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.