Is the New

A while ago, Adam brought us an update on the quickly changing world around us. As it turns out, nearly everything is the new something else. Today Shannon and I found another one, from the Chicago Times Sun (or whatever that paper is). As it turns out Breast-Feeding is the new Labor. The article is actually pretty dumb (don't bother reading it). The whole point is just to say that gone are the days when women got together to complain and tell horror stories about labor. Now it's all breast-feeding woes.

Personally, I'm waiting for the new "is the new". I'm thinking that soon the world will switch to "wouldn't be caught dead in" so that we can finally say, "'Wouldn't be caught dead in' is the new 'is the new'." Or, more correctly, "'Wouldn't be caught dead in' wouldn't be caught dead in 'is the new'."

The Soft Seats

Being as how I'm a good doobie, I volunteered to usher at stake conference. Of course, when we got there 50 minutes early the chapel was full. Thus began the battle for the soft chairs. The far end of the cultural hall is often used for gospel doctrine. As a result, all of the soft chairs in the gym were set up way in the back, so when you got there, you could chose to sit relatively close to the chapel on a hard seat, or you can park about 30 rows behind most everyone else for some extra comfort. So we had a surprising number of people sitting a long way from the front. Until some keen old ladies came up with a new solution. Just start picking up the soft chairs in the back, move them to the front and have the best of both worlds. In all, a few dozen soft chairs were carted up to the front of the gym. Moral of the story: when any moment could be your last, do whatever it takes to be comfortable.

Lunch

Lunch every day starts out with my string cheese. Next my sandwich. Then yogurt. Then whatever sort of dessert there may or may not be. Then my apple is for whenever I feel like it. Same order every day.

Enigma

Shannon and I got a new bookcase when last we were in SLC. Shannon grandparents decided that they needed neither a pair of bookcases nor a collection of National Geographics from the last 30 years. They offered us both, and we agreed to take the bookcases, but not 800 lbs of magazines. Anyway, we just took one, because we were bringing it back to San Jorge in our car. (And it was an adventure getting it in and out.) So we had to once again rearrange all of our books. The cookbooks left a cupboard in the kitchen (where we have very limited space) to go on the bookcase down stairs, while the reference books went from down stairs to the study. We had to pick something to move from the big bookcase in the study to the new one in our bedroom and at least for now have moved Harry Potter and all my Nerd Books. (And my Einstein doll)

Fast forward about 3 or 4 days, and suddenly, at about midnight as we're in bed reading and slowly drifting off to sleep, I wake up and start checking bookcases everywhere. Because 3 days after the fact my brain has realized that in all the moving of books, I never saw Fermat's Enigma. It's missing. Where is it? It's an enigma. (But maybe I loaned it to Suzanne?)

Basketball Clark

Despite my great apprehension earlier in the day, the first basketball game of the year went off exceedingly well. It's a bit tough organizing a basketball team, a referee, score keeper and time keeper when you don't really know anyone. Honestly, just about every single person in the ward that I know by name (and a few whose names I still can't quite learn) was there last night. Lucky for me the EQP was there, but unable to play, so he helped with the scoreboard. I reffed the first half, and then the Bishop (who had played the first half) traded jobs with me. It was my first experience reffing a game, and I guess it wasn't too terrible. Luckily, the game was very clean, and few fouls were needed. I came into the game in the second half, scored on the first two possessions and ended up with I think 12 points on 6 of 9 shooting. I did blow one layup, however. My defense was probably a bit poor, as I never really felt like I got into the game defensively. I picked up one beautiful block, where I went up and swatted the ball cleanly, and got possession. However, my own Bishop called me for a foul on what has got to be one of the two worst calls of the game. The other team admitted that it was a clean block. But, since the other worst call of the game was a no-call by me when I was ref, I guess the basketball gods were just repaying me. Ok, that's probably more about basketball than you really wanted to know. Oh, we won. Final score was 60-48 I think.

Spektor, Regina Spektor

While flipping through the channels the other day, VH1 was playing a music video. (Shocking, I know.) And it turned out to be a quirky little song by a girl named Regina Spektor. Not exactly what I think of for a pop star. (She might be a foreigner.) The music video has a "black and white world that goes color near the end" sort of theme. The song then stuck in my head for the rest of the day, particularly her way of singing the chorus. (Listen to it, you'll know what I'm talking about.) The oddest part of this, however, is that as the song was stuck in my head, I didn't mind. I can't say why, but I LIKE the song. I keep listening to it on YouTube. I can't figure out why I like it, but I do. And I've decided that I'm not going to be ashamed of that any more. So here is a link for the music video on YouTube, as well as a live version done in NY which I think I actually like better.

Orange Fairy

Last night at work we were all visited by the orange fairy. Everyone has a nice orange sitting on their desk. Of course, with only 6 people, it's pretty easy to figure out who it was. (Only aided by the fact that Stuart is out of town right now and Jason mentioned to me that he was going to do it.) So don't worry dad, no scurvy for me.

It's those LITTLE feet

Well, for the first time in years, I bought size 11 shoes. My feet mushroomed out to a size 12 somewhere near the end of high school, and I bought shoes at that size for some time. Then, strangely, 12s got too big for me, and I went back to 11 1/2. But while trying on shoes on Saturday, even an 11 1/2 was too big, and I ended up with an 11. It's been . . . well, my whole life since I looked down at my feet and thought that they were awful small. I guess I'm just not used to those little feet quite yet.

We're Gonna Be a Ma and Pa

Saturday afternoon we got a call from a stake executive secretary wanting to meet with us on Sunday. I then spent several hours annoying Shannon with my speculations as to what it could be for. Alas, we just weren't meant to be Stake Librarians I guess. Instead, we'll be trekking through the wilderness of Enterprise this spring with some of the youth and a hand cart. It'll be a three day thing on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday from May 31 - June 2 this spring/summer. Hopefully we can keep it in the low 100s, rather than the high 100s.

Charity

This weekend Shannon and I went to redeem some very old gift certificates at Cold Stone. Since ice cream is a wonderful thing, we got a great big bucket (it's cheaper that way) and used up our gift certificates (hint hint). The total comes to something like $10.71 and I hand the employee 2 certificates. She returns and states that our total is down to $0.35. "35 cents?" I ask, to make sure I heard her right. She confirmed and I whipped out my debit card. (That may seem silly, paying off 35 cents with a debit card, but 1: I get 3 cents per use of my card, so that's good, and 2: it is a heck of a lot less silly than pulling out the only other form of payment I had on me: a $100 bill.) Anyway, a person standing behind us quickly thrusts a dollar bill at the employee, saying how it's silly that I put 35 cents on a card. I tried to tell her that it wasn't necessary, but she insisted, and I figured I'd let her have her 35 cent good moment.

New Dude in the Ward

We've got a new couple in our ward, and since Shannon hasn't blogged this and it's been nearly a week, I'm taking it for myself. I haven't seen or met the wife yet, but he husband, like most people in our ward, has recently retired and splits time between his home up north and here in St. George. Oh, and he's got a white suit coat that he's not going to get to wear as much in St. George as he did back in SLC . . . .

Conjoinment

I've found a new show that Jessica should watch that is way better than diminutive people redoing their floors before company comes to town. While flipping through the channels last night, I stopped by TLC to see a girl with two heads. More correctly, it is two girls with one body. I've seen conjoined twins before, but never like these girls. They have two heads, two hearts, three lungs, three kidneys, two stomachs, two small intestines, one large intestine, one bladder, two arms (born with 3 arms) and two legs. But for the most part, they rather look like a person with two heads.

And they're amazing! They're 16 years old. They can swim, play softball and they just got their drivers licences (2 of them). When they drive, one of them works the pedals, one works the gear shift, one works the turn signals, and they both steer. They each have use of one arm, and can't feel the other arm. But still, when one of them is embarrassed, both hands go up and cover her face. They clap along with music and can even type on a keyboard and play the piano. (Of course, I've been playing songs in such a way with my sisters or Shannon for years, so I guess that's actually easier than playing the piano with just one person.)

Shannon and I spent a good part of the evening wondering about all the possible things they do and how they ever manage to pull it off. It was pretty darn incredible.

I like traffic lights

But only when they're green.

There are 5 traffic lights between my home and work. Yesterday (Wednesday) on my way home, I hit the last of those lights red before getting home, thus breaking my streak of 19 consecutive green lights! Wednesday afternoon and it was the first time all week I had hit a red light on my commute. Of course, when I was half way home I started thinking about that, hence jinxing myself. But still! 19 in a row! The practical side of me figures that I ought to point out that I was going into work at 5am and leaving at 4pm for the first half of this week, and that probably effected all of this. But still!

Stealing from Adam . . . .

I know the internet is supposed to be such a wonderful thing with all the information it puts at our fingertips, but sometimes, I wonder. But incase you ever need it to win a debate of some sort, here is a link to a List of Star Wars planets (O-Q).

How to Avoid Frost

I've never liked having to scrape my car off in the morning, and I've discovered something interesting about it's formation in the last couple of days. Both Monday and Tuesday morning I have left for work when it was about 20°F, and neither day have I had to scrape my car off. Perhaps it's a weird coincidence that despite the cold, both days I've escaped scraping, or it has to do with the fact that I've left at 5 in the morning both days. Whenever it is that frost forms, it isn't before 5am. It must then be forming from 5 to 8am? I'd run more tests, but it's terrible to get up this early.

Another frost note. We stayed at the Anderson's this last weekend, and because Kim had one Civic in Provo, we got to park in the garage. Their garage is unattached to their house, unheated, uninsulated and cold. But even with nighttime lows around 6°F, no ice forms on the car windows. How does the car know that it's indoors? Also, what constitutes "indoors"? What if the garage door is left open? Apparently you don't get ice on the windows from just cold weather. It's got to be cold, outdoors and at the crack of dawn.

The Universe Made Me Do It

I have a theory. It seems to me that there is a certain law of nature that requires that a certain percentage of humanity be sleeping at all time. Certainly the spinning of the earth helps greatly to facilitate this balance. It is dark on half the world at a time, so that gives a sort of basic segregation by itself. But my theory states that the balance is more delicate that just that, and that the effect of groups of people waking or sleeping earlier, later, more or less has an effect on others. Elderly people waking up at 4 am to work on their genealogy is necessarily offset by college students staying up until 4 am playing video games, and then sleeping until noon. My reason for speculating all of this is that surely all those people who get up at 6 am are somehow making it more difficult for me to get up on time. It's actually me fighting the very nature of the universe to pull myself out of bed in the morning. When you think of it that way, getting to work 10 minutes late is actually a pretty impressive feat!

The Hurst Curse

I was reminded of a funny story about Shannon's mom and uncle. They can both correct me if I get it wrong. (Shannon and Lucile, that is. Though I guess Evan is free to comment, too.) As I remember the story, Lucile was at a ward or maybe YM/YW camp out some years ago and awoke at something like 5 am. After being unable to get back to sleep, she finally gave up hope and decided to get up and go outside where she was surprised to find that someone else was awake, too. Her brother, Evan. The curse of waking up early is now known as the Hurst Curse. Shannon shares in it too, sometimes. Clark most certainly does not. But after Shannon's aunt Wendy (unrelated to the Hursts) was posting in her blog at 6:30 in the morning, I've been thinking about sleep patterns. More to come.

Higher Standards Needed!

There are some things that it doesn't make a lot of sense to skimp on. Education, new socks and enchilada sauce come to mind immediately. (All experiences with store brand enchilada sauce have ended poorly.) But I'd like to add another one to that list: life saving personnel. I've previously commented on the "ammediate" problem I had with our CPR instructor at work. Well, it turns out that the whole system seems to be a bit questionable. I got my card today that let's people know that I'm qualified to crack their ribs in an effort to save their life (because they usually ask for ID) and there at the bottom in the fine print the card clearly states: "Tampering with this card will alter its appearance." Thanks, I'll try and remember that one.

For all the Non-Lurkers

First off, if you comment regularly, then you're obviously not a lurker and need not feel threatened by a reminder aimed only at lurkers. Secondly, since the anti-lurking event is a whole week long, you can assume that you'll have various posts over a week and can choose to wait for a good one to comment on. Finally, anything that gets me 5 comments is a good post in my book.

No Lurking Zone

Apparently this week has been declared National De-Lurking Week. (Who has the power to declare that? I guessing that whoever did declare it doesn't have that power.) For those who don't know, lurking is the official term for people who read blogs, but don't comment. So this is the time to chip in your 2 cents with some lavish praise!

No show

I almost don't want to post, because I want to see just how many comments my previous post can get (7! And I haven't even made one of them!) but I can't not mention my attempts at watching football last night.

I tried to watch the big game last night. Shannon knew ahead of time that it was going to be on. We had dinner and FHE before the game was set to start and everything was primed. I turned the TV on and waited and waited for a football game to start. It never happened. Apparently Ohio State forgot when the game was, because they forgot to show up. I've actually seen tackling dummies make more plays than that. So, another 41-14 throttling in a bowl game. (Remember LSU vs. Notre Lame)

In other sporting news, #3 Michigan lost badly to USC and dropped to #9. #1 OSU lost badly to #2 Florida and dropped to #2. This is not suprising in any way, because there is an understood rule that no one would drop OSU lower than 2 no matter how badly they played. I also would like to congratulate one man in New Mexico that had the courage to cast his first place vote for the only undefeated team in college football. Unfortunately they finished 5th, behind two teams that had a pair of losses.

Than vs. Then

It is sad that I feel compelled to write this. And I realize that I'm preaching to the wrong people here. But why, oh why, can't people figure out the difference between THEN and THAN. When a sentence starts with IF, it is likely that THEN is the proper word. (All those endless IF/THEN statements in computer programming.) When you are COMPARING two things, by all means use THAN. DON'T MIX THEM UP!

examples:
If you don't use these words correctly, THEN I'll think you're dumb.
Even if they sound the same, mixing the words up makes you dumber THAN a pile of rocks.

I'm sorry to put you all through this, but I just needed to get it out.

It Calls to Me

When we moved to San Jorge (a whopping 4 months ago) there was a nice guy who was Elders Quorum President. About 6 weeks later, he was released and made the Young Men's President. Last week, he was made bishop. I suppose in another 6 weeks I should expect him to be made the Sunday School President.

In other news, I am now the Ward Athletic Director. You know, the WAD. As it turns out, there is a meeting Tuesday evening for all the WADs to discuss basketball season which is upon us. Once we make it through basketball season, who knows what my further responsibilities will be.

St. Ives

Today's post is brought to you by lotion. Swiss Formula St. Ives Vitamin E with Vitamin A Advanced Therapy Lotion, no less. This bottle, which has been in our bathroom for years now proudly states on the front: "Nutrient-rich skin therapy clinically proven to help restore soft, smooth, healthy skin." Any my though, every time I have read this (which must number in the hundreds*) is: why on earth does soft, smooth, healthy skin need to be restored? Shouldn't it say "Nutrient-rick skin therapy clinically proven to help restore rough, hard, nasty-looking skin"?

* A few weeks ago, I mentioned to Shannon that over half of women admit to throwing a shoe at their significant other. When she asked why in the world I knew that, I said, "It's on your shampoo." For whatever reason, I have always read things in the bathroom. When showering, my eyes automatically find things to read. Anything. So trivia questions on shampoo bottles are now ingrained in my brain. Shannon on the other hand, has never seen any of this stuff for two reasons. First, she spends about half the time in there that I generally do, and second, she is effectively blind when she showers.

Shannon and I went to see Eragon tonight. Yes, we paid money for it. Yes, we regret that. We actually got a lot more laughs and conversation out of the movie than most we see, so for that reason, it was worth it. The movie, however, was terrible. That is honestly the best possible rating I can give it: terrible. The actors were anywhere from decent to awful, and the depictions of the different people was laughable. Movies always make changes to books. They often have to; it's a different medium for story telling. But I almost couldn't keep a straight face through the movie. Various groups are important to the story line of the book: the Varden, dwarfs, Urgals and elves. The Varden come out looking like bad stereotypes of African warriors, the dwarfs are mentioned only once in the movie (in passing) though there are some bearded men which appear on screen in the places where there are supposed to be dwarfs. But since they never speak, aren't referred to and all seem to be about 5'7" I can only guess that they might be dwarfs. The Urgals are the non-human horned bad guys in the book, but for the movie they seem to have decided that it was better to just cast all the guys from the Capital One commercials. Finally the elves. They aren't in the movie either. In fact, the one character in the book who is an elf is never said to be so. Doesn't even have pointy ears.

It's a pity. The book is quite good. I recommend it. But they decided to go make drastic changes (I could go on and on) and get bad actors and compress it down to an hour and 39 minutes. Luckily, you needn't worry about any more movies (though there are at least 2 books after Eragon) because they didn't develop any of the plot necessary to lead into the second book, or make anyone want to see a second movie.

Additional beefs left out for space: "Dragon vision", Brom's death, the Raz'ac, Murtagh's scar, Saphira's growth, etc.

Guess the Occupation

"I wear a funny cloth boots over my shoes that kinda look like moon boots and make me look like Homestar Runner, as well as a hair net at work. What do you think I do?"

So what do you all think this sounds like? Points for creativity!

It's CRUNCHY!

A recent post on Big Pickles provides a link to What Does 200 Calories Look Like? wherein someone has taken pictures of 200 Calorie portions of food. (It's Calorie, not calorie, but that's for another day.) But there, on the 13th row, first picture on the left is "Corn Bran Cereal". But unless mine eyes deceive me, it's not just corn bran cereal, and it's not just any corn bran cereal, it's Crunchy Corn Bran Cereal!!! Oh how I find myself craving it right now.

I'm not joking

I was going to comment this to my last entry, but I wanted more people to notice it.

It's just now that I've realized that most people don't even recognize the nerdiness of "Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman". Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize winning physicist that worked on the Manhattan Project. I guess I've forgotten that large chunks of the population don't know who he is. I realize that I do have a pretty darn intelligent readership here, but honestly, how many people here already knew who Mr. Feynman was before this post, or seeing me get the book for Christmas?