My Life Since September, or Why I Love My Phone

Lunches

My holiday dearth of Optimistic. is over, and the only thing that rivals my happiness that he's back is my happiness that he's developed a new habit. Every night at about eleven p.m., Optimistic. puts assorted food items into a brown bag. He makes school lunches! I think it's fantastic.

The whole thing kind of makes me nostalgic. When I was younger, my parents made my lunches. (Go figure.) I'm sure my mom made them a bunch of times, but Dad would sometimes make school lunches his Project. My dad was a champion lunch-maker. Instead of PBJ's, Dad would make egg-salad sandwiches. Or, he would make BLT's. We didn't want the tomatoes to make our sandwiches soggy, so he would put them in a separate bag, to be added to the rest at time of consumption. They were awesome. Other times, he would make us cinnamon and sugar sandwiches. (In our family, we use brown sugar instead of white.)

The really cool thing about Dad making school lunches, though, was that he would personalize the bags for us. He knows how to draw pretty well, so he'd grab a Sharpie, and draw a funny cartoon on each of our bags, every day. People at school loved them.

Sadly, I had forgotten about all of this until Optimistic. began making his lunches.

I don't make lunches. I leave work at 12 or 1, so I usually plan on eating lunch at home, after work. I also usually get hungry by break time, at 10. Instead of pulling a snazzy brown bag out of the refrigerator here, I stare at the vending machines. Lately I've been eating Twix bars.

They're not the most nutritious, for sure, but yesterday I came up with a theory:

1. Drinking soda is bad because it dissolves (-) stuff. Like teeth. Let soda = "s". "s" = -x

2. Eating candy is bad because it adds (+) stuff. Let candy = "c". "c" = x

Therefore, eating candy and drinking soda together can be expressed as the equation:
c + s = ?

Let's solve!
We'll replace the variables.
(x) + (-x) = ?
x - x = 0.

What a pleasant discovery! By using a simple algebraic equation, we can prove that soda and candy cancel each other out.

Someday, I'll jump on the brown-bag-bandwagon again, too. For now, at least I can be content in knowing that I'm doing my body good.

For the Love of Learning

I have a few connections to BYU Independent Study:

1) I saw a cool commercial for BYU-IS back home, on BYU-TV. It featured a girl sitting on some South American ruins, using her computer. It was supposed to show that you could be having all kinds of adventures and still study. As someone suffering from a severe case of wanderlust, the commercial made BYU-IS seem really cool. (Since of course, ads always offer accurate portrayals of real people, right?)

2) One of my family members has taken 2? classes through BYU-IS, semi-recently.

3) 1/4 of everyone that I know has, at one time, worked at the BYU-IS office.

And so, since I'm wanting to take classes, it seemed logical to try a BYU-IS class.

Except, I've had a scholarship transfered, to pay for the tuition & book fees. And it has been the biggest hassle of my life. Almost.

They must think that I'm actually isolated at some South American ruins, or something, because they have made it their office goal to have everyone become BFF with me.

Trying to register for my class, I talked to the IS office, who had me talk to the BYU Financial Aide office, who coordinated things with the IS office. They figured out what I should do, and I had stuff sent over. And then, everything got mixed up in Christmas mail and took awhile to arrive. Fair enough. So after it should have arrived, I talked to the IS office, and talked to them again, and, oh, sad, the person I needed was gone on vacation. So I waited. And then I talked to the IS office, and they had me talk to the IS receiving office? or something. And they transfered me to the guy I really needed to talk to. And he finally registered me for my class a week ago. (Hooray!)

And he promised that I would recieve my class stuff. I asked him if the Bookstore would know what to do with the check that they would receive. They would, he said.

So I waited some more. And I got my IS class stuff! (Hooray!) And I was so excited to start, exceeeeppppptt.....I still don't have my book. It's structured so that I can't do much of anything until I receive it. Blast.

So after patiently waiting for my book, I called back today. Apparently the Bookstore doesn't know that I exist. The IS office doesn't know what's happening. I talked to 3 more girls today. I'm getting to know all of them. And all of them have advice for me. (Advice that they should've given when I called back in October.) [Mind you, the average conversation length with each of these people is 30-60 minutes.] Sweet mercy, will this saga never end? I'm supposed to call my dear friend who registered me last week (he was in a meeting when I called earlier.)

Today I registered for a second class. It was so simple. I walked into my yarn store. I asked if I had missed their January mailing. (I hadn't; they're sending it tomorrow.) I asked about the spinning class. They told me about it. I paid for my class, and that's it--I'm enrolled. I'll show up in two weeks, with a notebook and pen. They will provide everything else. Fantastic.

I really miss being a full-time student, but in one of those you-can't-appreciate-mountains-unless-you've-experienced-valleys sort of ways, I'm so pleased to have my two classes.

Why Nobody Should Ever Reach for the Stars

I usually think about stars and planets about as often as I think about pop rocks or canned meat: I'm aware that they exist, and every so often I'll think about them briefly, but that's about it.

Back home, you really couldn't see too many stars; there were just too many lights from too many cities. I'm pretty sure we looked at stars during my seventh-grade Catalina island trip. I remember using a giant telescope to see Mars from an Ohio farm. In elementary school we made eclipse-viewers. Those are my main experiences that I've had with star-gazing.

(In middle school I considered joining the astronomy (ha! I started typing "astrology club") club. I went to the first meeting, even. The club advisor was a teacher who was widely known for 1) picking his nose and 2) being very boring, so I lost interest before the second club meeting.)

But anyway, it turns out that you can see a lot of stars here.

Stars must have seemed incredible to people who lived awhile back. Without "knowing" about stars being luminous balls of plasma, stars would have seemed distant, and mysterious. I know that some cultures had star stuff figured out even better than we do, and it was a big deal to them. It must have been hard to study something that you can't touch or even see really well, especially with old scientific instruments.

And just knowing that stars are no longer is a mystery is enough to make them less interesting to me. I couldn't care less about touching stars or understanding what they are.

I started thinking about 'reaching for the stars.' In light (ha!) of scientific discovery (which, incidentally, predates the notion of reaching for stars), it does not make sense at all.

Suppose you're the tallest person in the world. You're Robert Wadlow, which you're not, and you're 8 feet 11 inches tall. Suppose you jump the largest jump recorded, which the tallest person wouldn't. Javier Sotomayor jumped the highest ever recorded, a jump of 8 feet and 1/2 inches, unaided. His jump was basically 125% of his height. Since your height is about 9 feet, proportionally, you would jump 11 feet and 3 inches. It would never happen, but we'll suppose you're extra ambitious, and in your reaching for the stars, your reach is the highest jump ever jumped. Cool.

The closest star to the Earth is the Sun. We'll suppose that you're reaching for it, even though the phrase isn't "reach for the most proximate star." The Sun is a paltry 93,000,000 miles away from the Earth. The Sun's orbit is elliptical, so we'll suppose you're reaching for the star(s) on January 2nd, when it's only 91.4 million miles away. (This should be easy!)

You reached... 11.25 ft x (1 mile/5280 feet) = 0.00213068182 miles.

0.00213068182 miles / 91400000 miles = 2.33116173 × 10^-11

Reaching ambitiously only gets you one .0000000000233116173th of the way there. Sad.

Suppose you somehow did manage to reach it anyway. (Hooray! right?) The surface of the Sun has a temperature of 6000°C (11000°F). People are cremated between 870-980 °C.

Even if you try your very very very very very best, it doesn't matter or count for anything. And this is supposed to be motivational?

A Google search of "reach for the stars" renders 743,000 results. How did this happen?

To help us all feel a little better, I suggest a modification of the saying. Instead of "Reach for the stars!" I recommend "Reach for your toes!" I know many people who cannot reach their toes. And, with regular effort (yoga classes, perhaps) this feat (ha!) can be achieved.

Winter

My very first district leader was an elder from Kazakhstan. He was fluent in Italian (because his mom is Italian), but he told me that he was kind of surprised that he wasn't called to serve in Russia. (Living in Kazakhstan, he'd learned Russian.) Any time he met anyone who spoke Russian as their first language, he would teach them about the gospel, in Russian. The people were so happy to have someone to talk to in their own language that they would always have lengthy conversations.

One time I asked him how he could pick out the Russians. (I sure couldn't.) He told me that one of the ways he could tell was the way they walked. Since Russians are accustomed to cold weather, snow and ice don't affect their walking at all. They walk...confidently?

I'm not one of those people who claims California because my parents moved there a couple years ago. I am a bona fide, born-and-raised, genuine Californian. I think that this winter is going to make it obvious that I'm not from here. Instead of walking confidently like the Russians, I walk like someone ice skating for the very first time.

I thought someone had really helped us pedestrians out by clearing all of Provo's sidewalks. [Yes! No more choosing between soaked, cold, normal-length pants and artificial high-waters!] Instead, it was all just a cruel joke. Instead of making my pedest-ing more comfortable, it makes it much more difficult. The sidewalks are glazed with ice. The soles of my shoes are unable to grip the cement. I slide all over the place. It's dangerous, really. In order to safely walk anywhere, I'll need those mountain-climber shoes that have spikes on them. For now, I shuffle instead of walking.

Another problem with snow is, it seems like it's in the way. It's sort of like having tracking in real life. On videos, people really don't like it. It gets in their way and bothers them. They press buttons on remotes, fast-forward and rewind, and try to get rid of it. And eventually, hopefully, it goes away. With snow, it's the same to me. I feel like I need to move it out of the way so that I can see things. Too bad universal remotes aren't really universal.

And snow is cold. Very cold.

A final observation about snow: even when it's dark and grey outside, the snow reflects light and everything seems brighter. I do like that.

Update, mostly about work.

As it turns out, I enjoy my new job. I have fun coworkers, and all that.

I've been reading a lot of our books from the "library" that we have in the break room. The Company will give us a free book of our choice if we read five from their list of new books. Us reading them makes it easier for us to sell them because we can recommend books that we've read to customers. The Company likes that.

It's been really funny, though, because I'm reading Church fiction books. Starting to read them has been kind of like starting to drink health shakes; you have to choke them down in the hopes that eventually you'll get used to the strange flavor.

Don't get me wrong; I love, love, love Church reference books. I'm just not used to the fiction ones. My little sister who attends BYUI reads Anita Stansfield (sp?) books. They're supposed to be romance novels. Church romance novels. And that, to me, seems like an oxymoron. It's a well-known fact that romance novels are smutty and plotless. They're full of lust and promiscuity. And those are things that would intentionally be omitted in any church related book. How can a Church romance novel exist? We teased my sister for reading them. She would start telling us how the plot (if you could call it a plot) was progressing, and I would interrupt her: "And they hold hands in the end?"

And now I'm reading the same sort of thing. The books are full of cheesy lines like: "I love you, Adam Price--but I should have known from your name that loving you would exact a big price from me" (p. 15). And the characters talk about their testimonies, and church things. And on the one hand, it's okay, because I talk about church things in real life, too. (So why shouldn't the characters?) And on the other hand, it's a bit like running into your professor at the grocery store or something. It seems really out of place.

There are also fiction series about Nephi and company, or other Book of Mormon characters. I think even if one of those books were placed on the list, I wouldn't read it. It's just too weird. Nephi chats it up with Sariah, and the authors take the liberty of naming characters that are unnamed in the scriptures. Who knew that this stuff existed?!

We also have some interesting customers, just like anywhere else.

A couple days ago I had a real gem. I knew that she was going to be interesting from the first time she opened her mouth. She said, "So I found out that I have a UTI and a bladder infection..." right from the start. Other highlights of our conversation included her looking for a book.

What was it called? She couldn't remember. What was it about? She couldn't remember that either. What type of book was it? She thought for a moment. It was a church book. It was definitely a church book.

I work at a Church bookstore.

She also wanted to find a particular CD. She pointed to one of the CDs that we had out. "It's shaped like this," she told me, to help me know which one she wanted. A CD that came in a CD case. Oh boy.

My break is over, so I'll post more later.

Recent Happenings.

Things that have happened recently:

• I attended the Joanna Newsom concert, which was amazing.


• Lavish and I dyed our hair this weekend, for an adventure
  
• I started work at a new job. So far, I enjoy it.

Also, the cat is getting bigger. She pounces on things.

The Trials of Darryl Hunt

Last night, I went with Brooklyn and Yellow to see a film that was part of the Sundance documentary series.

The Trials of Darryl Hunt was all about this guy who was convicted of a murder that he didn't commit. He spent 20 years in prison while his appeals were denied. Even after DNA testing showed that he wasn't responsible for the rape and murder of the lady wasn't enough to get him a new trial. Finally, they ended up finding the guy who had actually committed the crime, and they let Darryl out of prison.

It was a really interesting story. All along, nobody really had any evidence. People got so fired up because he was a black guy and she was a white woman that it became an emotional issue rather than a logical one.

The thing that really impressed me was that throughout it all, Darryl stayed really positive. When they asked him when he was first being tried if he was angry, he said that he wasn't. He said people make mistakes, and that was one of them. Pretty much all of the video clips of him showed him smiling and calm. He really made the best of his situation. He often talked about God watching out for him.

He's been out of prison for almost two years, now, and he isn't filing charges against anyone. He's moving on. He's serving other people.

In the discussion after the movie, the girl who made the film said that Darryl has started a program to help inmates succeed with the transition to life outside of prison. He has a 90 day? class that teaches people job skills, offers housing, etc, etc, and there have already been 35 or so people to complete it.

When someone asked her what we could do, she said that the best thing we could do would be to participate in prison literacy programs. I'm looking into those now.

I'm really glad that I went to see the movie; I think Darryl offered an amazing example of patience and optimism.