All aboard the nap train

Dear World,

While fabric shopping, M-Lite and I discovered this awesome book. Someone needs to buy it for me for my birthday, but instead of giving it to me, hold onto it and make me the quilt. And then I will love that person for forever.

In other news, finals are done, but they were almost my undoing. Our computer died the Saturday before finals, right when I needed it the most for the typing of papers and take home finals. So instead of getting to do all those things at home in my pajamas I had to spend 13 hour chunks of time on campus, using library computers with keyboards whose keys jam up. Why won't you let me type the letter K? Why?!

But now I'm done, and can spend whole days doing nothing but reading and eating goldfish crackers. If you too enjoy reading and eating goldfish crackers give me a call and we can maybe get together.

cordially,

Genuine

It was itchy, but not unbearably so.

I finally went in for allergy testing and now know that I am allergic to three kinds of trees, sagebrush, cats, dogs, house dust, and mites. This does not bode well. The last time I looked outside there were trees, and the last time I looked at my apartment there was house dust. I took steps to remedy the dust situation on my day off yesterday and decided to give my living room a deep clean. I knew it would cause some allergic reactions, but would be good for my health in the long run. So I set about cleaning all those hard to reach, behind the furniture sorts of places and the result was that in addition to dusting every single item in the room I also ended up rearranging all of our furniture. I like the new layout. It's a lot roomier now that the entertainment center is against a wall and not chunking off a whole corner of the room, but I keep being surprised every time I go in there. Optimistic. was more than a little surprised when he came home from work, but agreed that the new scheme is nice.

In other news, I will be graduating in April, assuming I pass a few upper level film classes this semester and next. But now that the end is near I don't want to leave, because I'm finally enjoying myself. I'm taking almost exclusively film classes and I get to TA beginning screenwriting, which is a lot of fun. However, Optimistic. has been more than a little patient hanging around Provo for three years after his graduation and we have plans to get him into grad school in the fall. Places we're looking at include University of Oregon, University of Washington, University of Michigan, and possibly somewhere in Japan. I'm rooting for the northwest options, but we'll see.

Mein bratwurst has a first name

My sister H played tennis in high school, so sometimes I'd pick her up or drop her off at practice. One day I picked her up and she plopped down, sweating and completely exhausted, in the passenger seat. Then she asked me if she smelled bad. I told her she did, so she rolled down the window and made me promise to tell her if she ever had BO in the future. Sure, what are sisters for.

Later that day I passed her in the kitchen as she was singing the Oscar Mayer wiener song.

H: 'cause Oscar Mayer has a way with B-A-L-O-G-N-A!
Me (loudly): B-O!
H (frantically smelling herself): What, still?! I showered! How could I...
Me (giggling): No, not you - the song! It's B-O-L-O-G-N-A, not B-A-L-O-G-N-A.

H was relieved that she didn't stink and I was tickled to know that she really took my BO policing seriously, a power that I never did milk as much as I should have.

Up to the highest heights

This morning I saw a house with a kite string coming out of an upstairs window. Obviously the people who live there don't care that I could have walked up and flown their house away. Some people are so careless.

The best four dollars I ever spent

Do you remember dot matrix paper? I just bought a case of it for the sole purpose of tearing the edges off and making them into accordion snakes. I have 2300 sheets if anyone cares to join me.

The anniversary of our computer wedding

There are a lot of new people in the ward for the summer, which means a lot of new introductions, so I'm constantly being asked by people how long we've been married. It's like being on a loop, repeating "two and a half years, two and a half years" over and over again, when if I had the time I'd answer "three years" and give the following explanation:

When we were still engaged, Optimistic. thought that we should buy a car together, because in all likelihood we'd need one as soon as the fall and we both shared cars with siblings. I was hesitant, because it was such a big commitment, but then he reminded me about the other commitment I'd made, you know, to marry him and spend forever with him, and suddenly buying a car didn't seem like that big a deal. So he researched a bit and we went to go test drive some used cars. We found our car and were signing for it, when the dealer asked how long we'd been married. We admitted that we weren't married yet, but would be in six months' time. He gravely typed away for a minute and then informed us that he was going to go ahead and marry us in the computer.

"Just on paper. When you're applying for a loan it looks better to be married as opposed to saying 'Hey, I want to buy a car with this girl I just met at a bus stop.'"

That sounded reasonable enough, so I was entered in under my future last name and we signed for the car. They let us drive it away right then and there, which neither of us was expecting, so we spent a giddy evening driving it around Provo. Eventually we ended up stopping to get frosties and celebrated by eating them on a play structure in the park. And since then we've done it every year around this time to celebrate the anniversary of our car, which coincides with our anniversary of being married in a computer.

You're turning violet, Violet!

I'm at the point in my recovery where instead of having an ice pack pressed up against my face all day I now have to use a hot pack and chew gum. It supposedly helps ward off jaw stiffness. I don't normally chew gum, so I've found it hard to pick up the habit so late in life. I simply don't know what to do with a mouthful of gum. I'm not used to it being there, so my speech comes out all garbled. Also, I'm terrified that if I let my mind wander I'll revert to chewing it with a set of teeth that no longer exist, and that would be remarkably painful, so, constant vigilance! I know people who constantly need to be chewing on gum, but for me it's just another chore, like rinsing with salt water 4 times a day. Similarly irksome is the fact that brushing my teeth now literally requires both hands and a small flashlight.

Vacuum love

I haven't vacuumed our apartment in ages, simply because we have a crappy upright vacuum that seems to make everything dustier than when I started, and after having worked for facility services on campus I'm accustomed to using industrial equipment. Solution: we purchased my dream vacuum - a Numatic NVQ 380-22, or what the WILK custodial staff calls a happy vac. It has a small head that gets into corners, it moves around and under furniture easily, and it's super quiet. It should arrive on Thursday, and you best better believe I'm going to vacuum the crap out this place, quite literally. Watch this video to see why I love Numatics so much.

Applesauce and medicine. Oh boy! Oh boy!

My brother wins the admiration with the correct guess of "I'm not Grandpa!" Watch this Dexter episode and all will be revealed.

Livin' the dream

Well, they're out. I went in yesterday and had to wait and wait and wait because my doctor was doing some other surgery at another building so I was a little ticked when he finally showed up. Mainly because it sucks to wait around for something that terrifies you, but also because I couldn't have anything to eat or drink beforehand.

That said, I don't even remember falling asleep and before I knew it I was awake and they were done. Optimistic. was there, and I talked to him, but I couldn't see him because of the oxygen thingus on my face, so I took it off and then told Optimistic. to go and ask if it was okay that I had. He left but was promptly told to lay down because he was colorless and woozy (medical stuff doesn't sit well with him). I told the nurse that he can't watch House, but it was through a lot of gauze, so maybe she only pretended to understand me. Anyway, I think it's a little funny that they had to clear Optimistic. to drive me home.

We got my prescriptions filled and headed home to where I had the sofa waiting for me with books, water, an ipod, tissues, and plastic spoons. The rundown of my day went something like this:

-ate applesauce and pills for lunch
-napped between changing my gauze and ice pack every hour
-listened to music all the while
-made the mistake of getting up to change my gauze in the bathroom mirror and ended up almost blacking out
-stayed on the couch after that
-ate pudding and pears for dinner. This took me 1 hour.
-had more pills
-watched A League of Their Own
-watched Much Ado About Nothing
-napped
-went to sleep on the couch

This morning I woke up and all the numbness was gone. It's nice to be able to feel my tongue, which should make mealtimes go a little faster. Also, I wasn't expecting to be able to walk around this much this soon. That said, I probably won't stray too far from the couch, simply because I'm lazy. What does today have in store? Some more movies, maybe a book, and a whole lot of napping.

The plus side of all of this is that Optimistic. may have finally gotten a decent night's sleep without me snoring next to him, and I get to watch all the movies he hates. Everybody wins, and all it took was me having costly surgery!

P.S. If any of you can come up with the correct 3-word phrase in response to what I had for lunch you will win my admiration. I'm looking at you, younger siblings.

A farewell to teeth

I'm having my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, which means a week of pudding, painkillers, and Pollyanna. Wish me luck.

There's no business

I spent all last semester doing research for a feature film being produced jointly by BYU and First Light Entertainment. Shooting began once school let out and I was on set for the first two weeks of May for the stuff being filmed at the LDS Motion Picture Studio which has a fake western town on its back lot. The weather was a bit temperamental, but I wore my pith helmet, which kept off both sun and rain quite nicely. Here are my two props crew-mates Tara and Jessica who are really hard core. I worked in the mornings and came to set in the afternoon, but they put in twelve hour days every day and are still going now that we're shooting on location.


That said, I'm hard core in my own way. Written into the script are several dead animals, which count as props, and guess who was in charge of them. Me. That's how I came to pluck three dead chickens and bake two rabbits in the last couple of weeks. Is this a bathtub full of dead chickens? Scientists agree that it is.


Scientists also agree that if you don't want your house to smell like a wet hen you shouldn't pluck a chicken indoors, so the last two I did on set. Also, plucking chickens that you got for free from a farm because they died mysteriously is not the most fun. But everyone was very impressed that I was able to go through with it three times, including cutting their heads off. Hopefully I will never have to handle a dead chicken ever again.


The upshot to being on set was that several name actors agreed to be in the film, including Edward Herrmann, who you may remember from such films as Annie, Overboard, and Saint Maybe as well as the show Gilmore Girls. It was really unprofessional of me, but I couldn't help snapping a few (dozen) pictures of him when he wasn't looking. Margot Kidder of Superman fame also agreed to play a significant role in the film and was a lot of fun to have on set. And now a few extra pictures.

This is our smoky saloon complete with 1st AD and town extras.

The head of the Art department mixing drinks.

Our director Tom Russell with Edward Herrmann

All in all it was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to be done. It's nice to get to spend time at home to rest and cook and read and in general, relax without having to worry that chicken #2's bottom is turning a weird shade of green.

P.S. I forgot to mention that John Gries of Napoleon Dynamite and Real Genius was also in the film and he gave me a shoulder punch!

Minty fresh motherly extortion

In honor of yesterday being Mother's Day I wanted to share one of my favorite stories about my mom, who will probably be horrified by what I'm about to say, but here it is.

Once when we were shopping at Target my mom found a case of Andes mints on clearance for 12 cents a box. So she bought the whole case, because that's a great deal on mints. She then charged us kids a dollar a box if we wanted any. Her reasoning for charging us was that she didn't want us to eat too much chocolate, but we could afford it, so we ended up eating a lot of chocolate anyway and she ended up making a tidy profit. I think she made at least $50 off of us. I also think I have the best mom in the whole world.

Languishing in bread, to steal a phrase.

Have you ever been dreaming and in that dream you're writing, scribbling furiously, a pencil clutched in your hand? Always when I wake up from that kind of dream I expect to find the pencil still in my hand, because my hand has clenched itself in my sleep. A few nights ago I dreamed I had a large twist of soft french bread. And in my dream I tore off a piece, held it in my hand, and popped it into my mouth. What happened then was that I immediately woke up owing to the fact that I had, in my sleep, put a crumpled up tissue into my mouth thinking it was dream bread. I always fall asleep with a tissue in my hand and I usually wake up with one crumpled inside either fist, but this is the first time my brain has taken a real-life fist clench and incorporated it into my dreams instead of the other way around.

So let it be written, so let it be done

The semester is over. This is the only Saturday I have to enjoy myself before shooting starts and I am sick - the kind of sick where the inside of my nose looks and feels like cornflakes. So I will probably not be doing all those errands I meant to do today - like buying storage bins for the show's props, going to the fabric store so I can make a skirt, or showering. I'll be busy watching The Ten Commandments if anyone needs me.

p.s. I have a mouth ulcer in the back of my throat. This week may suck big time.

future battery and assault

Dear Garrett of the HLRC,
Despite the accusations coming out of your smug face, I didn't lose your stupid power cord. It may have something to do with the fact that your incompetent staff didn't even check one out to me, so if you charge me for it I'll be forced to come back to the HLRC and give your shins the kicking of a lifetime.

Love,

Genuine P. Draft

English speaking ears

I filmed another debate in Chinese today, but I don't speak Chinese, so I listened without understanding anything while my ears picked up on words that sounded like they could be English. In today's debate someone made a statement and the opposing side responded with something that sounded like "way huge homo". Now there's a clever rebuttal - your opponent traps you with his argument so you respond by calling him a way huge homo forcing the debate into an "am not- are too" direction. Or at least that's what I imagined was going on - like I said, I don't speak Chinese.

Click on this

Friday I made a whole huge batch of chicken enchiladas, and after Optimistic. and I had had our way with them there were still six left over. So I froze them and can now enjoy an enchilada anytime I want, including right now. Scientists agree that this is possibly the best decision I have ever made, second only to deciding to like enchiladas.

Land sakes, her hair's as red as carrots!

As many of you know, I'm a redhead. People often compliment me on my hair, which I think is weird, seeing as how it's something completely out of my control, like my bone structure or shoe size. Usually it's people my own age, but sometimes it's old men who say things like "sure do like that hair of yours Red." The fact is, I haven't done anything to deserve a compliment, so how am I supposed to respond to that? Today as I entered a bathroom on campus a girl came out of a stall and said "Your hair color is truly gorgeous" so I said what I always say. "Thanks. I grew it myself."

After she left I realized I ought to shake things up a bit and come up with a new response. Any ideas? The best one I can think of would be to clutch my head and scream "It's not for sale! Get away from my hair!" and then run out of the room.

in which I live to become one year older and wiser

I had a most satisfactory birthday this year. To recap, I received:

-a package from my in-laws containing the third season of Psych, scratch-off lottery tickets (I won $6), and some Dr. Seuss books, including the ABC book, which I had memorized as a child - Aunt Annie's alligators, A A A!

-M-Lite got me two books. How to Fix It is an illustrated guide to doing handy things, like counter-sinking screws and replacing broken window panes. Book two is the Manual of American Dialects for Radio, Stage, and Screen. Optimistic. and I laughed ourselves silly trying to decipher phrases in different dialects. For example, "EE gwAHin gibv UHm EE hAWs" translates to "He's going to give him his horse".

-Whistler gave me The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency as well as a box of tissues. I assume the two gifts are unrelated, but I haven't read the book yet, so who knows.

-Ahem and Uffish gave me the most surprising gift - Hungry Hungry Hippos, which I assembled on the spot, after reading the instructional booklet, which had sections titled things like "Has your hippo lost its head?". Best of all, the hippos have names, one of them being Bottomless Potamus.

-Optimistic. purchased me not one, but four Harry Potter movies, which he cleverly disguised by wrapping up action figures along with them to create lumps in the packaging. Uffish insisted we watch Goblet of Fire right then and there because the guy who plays Barty Crouch Jr. also plays Dr. Who.

-My birthday package from home contained nothing but awesomeness, including a check for me to purchase a sewing machine with, four Powell's Books pint glasses, a book about how to build tree houses, pirate stickers, and a water bottle full of WINCO gummi worms. However, I didn't find my package on the doorstep until I left for class in the morning, so I was forced to bring it inside and head for campus without opening it. I spent the whole day tortured by the thought of not knowing what was inside.

I went and purchased my sewing machine on Wednesday and got a terrific deal on it. However, I know that if I use it now I'll get distracted and several end-of-semester papers won't get written, so I'm keeping the box sealed until after finals.

My birthday also included receiving a text from First Draft that wished me a nappy birthday instead of a happy birthday. Being pro nap I'm hoping that phrase catches on.

Slasher III: This time it's financial

Budget cuts at work. Exciting times.

Pal, you got that moisture on your head.

Today in screenwriting we were supposed to watch a movie and take notes on its structure, and I was fine with that until it started playing and I realized it was Groundhog Day. I may have mentioned before my fanatical need to preserve tradition? I could not sit there and watch Groundhog Day, because that would be sacrilege. I have to watch it on Groundhog Day, which is tomorrow. I also need to have a root beer float, and seeing as how it didn't look like my professor was ready to hand any out I decided to leave, because that, and a few other Groundhog Day-watching requirements just weren't being met.

My requirements:
1. It needs to be watched on Groundhog Day, preferably with family.
2. There will be root beer floats. Several of them. To be consumed by me.
3. I need to see the previews I grew up watching . The 1993 previews aren't on the DVD version, so I own it on VHS as well. It's just not the same without Mr. Jones, The Pickle, and El Mariachi.
4. I need to be able to talk during the movie, which I can't do in a room full of students. Why the need to talk? So I can imitate the sound Ned Ryerson makes that sounds like a cat purring underwater.
5. I need to dance to the weatherman song that plays as the end credits roll. Once again, not possible in a room full of my peers.

So, I'll be taking notes on the film's structure when I watch it tomorrow night, but that's okay, just so long as I get my root beer float and can say all the lines along with the movie.

"Buy me Bonestorm or go to Hell!"

Being in a married student ward I'm used to there being plenty of noise during sacrament meeting, what with all the babies that are constantly murmuring, chattering, crying, etc. I put up with it because there's nothing I can do to stop it, but today something happened to make me appreciate children making noise in church. During the last talk we heard a small voice in the congregation say "sh*t". And then this anonymous small child proceeded to repeat the word over and over again to himself every 3 seconds. Clearly, to him it was just a nonsense word, and he had no idea what he was saying, but I just about died trying to keep from laughing.

Out of Africa? Order some more!

1. Yesterday I watched Out of Africa, which turned out to be the most boring film ever made, so when there was a particularly slow scene I'd imagine a lion springing out of nowhere and attacking Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. That helped things somewhat. I also watched The Shawshank Redemption, which was just as good as I remembered.

2. We got some gift cards to Home Depot for Christmas so last night we browsed around and picked up some stuff for around the house - energy saver lightbulbs, a new dustpan, that sort of thing. But my favorite purchase was some good quality rags. I realize they're just rags, but having good rags makes a big difference when you're cleaning. I'm excited about them.

3. I'm taking exclusively film classes this semester. This is a lot of film. Too much film as it turns out. I'm taking documentary and non-fiction history, in which he lectures, we watch some shorter clips and then we watch a feature length film. Then I have film history, WWII to the present, in which we get some background lecture before we watch a feature. One night a week I have a transcendence in film class, which is really interesting. We discuss our readings and viewings, and then we watch a feature. I'm also taking screenwriting, in which we do not usually watch a movie, thank goodness. So I watch at least five films in class per week, three on Thursdays alone. Thursdays are long.

4. I finished the promotional film I was making for work, only to have my boss decide that it needed to be subtitled in Chinese the day before he left for China. I do not speak Chinese. It is a miracle that it got finished in time.

5. My W-2 finally came in the mail. I was unemployed for most of last year, but I was still surprised to find that I only paid $13.65 in taxes.