Growing Down

My tastes are getting younger and younger every year. I've spent the past two nights at HSM3 and Twilight, respectively. This is vaguely embarrassing, but not enough to deny that I'm listening to the HSM3 soundtrack as I type this. I belong to the demographic these movie-makers target, but do they choose me or do I choose them? Go ahead and judge me.
Today I finally downloaded pictures from the semester, and since I'm usually word-heavy, I thought some pix would be a nice change.


my fave brekky.

learning to work the bellows at an early age; cowboy around the clock.

homecoming parade with my fave ladies. (it snowed that day--what's wrong with today?)

halloween as a hippie--wearing my own clothes.

remembering two years.

and finally--the lowest low-light of the semester: the aforementioned spaghetti sauce incident. Both feet are shown.

What I'm learning at school

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.

--Wallace Stegner

Amen, Wallace. It's quite the road ahead.

Impossible!

That a plain yellow pumpkin would become a golden carriage. Impossible!

My iPod broke over a month ago--realdeal broke this time. I took it to Jim, iPod genius; I plugged it into every computer and wall I knew; I finally buried it mournfully in my desk drawer. RIP iPod.

Why did I not tell you? Perhaps it was too much for me to bear, and saying it aloud on my blof would only make it definite. So I kept it to myself. I carried my silent burden all over campus (I am not one to be loud when annoying things happen and I am alone...example: last week a glass bottle of spaghetti sauce fell from the Suburban and shattered, spraying sauce all over my leather/suedey shoes and jeans. I didn't say a word. I didn't make a peep. ('I don't want to hear one more poop out of you!' 'He means peep.')) And I was actually starting to get used to the silence. I started noticing people around me and I remembered my love of campus eavesdropping.

Then today, for who knows what reason, I dug through my drawer and found my old iPod. I tried starting it, resetting it, and rubbing it with love. Nothing. One of those bad pictures with a frowning iPod face. I tossed my poddy in my bag and went to school, thinking I would take it to the apple store and see if it could be reloaded (all music erased, etc.). Just now, I reached into my bag for my phone and I saw a light--No! It could not be my faithful resurrection pod that has come back to me after so many scares. In fact, my iPod is now working after a month and a half of darkness in my drawer.

Riddle me that.

It's Time

It's raining in the valley, snowing in the mountains, and happiness inside me. Not to mention I'm listening to Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan and thinking of how lovely my life has been. I have been alive for 8,877 days. Today is my 8,877th anniversary. Thank you all for remembering and sending gifts.

Think about that though. 8,877 days, 213,048 hours, 12,782,880 minutes, 766,972,800 seconds. Those are my life stats. I know I'm biased, but I think those numbers add up to some good life lessons (don't spit a mint out with a helmet visor over your face), some fantab experiences (from coast to coast, a couple different continents), and a whole heapin lot of love.

One memory: driving to Wulanyilli P3 (the school where I volunteer taught in Ghana) in a downpour--a rain with weightiness that made you check for dents in your car--seeing the beauty of fields with dust rising and mixing with the rain, dust rising like relief and a burden removed. We pulled up at the school convinced that the rain would have kept our students inside (but did we forget these were not American students eager for snow days and excuses to stay away from school), and found 50+ kids waiting for us. Drenched. Smiling. We stayed in the van because the driver said (and we knew) the classrooms would be too dark to teach in. The students rushed the van anyway, and I remember seeing those faces and the colors of their clothing blurring into a mess of light on my puddley window. They were beautiful...here's to you, children of the Wulanyilli P3, who will never see snow.

You know that book, The Giver? We are all like Jonas, I suppose, passing our memories back and forth and transmitting scenes, feelings, colors, dreams...my memory contains things I've never experienced myself. Keep sharing with me.

Yes we can, part 2

"Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, "We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection." And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too.

"And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

"For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

--Barack Obama, President-elect

botheration

Today things are bothering me. But: I am not grouchy about these botherations. (I don't think I'm allowed to put a colon behind a but but: I'm doing it because this is a blog and the wave of the future and the wave of the future doesn't care about grammar.)

Let me revise. I am and am not grouchy about them. I am not grouchy about them in my interactions with people (except for two people), and I am not grouchy about them in my general attitude. It would take many botherations to overcome my happiness at snow on the mountains and a potentially drizzly day. Potentially drizzly days just might be better than drizzly days.

I am grouchy about them in the back of my mind and in this blog-o and in my attempts to resist said botherations.

Number 1. A parking ticket that I shouldn't have received in the first place from a copper who has forgotten that he is also a human, which ticket somehow entered the justice system wrong and now I have late fees I don't deserve.

I just solved the first part of this, but it turns out that the late fees weren't nearly enough percentage of the fine. Rats.

Number 2. A "letter" that is as inhumane as that copper from the Utah State Tax Commission telling me that I owe them more money because mr. HRBlock filled out my taxes wrong. My impulse is to pay without investigating, but this impulse reveals my attitude towards the state botheration machine, which (for lack of understanding) I always assume is honest, accurate, and in my best interest. Today I'm doubting.

Haven't yet figured out how to solve this problem, since I didn't understand my taxes in the first place...hence mr. HRBlock.

Number 3. My front teeth don't touch. My top front teeth do not meet my bottom front teeth in the middle. There is no compromise, no happy medium, no you do your part and I'll do mine. "There's nothing between us. Just air." Why does this matter? Cause it really gets in the way of my incisors incising. I cannot bite things open like tubs of ranch dressing or otterpops. I cannot bite off hangnails (probably a good thing.) I cannot tear into anything that is smaller than the space between my teeth. I feel very vulnerable and handicapped by this problem, and I worry that it might someday get in the way of my survival...natural selection will rule me out, send me and my posterity packing....

I do not know when or how this happened, nor how to solve it. I often forget that it is the case until I try to bite something and feel the frustration of having something just out of reach. AARGH.

Number 4. Today I purchased a carrot snack dipper between classes, and after using my pen to open my tub of ranch, my first dip tasted overwhelmingly like mayonnaise. I know ranch dressing has mayonnaise in it, but this was more like 100 parts mayo, 1 part ranch. I am not okay with that. In a moment of stupidity, I thought it was me and not the dressing, and I tried dipping five more times. Each time--mayonnaise. The near solid consistency should have tipped me off.

Despite the botherations, I love LOVE fall. Cheers.

Halloweenie!

One of my favorite things about Halloween is not knowing if people are dressing up or dressing normal...a guy just walked past me and I thought, "oh cool, he's a nerd for Halloween." On second thought, I wasn't so sure. The more authentic the costume--the more believable it is--the better, right? I decided to be a diligent homework-doing-non-procrastinating student this Halloween. What about you?