Grad School

Grad School is self-inflicted punishment for those of us who can't make it in the real world.





This was my realization a couple of months back.

5K

Last weekend was the 5K. Of course it was. It was the 3rd weekend of May.
It was a lot of fun, as always. The one thing that I'm going to share from the weekend? The, uh, scripture mistake from church:

2 Nephi 2:27
Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose fertility and death ...

At this point the kid speaking stopped himself and said, "Uh, that was a mistake. I mean captivity."

Where'd that even come from?

I just wanted to explain family dinners

Our family dinners are way, way too much fun. I adore them. They're sorta like the following video, only we're having fun, more the people/things in the front.





Jarede:
I will post something about the Star Trek movie, soon, promise. Spoiler alert: everyone hangs of cliffs/ledges.

Brazilians tend to use larger spoons to eat, you know like the serving spoons that we use in the U.S.
So I'm telling Scottie about this a while back and I tell him that I got converted to the idea, that now I'm a big spoon-er



oops.

Cinco de Mayo--quebrado

So I had this long-standing tradition for Cinco de Mayo, mostly before my 20s: Every few years, I would break things. By break things, I mean my left hand (1989), my right hand (1994), my boss's car (1997 [accident not my fault]). My mom was understandably freaked out about my one and only Cinco de Mayo in Brazil in the mission field in 2001. Luckily it passed without incident.
Although, I think sometimes that my body was trying to channel a piñata on these Cincos de Mayo.

Since this year was yet another with no grand breakings, let's celebrate with some music:

True to the what?

I don't mean to be totally irreverent, but sometimes there are hymns that make me laugh. Okay, not the hymns per se, but the events surrounding them. (usually, In Our Lovely Deseret anyone?)
A few years back, one of our favorite 73rd ward members was conducting the closing hymn for RS, True to the Faith. You know the pattern for the hymn is No! No! Yes! Yes! right before the chorus? Well, right after the second verse, all of a sudden, there was this loud Yes! from the front of the room:
While we know the pow'rs of darkness
Seek to thwart the work of God,
Shall the children of the promise
Cease to grasp the iron rod? Yes!

I lost it, I could not regain control of my laughter thru the rest of the hymn. Heather, near the end of the final chorus, tried desperately to get me to behave and calm down. But there was no doing. I shook with laughter thru the prayer.
It's a good thing that I can laugh silently.
(Do you think that this story could go into that someone's book someday?)

It's like this hymn stalks me. At my seminary graduation, the organist pulled out all of the stops and blasted the chord for the NO! and scared us all to death.


Speaking of making people laugh during RS, a few years back, when Bepa was the Relief Society Princess, her birthday fell on a Sunday, so we took a present to church. I told her that she had to pass it around with the roll. The problem was that she also had to teach the lesson that day and had suffer thru watching every girl looking quizzically at the pen, shrug her shoulders, sign her name, and pass along the pen.
I was at the back of the room that day--again laughing silently. Good thing Bepa's a good sport.


And, really, it's all about the youtube videos for this post:

Lent and things I've learned

So I'm not Catholic, but this year I decided to observe Lent. Okay, really, it just sorta happened to be there when I decided that I needed to do something, or not do something, I guess, since it was Lent. And it was interesting to see what it was like to live without something interesting to me, voluntarily for 40 (it ended up more) days.

What did I go off of? Drum roll, please:

Politics.

I know that's a weird thing to go off of for most people. It's almost like when my single LDS friend would go off of sex every year for Lent.

But not for me. mmmhmmmmm, politics. And because going off of baseball would've been too hard.

Things were just getting too juvenile back and forth this and that on the TV, newspapers, (un)civil human interaction and interwebs, so I put the kibosh on the politics. I still watched/read some of the news from various sources across the political spectrum, but I avoided commenting, bring up or discussing whenever possible politics. I mean, I wasn't like, "Sorry, I know you asked me a question, but I have to stonewall you b/c I'm off politics for Lent. Yeah, I know I'm a Mormon. Yeah, I know we don't observe Lent." I would just keep things simple and avoid any partisanship whenever possible.

I just wanted to observe.

Top ten list as follows: 

So some general things that I learned? 

1-There are times to discuss things and times not to. Often in the past, I would feel that it was more important to get my point across, than to take in consideration the feelings of others. I've blown that too many times, and am trying to change.

2-Thus silence can be the better part of valor. Sometimes (most times?) people don't want to discuss things and come to a greater understanding, they just wanna be right, so who cares about the facts?

3-Going along with the first two, I often thought of people who liked to Bible bash. They care more about being right than helping someone. Their preferred weapons of choice is sanctimony and belittling others.

4-No political party or ideal has truth and good cornered (I know this is obvious--or at least it should be).

5-It is never okay to speak pejoratively about our leaders as people. It is alright to discuss and share concerns (at times forcefully) over policy. It is never right to mock another human being, especially our leaders. And doing it under the guise of being from a different political party is a weak excuse, at best. 

My head about exploded a while back when I had the mispleasure of suffering thru a "conversation" of some liberal blowhards who spent the whole time mocking and did nothing to improve the world, just contribute to a near migraine on my part. (I tried to defend the GOP, I really did, but I refer you to #1-3)

My coworker Carylee and I were discussing this b/c someone close to her was speaking abhorrently about President G. W. Bush and she brought up Article of Faith 12, and made some very good points (Right on, Carylee!). Just because other people do it doesn't make it right. And if that's your excuse, I'm sorry, it's just wrong.

A couple less general things that sorta stood out:

6-The LDS Church is not a member of any party. Leaders from the Church have participated in government elected as members of the GOP, Democratic party, as well as others. Question I hate: "How could you be a member of the Church and also be a member of ------- political party?"

The head of the Church's politcal affairs department is a democrat.

7-We shouldn't just be out there complaining, but also looking for answers to problems.

8-People that are saying that secession might be the only way to go frustrate me. I don't want to go off too much on it, but instead of coming together to do something that is at times hard, people lately seem to want to take the wimpy way out and ignore each other. We are not to be driven by fear. No good choice has ever been made when the driving force is fear.

9-If you think that one news channel/paper/website is the only one telling the truth, you will be misled. It really irks me when people say I only watch (MSNBC/FOXNews/KUTV) b/c they're the only ones who say it like it is. Give me a break. I was a reporter for a while. There is no unbiased news because we're all biased humans. People like to listen to what makes their ears buzz and boosts their ego. 

10-Talking to someone is not wrong.

11-Okay, really, this list should go to 11:

I do not mean to presume that my Lenten experience helped me attain political nirvana. And I doubt that anyone made it to this sentence. But I'm not sleepy, and so I decided to blog at 2am about some things that'd been on my mind.

Okay, I think I'm done for now.

Oh--and speaking about nirvana:

If you ever reach total enlightenment
while drinking beer, I bet it makes
beer shoot out your nose.