I'm so unbelievably stupid.

I'm embarrassed to be telling this story.
I was watching Jeopardy tonight and I was feeling good, one category was all about Romance languages. Ate that one up. Then came final Jeopardy: Word History. Snap! I was ready for this. Answer: This word meaning noxious liquid possibly derives from the name of a love goddess.
And there I sit, thinking, thinking... Ambrosia? No, can't be that. What's the root of poison? No, it's not that. Time's up. First contestant: What is poisonous? No. Second contestant: What is Ambrosia? No. Third contestant: What is venom?

I stared at the word; the first three letters VEN, just as the name VENus. I felt like the worlds dumbest person ever. I mean, who misses her own self on Jeopardy!!! The pain is only compounded by the fact that Venus, for some reason, was also a nickname of mine from 7th grade thru high school.

And, as a side note, yesterday when I was riding the bus to school, I sat across from Samwise Gamgee.

Another bus tale

I tend to sit in the back of rooms or buses. I also tend to sit in the corner of places. I don't like to be in front of people. Better said, I don't like like people looking at my back. And I don't like not knowing what's going on behind me. There's probably some diagnosable psychosis there.

Case in point, today on the bus I sat in the back corner and mostly talked on the phone to Newt.
But there's also another reason why I like sitting in the back of the bus. It's really funny to pull the little wire requesting a stop just as someone else has a hold of it to pull. It's always funny to see the reaction.

Maybe it's a little mean, but it's funny.

Or how about this?

Do you remember this clip at the end of Disney movies? Talk about a weird trip...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

This song has been stuck in my head for over 20 years. In fact, when people count, I end up finishing off the numbers in my head at 12 and singing. Emily has said a few numbers before and I've finished by singing up to 12 and then singing out the number 12 like this: tweh-eeh-eh-eeh-eeh-eh-elve! Then she'd look at me weird. Well now she knows the reason behind my madness:

an unintended hiatus

i just haven't blogged in a while. don't know why. (shoulder shrug)
on Monday at the service auction thingie that Sarah and Preston(?) organized, I won the ride in an airplane. that's a pretty cool thing to auction off, eh?
Cindy called me a little bit after i won to tell me that she's addicted to the West Wing. i'm fine with this. she blames me. again, i'm fine with this. but then i told her that i had won a ride in an airplane and she told me that i wasn't allowed to tell her when i would be in the air.

thanksgiving was great. we had a lot of fun at mom's. we watched ocean's 13, which scottie hadn't seen. (!!) ¡Viva Ciudad Juárez! i just love turkey and cranberry sauce.

oh, claire's in town, too. she's very exciting.

i'm sure other things have happened. but i'm really tired and can't remember.
but tomorrow's the BYU-UofU football game. go cougs!!
so there's this thing called the Deseret First Duel which i think is ASININE!!! it's a sponsored rivalry--sponsored!!--between the U and the Y. Deseret First Credit Union is behind this whole thing, it'll be a competition including 12 different sports. honestly, we already have a rivalry, do we need a sponsor? each team from the two schools wants to win, why is there this dumb, manufactured outlying competition that isn't really a competition. do you think the teams are going to work any harder just so the can win the not-at-all-coveted Deseret First Duel?
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Dumb.

a rundown of stuff

Today before we started class we discussed how we all want to see Enchanted just so we can see how funny it is when fairy tales clash with real life. We all decided (male student included) that this movie is a great idea.
This same male student knows Brian Hansen and he and I proceeded to do the Brian Hansen voice and discuss how we weren't sure when we met him if that really was his voice. "Uhhh, Sister Children...do you realize...that, uh...there's trouble, yes, trouble!....right here in River...City? Ribbit."
Tonight my friend said that people from Canada don't have accents, they just say some words differently. I laughed so hard I got the hiccups.
I was playing with her 2-year-old daughter and I put something in the hoodie on her shirt. Every once in a while she would catch a glimpse of the yellow plastic out of the corner of her eye and spin around like a puppy chasing after its tail. It was hysterical. Quickly she would spot something else and focus on that for a while, only to again see the yellow plastic and start spinning, over and over, around and around.

And here's a funny German present for you. The best is at the very end of the clip:

Overheard on the bus

This is what I heard on the bus this morning as a kid was talking on his cell loud and unashamedly:

-Get Chris.
-Get Chris.
-What does Chris do that I do?
-Get Chris.
-I wish I were blazed. Just get Chris.
-Is this Chris?
-Dude, are you buying or selling?
-Cali. Yeah.
-K. Call you later.

Gee. I wonder what was going on? I think he had a lot of guts for doing that in front of everyone. Pretty dumb.

**Addition, blazed means high on marijuana. I looked it up in a slang dictionary, which, if you're feeling adventurous and in the mood to see choice words, can look up yourself. Warned and forewarned.
oh, and the word "forewarned" when you warn someone, don't you usually advise them before something happens? isn't that the idea? then why forewarn. it seems a little redundant, ¿no?

Goings on at church

Worst pick-up line EVER: So, your grandpa died?

That one will get some mileage, I'm sure. What was he thinking?

All in all, though, I love my new ward. Church is what church is supposed to be: worship and learning. It's quite a novelty after our brief stint in the Old Mill ward.
Yay! for Sundays!
Now I'm going to go feed my post-church hunger pangs.


What are some of your favorite/anti-favorite pick-up lines?

Is your name virtue because you've been garnishing my thoughts. (Shout-out to Alex)

Favicon

This is what a favicon is. I've added one to my blog. It should be a nice little picture right up there by the address. Can you see it? It works best on Firefox, but it might be available on other web browsers, too.
Here's to hoping you can see it!!

Voting everywhere, y ¿¿calentura??

Before I write anything else, I just want to state that I really like eggplant.
That's what I got last night at Olive Garden.

I went to the Provo library yesterday to vote, where I always go to vote. But for some reason they weren't holding any voting there. Frustrating. So the nice lady in the Children's Library helped me and sent me off to Farrer Elementary to vote. My friend Rebeca had just past her thesis defense (Wahoo! since W.ford was on her committee), and she was in the library's parking lot waiting for me and then we were headed off to the Jardín de Olivas. Well, she indulged me and drove me to Farrer, where my name didn't appear on the list of possible voters. I'd been sent to the wrong place again. So the nice lady there helped me by sending me to the old UVSC building at BYU by Helaman Halls. On the way there Sonia called Rebeca trying to figure out where we were and why we were so late. This is when I learned the word "ciudadana" as Rebeca complained about being stuck with this "ciudadana responsable que quiere votar..." Finally I was able to vote, and I think for the first time as a citizen of Utah, the way that I've voted has followed the majority results. Yay! Vouchers killed! Provo results!
It was a weird trip to be part of a majority.

So I went to dinner with 2 argentinas, 1 chilena and 1 uruguya. What did I get from the night?
1st that "calentura" is not "hot flash."
2nd that none of them could remember how to say "hot flash."
3rd that my dad also doesn't know that word in Spanish: "How would I know? I've never had one."

Rebeca would like me to point out here that she doesn't know either because that's still a long way away for her and she has no need to know.

Don't worry, the internet didn't seem to know either.

Derek Redmond

Yesterday at church we were discussing finishing races--or life's race or something. We were talking about the Timothies and Titus, so there must be some sort of verse in there about races and the importance of finishing and not necessarily coming in first. I leaned over and told Em one of my favorite things that I ever watched, it's about Derek Redmond.
Back in 1992 he was one of the favorites for the gold medal for the 400 meters. About half way thru the semifinal race he grabbed his right thigh and then collapsed to the track: his hamstring had snapped. Some of the officials went over to him and workers started to bring a stretcher over, but when he realized that they wanted to take him off the track, he shrugged them off and started to walk to the finish line because he wanted to complete his race. You could see how much pain he was in as he limped down the track. Other officials tried to get him to quit, but he pushed them away. Then this man jumped from the stands and jogged over to him. Redmond tried to push him away, but then realized it was his father. When he leaned on his father for support, he broke down and started to cry. Another official tried to get Redmond to stop and get his dad off the track, but his dad, Jim, pushed him away and said, "I'm his father." Redmond got a standing ovation as he continued down the track and crossed the finish line, his father supporting him the whole way.
I still remember what Redmond said in the interview afterward, "I wasn't going to ------ well not finish the race." His dad said, "But whatever happens he had to finish, and I was there to help him finish. I intended to go over the line with him. We started his career together, I think we should finish it together."
I remember watching this the day it happened. It was my favorite moment from the Olympics that year, and very possibly the best thing I've ever seen in any Olympics I've watched. For years after the '92 Barcelona Games, I had this picture hanging on my wall to remind me to not give up.

SNL skit: i couldn't believe it

I know I just posted a couple of hours ago, but I couldn't go to bed without posting this, for fear I'd forget to:

Near-death experience and love stories

First, I am alive today because I saw the tail end of a news report about this.

I don't really like love stories, even (especially) if it's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
However, if it's the French version, I'm d'ac. I learned about this musical from Stick. She actually saw it in Paris while she lived in France for a year.
I really like this song, "Les rois du monde" (Kings of the World).

This next clip has this flowy woman dressed in white. I think she goes by La Muette, but I don't really know. She doesn't say anything and the characters "can't see her." My guess is she's a nicer version of Death. But she's really funny and sort of annoying.


Not quite the fluffy costumes of the Jackson 5/70s Romeo and Juliet, but still pretty funny looking.

Carol Burnett can make everything better?

This weekend very well might be the worst of the year. Yes, we return to Mountain Standard Time. A full hour of my late afternoon/early evening is brutally ripped away. Since time is a rather arbitrary entity, anyway, can't we please just standardize to Daylight Savings and quit with all of these changing stuff. I love how we have about 3 extra weeks now of Daylight Savings due to the bill signed by President Bush in '05. Click on the link and look at the groups of people that supported and opposed this portion of the bill. Who knew that some of these groups would care?! And who knew that some of these groups would actually be groups?!

Today as I was walking up the stairs and one of them must have moved because I sprawled a bit and my milk jug cracked and started to spew milk at its side. It was pretty funny. I salvaged a large portion of my milk, but the stairs and the landings are pretty wet and white right now.

And here I post a clip from the Carol Burnett Show starring the Jackson 5. I do this in honor of Dear assumeundone who now has a nice, new, overdue toothbrush. It makes me oh, so happy.
The absolute best part of this video is the horrific outfits the Jacksons were forced to wear. They are inexplicable. The second-best part of this clip is the minor earthquake a little over 3 minutes into the scene.


Here's a great one that I can't embed.

Here's one that I can:


And one more: