the hearts of the children

i taught again this past sunday. i finished about 20 minutes early. that's okay, right?

calling

i finally got a calling in my ward. i avoided it for about a year and a half, but then some uppity guy in my ward decided that i needed to teach sunday school. actually, it's okay, we're still friends.

so i teach gospel doctrine, now. my first lesson was on the 11th, called "a mission of saving." it was about rescuing the martin and willie handcart companies.

i was freaked out of my gourd to teach.

it went well, i'm told. my roommates and that guy told me that i am a very sincere teacher. i showed a video and then we read a bunch of quotes. it was fun.

i'm still freaked out of my gourd for the next one, though.

shaving

i was driving to work the other day when i stopped at a red light about to turn right. i pulled up so i could turn and stopped to make sure there weren't any cars coming. happened to glance into the car just to the left of me and saw that the driver was holding an electric razor.

now, for some reason it always makes me smile when i see someone getting ready in his car. doesn't really matter what's being done: hair, makeup, shaving.

so when i saw the guy holding a razor i got kind of anticipatorily excited that he would be shaving in his car around 2 in the afternoon. i mean, i'm lazy, but if i'm going someone after noon, i'm not going to get ready in the car. so that he was shaving that late made it all the sweeter.

i watched. i waited. he lifted the razor. and shaved....his hands?

seriously.

he was shaving the backs of his hands. with an electric razor. almost in public.

the end.

oi

so it's been a while since i wrote. let's think of all the things that have happened.

1. i got a new (to me) car. his name is reginald huntington III, 'reggie' for short. formerly of christianna-car fame.

2. i moved apartments on aug 20-21. it was only down 2 storeys down but it still took 2 days. amber and i have a lot of stuff, mine is mostly made up of books. maybe i should read them all before i buy anymore.

3. i dyed my hair. not that this is a new thing for me, but it was recent so i remember it.

4. in moving amber and i got a new roommate: anna eagar. she's fun and funny and has an awesome freakin' car. just saying.

5. i started a really dumb schedule for work at my own behest. half night shift, half day shift. all lame shift. it wouldn't be so bad were i only working, but doing both work and school is messing me up. seriously.

6. i finished my spring and summer classes without my brain ex- or imploding. go ahead and cheer for me, i know you want to.

7. i went to idaho for the wedding reception of my friend from junior high school, brittney fekete née carlson. in 45 minutes i got a sunburn but it was totally worth it to see my old friends and to hear brittney's mom scream when she saw me.

8. my friend, esther pluim, got her mission call and left for the mtc. she will be serving in wisconsin and promised to bring me back some cheese. she'll be awesome!

9. my youngest nephew, anders, turned 1. wahoo!

10. i attended my roommate's family reunion and learned that someone in her family tree is a sorensen. we're probably related and stuff.

11. in acquiring reggie i got to fly to la, drive with christianna to provo, drive to grandmother transtrum's house in eagle, drive to provo and die. but it was fun except when christianna poked my really hard in the face for no reason whatsoever.

12. my parents found a new house after agreeing to lease theirs to a family who used to live in their ward. they've been trying to sell it to move closer to salt lake for work, but now they are leasing and moving. their new house looks cool from what i've seen though it isn't done yet. it'll be great for them to be living together again.

well, that's all i can think of right now. but it's nearly 2 in the morning as i sit here on my night shift so there's good reason for nothing to be forthcoming. i'm enjoying my classes which include shakespeare (whose name sign i learned recently), modern american usage and the romantic era. by include, i mean that's it.

i'm having a bit of an issue with my html and i'm angry at it so i think i'll stop writing now anyway. i suppose it's good then that i ran out of things that have happened.

energy

for the love!

my work is being so stupid right now.

on friday an email was sent out saying that for summer semester instead of the 39 hours that we had been allowed (39 instead of 40 due to budget) we would only be allowed to work 30 hours. and then there was another email saying that we are now allowed to take on a second campus job to work 20 hours at each.

yeah. a second job.

now does that make sense to anyone else? because i don't get it.

also, keep in mind that this was sent to us 2 weeks before summer semester starts. which means that any position with on-campus jobs will have been filled. also, it's june. any job openings in provo have been filled. and if any of us manage to find another on-campus job, it won't pay as well as this one so we'd want to work 30 here and 10 there. but what other job is going to let us only work 10 hours?

now, those on my team had thought to avoid all this crap because we're doing roughly 1/3 the work of the entire call center where there are about 10 teams. are we exempt? no. they want us to cut back our hours so they can hire more people and make us train them. which only really serves to frustrate us more.

all of this is only because we're the peons in the entire operation.

i say we just delete everyone's accounts and then see how they feel about cutting back our hours.

crazy sauce

so i went to texas last week and while there we went to the beach.
we saw sand.
we saw rocks.
we saw shells.
we saw a lady drive into the ocean.
we saw birds.

what?

oh, we saw a lady drive into the ocean. yeah, it was....um...interesting. but i forgot my camera and haven't gotten the picture off my phone yet and i keep forgetting to make inge and jared send me pictures, so i drew you a diagram of what happened:

I know, it's really bad, but i am not the artist in the family, and i did what i could.

we still don't know why she did it. some thought maybe suicide or maybe drunk or maybe seizure/stroke. but seriously, no idea.

oh, and i forgot to mention that we saw the ocean.

finals

so i finished my finals the second day. i'm really proud of myself. but now i must recover from them. the end.

seven pounds

i really liked this movie.

just so you know.

sunday night

so i was laying in bed trying to get to sleep and it wasn't working.

i counted sheep.
i relaxed my whole body one muscle at a time.
i reviewed what i had to do for the week.
i checked my eyelids for holes.

nothing.

but then i started having one of those almost-dreams you get where it's mostly just your mind wandering freely. in this almost-dream i was going swimming. but wait! i hadn't shaved my legs. well, you can't go swimming without shaving your legs!

this thought drew me from my hallucination. that was why i couldn't sleep: my legs were hairy. i couldn't get to sleep at all. but i was awake, so i figured that i might as well get up and just shave and get it over with.

problem.

i couldn't get up!

seriously, i could not move! i tried and tried, but to no avail. and then i began to panic.

finally, i realized that i really was asleep. ah, that's why i couldn't move. phew! okay, i turned on the light next to my bed and went to sit up.

but wait.

i was still asleep!

so i fought my way to consciousness, turned on the light and...was still asleep!

by now i was just afraid that i wouldn't be able to wake up at all. what if i was dead and just didn't know it? three, four times i tried to fight my way through and at last, i made it!

yay for me!

wait.

i just actually woke myself up

so i could shave my legs and get back to sleep.

crap!

well...i might as well shave now that i'm actually awake. *shrug*

so i did. and then i went back to sleep. totally worth it!

Job at the FBI

The FBI had an opening for an assassin.

After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done there were 3 finalists: two men and a woman.

For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun.

'We must know that you will follow your orders no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair...Kill her!'

The man said, 'You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife.'

'Then you're not the right man for this job,' the agent replied. 'Take your wife and go home.'

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes.

Then the man came out with tears in his eyes, 'I tried,' he told them, 'but i can't kill my wife.'

The agent said, 'You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home.'

Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Shots were hears, one after another. The agents standing outside heard screaming, crashing and banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet again. The door slowly opened and there stood the woman, wiping sweat from her brow.

'This gun was loaded with blanks,' she explained. 'I had to beat him to death with the chair.'

MORAL:
Women are crazy. Don't mess with them.

english

i forgot to tell everyone that i finally changed my major - officially - to english.

for the past year i've just been telling people that i was an english major whenever it suited me since it meant that i could win an argument. okay, it never actually meant that, i just tried to win by saying, 'hey! i'm an english major, i should know what's right.'

it never really worked since i always got a response like 'are you really, matti? really?'

to which i would have to respond that no, i wasn't.

it probably didn't help that i called myself a psychology major when that suited me. i seldom, if ever, won arguments this way but i felt like i would.

anyway. i am now, officially, an english major. as such i can - officially - claim to know things because i am. unfortunately, i can no longer say that i know things because i am a psych major.

'i used to be a psych major' just doesn't carry the same weight.

*sigh*

google

my family is google.

seriously, if there is anything you want to know, someone in my family knows it.

according to my brother, 'our dad is like google and we're like mini versions. we're google mobile.'

but i'd like to extend that to the rest of my family.

i'm not really that smart, but i at least know where to go to get the information. i'm like the search engine, i know where to go to get whatever you need.

surprise

i have lived in my apartment for about 4 months now. every time i go into my closet i think "why didn't they put a light in here?"

today while i was putting on my shoes i was standing in my closet when i started to fall (i'm kind of a klutz sometimes) so i reached out and grabbed the wall. and there i found the switch that has always been there. seriously, been there the whole time. i don't know how i missed it but there is totally a light in there.

unless the apartment managers installed it just to mess with me. you have to admit, it could happen.

okay, probably not.

happy birthday to me

yay! amber and i are now 43 for another month.

woot.