Softball

After a two-year hiatus because I couldn't find a team to play on, I weaseled my way on to my mom's office team.

Can I tell you how weird it is that the people I'm playing softball with are calling me Vanessa and not Venom?

Because of necessity, I played Riss's position in left-center. The first hit was a pop fly right at me. I was oddly nervous b/c it had been so long since I played. But no worries, it all went okay.

I made a lot of new friends tonight and had way too much fun, but I also got extremely nostalgic for all of my old teammates. You awesome people know who you are.

I told my friend that I want to temple marry Softball. Is that sacrilegious? It probably is. So maybe I just wanna have softball for eternity somehow.

the goings on surrounding the Oquirrh Mt Temple open house

Did you know that South Jordan is the only city in the world to have 2 LDS temples? I mean, it makes sense when you think about it, I guess.

The video that they show in the highly air-conditioned tents prior to entering the open house has a scene where the show the Vegas temple overlooking miles of suburbs. The words the narrator said at that moment? "The temple points as a beacon." Bepa's response? "Amen."

Oh, and when the topic of eternal marriage was discussed in the video, the scripture in 1 Cor 11:11 was brought up, "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord." Brian leaned over to me and said, "You are nothing." I started to shake with laughter, Julie Rae glared at him. But it was funny.

The stone tiling in the temple is really beautiful. The limestone came from Morocco and Egypt. Brian said that the lighter sandier color obviously came from Egypt and the wilder design was obviously Moroccan. Logical, I know.

The fabric on the benches in the baptistry totally reminded me of a nice 1970s retro chic design (emphasis on chic).

Some of the chandeliers have a really cool, off-set geometric design. I'm not gonna describe it well, so you're going to have to go to the open house, or take my word for it.

The neighborhood that surrounds the temple has some nice home designs--totally not the nasty cookie-cutter neighborhoods that plague-like in Utah. The designs and the colors totally reminded me and Scottie of San Francisco. Thus, he started to sing the beginning of this.

Once Scottie, Mom and I were in the car, I set the shuffle on my iPod. The first song that popped up was some cheesy Peter, Paul and Mary song that my mom sang all of the lyrics to. Not surprising. The funny thing is that the next song that she song along to was Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by the Eurhythmics. It was really cute. What do you think? Should my mom cut her hair like Annie Lennox?

Scottie and I blabbered on and listened to music the whole way up and back. We tend to do that. The whole while Mom read a book called Jungle Love. No, just kidding, it was Bamboo and Lace, I think. Scottie thinks it should be called Pandas and Doilies.

My new favorite fear is

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

I don't personally suffer from this fear, but I think it has an awesome name.

And something cool about the number?

The beast number [stupid name] has several interesting properties which numerologists may find particularly interesting (Keith 1982-83). In particular, the beast number is equal to the sum of the squares of the first 7 primes

(1)

and satisfies the identity

Oh, and it seems that the number might've actually been 616, not 666, based on better information that we have now and translatable documents.

Anyway we go about it, I don't think it has anything to do with a microchip implant.

In case anyone was worried about the state of my soul...

It seems as though all is right in the world again. I finagled my way onto my mom's office's intramural co-ed softball team for this summer term. First game next week. All of my equipment is in my trunk, ready to go.

HELLo?

Oh sheesh.

The Melted Hose

So I like barbecuing. When I'm barbecuing I tend to lose focus on other things. A couple of Sundays ago I lost track of what I was doing and stowed some hot charcoals in a metal bowl, which was strategically right on top of the long hose.

Smart, no?

Well, to water the back yard, we need the long hose. So I set to work putting the hose back together. Our neighbor Cayd helped me while I used his dad's cutter.



After we got it cut, I started attaching the new ends to the hose, essentially turning 1 hose into 2:


Here's the finished product with the old, melted bits that I cut off in the background:


I had a lot of fun fixing my idiotic mistake. Stuff like this is fun and the fix only cost me something like $4. Pretty good compared to a new hose which was $25.

And if there's any doubt that Cayd is the cutest kid ever:

13

The 2 times in my life I've gotten a speeding ticket the cop clocked me at 13mph over the limit. Both times, though, the trooper was nice enough to lower the range so my insurance didn't get the low-down.
Weird coincidence, don't you think? Of all the numbers...