Dear Self,
Why is it that whenever you think of something you can write about on your blog you completely forget what it was in the 8 second time frame between logging on to the computer and bringing up the internet?
Also, are you allergic to being fat? Because ever since you gained back all that weight you lost after your mission you have gotten increasingly, and annoyingly, itchy. What gives? Is that even medically possible? Will you just quit it already?
And really, why did you gain back all that weight? Ugh.
Dear Springville City,
Is it really necessary to shut down the north-south street that I have to cross to get to my house for 10 blocks for your construction project? Especially when every time I drive by one of the closed streets there is absolutely nothing going on and no reasonable explanation for why I can't just cut across, except for the 89 million orange barrels blocking the way. Also, if it is an absolute necessity to make me drive a mile out of my way to get home (even though you only have enough crew members and equipment to work on one block at a time) could you at least not open random streets at random times to get my hopes up, only to close them less than 24 hours later? Because that is just cruel. If I have to drive around you, fine, but don't tease me. We're both too old for that.
Additionally, would you consider repealing your anti-sign law? I know that you don't want city property to be littered with yard sale and puppies-for-sale signs, but people in this city have obviously found a way around this law. They now post their signs on their cars and park them on main street. This means that people interested in yard-sailing now slow down and brake ON MAIN STREET to jot down addresses, thus blocking traffic and posing a real danger to themselves and others. Would it be that difficult to create a new law allowing signs to be hung only for 24-48 hours before a yard sale? Then you could write tickets to the people who don't clean up their signs. This would be easy because their addresses are right there on the sign! You could just ticket them through the mail! Think of the revenue! Think of the eased flow of traffic! If you are not keen on that idea, how about making it legal to hit people who brake on main street to look at the yard sale signs?
One last thing: Are you aware that the haz-mat trucks that you park next to the library (where lots of people see them) say "Participating Agency's", rather than "Participating AgencIES"? I don't mean to be a stickler, but when it comes to a professional organization dealing with the clean-up and disposal of hazardous materials you really can't afford to have people question their confidence in you. Just a thought.
Dear Winco,
How could you discontinue the most delicious toffee caramel scones ever?! They were approximately 35% of your coolness (the other 65% being made up of your amazing low prices and your selling items like cereal, granola, sugar, etc per pound like bulk candy). I can't fathom that the scones weren't selling. Anyone who has tasted their deliciousness would be unable to restrain from buying them. So maybe your problem is advertising. In which case I would be willing to help you sell them using whatever skills I may have, even if it means going door to door giving out samples. You are a company that is very new to this area so I am sure that their not selling only has to do with not many Utahns having tried them and that once they do your sales of said scones will go through the roof. However, if you are still set on discontinuing them then could you please see fit to send me the recipe? That way at least I will be able to treasure them, even if nobody else knows how good they are.
Dear Russian,
I hope you were not offended by my last post. If you couldn't tell I am somewhat sarcastic. I don't really think you are a stalker and you are welcome to continue reading my blog. And I hope you do because it makes me feel important to have international readership :)
Dear certain people,
Isn't it just a teeny bit hypocritical to be so bullheaded about immigration when you yourself are the product of immigrants? I mean, I'm not saying open the borders and have a free for all but by your own zero tolerance policy the American Indians should technically be able to kick you the hell out of their land. Your immigrant parents didn't speak their language when they came here, and they weren't forced to learn it either. And wouldn't you know it, just a few generations later their progeny managed to assimilate into the culture just fine. (If by fine you mean becoming intolerant anti-immigration bigots :)
Dear Mosquitos,
Thank you for not biting me more this year. You have gotten me a few times but thanks to my fat allergy (see above) I don't think I could handle much more. So thanks for backing off.
And finally, Dear Readers,
Thanks for putting up with me and finding humor in what I write even if if seems like a giant rant (which at times it may be. And probably is.)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Whales Probably Have Clearer Thought Patterns Than I Do. But I Still Hate Them.
Remember how I said that I was going write a real post soon? Yeah, this probably isn't it. I'm still not in a blogging mood and every time I think about writing something I get really really tired. So even though I kind of want to tell you about how much I hate whales and why, I am just not really enthused about it. So you will just have to be kept in suspense, which is bad for both of us because its not like its the funniest, most awesome story ever. But the waiting will make you excited for it, which will make me avoid telling it because I will think that I have to make it the most awesome post ever, which will make me avoid writing it for fear of failing miserably and losing all my readership (which apparently includes somebody in Moscow, Russia. I don't know anybody in Moscow, which makes me kind of nervous because what if it's a stalker person who is secretly planning to kill me? But then if they did kill me I wouldn't have to tell you the whale story and that would solve that problem and it wouldn't matter if I lost my readership because I would be dead. Shout out to you Moscow! But actually, maybe don't kill me after all and I will just tell the whale story now and save us all the suspense.)
I really wasn't planning on telling the whale story today and I apologize in advance if you are bored to tears by it or if you really really love whales, but please know that this is taking monumental effort on my part to tell. I mean, look at the horrible coherence of this post so far and you will clearly see that my thinking is tangential at best.
Anyway, back to sixth grade. I was a somewhat normal 11 year old starting fresh at the middle school. (Side note: When I was growing up there was a middle school AND a junior high and you went to both (middle school for 6-7th grade, Jr. High from 8-9th). I thought this was perfectly normal, but apparently elsewhere they just have one or the other. That's what you get when your high school is 60 years old and has more portables than actual building I guess) So there I was collecting moodies and figuring out how to work a locker like everybody else.
(These are moodies and they were more popular than anything since pogs when I was in middle school. Funny when you think about it. I mean, what could be more ironic than expressive little emoticons that tell you exactly what they are feeling being popular among the angsty non-communicative adolescent set that makes up 98.4% of the middle school?)
My best friend and I were super psyched that we had our English class together and our teacher seemed pretty cool. She even let us choose our own seats! This was unheard of in the elementary school. So of course we sat next to each other.
We didn't think much of it when our first writing assignment was to be about whales. And because we would all be writing about whales we would use some of our class time to learn about whales. No problem there. Less research to do on my own.
Now, up until this point my feelings about whales could best be described as apathetic. They were ok, but not something to obsess about like the Backstreet Boys (which of course I did, even going so far as to develop a crush on a boy I barely knew who happened to look like my favorite Backstreet Boy. Poor guy.)
But as the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months we continued to learn about whales. The right whale. The sperm whale. The orca. The narwhal (which is pretty much the only whale that I can still stand today, due to a hazy understanding of evolution that lead me to believe that they had descended from unicorns who were too proud to get into Noah's ark and thus had to learn to swim pretty quickly.)
(And really, how could they not be related? I love this picture)
We learned about the various uses of whale byproducts in the 1800s. We learned about what they ate (Krill. That's it. Stupid whales. They're like the koalas of the sea, with their exclusive diets of only one thing). We learned about how big they were, where they lived, how they gave birth, how they breathed, how they used echolocation, what their favorite colors were, who they had a crush on... no wait, that was me and best friend Chelsy. Anyway, we learned a whole lot about whales. We even went out to the parking lot and measured out the actual size of various whales and drew them with sidewalk chalk.
Finally, after several terms of learning about whales, of creating flashcards about whales, of turning in draft after draft of papers about whales, I had had just about enough. My apathy had slowly began to bubble into a deep dislike within my soul. Chelsy felt the same way. When the teacher began class one day with another diatribe about whales for the zagbillionth time Chelsy raised her hand and when called upon stated simply, "I hate whales."
Over 12 years later, I still have not forgotten the look on the teacher's face. It was as if Chelsy had slaughtered a puppy in front of her. She stood there with a look of complete and utter shock, unable to say a single word.
Now, I am a pacifist at heart so despite my dislike for the whales I tried to smooth over the apparent horror that Chelsy's statement had caused.
Me: I think what Chelsy is trying to say is that it is getting a little boring learning about whales after so much time and maybe we should...
Chelsy: No. I hate whales. I really do. That's all.
Me: I mean, hate is a strong word, so maybe she just means....
Chelsy: I. HATE. WHALES!!!!
Me: Ummm...
Teacher: Stunned silence
Jenny (Stupid artsy-fartsy superfake girl in English class): You know, whenever I start to get a little bored with learning about whales I just stop and think about what amazing creatures they are and how they can do so much and blah blah blah, defense of the whales, I'm a teacher's pet and am incapable of speaking in a normal way, instead choosing to articulate random syllables unnecessarily and pause for dramatic effect.
I don't remember exactly what happened after that. The rest of the day was kind of a blur as the dislike in my soul boiled over into pure, unadulterated hatred of the stupid whales and the utter inability of anybody in the class to see them for the floating blobs of lard that they are.
Even after all these years I still dislike them. It is probably misplaced hatred and what I really should hate is the essential brainwashing of an entire 6th grade class. I don't think Save The Whales International could do a better job of recruiting whale lovers than that 6th grade teacher did. (Maybe she was secretly working for them. Although, landlocked Utah is a strange place to do undercover whale lover brainwashing...)
Anyway, that is why I stand today with Tim Calhoun of Saturday Night Live as he says, "I like whales, but they have to go. I will organize a whaling party that will not stop until all the whales are dead."
And Nelson Munce of Simpson's fame as he proclaims "Nuke the Whales. Hey, you gotta nuke something."
(Okay, so maybe I am not that twisted and cruel. But if you ask me to go whale watching with you after this, I will slap you. And I will do the same thing and worse to any Russians who try to kill me. Just saying.)
I really wasn't planning on telling the whale story today and I apologize in advance if you are bored to tears by it or if you really really love whales, but please know that this is taking monumental effort on my part to tell. I mean, look at the horrible coherence of this post so far and you will clearly see that my thinking is tangential at best.
Anyway, back to sixth grade. I was a somewhat normal 11 year old starting fresh at the middle school. (Side note: When I was growing up there was a middle school AND a junior high and you went to both (middle school for 6-7th grade, Jr. High from 8-9th). I thought this was perfectly normal, but apparently elsewhere they just have one or the other. That's what you get when your high school is 60 years old and has more portables than actual building I guess) So there I was collecting moodies and figuring out how to work a locker like everybody else.
(These are moodies and they were more popular than anything since pogs when I was in middle school. Funny when you think about it. I mean, what could be more ironic than expressive little emoticons that tell you exactly what they are feeling being popular among the angsty non-communicative adolescent set that makes up 98.4% of the middle school?)My best friend and I were super psyched that we had our English class together and our teacher seemed pretty cool. She even let us choose our own seats! This was unheard of in the elementary school. So of course we sat next to each other.
We didn't think much of it when our first writing assignment was to be about whales. And because we would all be writing about whales we would use some of our class time to learn about whales. No problem there. Less research to do on my own.
Now, up until this point my feelings about whales could best be described as apathetic. They were ok, but not something to obsess about like the Backstreet Boys (which of course I did, even going so far as to develop a crush on a boy I barely knew who happened to look like my favorite Backstreet Boy. Poor guy.)
But as the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months we continued to learn about whales. The right whale. The sperm whale. The orca. The narwhal (which is pretty much the only whale that I can still stand today, due to a hazy understanding of evolution that lead me to believe that they had descended from unicorns who were too proud to get into Noah's ark and thus had to learn to swim pretty quickly.)
(And really, how could they not be related? I love this picture)We learned about the various uses of whale byproducts in the 1800s. We learned about what they ate (Krill. That's it. Stupid whales. They're like the koalas of the sea, with their exclusive diets of only one thing). We learned about how big they were, where they lived, how they gave birth, how they breathed, how they used echolocation, what their favorite colors were, who they had a crush on... no wait, that was me and best friend Chelsy. Anyway, we learned a whole lot about whales. We even went out to the parking lot and measured out the actual size of various whales and drew them with sidewalk chalk.
Finally, after several terms of learning about whales, of creating flashcards about whales, of turning in draft after draft of papers about whales, I had had just about enough. My apathy had slowly began to bubble into a deep dislike within my soul. Chelsy felt the same way. When the teacher began class one day with another diatribe about whales for the zagbillionth time Chelsy raised her hand and when called upon stated simply, "I hate whales."
Over 12 years later, I still have not forgotten the look on the teacher's face. It was as if Chelsy had slaughtered a puppy in front of her. She stood there with a look of complete and utter shock, unable to say a single word.
Now, I am a pacifist at heart so despite my dislike for the whales I tried to smooth over the apparent horror that Chelsy's statement had caused.
Me: I think what Chelsy is trying to say is that it is getting a little boring learning about whales after so much time and maybe we should...
Chelsy: No. I hate whales. I really do. That's all.
Me: I mean, hate is a strong word, so maybe she just means....
Chelsy: I. HATE. WHALES!!!!
Me: Ummm...
Teacher: Stunned silence
Jenny (Stupid artsy-fartsy superfake girl in English class): You know, whenever I start to get a little bored with learning about whales I just stop and think about what amazing creatures they are and how they can do so much and blah blah blah, defense of the whales, I'm a teacher's pet and am incapable of speaking in a normal way, instead choosing to articulate random syllables unnecessarily and pause for dramatic effect.
I don't remember exactly what happened after that. The rest of the day was kind of a blur as the dislike in my soul boiled over into pure, unadulterated hatred of the stupid whales and the utter inability of anybody in the class to see them for the floating blobs of lard that they are.
Even after all these years I still dislike them. It is probably misplaced hatred and what I really should hate is the essential brainwashing of an entire 6th grade class. I don't think Save The Whales International could do a better job of recruiting whale lovers than that 6th grade teacher did. (Maybe she was secretly working for them. Although, landlocked Utah is a strange place to do undercover whale lover brainwashing...)
Anyway, that is why I stand today with Tim Calhoun of Saturday Night Live as he says, "I like whales, but they have to go. I will organize a whaling party that will not stop until all the whales are dead."
And Nelson Munce of Simpson's fame as he proclaims "Nuke the Whales. Hey, you gotta nuke something."
(Okay, so maybe I am not that twisted and cruel. But if you ask me to go whale watching with you after this, I will slap you. And I will do the same thing and worse to any Russians who try to kill me. Just saying.)
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Aww
Just thought I would post a picture of this cute baby, since he has gotten so big and since I haven't been in much of a blogging mood lately (if there is such a thing). Plus, the kid's parents blog even less frequently than me if you can believe it, so the forums in which he can be shown off are limited.
You might not think it's possible, but he's even cuter in person : )
Oh, yeah, and things with me are ok. I'm just being lazy. One of these days I will get around to writing a "real" post, I promise. In the meantime, Evan will have to do : )
You might not think it's possible, but he's even cuter in person : )Oh, yeah, and things with me are ok. I'm just being lazy. One of these days I will get around to writing a "real" post, I promise. In the meantime, Evan will have to do : )
Monday, May 3, 2010
If You Can Forward, You Can BCC
And you should!! Because in the first place, I don't want to get your quadruple forwarded email, but if I do, I don't want the 68,00 other people you forwarded it to to be able to see my PERSONAL, PRIVATE (I thought) email. Grrr. I have a junk account for that exact purpose. Maybe I should send out a mass email to everyone in my address book and tell them that if they have any forwards, spam, junk mail, etc to send me they ought to send it to said account. But of course, that would probably get forwarded again, thus defeating the purpose.
So instead I will tell you all about a neat little feature in your email account called the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC). This amazing (and amazingly simple) feature allows you to send out all the annoying forwarded emails you would like to everyone (everyone!) in your address book as if you were only sending it to one person. So everybody gets the email but they don't know that you also sent it to sexyman312@aol.com, moviemaven94@gmail.com, goth_gurl21@hotmail.com and all the other weirdos in your address book. They also don't have to scroll past all those names to get to the actual email you sent to see how naive you are. Granted, the way to access the BCC is different depending on which email service you use but generally it is found under the "To:" section where you type in the addresses of the people to whom you are sending your lame forward. I know it requires some brain power to figure out but if you can breathe on your own you should be able to get it.
And even if you are not a math genius you should be able to figure out that money isn't free. (Even if it comes from your parents, it wasn't free to them:) So if you get an email telling you that Microsoft will give you $250 for every person you forward an email to you should realize that it's too good to be true.
I am no math genius myself, but with the help of a calculator I was able to look into the economics of this proposition. (I think this math is correct, but if not don't leave me any snarky comments about my stupidity, thank you. I'm well aware.) Basically, for every 10 people you forward it to, you earn $2,500. That means that if 1,000 people forward it to 10 people each, they earn a collective 2.5 MILLION dollars. (Or Microsoft pays out 2.5 million dollars for every 1,000 people who forward it to 10 people, whichever makes more sense to you). The population of the US is around 300 million, but assuming that half of them (150 million) forward this email to 10 people each (this is where the math could get tricky, but remember that Microsoft is a global company so we're going to assume that each of those 150 million people could forward the email to people outside the US and not just to people in the US who would have already received it from somebody else) Microsoft would pay out 375 BILLION dollars!!!
Now you may think that Microsoft has that kind of money, but you would be wrong. In fact, they make about 60 billion dollars in revenue per year. A lot, yes. But still 6 times less than what they would have to pay to all those forwarders. It just doesn't make any economic sense.
I know most people hate math so here's an even simpler solution: snopes.com. This is an amazing website that will tell you all about folklore, urban legends, and the validity of forwarded emails. So if you get a forwarded email and you wonder if it's legit, all you have to do is go to their website and perform a simple search. (Just like google, and even if you can't do math I know you can do google.) There's pretty much nothing they haven't heard of and they will tell you with a big red sign if it's false (or a big green one if it's true).
But if you are too lazy or uninformed to do that, let me know when you get your check from Microsoft. I will have already gotten mine from the advertising company to whom I sold all the email addresses in your forward. HA HA!
So instead I will tell you all about a neat little feature in your email account called the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC). This amazing (and amazingly simple) feature allows you to send out all the annoying forwarded emails you would like to everyone (everyone!) in your address book as if you were only sending it to one person. So everybody gets the email but they don't know that you also sent it to sexyman312@aol.com, moviemaven94@gmail.com, goth_gurl21@hotmail.com and all the other weirdos in your address book. They also don't have to scroll past all those names to get to the actual email you sent to see how naive you are. Granted, the way to access the BCC is different depending on which email service you use but generally it is found under the "To:" section where you type in the addresses of the people to whom you are sending your lame forward. I know it requires some brain power to figure out but if you can breathe on your own you should be able to get it.
And even if you are not a math genius you should be able to figure out that money isn't free. (Even if it comes from your parents, it wasn't free to them:) So if you get an email telling you that Microsoft will give you $250 for every person you forward an email to you should realize that it's too good to be true.
I am no math genius myself, but with the help of a calculator I was able to look into the economics of this proposition. (I think this math is correct, but if not don't leave me any snarky comments about my stupidity, thank you. I'm well aware.) Basically, for every 10 people you forward it to, you earn $2,500. That means that if 1,000 people forward it to 10 people each, they earn a collective 2.5 MILLION dollars. (Or Microsoft pays out 2.5 million dollars for every 1,000 people who forward it to 10 people, whichever makes more sense to you). The population of the US is around 300 million, but assuming that half of them (150 million) forward this email to 10 people each (this is where the math could get tricky, but remember that Microsoft is a global company so we're going to assume that each of those 150 million people could forward the email to people outside the US and not just to people in the US who would have already received it from somebody else) Microsoft would pay out 375 BILLION dollars!!!
Now you may think that Microsoft has that kind of money, but you would be wrong. In fact, they make about 60 billion dollars in revenue per year. A lot, yes. But still 6 times less than what they would have to pay to all those forwarders. It just doesn't make any economic sense.
I know most people hate math so here's an even simpler solution: snopes.com. This is an amazing website that will tell you all about folklore, urban legends, and the validity of forwarded emails. So if you get a forwarded email and you wonder if it's legit, all you have to do is go to their website and perform a simple search. (Just like google, and even if you can't do math I know you can do google.) There's pretty much nothing they haven't heard of and they will tell you with a big red sign if it's false (or a big green one if it's true).
But if you are too lazy or uninformed to do that, let me know when you get your check from Microsoft. I will have already gotten mine from the advertising company to whom I sold all the email addresses in your forward. HA HA!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Dreams Can Shatter Like Glass
Ok, so that's an overly dramatic title. I haven't suffered any tragedies or anything like that but my recent trip to Seattle did crush a small dream I've harbored for awhile. But we'll get to that later. First, the travelogue. (Because that way I don't have to give it in fast and testimony meeting. Ha Ha. )
So two of my mission companions and I recently took a week-long trip back to Seattle before one of them moved to Hawaii for the next three years. It was a really fun trip. We got to see a lot of people we taught and worked with and do most of the things we didn't get the chance to do as missionaries. (Dork alert: we were all secretly excited that we got to go outside of our mission boundaries in all directions (if you include the ocean as a boundary, which I do since we were never allowed to set foot in it before). Seattle is a really small mission by the way. It basically covers one county. It looks like this:
Anyway, I could probably bore you for hours with mission information. Instead, I will bore you with travel pictures. This is the start of our journey into Seattle.
Yep, that's snow. It was there to greet us at Snoqualmie pass on the way into Seattle. Also, you will notice my grey sweater. You will be seeing a lot of it. I promise that I did change my clothes every day. I just also always wore my sweater so it looks like I didn't change for a week.
These are my former (now travel) companions Lindsey (I have an odd tendency to hang out with people named Lindsey. In Jr. High, two of my good friends were named Lindsey. Promise I'm not a narcissist) and Courtney. I call them McNovia and Powellita. Cause it's weird to think that mission companions have first names. They call me Schultz for the same reason.
This is me at the Seattle Center with my favorite animal: a whale. If you can't tell by my expression how I really feel about them Tim Calhoun from Saturday Night Live sums it up pretty well:"I like whales, but they have to go!" Let's just say that ever since 6th grade, whales are about as popular with me as Daylight Savings Time. But that's a story for another day.
This is me with the starfish I found and rescued at Alki Beach. It was low tide and he got stuck out of the water. I was secretly a little disappointed he wasn't dead because then I could keep him. But saving him was nice too :)
This is a crab that I found at Redondo beach in Federal Way. We used to jog along the boardwalk there in the mornings and the only redeeming quality was seeing the beach at sunrise. Even then, it was a stretch for me.
This is the troll under Troll street. It's kind of a random place for a troll, but really cool nonetheless.
We also visited the locks on Lake Washington. They have fish ladders for the salmon to get past the dam. As you can see from the picture they didn't have salmon. I guess April is a little early for them to start their journey upstream. Either that or they didn't want to see me in my grey sweater.
Another picture at the locks. I think these were supposed to be waves. We thought maybe an octopus at first, but there were only 7 of them so we're going to go with waves.
This is me outside the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. Those things behind me look like a water fountain but are actually glass.
This is the Venetian wall by glass artist Dale Chihuly. It's an enormous wall on a bridge outside the museum filled with glass pieces. The bridge actually crosses over a main street so you can pass under it in your car and see the pieces as well.
The picture makes it look small, but this vase is probably only about a foot or so shorter than me.
This is the Seaform Pavilion, where all the glass pieces are in a bridge over your head. I think if I were less socially inhibited I would have laid down on the ground and stared up at it all for hours.
Instead we took pictures like this.
And this. (This is me pretending to be artistic taking a self portrait. Ha)
And this is where my dreams began to shatter. This is the Hot Shop inside the museum where you can watch the artists work. Now, I am the first person to admit that I have no artistic abilities whatsoever. Even my stick figures have self-esteem issues. But I always attributed that to not having the right medium to work with. So secretly I always thought that if I had the opportunity to be a glassblower I would be good at it. My reasoning is that it seems to be more technical than other art forms. Painting and sculpting require a certain type of skill, which I definitely don't posses. But glassblowing seemed somehow more learnable. Like the piano maybe. Something anybody can learn with a little practice and patience. Then I watched him work:
This is Preston Singletary, who was a visiting artist the day we were there. (You can see some of his AMAZING work here.) After watching him work I realized that my ideas were all wrong and that in all likelihood I would be about as good at glassblowing as I am at sketching. (Which is very depressing.) I can't really explain what it was about watching him that made me realize this. I guess it was just the fact that there was so much more than just blowing air into hot glass and so many intricacies to the process than I ever imagined.
So now my secret dream of becoming a glassblower is pretty much shattered. Sigh. I guess I can still hold on to my dream of hosting Scientific American Frontiers. At least until I meet Alan Alda and watch him at work. Then I will have to come up with a new set of impractical but not impossible secret dreams.
In the meantime, I discovered a book on torchwork, which is like glassblowing but on a much smaller scale. It involves using a blowtorch to shape glass rods into things like beads and rings. With my track record of clumsiness I am a little leery about taking it up but I think I might just be able to do it without burning down the garage. And if I do, I will call the remains "Artist's Dreams" and sell it to an art museum.
So two of my mission companions and I recently took a week-long trip back to Seattle before one of them moved to Hawaii for the next three years. It was a really fun trip. We got to see a lot of people we taught and worked with and do most of the things we didn't get the chance to do as missionaries. (Dork alert: we were all secretly excited that we got to go outside of our mission boundaries in all directions (if you include the ocean as a boundary, which I do since we were never allowed to set foot in it before). Seattle is a really small mission by the way. It basically covers one county. It looks like this:
Anyway, I could probably bore you for hours with mission information. Instead, I will bore you with travel pictures. This is the start of our journey into Seattle.
Yep, that's snow. It was there to greet us at Snoqualmie pass on the way into Seattle. Also, you will notice my grey sweater. You will be seeing a lot of it. I promise that I did change my clothes every day. I just also always wore my sweater so it looks like I didn't change for a week.
These are my former (now travel) companions Lindsey (I have an odd tendency to hang out with people named Lindsey. In Jr. High, two of my good friends were named Lindsey. Promise I'm not a narcissist) and Courtney. I call them McNovia and Powellita. Cause it's weird to think that mission companions have first names. They call me Schultz for the same reason.
This is me at the Seattle Center with my favorite animal: a whale. If you can't tell by my expression how I really feel about them Tim Calhoun from Saturday Night Live sums it up pretty well:"I like whales, but they have to go!" Let's just say that ever since 6th grade, whales are about as popular with me as Daylight Savings Time. But that's a story for another day.
This is me with the starfish I found and rescued at Alki Beach. It was low tide and he got stuck out of the water. I was secretly a little disappointed he wasn't dead because then I could keep him. But saving him was nice too :)
This is a crab that I found at Redondo beach in Federal Way. We used to jog along the boardwalk there in the mornings and the only redeeming quality was seeing the beach at sunrise. Even then, it was a stretch for me.
This is the troll under Troll street. It's kind of a random place for a troll, but really cool nonetheless.
We also visited the locks on Lake Washington. They have fish ladders for the salmon to get past the dam. As you can see from the picture they didn't have salmon. I guess April is a little early for them to start their journey upstream. Either that or they didn't want to see me in my grey sweater.
Another picture at the locks. I think these were supposed to be waves. We thought maybe an octopus at first, but there were only 7 of them so we're going to go with waves.
This is me outside the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. Those things behind me look like a water fountain but are actually glass.
This is the Venetian wall by glass artist Dale Chihuly. It's an enormous wall on a bridge outside the museum filled with glass pieces. The bridge actually crosses over a main street so you can pass under it in your car and see the pieces as well.
The picture makes it look small, but this vase is probably only about a foot or so shorter than me.
This is the Seaform Pavilion, where all the glass pieces are in a bridge over your head. I think if I were less socially inhibited I would have laid down on the ground and stared up at it all for hours. 
Instead we took pictures like this.
And this. (This is me pretending to be artistic taking a self portrait. Ha)
And this is where my dreams began to shatter. This is the Hot Shop inside the museum where you can watch the artists work. Now, I am the first person to admit that I have no artistic abilities whatsoever. Even my stick figures have self-esteem issues. But I always attributed that to not having the right medium to work with. So secretly I always thought that if I had the opportunity to be a glassblower I would be good at it. My reasoning is that it seems to be more technical than other art forms. Painting and sculpting require a certain type of skill, which I definitely don't posses. But glassblowing seemed somehow more learnable. Like the piano maybe. Something anybody can learn with a little practice and patience. Then I watched him work:
This is Preston Singletary, who was a visiting artist the day we were there. (You can see some of his AMAZING work here.) After watching him work I realized that my ideas were all wrong and that in all likelihood I would be about as good at glassblowing as I am at sketching. (Which is very depressing.) I can't really explain what it was about watching him that made me realize this. I guess it was just the fact that there was so much more than just blowing air into hot glass and so many intricacies to the process than I ever imagined.So now my secret dream of becoming a glassblower is pretty much shattered. Sigh. I guess I can still hold on to my dream of hosting Scientific American Frontiers. At least until I meet Alan Alda and watch him at work. Then I will have to come up with a new set of impractical but not impossible secret dreams.
In the meantime, I discovered a book on torchwork, which is like glassblowing but on a much smaller scale. It involves using a blowtorch to shape glass rods into things like beads and rings. With my track record of clumsiness I am a little leery about taking it up but I think I might just be able to do it without burning down the garage. And if I do, I will call the remains "Artist's Dreams" and sell it to an art museum.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
You Can Count, Right?
Because if not your kindergarten teacher should be beaten. And if you can count to twenty and still come through my express lane with 48 items, you should be beaten.
I'm just sayin'.
Also, while I'm on the subject of grocery store checkouts I will let you in on a little secret: The self checkout lanes are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much slower than any cashier, even one-armed Tina. In order to save any time at all at a self-checkout lane ALL of the following conditions must be met (ALL OF THEM! NO EXCEPTIONS!) :
I'm just sayin'.
Also, while I'm on the subject of grocery store checkouts I will let you in on a little secret: The self checkout lanes are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much slower than any cashier, even one-armed Tina. In order to save any time at all at a self-checkout lane ALL of the following conditions must be met (ALL OF THEM! NO EXCEPTIONS!) :
- You must have fewer than 10 items. More likely 5, but maybe you are one of the exceptional people who can handle 10
- You must not have any produce. Zero. Even if you are a genius. No exceptions.
- You must not have any items you do not want bagged. Yes there is a skip bagging button but if you have to press it you will not save any time and will only become frustrated at it when it refuses to let you continue without the assistance of a cashier.
- You must not have multiples of any item, especially items you don't want bagged. See above.
- You must be willing to accept the machine as omnipotent. I do not care if you are the offspring of Stephen Hawking and (I'm trying to think of the most genius female ever and I can't come up with one. I'm not so sure how I feel about that...) I'm sorry, but you are not smarter than the machine if you stand there slack-jawed with your scanned item in hand while the screen reads "please bag item." Berating the machine to its screen, while amusing to the cashier, will only serve to prove your inferiority and unworthiness before the all-knowing machine.
- You must not have unruly children with you. (And really, who comes to the grocery store without unruly children :)
- You must not be purchasing phone cards, electronics, restricted items (R movies, cold medicine, spray paint, etc) or price matching any items. All of those require the assistance of a cashier, who is probably busy helping 3 other novices who foolishly thought they could beat the odds and take on the machine.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Cow Magnets
And you didn't even know cows had magnetic properties!
I was reading a book today and one of the characters was a farmer who briefly mentioned cow magnets. Never having heard of such a thing and thinking that since it was a work of fiction perhaps the author was making things up I decided to investigate.
And guess what? There really are such things as cow magnets. But they aren't gigantic magnets to attract cows.
Apparently cows have a propensity to eat random metal objects in the course of their grazing and this can obviously lead to digestive problems. Enter the cow magnet.
This magnetic rod is fed to calves at branding time where it gets stuck in one of the stomach chambers and attracts said metal objects. In the book the farmer says that they are eventually passed through the cow's system but according to wikipedia they just stay in the stomach. Either way I found it fascinating on two counts. One, that cows are more goat-like than I had ever suspected and actually swallow things like barbed wire and Two, that humans invented such an interesting solution.
I can think of maybe one of my friends who has heard of these things and is probably not particularly impressed but I expect the rest of you to be as fascinated as I am. Isn't the world such an interesting place ?
I was reading a book today and one of the characters was a farmer who briefly mentioned cow magnets. Never having heard of such a thing and thinking that since it was a work of fiction perhaps the author was making things up I decided to investigate.
And guess what? There really are such things as cow magnets. But they aren't gigantic magnets to attract cows.
Apparently cows have a propensity to eat random metal objects in the course of their grazing and this can obviously lead to digestive problems. Enter the cow magnet.
This magnetic rod is fed to calves at branding time where it gets stuck in one of the stomach chambers and attracts said metal objects. In the book the farmer says that they are eventually passed through the cow's system but according to wikipedia they just stay in the stomach. Either way I found it fascinating on two counts. One, that cows are more goat-like than I had ever suspected and actually swallow things like barbed wire and Two, that humans invented such an interesting solution.I can think of maybe one of my friends who has heard of these things and is probably not particularly impressed but I expect the rest of you to be as fascinated as I am. Isn't the world such an interesting place ?
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