The parasite is back

come swiftly death.

the parasite's, or mine. at this point, I'm kinda ambivalent.

Signs of Aging

I'm working on a re-write of a story right now.

In response to original scene in which protagonist runs about town trying to find out what someting means, agent says the following to me: "So, uh, why wouldn't she just *Google* this?!"

duoh.

Because I am so very, very, very old now that it didn't even occur to me.

*I* didn't have Google when I was 16. So why should *she*?!

Santa loves Sam and Lily

Congratulations to the Highly Effective Cartoon Network Marketing Department!

We were driving around and looking at Christmas lights, but Sam was being a bit Scroogish and just wanted to go home.

Me: "We can't go home, Sam! We're having a Merry Christmas time!"

Sam: [disdainful voice] "Not every day is a Merry Christmas day, Mommy."

Me: "Really? When *is* it a Merry Christmas day, then?"

Sam: "It's only Christmastime when the Cartoon Network says it is, Mommy."

Congratulations Fall of 2007

not only are you now done with finals, you have officially managed to blow my mind. and not in the bad way like most semesters!!

Build your own windmill for $150!

http://www.thekevdog.com/projects/wind_generator/

"Well, the other day we showered together,"

As I was walking away from the testing center, someone on a cell phone said that.

Anyone have any good ideas about the probable context of said quote? (Remember, this was at BYU...)

stuff students will do for extensions

They will fake Ron Paul's Southern accent and give impassioned speeches about why we should all drink unpasteurized milk.

stuff students will do for extensions

Forget the whole war in Iraq thing

what really ticked me off was that Georgie's energy bill today did NOT renew the PTC's that keep windmill farms afloat.

Dude's on my *list* now.

stuff students will do for grades

They will pat their bums to music in synchronization.

Counseling with my conscience, I pondered the thought of victory.

that was a line from a student paper I just graded.

muster all of your creative juice and write me the best next line EVER!!

If you want to guess what grade I gave the paper that birthed that fascinating line, you can do that, too. ;-)

Look! One of my students wrote me a touchy-feely haiku!

Kill death kill
Blood mangled teachers once
Kill death kill

Elder Ballard Wants Us to Blog

http://www.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/using-new-media-to-support-the-work-of-the-church




(I don't think that this blog is exactly the kind he was talking about, though...)

Of course

Me: "Oh, Sam, I think you are *handsome.*"

Sam: "Oh, no, Mommy. I not handsome."

Me: "You're not?"

Sam: "No, Mommy. I am VERY handsome."

Merry Elfin Christmas from Us!

You'll have to click this link for the fun, but it'll be worth it!!

Sam hearts Mitt Romney

We were watching Mitt's religion speech on TV the other night when Sam asked,

"What are you *watching*?"

We said, "We're watching Mitt. He's talking about how he's Mormon like us! Isn't that great?"

Sam gave me his dirtiest look. "It's NOT great, Mommy."

"Uh," I said. "okay."

But then he broke into this huge grin and yelled, "It's AWESOME!!!!"

One of BYU's kinda warped traditions

is to get engaged at the end of the semester.

so far, I think I have five engaged students. I would have had six, but one of them said no.

Here's a picture of one proposal scene (he sent me a copy; still not quite sure why):



(ps: most of my students are 18, remember. friggin *18.*)

stuff students do for paper extentions

They dress up like Pippi Longstocking.

Stuff students do for paper extentions

They wear foil on their teeth for a full day.

I have a video, but I just can't get it to post!!!

students are also willing to dance around wearing a crown and singing "I'm a Barbie Girl."

the video is priceless, alas. :-(

Stuff students are *willing* to do for an extension on a paper

Just got this proposal emailed to me. In exchange for turning in a paper late, this student is willing to let me chose one item from the list for them to do:


Walk around all day with a pen mark on my face
Sing “Popular” for class with cookies
Talk in pig-Latin all day—even though I don’t know how
Pretend to pick some gum out of a random girl’s hair
Wear a Harry Potter scar on my forehead
Read my most embarrassing journal entry (about boogers) to the class (with cookies)
Actually be to class on time---in one of your classes next semester. (Then you would say, “Good job, N****! But, sadly, you got the wrong semester.” Then I would say, “Darn!”)
Pinch some random guy’s cheek and say, “oh! How precious are you?!”
Talk in a fake accent the entire day
Wear a totally mis-matching outfit on day
Stalk someone
Write on people’s arms that sit by me, “I love you”
Go on a blind date with a guy of your choice
Block the door of a building and make people “say the magic word” to go in
Do a cartwheel while screaming on the grass during passing time
Throw a snowball at a hot guy and apologize by giving him my phone number
Buy you a Christmas present
Eat some grass
Do a Gollum impersonation (with cookies, of course)
Speak in opera tones
Dye my hair a weird color
Actually buy presents for my family this year
Wear a toga to school
Wake my roommates up in the middle of the night (and record it) by screaming, “The snails have got me! The snails have got me!” (this would be so embarressing...)
Put snow down someone’s shirt and run off screaming, “you’ve been hit by the psycho penguin!
Wear a tutu to school
Abstain from using a really common word for a whole day…and if I use it I must squawk like a chicken
Quote “The Princess Bride” for the class (with cookies, of course)
Act crazy (er)
Play “Mary had a little lamb” five times in a row in the Wilk eating area REALLY LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS
Start a protest against boring teachers
Write a letter to your boss describing how wonderful you are
Smile all day with spinach in my teeth
Work at Taco Bell and address at least three people as “my cutie pie”
Eat nothing for a whole day
Imitate someone in the class and have everyone guess who it is
Act out a scene from a book everyone knows…
Wear flip-flops in the snow and when people exclaim at me how weird I am just reply, “My feet get too hot during the winter.”
Get a wheelchair, go to the mall with a friend, and be the retarded sister who is abused. (This is from personal experience.)
Wear a prom dress to school
Wear a toilet paper turban for the duration of the class
Try to get my middle splits down by next Wednesday and record my progress in inches.
Drink a liter of something during class
Teach the class my favorite song “The Mysterious Ticking Noise” (with cookies, of course)
Give out medals to random people for being “worst dressed”
Go on a blind date and pretend to be “deaf” and record my experience :P
Jump off the high dive in swimming and scream: “Aphrodite!” on the way down
Wrap up all my chewed pens and give to someone as a Christmas present
Sing “I’m a little Teapot” while going to the bathroom in a public restroom
Play truth or dare with the class…two truths and two dares.
Do a death scene
Hop around the room yelling the names of the seven dwarfs
Make a phone call to someone’s mother and tell her that her son/daughter needs one hundred dollars
Sing everything I want to say
Quote Monty Python (with cookies, of course!)
Think of five words that rhyme with my name and make them into a poem
Give the heaviest person in the class a piggy back ride
Yodel and dance around for 30 seconds
Do thirty push-ups as if I’m in the army (with cookies for the class, too!)
Lick my foot…for some reason
Give you two cookies and a back massage during class
For a minute, sing improvised opera about a subject of your choosing
Tell everyone who my first kiss was (this is actually a REAL cause for embarrassment and no one else has a story as weird as this…) with cookies!
Lick the floor?
Kiss someone on the cheek
Play “Baby if you love me…” with the class
Answer all questions in class as if I were a character out of a book or movie (the class decides which character)

Stuff students will do for grades

They will wear bright yellow dresses from the 70's with their hair combed into an afro.

And Barb thought *she* was nerdy!

Well, I guess that changes the perspective

I was feeling particularly moody and/or crappy and/or down on myself this morning. So, I did what I normally do when feeling particulary moody and/or crappy and/or down on myself: I started playing the piano. I'm not super great at the piano, but I like to play it. I make up songs and play songs I like and somehow by the end, I usually feel better.

Well, today I was playing and it just wasn't helping. "Listen to this drivel you're playing, Kerry," thought I. "You're a stupid hack who obviously can't write music and obviously *anything* you try to write is going to be crappy. I mean, seriously! Listen to that melody line!"

Full stop.

I listen to the melody line.

And suddenly I realize that I haven't been playing something that *I* wrote.

I've been playing Dvorak.

Dvorak.

Like, one of the greatest composers of the 19th century.

Yeah.

(You can hear the BYU men's chorus sing what I was playing here.)

The epic battle: Falcon versus Bob

One of assignments in class is to write an unbiased informative research paper on something that "freaks you out" and to then post the paper on Wikipedia for the world to see. (That way, if you really *are* biased, *everyone* can tell you about it.)

One of my favorite students, an adorable boy named Bob, wrote his paper on Sanguinarians--or, the type of self-described vampire who actually drinks blood.

Well, when he posted his paper, some dude named Falcon took it down in, like, five minutes! So he posted it again. So it came down again. So he posted it again. etc.

Apparently, "Falcon" is a vampire who has deemed himself keeper of the Vampire Wiki page.

I'm excited to see who'll win!

Roid Rage

Sam got prescribed these steroids for his asthma and they've turned him into a crazy little ADHD kid who can't stop running around or talking. He talks constantly. And when he doesn't talk, he sings. It'll be three in the morning and he'll be standing all red-eyed at my bed talking seventeen thousand words a minute. And then he'll break into song. And then he'll run around. While singing. I asked him, "do you just have a lot of energy, or are you hopped up on drugs?" And he said all maniacal, "I'm hupped un drugs, mommy."

I haven't slept all week.

I can't take much more of this, people.

explains a lot, huh

just heard on the radio this morning that Utah is officially the "most depressed" state in the US.

I hear they're thinking of putting Prozac in the water, along with Fluoride.

Sam is a Famous Feminist now!

This picture of Sam doing the sign for "help" was just posted on the FMH advent calendar. So funny. :-)

Eight years ago today...

I walked into a room where Steve was sitting, waiting for his Rhodes Scholarship interview, and thought to myself, "Huh. That kid is in my *family* somehow... but... which part?" Then because I was all hyped up from having just finished *my* interview, I sat down and said [talking about 1000 miles a minute], "Hi, my name is Kerry. Let me tell you about my preferences for food flavored in basil, math text books written in a sans serif font, and the last conversation I had with my mother..." [that was a paraphrase...but pretty close. :-)]

Now we're all married and stuff and really *are* family. Yay for nerves that make me blabbermouthy!

If you were in Cali, isn't that where you would go?

I went to visit the biggest windmill farm in north america this thanksgiving and it was awesome!



My mom thought it was a little weird that the place I wanted to go most was to see the windmills, but, oh well. I thought it rocked!

But we went other places too that were fun. Like the Nut Tree Family Park!



I had a great time on the Merry Go Round.



Lily was less than impressed.

Is this kid adorable or what?!

Sam at the Nut Tree Family Park in Cali:

Well, seeing as I'm a college WRITING professor and all, this is kinda embarassing

Cash Advance Loans

Had to look the picture up, Travis. Couldn't help myself. :-)

Not the only boots girl

this is a picture of my maternal grandmother. apparently, she was really proud of her boots, too.

Lily's new boyfriends

We sat next to these guys on the plane home from Cali yesterday:

Lily was a shameless flirt. She played peek-a-boo, she made her eyes go all coquettish, she laughed and babbled and touched their hair. She even demonstrated her head-butting technique on her dad in an attempt to get them to let her join the team. They discussed it, but decided she was too tough for them. And, that, yanno, her whole plan for world-domination didn't quite jive with the team agenda. But they blew her a kiss anyway cause she's purty cute.

I'm thankful for...

pictures that make me laugh

Bad Hair Happens

My cousin Sarah just sent me this picture of her kiddo...

When we're stupid we think that we're wise

So, I just finished reading a thoroughly horrific (not only preachy and didactic and self righteous, but a complete misunderstanding of analysis, critical thinking, and, yes, even the friggin English language) student paper and it's made me wonder...

you know how the Book of Mormon warns against thinking that being learned means that you're wise?

I think we've taken it too far.

Ignorance was never a virtue, people.

COME ON, NOW!!!!

Every now and then, students rock

Whenever I get a cold, it goes immediately to my voice and I sound like a gravelly meth user.

Thus, the following conversation while teaching:

girl student: "Did you lose your voice?"

me: "No, I'm just talking like this because I wanted to sound sexy."

boy student [straight faced] sitting on front row: "Well, it's *working.*"

Today's Bravery Award Goes To...

Sam! Who didn't cry at all when he got his flu shot today! He scrunched his eyes together and said, "ow... ow..." but then he took a trembling breath and didn't cry!

which made me cry.

ironic, isn't it?

Apparenty, I used to have a brain

My mom just sent me this excerpt from a family Christmas letter:

"[Kerry] is constantly writing, although she is only in Kindergarten." He then says: "She spells strictly phonetically. For example: "I am sary," or "wy nyd a baby bessing." Marty said, "It's nice to find notes saying, "I love you dadee."" He also says, "We play a math game, I say a string of problems like 3 plus 7 take away 4 take away 2 double that, now what's that equal? She gets 4 out of 5 right."

Wha' happened, people?!

Lily's reaction to the last post

"Shoe! Mama! Mama! Shoe! My Shoe!"

[happy laugh followed by triumphant tone and poking at my poor computer screen]

"SHOE!!!!"

Lily luvs shoes

All you gender un-essentialists out there, consider this:

my one year old is passionatey in love with her shoes.

I'm not kidding, either. She rocks them like they're baby dolls. She makes up songs about them. One of her only words is: "Shoe." Or, alternatively, "My shoe." [insert relieved giggling and much hugging of said shoe.]

Sometimes, if she's crying, you can give her a shoe and she'll stop.

Sometimes, she takes her shoes to bed with her like a not-so-cuddly security blanket.

This one is her absolute favorite:

"House" is just like Scooby Doo

It always follows the same format, but you love it, yanno?

(Plus Hugh Laurie is hot.)

Here's a Picture of my Parasite

The labs came back

And I *do* have a parasite.

Me: "Seriously? A parasite? This is America."

Doctor: "Well, dear, when you live with people who think it's funny to eat their own poop, this kind of thing is bound to happen."

Me: "But this is America."

Doctor: "I know. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to call the Health Department." [shrug] "Mandatory reporting and all."

My student just sent me this picture

From left to right we are: 1) A Palm Tree 2) Aphrodite 3) A Pumpkin.

If I can ever figure out how to transfer pictures from Steve's Camera, I'll post my kids in their costumes cause they're adorable.

Sam the Lyricist

My three year old made up these hilarious alternative words to Twinkle Twinkle:

Twinkle Twinkle BIG BIG star
How I wonder what you ATE
Up above the world so LOW
Like a Rocket SLOW SLOW SLOW
Twinkle Twinkle BIG BIG star
How I wonder what you ATE

I might have a parasite

Stomach flu just won't die. So I go to see the doctor man. Who suggests that there might be a protozoan cause to my... uh... problems.

So I google this protozoan parasite thing he says I might have. Three big outbreaks have occurred recently:

1) in North Wales
2) in Utah County
3) at my BFF's house

Apparently, I'm the vector.

Well, I've always wanted to be *someone.*

Some of you are still confused

Even after my clarification post, I've gotten a few concerned emails from people thinking that I've *lost* twenty pounds. So I just want to clarify again. No 20 pound loss. The scale literally had the number 20 on it. So I weigh less than... my one year old?

I think something was bent inside the scale, so the spring won't let the dial go past the number 20.

So I threw the scale away this morning.

So: yes, my diet is officially over. No, it is not because I reached my goal weight. It is because I am too cheap to buy a new scale.

Before the twenty pound incident, my last known weight was 167. That was more than a month ago. Who even KNOWS how much I weigh today. (I will bet money that it is *not* 147, though. :-)

Summary:

240: how much I weighed when I delivered Lily more than 18 months ago
167: how much I weighed last time my scale wasn't crazy
163: how much I weighed before I got pregnant
77: how many pounds I gained during pregnancy
73: how many pounds I know I've lost in the last 18 months

diet: OVER

the end.

In case that last post was confusing

the number on the scale was literally 20. just a 2 and a 0. making me... dead?

sam lately will tell me about stuff that happened and he'll end it with, "and then I died."

guess it's running in the family.

This morning's weigh in

20 pounds.

so, uh, either the stomach flu is disturbingly effective, or my scale is broken.

and since I'm too cheap to buy another scale, I'm declaring my diet officially OVER.

halleluia.

Stomach Flu. Again.

Cause I love having it SOOO much?! Is this like, the YEAR of stomach flu?!

crap, crap, crap.

uh...

yeah, literally, I guess.

Story Time!

After dinner tonight, Sam was in a storytelling mood. It was actually the first time that I remember him being in this mood in his entire, three-year-old, life. And it was friggin adorable.

He told us three stories in all. The first story was about a boy who gets eaten by a dragon. (Don't worry, the boy made so much noise in the dragon's stomach that the dragon spit him out and the boy ran away.) The third story was about how SpongeBob saved Mr. Krabs from the evil Jelly Fish. The second story, I'll share below in it's adorable fullness. (Pictures added by me.)

_________________________________________________

_______________________

The Tall Man and the Ghost

_______________________

Once upon a time there lived the tallest man in the whole world.

He was very, very tall.

But then, one day, he met a ghost!

The very tall man took the ghost and put him in the sink. But that didn't make him go away. So the tall man took the ghost and put him in the water drawer. But that didn't go away. So the tall man got a jar of water:

The ghost tried to run away. He made himself look like a little boy! But he wasn't a little boy! He was a ghost!

But it's okay because the tallest man took the ghost and put him in the jar.

The End.

_________________________________________________

Whaddya' think? Personally, the story made me get all weepy. Yay for adorable little storytelling boys!

More Extra Credit!

I say the extra credit thing because sometimes I wonder if any of my students read this blog. (It's not the easiest to find, but there's a link on my facebook page and some of them have added me as a "friend.") Nothing sauces out the students like offering extra credit.

Here's today's puzzle:

Tarantula Ballad Ruled

What's THAT?!

We've gotta new addition to the family!

Not mine. (Thank goodness.)(Wait...Did I say that out loud?)

My sister had a baby. Seven pounds and some change. Born at 3AM on October 11. Kinda hard labor from what I hear.

His name is Benjamin Johnson and I think he's purty cute.

some Welsh pictures

This is my school:

This is the library at my school (The faint images of people are Emma and Amy):

This is the hallway at my school (betcha didn't realize I was going to Hogworts, huh?):

There is soooooooo much shopping in Bangor:

This is a sheep I chased:

Annotated Answers to the Super Quiz!

1) It's okay that you don't speak Welsh because everyone in Wales also speaks English.

This is false, false, false. Yes, it is true that only 20% of people in Wales speak Welsh as their primary language. HOWEVER, in certain northern parts of Wales near Snowdonia--AKA where I was the whole time--Welsh is spoken primarily. A lot of people don't even speak English. A lot of the signs aren't even in English. You walk around all confused because you expected to be able to understand what was going on and you DON'T. And then, to make things worse, every now and then people speaking Welsh throw in an English phrase here and there and your ears perk up and you think that you'll be able to understand *something* but you don't understand *anything* and you're just even more confused. All very disconcerting.

___________________________________________________
2) Old Welsh men break into opera songs a lot.

True. At least for me. I ate lunch with a delightful old (70 or 80 years is my guess) man named Alan who barely spoke English and kept slipping into Welsh. He told me not to tell my husband about our lunch so Steve wouldn't get jealous. He also kept breaking into opera and kept trying to get me to sing, too.

______________________________________________________

3) The Welsh are very anti-American.

False. They're so relieved that you're not English that they fawn all over you.
______________________________________________________
4) But the Welsh really love the English, so if you're an American, you should consider putting on a fake London accent so they'll be nicer to you.

False. They hate the English. Don't know enough history to understand it, but it sure does come in handy when you're a stranded American girl! Yay for the Welsh!
_______________________________________________________

4) KFC is very popular in Wales. So is Subway (the restaurant, not the mode of transportation).

True.
________________________________________________________
5) But, really, there is so much good food in Wales that why would you ever want to go to KFC?

FALSE, FALSE, FALSE. My favorite food in Wales is this nasty pastry thing that has a semi-gelatinous meat paste in the middle. Welsh cakes (kinda like flat scones) are pretty nice, though.
________________________________________________________
6) BYU is totally right to be all proud of its dress code, because immodest dressing is a big problem at the University of Wales.

Immodest dress? Uh, not a problem in Wales. Cause it's friggin freezing. I actually didn't realize it, though, until I was at this kegger/wine tasting thing and everyone got to the point of drunk where they started showing each other their tattoos. And EVeryone had tattoos. (Except me.) It totally surprised me because I hadn't seen tattoos on anyone at all. And then I realized that it was so friggin cold that everyone's skin was always covered from just below their chin down to their toes. (I call the Welsh style of dress "bag-lady chic.") If they were to have a tattoo where I could see, it would have to be on their nose. So, uh, no. Immodesty is not a Welsh problem.
_______________________________________________________
7) Oh, and students at the University of Wales drink a lot of alcohol. Mostly really cold wine in plastic cups and not the hard stuff, though. And they like to drink with Twix candy bars on the side.

True.
_______________________________________________________
8) Wales and England are basically the same country.

ha! wanna get beat up? tell someone this in Wales. False, false, false.
_______________________________________________________
9) It's really easy to get to Bangor, Wales, from London. All you do is hop on a train.

False. More like six trains. Depends on which tube lines are down that day. And beware, some of the trains are really full so you end up sitting on top of your suitcase in front of the stinky train toilet. Makes lunch yummy.
_______________________________________________________
10) Welsh hotel owners might not call you back when you try to make a reservation, but that's because Welsh people prefer to do all business face to face.

False. Welsh hotel owners don't call you because they're FULL. Everyone in the whole town is full. And you find this out at nine at night when you're exhausted and you have no place to stay. And then random strangers are so upset at the sight of a cute little homeless American girl that they all get on their cell phones and start calling everyone they know. And then they invite you to stay at their house and you're just about to when a random hotel calls to say they just had a cancellation. So you go there. But you're all weepy because random strangers were just so amazingly sweet to you. And you have jet lag, which makes the weepies turn into full on sobbing. And that's kinda hard to explain to the taxi cab driver, so you just leave him a big tip. And then he's all happy because he likes Americans because they tip and so he forgives the weeping.
________________________________________________________
11) No professor at the University of Wales would EVER have an affair with one of their tutees.

False. Apparently, this happens so often it's a cliche. _______________________________________________________
12) When you fly to Wales and you get bumped up to Business Class because you have the best father in law EVER, there is this secret room they let you in at the airport that has a buffet of food and a full bar and massage chairs and showers and places to plug in your laptop and a bunch of other stuff that should probably be kept secret so that the proletariat masses don't revolt.

True. The room would astound you, people. Seriously.
_______________________________________________________
13) It takes three days to get to Wales.

True. I guess it's possible to get there faster, but that's how long it took me.
_______________________________________________________
14) They totally understand the concept of chastity in Wales.

False. When they found out I'd actually lived the Mormon chastity rules they were silent for approximately 1.5 minutes. They kept trying to speak and then couldn't. Finally a stuttering dude from Scotland said, "Well, I guess tha's kinna sweet." Apparently, they didn't realize someone like me could exist. It was actually really nice to feel all conservative and provincial for once. At BYU I always feel like a psycho-liberal-heretic who's inches away from being thrown out. Yay for racy European cultures!
_______________________________________________________
15) The best place to get food in Bangor is at the grocery store.

True. That's where I met Alan.
_______________________________________________________
16) Jet lag is a b*&^% and can make you literally vomit.

True. BLECH. (Literally.)


Barb's the winner cause most of you lovies were too lazy to comment. Love you all anyway, though.

Yay for being back!!!!

Wales! The Super Quiz!

All of the following statements are either true or false. Please post your answers in the comments section. I'm not going to promise a prize for the winner, cause I can't think of anything that good, honestly; but if you guys can think of something I want to give, then I totally will give a prize.

1) It's okay that you don't speak Welsh because everyone in Wales also speaks English.

2) Old Welsh men break into opera songs a lot.

3) The Welsh are very anti-American.

4) But the Welsh really love the English, so if you're an American, you should consider putting on a fake London accent so they'll be nicer to you.

4) KFC is very popular in Wales. So is Subway (the restaurant, not the mode of transportation).

5) But, really, there is so much good food in Wales that why would you ever want to go to KFC?

6) BYU is totally right to be all proud of its dress code, because immodest dressing is a big problem at the University of Wales.

7) Oh, and students at the University of Wales drink a lot of alcohol. Mostly really cold wine in plastic cups and not the hard stuff, though. And they like to drink with Twix candy bars on the side.

8) Wales and England are basically the same country.

9) It's really easy to get to Bangor, Wales, from London. All you do is hop on a train.

10) Welsh hotel owners might not call you back when you try to make a reservation, but that's because Welsh people prefer to do all business face to face.

11) No professor at the University of Wales would EVER have an affair with one of their tutees.

12) When you fly to Wales and you get bumped up to Business Class because you have the best father in law EVER, there is this secret room they let you in at the airport that has a buffet of food and a full bar and massage chairs and showers and places to plug in your laptop and a bunch of other stuff that should probably be kept secret so that the proletariat masses don't revolt.

13) It takes three days to get to Wales.

14) They totally understand the concept of chastity in Wales.

15) The best place to get food in Bangor is at the grocery store.

16) Jet lag is a b*&^% and can make you literally vomit.

Okay, I think that's enough for now.

Yay for being back!

Only $279,250 to go!

Good news posted here:
http://arts.utah.gov/funding/competitions/writing_competition/index.html

Going Dark (And all Welsh and Stuff)

Not sure how much internet access I'll have for the next two weeks.

I'm going to Wales.

It's so awesome that I'm jealous of myself.

This morning's weigh in

167

Four More Pounds until we get to Pre-Lily weight.

(One more tummy tuck until we get to Pre-Lily waist size, though. Alas.)

ARRRRRRRRRR

so many of you wrote about the whole National Talk Like a Pirate Day thing on your blogs, that I thought I'd add my growl to the punch.

China has decided that no Tibetian Monks can reincarnate without government permission

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2007/2036975.htm

(And you thought the thought police were at BYU... :-))

Where are your wrinkles?

That's what Sam asked me when I was getting dressed this morning. He said, "I like your shirt. And I love your beautiful hair. But you need wrinkles."

I asked him, "wrinkles?"

And he said, "Yes." And then he made a motion with his hands across his face and said, "Like this. One two three four! Four wrinkles!"

I think he may have been trying to tell me to put my makeup on, but honestly, I'm not entirely sure.

Uh . . . eek?

This disconcerting picture was taken out of my front window (while I was driving) on the freeway. Kinda weirded me out.

How's THAT supposed to help me?!

I was trying to buy a jacket online. (a "professor" jacket that looks professional and stuff.)

I've lost a good deal of weight in the last year and I'm kind of between sizes right now, so I wasn't sure what size I should order. Well, there was a size chart, so I clicked on it. It gave different body measurements and what size they corresponded to. So I got out my tape measure.

According to this chart, though:

my bust is a size 4.
my hips are a size 10.
my waist is a size 16.
my inseam is not usually manufactured. (35," if you're wondering. yeah. I'm six feet tall.)

So what the &^%$ am I supposed to order?!

But the real question is...

sage?

or blue?

It's okay that it's a Lexus and all bourgeois because it's a hybrid, too!

I'm shamelessly in love with this car.

The annoying thing about having stomach flu

is that everyone asks you, "are you sure you're not pregnant?"

and when you say, "yeah, I'm sure," they just give you a funny look and say, "but are you really sure?"

and then you have to explain to them that while stomach flu feels exactly the same as pregnancy, pregnancy only causes massive amounts of vomit, not full on bowel explosions of the other kind.

and then people look at you funny because you were just talking about the subtle difference between vomit-flu and diarrhea flu?

and then you freak out inside because are you really sure that pregnancy doesn't cause diarrhea? Like, really, really sure? and you look around all frantic for someone to ask.

and then you go to the dollar store to buy a pregnancy test because you're too cheap to buy a real one. but when it's negative, you freak out again because, I mean, you only paid a dollar for it! how can you be sure it's accurate?!

that is the annoying thing about having stomach flu.

Madeleine L'Engle has died at 88

The author of my favorite book ever--The Newbury winner, A Wrinkle in Time--died yesterday. You can read about it here.



One of the things this article mentions that I've always loved about Madeleine is that in answer to the question of why we tell stories, she says that “It does indeed have something to do with faith. Faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”



Here's to mattering.

Why am I so happy?

It's simple, really. As of September 2, Steve and I have been married 7 years. Yay for us!

Quote of the week

A member of my family who will go annonymous because I like her said this:

"People in Utah are just like sheep." [pause] "They do whatever they want."

It made me laugh.

Well, that's one way to spend $92

Bought some new underwear. Let the world rejoice.

Gosh, you used to suck and now it's not so bad anymore!

Just got an email from BYU saying that they couldn't help but notice that my student evaluations have been getting better and better and would I mind telling them what I've been doing to make such a marked improvement so that they can use the information to help other professors?

I don't know if I should be 1) flattered that they think I might know a thing or two about teaching. OR 2) disturbed that my ratings used to be so bad that they were all alarmed at how much I've improved.

(I'm feeling a bit of both, honestly.)

Lunar Eclipse Tonight!

If you feel like getting up at five in the morning (Utah time) you can see a lunar eclipse! I'll probably sleep through it, but if you get up and look at it, let me know how it was!

LILY!!

So, I'm sure most of you are familiar with these uber-huge, like three-stories tall play places at McDonald's. Right? Well, yesterday morning, we were eating breakfast at McDonald's. Sam was running around and playing, and Lily was climbing up and down these little stairs and hanging out in a little slide. But then I turned my back for like three seconds and Lily was gone. I was trying to find her (not really panicked yet, because I would have seen her if she'd left the play area), calling her name and such. Then this voice comes from the sky: "Hi Mama!"

I look up, totally confused. But there was Lily. She had climbed UP the slide and then made her way to the TOP of the three-story play thing. I started laughing because she OBVIOUSLY doesn't know that she's a BABY. (Remind you of anything, Mom?)

After awhile, she decided she'd had enough of her sky-perch and she walked herself over to the HUGE twisty slide and slid those three stories down to the ground. Then she jumped off the slide as if this was the sort of thing that 15-month olds do ALL the time.

?!

This is a picture of Sam and Lily (in the background) in the bird perch at the top, top, top of the play place.