Friday, February 23, 2007

My Seventy-eighth Post

Computer: Why are you broken? I have no idea how to spend my time. I think I've started to annoy my roommates because I have nothing to entertain me while I'm at home. So I bother them. A lot more that usual. Please, for the love of all that is electronic, get well soon!

Former acquaintance: Why oh why did I have to run into you? Yes, you're very funny. Yes, your engagement story was truly riveting. I just simply didn't have the time. I needed to eat quickly and then get back to writing my paper! So next time, I would prefer if we just pretend not to see each other, okay? Okay.

Co-worker: You are a nice guy. But please try to be more subtle when you hit on me. Your directness is starting to unnerve me.

Netflix: Why does it take you an entire week to receive the DVDs I mailed back? I'm in the middle of the 1st season of 24, and I really need to know what happens next.

Hamburger (roommate): I love you, but please don't ever do that again. It's very emotionally trying for everyone involved, and I can't handle it.

Jdawgs: You are delicious. I can't believe I waited this long to get to know you. Welcome to my life (at least, when I can afford you).

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

My Seventy-seventh Post

I have started writing several blog entries that I know I'm never going to finish, because organizing my thouhgts about some issues and events is just too hard. Instead, I'll list a few excerpts:



I believe that I should have high standards based on my personal interpretations and belief system… but I don’t think I have a right to apply those standards to anyone else. Now the problem arises when we look at the issue of universal societal standards. There are some things that are just plain wrong.




I have a great fear of my existence—especially when you add in an eternal perspective. For some reason I have eternity pictured as a very intricate video game that just never ends. And though it may be fun and challenging and engaging, it never ends. There’s no moment when you can sit back and say “I did it! I’m done!” And it’s really distressing me right now. Curse my linear brain!




I have a secret. I love hosting. I love presentation. I just seldom have the friends or the money to experiment with.



Okay. Um. That's it for now.

Friday, February 16, 2007

My Seventy-sixth Post

Let me tell you about a good friend of mine. I will call her Tomboy. She is the most Christ-like person I have ever come to know. For the last two years, she is the one I have gone to with all of my problems because I know she can help make it better. She can inspire me to be better because I know that she genuinely cares about me and my problems.

She has been out-of-town for a while, so I haven’t spoken to her much in the last few months. She came back a couple of days ago, and when I realized she was home, I couldn’t contain my excitement. In fact, I was slightly miffed that she hadn’t come to see me yet. My exact thought was “She has to come, I need her!”

So anyway, I was pretty stir-crazy last night and I needed to escape from my apartment for a while, so I went to her place. I figured we could catch up and then she could help me figure out how to fix my life.

[aside: I had the weirdest experience walking over to her apartment last night. I was almost hit by a car. As I sat there in the middle of the road trying to figure out how I had gotten there, I really felt no emotions. Nothing that I would have expected to feel after such a close call with serious injury. No anger, no fear, no relief. Honestly, the only thought I really had was that my pants were all muddy, and I would have to wash them.]

So I got to her apartment, and we made small talk for a bit. After a while, her roommates went to bed, and I felt like I could really talk to her. I knew some of the things that had been happening in her life, so I started asking about them, and she began to get really emotional about it. I had no idea there was that much pain beneath the surface, and I had no idea how to help her. I felt like my presence was only making things harder, and I was suddenly ashamed of how selfish I was to expect her to magically help me with my problems, when I couldn’t even comfort her in her pain. Actually, I was in shock. Why, Heavenly Father, does she have to go through so much pain? Why is it that one of your most valiant daughters, who is so righteous and loving, has to deal with this? Why can’t you lessen her pain and help her, as I can’t? I was quite distraught over the whole thing. And then I sat there listening to her for several hours as she tried to answer my silent questions herself. I was so ashamed that even while going through so much tribulation, she could still see Heavenly Father’s plan so much clearer than I could. I knew that eventually she would be okay—better than okay, because God’s promises are sure. And He will not give her more than she can bear. I just wish He’d help me better know how I can help. At least I was able to sit with her and listen and let her know that I am her friend. I just wish there were more I knew how to do.

~*~

On a much lighter note, my roommate DancerGirl is getting married today. When I came home last night, she was already asleep. I wanted her to get as restful night of sleep as possible, so I was absolutely silent as I prepared for bed, set my alarm, and crawled under my covers. I then spent the next two hours lying perfectly still trying to suppress the urge to cough until I finally fell asleep. Seeing as how I’ve been sick and have been coughing every two minutes for the last several days, this was quite a feat. I know she’ll never know of my sacrifice, but I was proud to offer it. Congratulations, DancerGirl. I’ll miss having you around.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

My Seventy-fifth Post

So I was just chatting online with someone when I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to do something. Although I knew what it was I had forgotten, I was distracted and it didn’t quite register in my conscious mind. Regardless, I knew it was important so I grabbed a nearby pencil and jotted down a reminder about what I needed to do so I wouldn’t forget again. I just barely looked down and realized what I had written:

pray about it!

Good advice. Thanks, subconscious!

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

My Seventy-fourth Post

Somebody asked me why I’m not writing for the Board now-a-days. I wrote the following in response. When I realized I haven’t blogged in almost a week, I decided to post it here as well.

As to my relationship with the Board, it's only sensitive in my own mind. On one hand, I would love to write for the Board again. I'm just afraid that if I ask Yellow, he'll say something along the lines of "Thanks very much for your offer, but no thanks." Then I would be crushed and feel depressed about it. [**RUN-ON SENTENCE WARNING**] On the other hand, he might say yes, and I'm terrified that if I start writing for the Board again, I'll slack off and not fulfill my quotas, thus disgracing myself in the eyes of our illustrious editors, making them regret letting me come back.

So maybe I should just follow the precedent set by other alumni writers and slink off into the sidelines. But living with krebscout makes that hard. :) She's always dragging me to writer gatherings and such. Which makes me miss the Board all the more. I'm constantly worried that other writers resent my presence at these gatherings, but nobody really says anything, and I enjoy them. So I persist in my attendance. I suppose I'll stay where I am for the time being-- many of the perks of being a writer (the social ones, at least) without any of the responsibility. We'll see how long that lasts. :)

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

My Seventy-third Post

I know what nostalgia is. This isn’t it.

Nostalgia is when I listen to a certain song and I am suddenly transported back to the brief period of time my family lived in an apartment when I was nine years old. I can hear the weird rhythmic clicking sound that my beat up neon green tape deck would make as I drifted off to sleep listening to the Newsies soundtrack.

Or when I am listening to David Cassidy & The Partridge Family, and I am suddenly on the bus on my way home from marching band camp. I can distinctly remember the aching of my feet and the faint smell of gasoline that permeated the back of that bus.

This makes sense to me. I hear something that I closely relate to an event from the past, bringing these almost forgotten memories to the foreground of my mind. But just now, I experienced this feeling, except that there was nothing from the past I was connecting to. I remember having similar feelings when I first heard this song a couple of weeks ago. It’s a feeling of nostalgia, but I have no idea what I’m nostalgic for. This has happened once or twice before with different songs. I just can’t seem to put the pieces together and find the bigger picture. I have no idea how to better describe it.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

My Seventy-second Post

So the other day, krebscout told me I could be her sidekick. I’m so excited about this. I hope to receive a list of my official duties in the near future. Wahoo!

Also, krebscout and I went to DI yesterday to purchase some various items we were in need of. In the process of our search, krebscout found what I could only describe as, well… a gigantic fork. It is over a foot and a half long, and it is at least 4 inches across. She decided her life would not be complete until she owned it. As we continued our stroll about the store, she began to use the fork as an extension of her arm, pointing things out by gesturing to them with the fork. This wouldn’t be all that hilarious except that when I wrote myself a note to remind me to blog, I wrote the following about that incident: “big fork: wild gesticulations.” Hee. Anyway. We now have a large fork hanging on our living room wall. Wonderful.

PS~ I’m hoping sidekick is not a synonym for lackey, because that sounds way less glamorous.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

My Seventy-first Post

Oatmeal and I are now friends. We were strained acquaintances for a while, but we’ve recently sat down and worked out our differences. I’ve agreed to pay more attention to it—not just calling it up randomly whenever I want to make cookies. It has agreed to taste good and maintain a palatable texture.

Welcome to my life, oatmeal. I hope we will stay on good terms for a long time to come.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

My Seventieth Post

So once upon a time, I was a freshman. I was really bored, so I was going through some random blogs of people I barely knew through facebook. I ran across a post someone had written about the 100 Hour Board, and how awesome it was. So I checked it out. I became hooked. I read for months and months until I finally got up the courage to ask the Board a question. My first few questions were pretty random, and I signed them with whatever pseudonym came to mind. At some point, I asked a question about Heritage Halls, and signed it as Heretical in Heritage. I thought this was quite a clever ‘nym, so I stuck with it in many of my future questions to the Board.

Eventually, I moved out of Heritage Halls, and I decided it was time to change my handle. I knew no one on the Board would know who I was if I changed my signature, so I asked quite a few questions in a short period of time to get my new name out there. I signed all of these as Baked Alaska.

At about this time, I decided I would really like to be even more involved with the Board than I already was, so I applied to be a writer. I was accepted (possibly just to keep me from asking so many questions), and I began my writing career the summer after my sophomore year. I had never intended to use Baked Alaska as my writer ‘nym, but it just seemed to work out that way. So I wrote for the Board for several months and got to know the other writers at numerous Board parties and other writer-type activities. Unfortunately, school started, and I started finding myself struggling to keep up with the current questions on the Board. I was in the middle of a semester that would determine my future at BYU (if I didn’t do well in my classes, I would most likely not be able to return). So after a bit of stalling, I resigned from the Board. This was probably a very good move, since I was able to get a 3.0 GPA that semester (for the first time since high school) and remain in school.

But I missed the Board. It had been a big part of my daily routine for over two years, and I now had many friends affiliated with the Board, especially my roommate krebscout (whom I had convinced to apply). So I continued reading daily, and eventually I started asking questions again as Rejected in Regency, a throw back to my days as Heretical in Heritage.

This whole time, I had been involved with various blogs of family and friends, always using the title of “ahem.” (which basically started as an inside joke with my sisters). At first, I really never intended to make my personal blog public, so I didn’t care what name I was using. But I did start making comments on others’ blogs, and a few people started to know me by “ahem.” as well. So when I started telling people about my blog, I didn’t really want to distance myself from those comments or blog-relationships I had established. So I stayed as ahem., and for the most part, I tried not to write anything that would specifically link my blog to any of the ‘nyms I had used over the years (with a few exceptions). But I have finally decided that since any of you now reading this most likely know who I am anyway, it doesn’t make sense to keep up the façade of secrecy. I don’t really care anymore. So there you are.

Friday, February 02, 2007

My Sixty-ninth Post

I came into my room this evening to find two surprises:

1) A very fluffy wedding dress, taking over my roommate’s half of the room
2) krebscout, sleeping in my bed

I really shouldn’t pretend to steal her cell phone anymore. Tonight I accidentally took it with me when I went to work, leaving our poor krebscout without contact to the world at large. Sorry to any of you who tried to call her tonight. My bad.

Also, the Board’s booth was awesome. And I’ve decided it’s finally time to come clean about my multiple identities. This will be an exposé the likes of which you’ve never seen. Stay tuned.