we were trying not to be late.


Our reception was at J's parents' house, and it went well.

We spent Saturday and Sunday nights at The Kimball, in downtown Salt Lake, and then on Monday we flew down to southern California for the rest of our honeymoon. We stayed at a resort on the beach, in Oceanside.

This is a picture from our visit to the San Diego Zoo:
We had a second reception in Walnut (CA) on the following Saturday afternoon.

We flew back that Sunday, and since then we have had many, many fun projects. Some of our recent activities have been:
- me moving in.
- finishing taxes.
- a LOT of cleaning and organizing. (But lots more to go...)
- flooding our house, and trying to fix the roof.
- meeting with roofers, and replacing a portion of our roof.
- building a new area for the chickens.**
- pruning trees.
- tiling linoleum under the kitchen counters (to cover the concrete and reclaim some kitchen space).
- school projects.
- more school projects.
- weaning the calves.***

Those are the things that come to mind. Hopefully sometime soon I can begin to blog about recent things in greater detail.

Some upcoming projects include:
- writing furiously for the next day or two and then,
- hopefully, hopefully, most-likely graduating this Friday.
- Mom visiting for my graduation.
- participating in South Jordan's green waste collection day thing by hauling branches we pruned.
- actually (finally!) cleaning and organizing our house.
- getting started with ag water.
- implementing more of the Nourishing Traditions ideas into our diet. (To try next: sprouting our grains and using fresh flour for recipes.)
- learning to use Quicken better.
- finding a job.
- building raised garden beds? (maybe?)
- building some furniture.
- getting a puppy!****
- starting a compost pile.
- getting a goat? (may be delayed until next year)
- cleaning/painting the barns?
- fencing off the larger pasture area. (For calves as they get larger, and/or if we get a goat.)
- mayyybe getting more hens, since this is the right time of year. We're also considering a couple turkeys, for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We have a lot going on. For now, I've got to get back to schoolwork. I'm still finishing a big paper.



* Jess and Mitch kindly shared some of the pictures they took, but we promptly laundered the SD card. So we haven't actually seen them yet.
** Since the calves were eating the chicken coop.
*** While we were on our honeymoon, the people that we paid to feed them felt like they were skinny, so they fed them twice as much milk as we told them to (and as the package said to.) So we had to like, double-wean them, because first we had to wean them down to the recommended amount, and then we had to really wean them. Not their favorite, but they like grass now. We also dehorned them, and castrated them. Worst day of their lives!
**** NOT allowed until the house is completely clean and organized. It will probably be a small dog (since J likes small dogs better and since it will be an inside/outside dog and our inside is not huge) but it may be a big dog (because I think I like big dogs better and if it's inside/outside anyway, if it has too much energy, that can just mean it's time to play outside.) If it's a little dog, it will probably be a mixed breed one (a yorkie-poo/chorkie/pomchi/yorkie-pom/porkie, etc.) because those are cute and have the benefits of mixed-breed dog (eg, better health and temperament). If it's a big dog, it will probably be a great dane. We'll see.

Back to School!

Someday I'll have time to write a real blog post. I hope.

Classes started last week. I am taking:

Victorian literature - with one of my favorite professors. It seems pretty good so far. Lots of reading.

Literary History (the earliest one, though, so pre-1660, I think) - Pretty boring so far. It's with the professor that is probably the most popular in the department. I was really looking forward to taking this class with him, but a week into the class I haven't figured out why he has such a great reputation. He seems to know his stuff.

Advanced Seminar (which is on Kafka) - The professor's name is Anne Jamison, and I had heard great things about her, too. She looks so much like Anne (Roger's wife), that every class I try to decide whether they look enough alike to be closely related or not.

She's great! She said the bookstore on campus operates on some kind of ponzi scheme, and that they're not a real bookstore anyway, they're a sweatshirt and teddy bear store, so she ordered our books through a local bookshop in Salt Lake somewhere. And gave us the ISBNs for our books so that we can order them online if we prefer. And, so that we're not using WebCT (which is very regulated and sucks), she set up a LiveJournal group for our class. So we have discussions there.

International Tourism - Meets my international requirement (which my AA did not, since I didn't get it in UT). I am taking it online. It sounded SUPER when I read the syllabus, but so far I am totally disappointed--it is so much about fixing poverty and sustainability.

Thanks, I'm not really interested in that. I am heartless, and I don't want one world community. I don't think everyone's opinions are valid, and I don't think we should make economic decisions based on spiritual and emotional values. Our text actually suggested that. (I do think sex trafficking is wrong, so at least when we get to that chapter I'll be on the same page as everyone else.)

So far, we've had to watch little videos where they show the world spinning from space and have us listen to quotes about how there are no boundaries and because we all evolved together since the Big Bang, we need to love each other. And not increase global warming. We have readings and lectures, and movies, and discussions, and quizzes, and projects, and it just seems like an awful lot of work. I hope the tone of the class changes a little! Half of the last lesson was actually about knowing ourselves so that we can be aware of how we act other places. It seemed more interesting and more practical, so we'll see.

I still have my Folklore class, which I started last semester. I am transcribing my interview that I did with J's dad, and I'll be preparing the manuscript for publication. So. That will be fun.

On Friday I finally got the results for my Italian test. I needed a 120/190 to demonstrate "advanced proficiency" and buy credits instead of taking another Italian class for the language requirement. I got a 172/190! So I'll be buying that class instead of taking it.

This semester I am trying to take TRAX instead of driving up. (It's already been pretty exciting; TRAX always is, right?) The idea is that this way I will avoid buying a parking permit and lots of gas, and also have extra time to study (/work on whatever!) during my commutes. My classes are all on Tues/Thurs, so it's working out pretty well so far. The disadvantages are: less Glenn, and less Dr. Laura. I can live with that, I guess.

I took the LSAT

I should also mention that not this weekend but the weekend before, I finally took the LSAT.

I suspect I did very okay.

I took LSAT classes off and on from February through late August. I didn't do much of the homework, though, because I kept being busy and had a hard time paying attention to it.

I thought about re-scheduling it again (which costs like $80), but decided I definitely wasn't going to have more time to study for the December test. Or the February or June tests. I'm not even really sure I want to do law school anymore. If I do, I suspect I'll want to re-take the LSAT sometime after I've finished my undergrad. When I'll actually have time to study and do all of the homework.

My test-taking experience was all right. The LSAT administration on the U of U campus is in the engineering building, which is actually pretty nice. My room didn't have the door open when everyone was supposed to be checking in, so a lot of people waited outside instead of just coming in, and our group got started later.

I was a little nervous because I usually use the timer on my cellphone to keep track of my time on each section. For the LSAT you are allowed to bring an analog watch, which I have, but the morning of the test I couldn't find it. I went just hoping that my room would have a clock. It did. And that was fine.

It was kind of interesting to see how people approached the test differently. You're allowed to bring a gallon bag with a few things in it: 3-4 pencils. Erasers. A highlighter. An analog watch. A juice box or drink in a bottle no more than 20oz. A snack, ONLY FOR THE BREAK. Your ID. Your wallet and keys. Medical items, for those who need them.

It was funny, though, because some people had like a dozen pencils. Seriously, though. Like, the bottom of their bag was full of pencils. I would love to watch someone take a test and actually use 12+ pencils. What, do you use each pencil for one answer bubble? And then there was this guy like, diagonal from me. He had ONE pencil with one of those bigger pink erasers that you can put on the end of a pencil. And that was about it. Most people had watches. A few other people didn't. Most people had gallon bags. This one guy had his stuff in like, a grocery bag. A few people didn't bring bags at all. I felt really weird not having my cellphone, but I think if it was OFF and in my pocket and I left it alone, nobody would have cared.

There was kind of a funny/awkward moment at the beginning. The girl who was administrating the test said: "It's hot in here. Are you guys hot in here?" And I never am, but a bunch of other people agreed with her. She adjusted the thermostat and then walked across the room and muttered, "Maybe I'm just having hot flashes. I haven't had my period in a few months." But like, she muttered it loud enough that the whole room (70-ish people) heard. And we all kind of looked around, like, did she just say that? And she had.

Also, she had a lisp. Which would not be such a big deal except that when we got to the writing Sample teSt aSSeSSment she kept having problems reading the instructions. She put her head down and was like, sorry guys, and told us she was just not with it today. Poor girl.

There were a lot of questions I didn't get to. I think that's partly because I hadn't studied recently. I'll get my results by e-mail about 3 weeks from my test date.

I'm hanging onto my test prep materials in case I decide to try again in a year or so, but it feels good to (kind of) be done.

Volunteering at the Library!

Earlier this year, our campus had hardcore budget cuts.

Which meant the library had major budget cuts, too.

Some things changed. The entire department on the other side of mine was outsourced to save money. (It was weird, because it was kind of like how in The Office that one guy was fired, but nobody really knew what he did or that he was in the show. Same idea. We all heard that they were losing their jobs and we were like... "uh...what do they do?" "I'm not really sure..." We didn't even know who they were, except that there was one lady who had a little rubber statue-toy-thing of a monk on a cellphone that always made us smile when we would walk past.)

Also, our schedules changed. Instead of firing people, we took reduced schedules for a month or so, until another guy got a job that actually had something to do with his major.

And another thing was, before, when there were books that were falling apart or torn, or having big problems, we would always send them to Preservations. After budget cuts, I would tell my like, supervisor (kind of?) about books with problems and she would say "hmmmm. I don't really know that Preservations will be able to do anything about it now..." "Well, before I would have taken it to Preservations, but after the budget cuts, he may just leave it..."

I felt bad for the poor, broken books.

I thought of my grandma, and my mom, and how they've taken torn hymnals home from church and fixed their bindings and brought them back. The church sells a hymnal repair kit, even.

I pictured a dark room in the library with a desk that had tall stacks of books on both sides, waiting to have their bindings fixed. Maybe before budget cuts someone else had worked there too, but after budget cuts, there just were not enough work hours to fix all of the books that needed help.

I thought about it a bunch and decided that I would be willing to volunteer so that more could be done. I could just spend a few hours on, like, Friday afternoons and tape up the bindings. Or, you know, whatever. It would be nice to know how to do that, anyway.

I always thought it would be nice to be able to take a bookbinding class, but those classes are always like 4 hours long and never fit into my schedule of classes that I actually need. Too bad.

So I told my boss I was interested in doing that. And she went off and talked to the guy who is in charge of the Preservations stuff, and told me I would not be binding books right away--he would train me just like a new part-time person. She said she would show me after I was done working.

So after work she took me over to Preservations and the guy in charge gave me a tour. It wasn't a dark room with a desk and stacks of books---it looks like a laboratory or art room! He showed me the different things that they do, and told me I would be doing fancy, exciting sewing on books because they just do standard, practical stuff. He said sometimes people come and want to volunteer and they have delusions of grandeur because they think they'll come right in and start doing fancy stuff. But you start with things like dust jackets.

And, well, I don't know anything about fancy sewing on bindings, so that didn't bother me at all. He asked if I was still interested, and I said that I was, and I told him I would come in for an hour every morning. He said he wouldn't be able to teach me much in an hour. So I agreed to come in for 2 hours. He starts work at 8:30, and I start work at 10:30, so now every morning I volunteer at Preservations from 8:30 to 10:30 am.

So far I have learned how to put plastic dust cover jacket things on, and I've done a bunch of those, and then I have also learned to sew pamphlets into protective cover things. (See my second photo-- doesn't it look like book acupuncture??) Today I learned how to remove stickers/tape from books with a heat tool and fancy eraser.

Also, today I was added to the who's-here white board (my name is on a magnet!) and I got a name plate thing at my work area. I share a workspace with a guy who [allegedly] volunteers on Thursday afternoons.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that for now.

The Community Food Co-Op of Utah!

A long time ago one of my co-workers at Ancestry told all of us about the Co-op. He gave us the website address. I didn't really look into it. Because I could totally afford food, so like, why not just go to the grocery store?

I just kind of assumed the co-op was a poor people thing, and like yeah, maybe everyone was allowed to participate, but since it's cheap food it would be like going to a soup kitchen. Sure, everyone would be welcome, but you'd be in line with people wearing rags, and when you got up to the front they would hand you a bruised pear and a can of tuna and tell you thanks for coming.
Plus it was in south Provo, and since I had no car it wasn't too easy to get there.

AND THEN! I volunteered last month, with one of the service groups on campus. I counted lemons at the warehouse, where the groups come to pick up food for people in their areas.

AND THEN! At Earth-Fest on campus, there was a booth for the Co-op and I decided I would try it for May.

I ordered a Standard Share ($23?), a Nutty Guys Sampler Pack ($12?), and a 32 oz. thing of olive oil ($7?). And then I waited, because the Co-op is a once-a-month kind of thing.

They sent me an e-mail confirming my order, and someone called me to remind me to pick it up. Bring bags, they told me. They reminded me of where my pick up location is, which is a block and a half from my house at First Unitarian Church.

I got an e-mail to remind me and to let me know what the fruits and veggies would be (they order a few days before you get them, so you don't know ahead of time).

This month, my Standard Share included:

• 1 lb. lean ground beef
• 2 lbs. chicken thighs
• 2 lbs. beef chuck roast
• 2 lbs. 'country style' pork spare ribs


• 1 pkg. mushrooms
• 6 bananas
• 1 cantaloupe
• 5 apples
• 1 bunch radishes
• 3 zucchini
• 1 bunch asparagus
• 1 bag of white potatos


• Stone Ground's Artisan Wheat Loaf
• 16 oz. Rice

HOLY SMOKES! What a deal! J and I went to pick it all up on Saturday morning. We went to the check-in table [SRSLY, it was like going to the temple. This sweet lady was like "Welcome! Is this your first time at the co-op? Great! We're happy to have you here, this is how it works...] and they gave me my extras (the nuts and oil) and a little colored sheet saying STANDARD SHARE and the things I needed to get. And then they had long tables for STANDARD SHARE, HALF SHARE, and HARVEST SHARE. So we went to our long table and went down the line adding each item to my bag.

And then they had a trade table, so if you didn't want something you could trade it for something that you did want. I had mentioned that I didn't want radishes and the lady behind us said her husband loves radishes! she would trade me! And so I traded my radishes for her wheat loaf, which turned out to be SO. SO. GOOD! And free of artificial ingredients, so J can actually eat it.

At the trade table we traded my mushrooms for another wheat loaf. And then we went to a table where we checked-out, except it's all pre-paid, so I just initialed that I got my stuff. And they thanked me for coming and told me to tell my friends. Tell my friends? Psh! I want to serve a full-time co-op mission. I want to tell strangers!

So the co-op turned out to be the Best Idea Ever. J was amazed by the quality of the produce. He thinks he may participate next month. Like, I don't know why anyone would know about this and choose not to participate. When people move to Utah, there should be someone at the border to say "Welcome to Utah! Here's your co-op order form for next month."

ANYWAY, it's a super good deal. They're way into working with local farmers, so it's like local (often organic) stuff, and it's so cheap. The catch is that the price includes 2hrs of volunteer work. BUT, the volunteer work doesn't even have to be at the co-op! It can be anything you do for someone outside your home for free. (I donate platelets at ARUP 2x/month, so I put that and I have 4 hrs already.) They do want you to volunteer at the co-op at least one time every year, but you can do things like measure rice, or write an article for the co-op newspaper, too.

Interested? For Provo the pick-up location is:
Centro Hispano, 10:30-11:30AM 818 South Freedom Blvd.

The page about how to join, etc is here. Orders are due 12 June. The newsletters are on this page. The June one isn't up yet, but the last one is here.

Other normal people do this too! I searched on Google and found two other blog posts about it...so you can read about their experiences here and here.

BEST. MAGAZINE. EVER.

At work, I discovered the best magazine ever. Okay, maybe not the best, but it's up there. It's called "The American Home" and it is fantastic. Someone requested something from volume XXVIII, which is June to November, 1942. I can't put it down.

I have six excellent things to share from within these issues. They are:
1. Four great IDEAs!
2. A Kleenex advert.
3. Two Windex adverts.
4. An Air Warden Shindig.
5. An article about how children can help us win the war.
6. A VICTORY DIET!

These are really amazing. If you want to see pictures of the covers from these magazines, they are posted here. Totally worth it. According to Wikipedia, it was published from 1928 to 1977. I don't know. I don't know if it was quite this amazing after the war, but during the war, like every page is about ON GUARD...the home front. Cooperating for VICTORY. I love Victory. So did they. They had Victory vacations, Victory parties, Victory dinners where everyone dressed up as vegetables from their Victory gardens. Victory hobbies, Victory everything!


Just a thought--maybe this is why we keep having problems with our wars now. Maybe if we would just buy some war bonds and take care to feed our future citizens more vegetables, and use more Bon Ami cleaner and take care of our homes since they are Second Fronts, maybe we would win our wars in the middle east. I'm just saying. Nobody invited me to an Air Warden Shindig during the war in Iraq.

Anyway, here is the first part, which is actually four parts:

IDEA! IF "Drink your orange juice, Junior!" raises a storm of stubborn objections, you can settle your tempest, in a teapot! Invite your young problem child to have "tea" with you. Lay the table just as you do for grown-up parties, with regular cups and a large teapot. No kid stuff! Make a plate of miniature, but healthy sandwiches and sit down to "tea," while your child pours. -EFFIE LEE ESTES
IDEA! CAKE FOR BABY: For baby's first birthday, pile mashed potatoes into the shape of a cake, surround with "frosting" of buttered beets or spinach, and center it with a hollowed-out cooked carrot candle holder and an asparagus stalk candle. - MRS. ELMER STOWELL
MYSTERY MAKES MONEY: If you're giving a benefit party, remember that curiosity is one of your best allies, and wrap up the white elephants instead of letting them stand out in the open for sale. People are much more likely to part with their nickels and dimes if they aren't sure of what they'll get. - MRS. DAVID CANFIELD
IDEA! MY THINKING-TIME BILLBOARD is thin wood veneer decorated with decals appropriate to the kitchen and is hung on the wall with tiny rings and glass-headed picture tacks. It holds ABC vitamin lore, perhaps a club speech to be "polished off," a lovely poem, a new recipe, or the day's menu. - MARION FISCHER
TO SAVE THE FLOOR: To eliminate those dark smudges on linoleum caused by the bottom of chromium kitchen chairs, apply Scotch tape to the parts touching the floor. - MRS. FRANK JACKLE
IDEA! Yes, it's done with mirrors--big ones or little ones, whole ones or in pieces--hung on strings or thing wires here and there in the fruit garden so that they swing and send flashes of sunlight in all directions. Robber birds just can't figure out what it's all about, so they go away from there as fast as their wings will carry them. - MAY LEWIS

These things worked in 1942, people, and they'll work now. Help us win the war! Make your babies vegetable birthday cakes!

Earth Day Revue!

This Wednesday was Earth Day, and we had something on campus called Earthfest. It was a big thing with a bunch of booths that helped everyone get excited about being green, or going green, etc.

There was a booth that had facts to prove that unless everyone in the world moved into 2-bedroom apartments and used solar electricity and grew their own foods, and only walked and rode bikes and stopped having kids, etc, then we would destroy four Earths within our lifetime. I didn't read all of it, but that was basically what my coworker said about it afterward. So here's what I don't get, though: have none of these scientists ever been on a road trip? There's still a lot of space. Hasn't anyone played Sim City 2000? Because obviously, of course, the solution is to start building arcologies when we need to. I don't understand what the problem is.

There was a sculpture of a unicorn that said "clean coal" on it. I heard someone explain why they built it, and basically it was because Matheson has clean coal ideas, and they think it's as real as a unicorn which should fly off to some magical fairyland or something. It sounded really ridiculous, but I guess they probably got a lot of attention, and that's probably what they wanted.

One of the booths had soil and seeds, and they encouraged people to plant a seed. So I did. A lot of the seeds they had were for things that I'm already growing or for things that I wouldn't know how to use if it did grow. So I planted catnip. Paley will like that. She loves catnip. And then I carried the little planted seed around all day so that everyone would know that I Care About The Environment, which is a Big Deal here.

The booths that I was more interested in were:

The Utah Museum of Natural History. They had a booth about their exhibit called Toadally Frogs! There was a guy dressed up as a frog at the booth, and I got a picture with him, but my favorite part of his costume you can't see in the picture--he had green little-kid swim fins on top of his shoes. And he was wearing green tights. The costume was pretty awesome, actually. I think the exhibit sounds cool, too. I want to go. It is free for [U of U] students and $7 for adults. (Other students with ID are $2.50, and kids are $3.50.) They have some neat lectures and events coming up. This weekend we're going to the Tulip Festival (for Dutch Day! At Thanksgiving Point!), but this exhibit goes through September, so maybe we can go after school gets out.

Sun Ovens. I had never heard of these before! Basically, it uses reflector things to heat up an oven. They were cooking cookies (at 350 degrees F!) and bread right in front of us. These seem like they would be great for emergencies or for camping.

Salt Lake Food Co-Op. I volunteered at their shipment last month (counting lemons!), because of a group I'm involved with on campus, but I didn't actually know much about them. I think I may start participating, though. Basically, a whole bunch of people as a group order stuff mostly from local growers. So it's fresh, and supporting local farmers, and a bunch of it is organic. Plus! Since they order directly and cut out the retailers (people volunteer to make it all happen), things cost like half of what they do in the grocery stores. That's kind of cool. And it's not like, a poverty thing. It's an anyone thing.

Local Green Things. There were several booths about gardening opportunities, and free classes on gardening things, etc. One booth was about urban chicken-raising. I would really like to get some chickens, because I think it would be great to have fresh eggs! That booth had adorable little chicks. Apparently, in Salt Lake a lot of people are becoming interested in raising chickens. The laws here say that you can have chickens in the City if you get permission from your neighbors. No roosters, though. Nothing prohibits having roosters, exactly, but people kind of assume that it would disturb neighbors, which is a pretty safe assumption since most people don't want a neighbor's rooster to crow early. And if you were to get a rooster and it bothered your neighbors, the City would make you get rid of it. So people are sticking to just hens. (Which is kind of like the opposite of China--makes me wonder what they do with all of the left over roosters...)

The U of U's new bike program. The senior gift this year was a bunch of bikes, which students can borrow for free, for a couple weeks. Our campus loves bikes, because we love going green. Bikes are kind of silly, though, because our campus is on a huge hill. Senior gifts are silly, too, I think, because basically what they do is: take our money, spend it on something they want, present it to us, and we're supposed to feel like we're receiving something nice. I'd rather just keep my money. But hey, whatever. (I guess that would kind of be expected, since I'm conservative and prefer to keep my own money, thankyouverymuch.) The bikes look nice, anyway.

Farm to Fork Food! One booth had a bunch of food that you could taste that was made from fresh ingredients. So I bought tickets and I had bruschetta on fresh bread with fresh tomatoes and onions and olive oil. And I had watermelon juice to drink. It was fantastic. I ended up buying some artisan bread (honey whole wheat), which was excellent.

Going Green on Campus

Last semester in one of my English classes we talked about performative theory. Performative theory is basically the idea that you're not born something, you just perform it. And by performing something well, you sort of become what you're pretending to be. And other people respond to that.

The big thing we discussed was gender. Judith Butler wrote all about this. Girls are not girls; they're just people who perform girl-ness by having curves, and by walking the way girls walk, and by talking and dressing and doing everything else the way girls do those things.

[I think that's kind of ridiculous because I'm religious and I absolutely believe that gender is part of who God intended us to be, and not just something that we arbitrarily perform, but I digress.]

This also works for other things. I've started running more. I perform "runner" by wearing runner clothes, having the runner stuff, going to run in the morning, etc.

My real reason for mentioning this, though, is that I think people and schools are obsessed with performing green-ness. And by doing all of the things that look green, people feel more modern and like they're doing more for the environment than maybe they actually are.

When I visited Harvard during fall break, they had banners that said "GREEN IS THE NEW CRIMSON". Having banners like that does not do anything for the environment, but it gave me the impression that their school is doing more to act green, which may or may not be true. This raised my opinion of the school (but seriously, who has a bad opinion of Harvard?) because they were doing something that our culture values right now.

The University of Utah is also making an effort to go green. I think it's kind of funny, though, because the efforts that I have seen are not things that make a big difference, I don't think, but they're things that make it seem like we are doing more. I can think of four examples, which include two silly (but kind of practical) things, and two examples of budget cuts that were transformed into initiatives to go green.

1. Our campus had bike lanes painted onto some of our walkways down the middle of campus. To someone visiting our campus, we would seem really modern, and like we really care about the environment. The bike lanes signal to people that we have enough people riding bicycles instead of driving that we actually needed bike lanes. To someone visiting, or not paying attention, it would seem like something that would promote order, and something really organized.

This is not actually the case. The bike lanes don't really go very many places, and bikes don't really use the lanes very much. Since they are not used all that much, people walk on them just like they did before the lanes were painted.

2. Our campus cafeteria thing, Chartwells, put out water cups that are made of corn. They look like plastic cups, but they are "corn cups" and they are compostable. Why not just paper? Paper is compostable too. If we take a corn cup, water is free. If we take a paper Coke-style cup, water costs 30 cents. I understand that it's a good idea to replace Styrofoam (in fact Styrofoam is one thing that I actually care about), but corn cups seem like they're more for show than actual concern about the environment. I don't actually know much about this, though, so I did a basic search online. Corn cups are $127 for a case of 1000, with a multiple case quantity discount. Coke cups are $87 for a case of 1200.

3. This semester, most of my classes did not provide syllabuses. They were posted online. A couple teachers told us it was because we're going green. But they still expected us to print them out ourselves. SRSLY? It's not saving paper if we still have to print it. And, not only that, even if we do lose 1/4 of our funding, I am paying enough tuition that I believe I am entitled to syllabuses in all of my classes. For 3 cents a page, just splurge. Please, just splurge. Or charge everyone a $1 copy fee that covers all of the syllabuses.

4. At work (on campus), the school is not supplying Kleenex anymore. Okay. That's fine. I seldom get sick. There was a sign up though, that said it was because of budget cuts and also an effort to go green. Huh? How does that help us go green? The sign also said that the full-time people would be buying it instead, and that part-timers were welcome to contribute if they wanted to. Seems to me that if we're still buying and using Kleenex it isn't actually going to do anything to help us go green. They would have to give us handkerchiefs if we were really going to stop using Kleenex. And is that even greener anyway? Because how much water/energy does it take to wash a handkerchief? I don't know. I laughed when I read the note, because it sounded like a joke. It wasn't.

I partly think I should really embrace this stuff, though, and get all excited about going green, too, and involved in having more bike lanes painted--so that when I'm applying for grad school it looks like I actually care. Schools like to think that people care about this stuff. Because if they admit students who care, and more of the student body cares, then the institution cares more. Right? (Ha. Ironically, this is a logical fallacy.)

Waiting at the gym

Every semester the gym on campus rents out lockers that you can keep for the whole semester.  But there are only 30, and lots of people want them (instead of leaving your stuff in cubbies or paying to rent a locker every time), so they have a set time that people can come get lockers.

The set time is this Wednesday at 10 am.  Last semester it was also on a Wednesday at 10 am.  I arrived at 9:20ish, and I got locker number 23.  If I would have actually arrived at 1o they would have been long gone.

So today, I came at 8ish am.  Because I was going to go get breakfast first, and left my house just later than I thought I should for that.  I am either number 3 or 4 in line, hopefully three since the odd lockers are the top ones.

Three of us have our computers out, one guy is reading, and girl is writing, and the other guy is just sitting.  

This kind of reminds me of living in CA, because they always have Meet-and-Greets with celebrities, but you have to show up way early and wait for hours.  Waiting isn't so bad when you have things to do.

Better to be early and get a locker than to be on time and not get one.

So hopefully, I'll get a couple blog posts written.  Three more guys came in just now, though, so I wonder if they'll start assigning lockers after there are no more places to sit?  Who knows.

First item of news:

I GOT A COMPUTER!!!

I've had a desktop that I bought off of Craigslist, for like the past year.  I paid $250 for it, used, and the thing I was MOST excited about was the memory card reader that was built into it.  I take lots of pictures, so it was nice to be able to put my camera card directly into the computer. 

Buuuut those readers are actually cheap.  And the girl who sold it neglected to mention that it was a terrible computer.  It's an eMachine, which is like, Walmart's brand of computer.  And the trouble is, if you have any problem with it, you can't just boot from the CDs, or reload part of the system software; the only thing you can do is wipe everything clean.

My computer has had problems starting like four times.  Every time, I lose all of my pictures and all of my music.  The first couple times I was devastated.  Now, I just don't trust the dang thing, so I don't save anything on it.

The other problem is, since it's outdated and has no memory space on it, it won't download programs that I want.  Like iTunes.  It WAS working before the first crash, and ever since then it won't download.  Or it downloads, but tells me that I need something else, and I download that.  Then I go to finish installing iTunes and it tells me that I need the same thing that I just downloaded.  We never get anywhere.  Frustrating!

Plus, I don't have the Internet at my house anymore, so I really can't do anything with it anymore.

So.  It was time.  

I got a new MacBook.  It's pretty.  It's all aluminum, and fast, and it does the cool stacks thing that this OS does.  And!  I can get free Internet all over campus.  And lots of other places.  

It will be so nice to be able to like, write my papers during my breaks between classes.  Or, like take notes in class quickly.

I'm excited about this.  

School

Well, my classes started this week, and things are okay so far.

I'm taking four classes.

1. English 2700: Diversity in American Literature
2. English 5920: Intellectual Movements
3. English 3703: Intro to Lit History 3 (which is the modernism part)
4. English 5880: Children's Lit

I feel like I'm taking the same class four times. And when I talk about my classes, I want to say "in my English class", but then I realize that all of my classes are English classes.

Yesterday I was hating my life, wondering why I'm majoring in English, but today I feel really optimistic about this semester. Here's why: I have excellent professors this semester.

Here are the interesting things about each of the classes, so far:

1. Diversity in American Literature. I'm taking this one because it satisfies the university's diversity requirement AND part of my English major requirement. It's a lower level English class, though. So it feels like high school English. Where the professor defines words like "simile" instead of just words like "post-structuralism".

I'm not wild about the professor for this class (yet, anyway), but everything seems pretty simple, so I think that as long as I do the reading it should be a breeze. And the reading seems pretty simple, too. The professor for this class dresses really artsy. The first day she came in wearing a bright purple coat, a lime green sweater top, a goldenrod scarf, black pants, and red boots. And a beret.

2. Intellectual movements. This is a very-upper-division class, and the idea behind it is that the professor picks something that like, changed literary history and we study it intensely. And to celebrate the 150th anniversary of On The Origin of Species, we're studying Darwin and evolution! Greaaaat. I'm very secure in my religious beliefs, and I don't mind discussing evolution, but I wasn't too thrilled about a whole semester of it. EXCEPT! So far it's my favorite class! The professor is hilarious. She's really sarcastic.

We were talking about evolution (of course), and Lamarck, and how species all just want to progress. She told us that he was all into inheritance of acquired characteristics. Like, the giraffe reached a little bit to get higher leaves, and the next generation, and the next generation, and gradually the neck got longer and longer. She said, "as anyone who has had a nose job and then looked at their children knows, this does not work." She also told us about a guy, August Wiseman? who "hacked off the tails of about 2000 mice and did not produce any tailless mice."

And then later, "The giraffe wants a longer neck, the African people want to become British. There's no question about it. It's obvious." (Like from the perspective of the British, back when people were first starting to talk about evolution.)

Or another time we were talking about the problems with the new idea of evolution, and one problem is that if you're not in the upper class, you may wonder why not, wonder why your ancestors didn't do whatever they were supposed to to evolve. And the prof whined like a kid who wanted candy and her mom wouldn't buy it, "Moooooooom, why aren't you letting me eevvooooolve?"

Or, we were going over the syllabus, and we're reading Heart of Darkness (which we're also reading in one of my other classes), and then we're reading Tarzan of the Apes, "which is Heart of Darkness, but happy!"

The people in the class seem good, too. Before the class started, one of the guys was talking to the girl behind me. "Break seemed really short, didn't it?" he asked her, and they talked a bit about it. And he explained, "You see, I don't count the days that were snowing as part of my break. So break was like three days. Weekends don't count towards break either." And I could not agree with that more. And later she was talking talking more about Tarzan, and she said "There are like a million of them! Tarzan Goes to Mars, Tarzan Meets the President, and by the end of the series Tarzan is like a Jack Bauer. We're just going to read the first one, from 1914."

So. That class is really entertaining.

[Also, when I first started this blog post, I went downstairs in the library to clock out, and I ran into this Prof! I said hello, and we talked about the big Darwin displays that they put up in the library yesterday (which I had told her about). She had found one and was going to go check out (ha!) the other one. And as we quit chatting, she said "Emily, right?" Yes!]

3. Intro to Lit History 3. I think I will hate the content of this class the most. Because the prof already said we're doing poetry this week, and the rest of the readings sound gross too. BUT, he has personality, and the structure of the class is: we come in and chat about what we read. Which I can handle.

It was funny, when he first started class he said, "I'm not going to ask you why you're here. My first class here, there were 60 people! Modernism was my first class and I said the University of Utah is the Best Place Ever! All these people are interested in modernism! That's great! So I had them each write a little paragraph about why you're here. All of the answers were 'It's at 10 o'clock. It's required. I made a huge mistake, if I only would have studied math instead, I would have been alright." So he understood that we didn't really care about modernism.

And then he had us go around the class and name our favorite and least favorite works from the 20th century. And people all had favorites like Ulysses. Gross.

Oh, one funny thing that he talked about was using the dictionary.

"Look up words that you don't know, and that you do know." He talked about people using words wrong, and he said that words are our tools. "If you go into a chemistry lab, you don't just pour stuff out of bottles, and say 'I don't know what that was.'"

4. Children's Lit. Um, this is going to be okay. I somehow got the one Children's Lit teacher that thinks kids read adult books and adults read kid books, so we shouldn't limit our study to books for children. Too bad! She is also very interested in the Holocaust. And group projects. (I hate group projects. Because they usually just mean Emily projects. And I want to do my own work, not work for 5 people, thanks.)

Also, I'm a little afraid of this professor, because in her syllabus she tells us that we should use professional language when we e-mail her. She specifically says not to address her with "Hey". And that is definitely something I would do, because I wouldn't write, "Dear Professor," or "Hello Professor". (My coworker said I can just start it with "Professor," and that will work. If I remember!)

But in the end, she said she hates grades. So she wants to give us all good grades, and she will, but we have to give the class our very best. We need to attend classes, do a great job on our presentations, and a great job on our papers, and then we'll be fine. And if we don't then she'll adjust things...but she doesn't want to have to do that. No tests. No midterm. No final. And that's a pretty sweet grading policy.

So things should be okay. I have a few other things to write about, but I'll save them for later.

The Old Testament

I went to an Institute class this morning that was fantastic. It's a class on the second half of the Old Testament, which is perfect for me, because I'm to Proverbs and one of my 2009 goals is to finish the Old Testament. The class started at 8:35 am (and like seriously, the Old Testament), so I knew it would be a small class, except that, oh wait, it was actually two classrooms big. There were a bunch of people! And I'm sure some people are ambitious and go to the first class and stop coming partway through the semester, but still!

Turns out, it's basically because the teacher is amazing.

He was telling us, you go to the Old Testament for a first person account of the Atonement. He said that next to the book of Luke, the Old Testament is the best place to go to get to know Christ. Mostly the second half of Isaiah, and the stuff David wrote. I thought this was kind of interesting, because I always just sort of assumed that the Book of Mormon would be the second best. Or like, Matthew would be, or something. But as we were talking about it, I could see what he meant.

We mostly talked about a few Psalms today. Psalms are not just a poetic part of the scriptures; they're basically the hymnbook of their world back then. It was the same as it is for us. When we're going through hard times, sometimes we sing hymns. The LDS pioneers sometimes sang "Come, Come Ye Saints" when things were rough. Just as we draw on hymns in times of trial, Christ quoted Psalm 22; "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,". But he wasn't just saying that line; he was quoting the first line of this song. And people back then would have known that he was quoting it.

So to know better how Christ was feeling, we can read the rest of the psalm. Instead of us looking up at the cross, like we are in the accounts in the gospels, reading this takes us right up onto the cross with him, because it's in first person.

7 All they that see me laugh me to scorn : they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,

8 He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

(Shoot out the lip = stick out their tongues. They're mocking him. Which, we knew.)

He told us the most poignant account of the crucifixion is Psalm 22. It's Messianic literature.

With Messianic literature, there are two ways of looking at it:

1. The writer saw Christ and was writing about it. (This is more true of Isaiah.)

2. David had experiences, and he had a deep heart and could express some of the deepest feelings of our hearts. (He compared this to Shakespeare, who can write from the perspective of Juliet, who is a teenager in love, and also from the perspective of King Lear, who is like, a bitter old man. And he writes the depth of emotions that all different kinds of people experience so well that his stuff stays around. Not very many people can express deep emotions so well, but Shakespeare was one who could, and so was David.) And David's writing is Messianic because Christ drew upon his words and said that's exactly how he felt.

So with Messianic literature it's partially people writing about Christ, and partially people expressing deep emotions so well that Christ quotes it later.

16 For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.

17 I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.

18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

These things are literal, and then verse 19:

19 But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me.

They can do all these things to me, but I can handle all that; but Lord, don't you leave me. These verses give us perspective into how Christ was feeling during the Atonement.

He said a bunch of other stuff, and gave other examples, but it's late and I'm tired, so I'll just share a couple more things from my notes.

Psalm 69.

9 For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.

20 Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.

21 They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Again, we're on the cross with Him, looking down, instead of being with the apostles, looking up.

He said we sometimes talk about "the cup of trembling" or the "bitter cup" when we're talking about the Atonement, and he said that the two go together. When we drink vinegar, we don't just say "ew", and he made a face as though he'd tasted something bitter, and when people taste bitter things, their faces pucker and crinkle up--bitterness causes trembling. (He told us, "You go home tonight and drink a cup of vinegar and you'll understand the image very well.")

And then just one last thing he talked about; Psalm 107. He said sometimes Christ deliberately did things to fulfil prophecy. He would specifically duplicate the miracles of other prophets.

That was the way they did things back then. I wish I remember all of the examples he gave, but basically, like Moses parts the Sea, so other prophets parted other things. And that repetition happened a lot. It was part of assuming the mantle of a prophet. Or something like that.

And back in the day, because they did that, you couldn't say "Oh, I believe Abraham was a prophet, and Moses was, and I believe in Elijah, but I don't know about this Elisha..." because that would be gross hypocracy.

In Psalm 107, he showed us this:

23 They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;

24 These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

25 For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

26 They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.

27 They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man and are at their wits’ end.

28 Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.

29 He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.

(He told us that the phrase "at their wits' end" came from that verse of the scriptures.)

I asked him if the apostles would have recognized that from the psalm when he calmed the storm. He told me they would have. He said they knew the Psalms really well, just like we would recognize stories from the Book of Mormon if we heard them.

Anyhow, it was a really good class. I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester. I was telling my coworkers about it today, and my boss asked who was teaching it. I looked it up, and I told her. It's S. Michael Wilcox. I thought the name had sounded kinda familiar, but she knew who he was. Apparently he's also an author. He's written a bunch of books I've heard of. Deseret Book has like 15 of his books listed. Hm. Neat.

How to Commit Fraud

Tomorrow morning I'm taking my Accounting final. Early. We're allowed to use a 3x5 card with whatever we want on it, as long as it is in our own handwriting. I am, of course, writing as much as I possibly can on my card. (I'm using pigma micron 005 pens, which write .20 mm line width = tiny.) To keep things nice and legible, I'm writing four lines between each line on the index card.

I just came across a kind of fun slide that I thought I would mention. It's a page of "Recent Financial Reporting Misstatements" and it was basically our class conversation about how to commit fraud. I guess a bunch of accounting professors won't really talk about fraud in classes, but mine does! He tells us he's teaching us how to commit fraud so that we know not to do it. "If you do it, you'll get away with it for awhile," he says. "But eventually you'll get caught."

So the deal is this: every year public companies have to issue financial statements. People who buy stocks use these financial statements to know how the company is doing, and how it will probably continue to operate, etc. The financial statements don't come out right right after the period that they represent, so even if anything serious changes between when the statements are from and when they're released (like a few months), they're even supposed to mention that. Because as someone buying part of the company, like, you deserve to know.

That's the whole point of this stuff. If you choose to invest in a risky company, that's totally your choice, and maybe you'll make a lot of money or maybe you'll lose a lot of money. BUT, you have to know accurate numbers so that you know which companies are risky or less risky so that you can make that informed decision about where to put your moneys.

But companies can do some shady stuff to make it look like everything is fine or good when it actually is not fine.

Like these things:

Recording revenue too soon. OH NO! The financial year is ending tomorrow and everyone is expecting us to make THIS much money and instead we only made this much money. Well, Joe has paid us for the big order of stuff we're delivering to him next week, so let's just go ahead and count it now instead of next week, since we already know we're going to have it for him next week anyway. And if we count it now then we'll be closer to what people are expecting. [In accounting, this is not okay.]

Boosting income with one time sales. Everyone expected us to make $$$, but we actually sold Suzie that big order, so this year we made $$$$$$. All of us here at the company know that Suzie just needed stuff once, and that our company is not really growing that much or doing any better than we usually do. Next year we'll be back to making $$ or $$$ or mayyyybe $$$$ if we're lucky. Definitely not $$$$$$ like this year. But we just won't really say anything about Suzie's order, or draw any attention to it, and everyone will think we had a great year, and that next year will probably be even better. And they'll buy our stock like it's crack cocaine. Or candy. [Also not fine. They have a fatty notes section at the end of the financial statements where you can say "welllll, we had a great year, but it was mostly business as usual except for Suzie's big one time order" and that way everyone knows that you actually are still the company that they think you are. Or that you're doing worse if you are. Or whatever. But you're not misleading people into thinking that you're making more money if it's actually a one shot deal.]

Shifting current revenue to a later period. People were expecting us to make $15 and we actually made $35, but next year is going to be rough. So instead of saying we made $35, let's only say we made $20. And then we can count the other $15 next year, because our main product is our chocolate chip cookie, and we know that chocolate chips are on back order everywhere for the next 6 months, so times are going to be rough, but if we just save that $15 and count it later, then it will look like we did fine next year too, no matter how things actually go. [Also misleads people. Like maybe your stock stays the same because you did what everyone expected, so you can buy up lots of stock and then declare your other revenue next time and you'll be way ahead, and the stock will go up, and that would be shady. So, you can't shift current revenue to a later period.]

Recording bogus revenue. Hey look, our contractor sent us a refund because he was able to get the part cheaper! Great! Let's just pretend we sold more of something! [Obviously not fine to pretend you made money when you didn't.]

Shifting current expenses to a later or earlier period. "Well, everyone expected us to make $50, but after we pay Bill for the paper clips we ordered, we'll only have made $40. Blast. Oh, I know! Let's just pretend I didn't actually mail the check to Bill and we'll count it tomorrow so that it's part of our next financial statements. That way we'll have made our $50, and we can just plan to make a little more to cover the paper clips next time." [Just pay for the paper clips now. Let your numbers be a little lower this time, and people may be unhappy, but then you won't have to worry about jail time. For shifting current expenses, anyway.]

Failure to record or improperly reducing liabilities. Liabilities are the things you owe other people. So this is like saying, "Look! We have $25!" and everyone thinks you sold $25 of whatever, but you don't tell them that you also owe the bank $25, and you maybe didn't sell anything at all. Or maybe you sold stuff but you didn't charge enough to make a profit. You could be saying, "Look at our great company! We have $25!" and actually you have a loan that you still have to pay off that's $50, and you're losing money. [Don't do this.] [Lose money OR commit fraud.]

Shifting future expenses to the current period as a special charge. Well, if we have more expenses, it will make sense that we have less money than people expected. So, let's just pretend we paid all of our electric bills for the rest of the year. We'll put it on our statements as "Electricity Fee" (or, you know, whatever) and then when we have to pay them later we'll just know that we already counted them. Or we'll count them again under their normal utility category. Similar to shifting revenue; it makes it look like you're making more or less than you actually are. [Bad idea.]

Interesting, huh. The magician clip art I actually copy/pasted from the slide because I thought that was kinda funny.

Finished Project!

This weekend I finished a project I've been working on for awhile. See, when I started attending the University of Utah I also started attending football games. Which are often in the evenings, which are often cold.

Every time I'd go to a game, I would have the great idea that I should make a blanket to bring to football games.

The only game of the season is our BCS game, which I won't be attending, so the blanket doesn't really do me any good now. But it will be great for next year. Or other sports games. Or, you know, whenever I'm feeling especially proud of my school, and cold.

The top is flannel, the bottom is fake fur. I bound the edges with flannel. I tied the blanket at the corners of the squares, but I didn't do tassels; instead I just did surgeon knots. I cut close to the knots (on the fur side) so that the fur covers the knots. That was the idea, anyway. It actually came out looking like the belly of a female cat. Hopefully as I use the blanket more, the fur will do a better job of covering the knots.

Go Utes!

Auto Bailouts

This week in my accounting class we've just been researching and discussing the auto bailouts. We broke into groups and looked at the financial statements for Ford and GM (Chrysler is a privately owned company, so their statements are not public), and we did a bunch of calculations for their numbers from the past five years, and looked at trends. We also researched what Ford and GM have told the government they're going to do. Today we just had a big discussion about it.

Here are some of the more interesting things:

1. The only reason Ford even exists anymore is because of debt. They have negative owners equity. Which pretty much means, they don't have any of their own money that they've put into the company.

2. Ford has like $165 BILLION in debt. They're asking for like $9 billion total from us taxpayers. Which is nothing compared to what they owe. Sooooo, what are they going to do with the money that is going to make the difference? They're not saying.

3. This is my favorite fact, which I didn't know, and I think most people don't know. The CEOs of all three companies have said that they would take $1 salary. Now, when people hear that, they think that these guys are going to take only $1 for the whole year. I thought that too. That's not what it is at all though. These guys take a salary and compensation. So for example, for Ford, the CEO is Alan Mulally. His salary is normally $2 million dollars, and then he gets $18.5 million in other compensation. So him taking $1 salary means that next year he would be willing, out of the goodness of his heart, when his company is failing, to only make $18.5 million instead of $20.5 million. They're not offering to work basically for free. At all. It's a drop in the bucket, and it should be insulting to us that they would offer that. I totally thought it meant he would take $1 for the year. Not so.

4. The companies offer a lot of fluff, and some things that are real. Saying they'll make smaller cars, which are supposed to be more profitable (how profitable? says who? why are we only realizing this now?) is fluff. Saying they're selling their private jets (for how much? compared to how much debt?) is fluff. Selling Volvo (for how much? this year it wasn't profitable...) is fluff. GM selling Saturn and cutting Pontiac is fluff. Merging with Chrysler is fluff. None of those things have any numbers along with them, none of them indicate any real change to the business model, and none of the plan indicates how using our tax money will make any difference.

The things that are real are the innocent people. Ford and GM will be shutting down dealerships and plants. Most of the plants are in the Midwest. The plants are in cities where everyone works at the plant. And people don't really have bachelors degrees, because they work at the plant and their parents, and maybe their grandparents did. So when these places close, it's going to completely change life for the people in those cities. And that sucks for them. Because it isn't their fault the CEOs have been managing the companies very irresponsibly for the past 10 or 20 years. [But it doesn't cost money to shut down dealerships and plants and to lay people off, so where is our tax money going?]

Anyhow. They'll get their money, but I guarantee they'll be back in 3 months asking for more.

Really, though, I just wanted to share the part about the $1 salaries. Because I thought that was super shady.

Other Strategies for Adding Humor to Your Life

I was looking at the same article I just posted the quiz from, and the page before the quiz is a list of ways to add humor to your life. This may also be of interest to someone.

Innovations in Clinical Practice: A Source Book (Vol. 5)
Waleed Salameh "The effective use of humor in psychotherapy." (p. 169)

Other Strategies for Adding Humor to Your Life. Draw cartoons (without worrying about their artistic value) about situations, persons, or events which you find to be particularly humorous. Create humorous collages. Take an art or photography catalog (or even your own family album) and make up humorous captions for each picture. When you come home every evening, try to remember at least one funny event that happened during the day. Write it down and share it with friends and family. Practice "International Dyslexia" by creating new words or onomatopoeias that cannot be found in dictionaries. Ask your friends to tell you their favorite jokes and tell them yours.

Find some time to be alone, sitting in your most comfortable position, relaxed, and breathing soundly. Close your eyes and bring up a humorous experience. Visualize the event as concretely as possible, and allow yourself to fully relive and enjoy it in all its details and with all the feelings you experienced at that moment. Make a date with yourself to repeat this experience on a regular basis by bringing up the same event, constructing a cassette tape of the experience, or picturing other humorous events you have been involved in. Keep in mind that all of us have had happy, humorous experiences, even if we are sometimes more prone to remember negative happenings.

List five facts or life situations you frequently experience and which you find to be absurdly humorous. For example, why can't public telephones return change, or why do some envelopes have a caption on the top right corner saying, "Place stamp here"?

Make written notes of humorous car stickers you notice as you drive. Some examples are "Plumbers do it with a flush," "Teachers do it with class," "Fishermen have all the angles," "Quilters do it warmly," "Chemists get better reactions," "Chess players are better at mating." Start your own "...do it with..." sequence.

Think of a problem that has been bothering you. Think of one sentence which you could use to define your problem in a humorous vein and write it down.

Don't be afraid to share with others the spontaneous humorous associations or scenarios that cross the freeways of your mind. Of course, some of what you find humorous may not be humorous to others because different individuals have predilections for different humorous genres. It is okay for some people to feel that some other people's humor is not okay.

With your co-workers, friends, or colleagues, start a humor support group. Your group can share jokes and success stories on the constructive applications of nondestructive humor used with oneself or others. Each group member can also share with the group an embarrassing episode that he or she has lived, simply relating what happened with out censuring the event in any way. The sharing of embarrassing episodes promotes group cohesiveness, encourages members to be less self-conscious, and brings home the message that we are all imperfect human beings living in an imperfect world. Additionally, the group may enjoy experimenting with improvisational comedy sketches, miming, or other humorous performances.

Start the day with a zing. As soon as you get up in the morning, make a habit of calling up a good friend and exchanging humorous repartee with him or her. This will get you perked up and humorously ready for the day. You can also call any of your friends during the day (especially those who are unhappy and need to laugh) and leave humorous messages on their answering machines. Examples include imitating various dialects or funny advertisements, remembering private jokes, sharing new jokes, and so on.

Make funny lists to exaggerate, stretch, and spoof some of your own problems, fears, and behaviors. You may find that writing such comical lists is not only a lot of fun but can also help you deflate and gain perspective on hitherto insurmountable or disquieting concerns. And, who knows, you may find out about things you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask. Examples include "ten things I must remember to do to fail my exams," "twelve recommendations that would virtually squelch my chances of ever getting a promotion," "five things I must remember to do to spoil my relationships with others," "ten favorite anxieties I can't live without," "twelve worries I want to indulge in from now until death do us part," "five myths I want to keep believing about myself so I can enjoy depression," "seven myths and seven realities about my fear of success," and "three reasons why undue guilt is good for me."

You can also take the Humorous Sentence Completion Blank test which I have included on the next two pages. [NOTE: the Humorous Sentence Completion Blank test was my last blog post, found here]