Christmas Elf Invasion!

Bat-elf

he must have writer's block

reindeer are much faster

please share some hot chocolate

ahh caught in the act

and crying in shame

no, it's not chocolate... disappointing

I made a third elf and he is on his way to another house (Adam says he looks like Santa and I am disappointed)...

three cheers for salt!

Preparing for Christmas!

We have a house and I can have a real Christmas tree!! It's very exciting. I have a few other Christmas decorations, and I am sure they will just kind of accumulate on their own.

For a craft project,  Adam and I made these Tomtens. They are Christmas elves I plan to hide in mischievous places Well, Adam is still working on his. The materials were really cheap! I just hope I can get the wooden bead to stick to the pipe cleaner neck somehow. ;;

Private blog update

I put up a post about our Halloween trip and another with a bunch of random cell phone pictures I took. Come to think of it, I guess I could have put that one here. Ah, oh well. Here's one of the weird yellow mountain problem we had when the grass was dead and partially snow-covered.

Whining about BBC's "great book list"

Aaaahhh. Several people have tagged me in that "great book list" where you can tell everyone about what great literature you've read and feel good or guilty about it, depending. I don't think it's a good list! It doesn't seem to be well-categorized. The chronicles of narnia are on there along with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The books on the facebook note don't even match the original, which was just a list of British people's favorite books in 2003. War and Peace counts as one book as does Harry Potter. This is a terrible way to measure reading passion or general well-read-ness. If that's the goal, make a poem referencing all that stuff and see how many people get it (oh wait, we did that, thank you modernist poets).

I think a more interesting viral note campaign would be to list one underrated book you think other people should read with reasons why. Then you would get to learn about a book you might not have already read and skip the gloating/guilty feeling of knowing what classic books other people have put themselves through. It would look something like this:

Name one under-read book and tell us why we should read it.

Or, if I were going for the whimsical prose style of chain letters, I suppose it would read more like this:

Think of one book that not everyone you know has read. It can be happy or sad or fun, as long as it's a book you like and you think others might like it too. List this book and give 5 reasons why you think more people should read it in the following categories: 
1.  How cool you'll be once you can join the subgroup of people who have read this book.
2. What handsome guys are in it.
3. What books it's similar to, or just mention the last popular book you read, to pique the interest of lesser readers.
4. How quick it is to read (include # of hours it took you to read if under 10, esp. if it was in the same day).
5. How you don't have to know anything about obscure history or cultures to understand the book.


BONUS: Include the word "thrilling."

I will demonstrate with Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata.

Snow Country is a lovely, delicate read by the Japanese master author Kawabata. While Snow Country isn't as bizarre as Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, it will make any fan of Japanese literature smile with its small details and wandering pace. The unnamed, mysterious male protagonist enjoys the company of his favorite geisha in the snow-ridden area of the Gunma prefecture in Japan. Even if you don't know a shamisen from a sanshin, you can enjoy the small intimacies of tatami mats and silk worms in just a few hours.

* * *

I really do like Snow Country! I just think book blurbs are hilarious/ridiculous.

Comics!

I got sick and I read a bunch of manga. And I remembered how much I love comics! I am really loving Host Club (I Inter-Library Loaned the next three volumes... will that really work?). I've been thinking of things in comic form and it makes me want to draw comics (I fantasize about drawing a webcomic sometimes... but I think I would just put them in my blog)! So, Host Club is about an over-the-top-rich kid's high school where some pretty boys have a host club (they entertain women for money). The weird thing is that host and hostess clubs actually exist in Japan! People go to them to drink and pay people to flirt with them, or just talk to them. I also started reading Hana-Kimi, which isn't as good. It's so high-school-girl-fantasy... but there are funny parts (we are keeping my sis-in-law's manga while she's in Japan).

I haven't been doing much homework and I'm liking it. I'll have to get back to work at some point, but playing a little Starcraft and watching anime really does help me de-stress (that and sleeping 10 hours!). I'm finally getting to the point in Starcraft where I can focus on things like hotkeying and strategy instead of just getting troops out. I want to get better!

a little Halloween celebration

Adam made this pumpkin, which says "Halloween" in katakana (so it reads like "haroeen"). He and his mentee both carved pumpkins and I made some popcorn (for some reason my mom always made popcorn when we carved pumpkins). I melted down some butter and sugar in hopes to make caramel popcorn, but I don't think I got it hot enough and it just got kind of hard. It was still good, just not the kind for popcorn balls (which someday, I will make). We also tried roasting pumpkin seeds, but I'm not a huge fan of them and we just put salt on them.

Speaking of Japanese, I have been studying that language. It is very different from any other language I've studied. The parts I expect to be hard are easy and vice versa (i.e., verbs have a lot of forms but don't really conjugate; nouns have no plurals or other forms; but particles and word order and kind of hard!).

Sometimes freshmen are freshmen

Okay. I teach a first-year writing class, right? My students get to be in a computer classroom 2 days a week out of 3. To teach them MLA format, I decided we could have a competition. They'd divide into groups , I'd give them copies of an article or book with the information they needed, and then each team would write their citation in a google doc which I would project on the screen so everyone could see how they were doing. The first group to get everything perfect would get three points and 2nd and 3rd place would get one point (maybe I should have made 2nd place 2 points, oh well).

The problem with my plan is that I gave everyone the link to access the google doc, and they all appeared as anonymous users. At first I threatened to take away points for sabotage, but then we discovered that I couldn't do that... guess what happened. Yes, someone in the class, which is mostly boys, decided to sabotage other groups by decapitalizing letters, making things into italics, or adding random periods. It seems like a more productive way to cheat would be to copy and paste the winner's citation, but I don't think anyone tried that (too obvious?). Anyway, I was disappointed by my class's lack of maturity. My pleas of "you're too old for this" were ignored. As a solution, we had only one person per group allowed on the document, which worked--it was too hard to both type the citation and sabotage other groups. Okay, whining over.

New backpack and shoes

Okay, okay. I know you were worried about how the new backpack thing would go. I settled on the Jester model from the North Face (it was on sale at the REI outlet for like $30, so yeah). It's this weird orange plaid pattern that matches almost nothing I own. I guess I am okay with that. One thing that drives me crazy is that there are only two pockets - one main one and one semi-large front pocket. I just wish I had another pocket sometimes. That said, the limited number of pockets does cut down on the bulk of the backpack. Even when the backpack is chalk full it appears fairly slender. This is accomplished through forcing the user to use more vertical space. I like that the lining is this rubberish probably waterproof stuff that hasn't started flaking off yet. One great design improvement is with the elastic water-bottle holder mesh things on the sides. There's a little pull tab so you can extend the elastic out without getting your fingers caught in it. And the slot is big enough for my wide-mouthed water bottle (wide-mouthed to accommodate convenient cleaning).

Another product I have been excited about is my new Rocket Dog tennis shoes (no I did not pay $45 for them, I got them on sale too). They're a red and black plaid, and I love that the shape is symmetrical but the colors aren't. The sole, toe, and heel are thick rubber, so I'm hoping they'll be somewhat waterproof (I should waterproof the canvas part). They only breathe a little, so they're pretty warm. The only thing I'm worried about is that they have the same problem as my converses where they chafe my heel spurs a little so I have to wear thicker socks (was that tmi?). Their arch support isn't super but they don't hurt.

Okay, while we're talking about shoes, a month back I got a pair of Sanuk sidewalk surfers, mostly because I checked the reviews on them and people were like "these are amazing." The company claims that they sell shoes that are actually sandals, but don't believe them. Their shoes are actually socially acceptable slippers. I'm not sure how people wear these barefoot, but with some ankle socks they are incredibly comfortable. They're a very light shoe and were perfect for that long end of summer we had. They're rubber-soled too, so you can step in a shallow puddle and not get soaked. I don't really like the frayed look, and I still kind of associate the brand with rich beach bums, but I can't deny that the shoes are incredibly comfortable (despite having no support... I'm beginning to suspect that cheap shoes which make my feet hurt simply support in the wrong places). Anyway, SHOES.

Oh, P.S. It looks like mormon.org finally got around to posting my profile. I used some primary-lesson-y language, but oh well.

RIP Bookpacker Plus

Earlier this week, the elderly zipper on my backpack finally gave out. I tried to fix it, hoping that I could still enjoy the companionship of the backpack that had been with me since high school and all through college, but my efforts were in vain. I was very sad to give up on my backpack. It was one of the few things I took with me my first year of college and it accompanied me to all of my classes, my meetings with professors, my inkblot testing, and my flute practicing. In high school it withstood my abuse (textbooks, lunch, and a flute) and came with me on the bus every day, offering its padded back as a pillow when I came home late from pep band. This backpack accompanied me to flute camp and trips to Utah and then my trips back to California. It even came on the honeymoon. As I give up on this backpack, I feel as if I am leaving behind my adolescence and all the wannabe independence it stood for.  

I called up REI in Salt Lake, which has a repair shop. They said they could repair the zipper at a small cost. I considered this, but another zipper is coming undone and I think it is time to just get another backpack and consign this one to 72-hour-kitdom. REI does not really make backpacks for bookpacking anymore. This too was disappointing. I felt like REI had betrayed me. I understand that they are an outdoor store and that they want to focus on that, but there was nothing wrong with this backpack design. Why did they stop making it? Can any other backpack really compare? After much research, I ordered The North Face Jester backpack, but I don't think it will be the same. It won't be green. It won't have the chewed-up strapling where my inexpert vacuuming manifested itself. It won't have the keyring where my space camp keychain lost itself. Maybe I really should just have REI repair it. :-(

Bugs bugs bugs

Our backyard is overrun with weeds and also bugs. I've been weeding in the mornings and just trying to ignore the bugs. They aren't really jumping around at 9am anyway. I know why we have a lot of weeds but I'm not sure why we have a lot of bugs, which I noticed in an afternoon observation session. My theories are 1) that our backyard is relatively undisturbed (we haven't been mowing it regularly and it's not like we have kids who play back there all the time), 2) that we live on the outskirts of town so there is more wildlife, and 3) we have delicious things in our backyard. Regarding 3): there are plenty of slugs and pill bugs in the ground and crane flies in the air. I think this explains all the spiders. There are spiders among the thicker foliage and one that has a huge web next to the fence. I was looking at the ground and saw at least four or five baby spiders (or maybe the full-grown is that small?). Spiders really creep me out but I keep telling myself that they are eating things that are hard to get rid of. Also today I totally saw a PRAYING MANTIS. Maybe it will eat the baby spiders I saw. Excluded in this small food chain are the white butterflies that flutter over occasionally. Oh, and it's not a bug but a special-op sunflower popped up! It was hiding behind the tree.

Profile on Mormon.org

In case you weren't aware! I decided to take some time today to make a profile on Mormon.org. It requires a lot of writing! If you're already a Mormon you can get to know me a little better by reading the things I wrote. I'm glad I did it because it helped me write about my faith with little prompts and things. I recommend making a profile on mormon.org as an appropriate Sunday activity (if you're Mormon. If you're not you can read about other Mormons)! I think most of my content is still pending approval, but should be up in a day or so.

Coke vs. Pepsi

My husband conducted an experiment to see if our friends could tell the difference between non-caffinated Coke and Pepsi. I feel obligated to publish the results before I throw them away. We had 9 participants, 4 male and 5 female, with ages ranging from 19 to 31. Each participant received a chance to taste Coke and Pepsi knowing what it was beforehand so they could familiarize themselves with the drinks. Each participant was given three unlabeled samples of one of six permutations of drink combinations (Coke Pepsi Pepsi, pcc, pcp, cpc, ppc, or ccp), determined by dice roll. Of the nine participants 4 (44%) correctly identified which one "didn't belong;" only two participants correctly identified the odd sample out as what it actually was. From the results it would appear that there is a significant but small difference between the two drinks, even when non-caffinated (do you really want me to do a t-test on 44%? Chance alone would be 33%). Further study would include more participants.

San Diego post on other blog

I posted on the picture blog about San Diego! I also talked about how cool I think the video game The World Ends With You is.

Cuttlefish at seaworld

Here are some cuttlefish! You can see them change color.

Boogie Boarding

I wanted to post about our trip to San Diego and have photos of the beach and everything, but I'm too lazy to get the photos off of Adam's camera at the moment. So I will have to describe to you the joy that is boogie boarding.

Boogie boarding, as I understand it, is kind of like surfing, only you can do it closer to shore so you don't have to be an expert swimmer to enjoy it. You use a boogie board and lay on it stomach-down. This decreases the devastation of wipe-outs. I'm not an advanced boogie boarder - I still haven't mastered the going-across-a-wave-sidewise move. But I can catch waves and ride them all the way to shore, and it feels amazing (I did it once before in Hawaii). It's a low-friction environment, so it feels kind of like sliding, only much cooler. Better than ice skating or roller blading. It's a little like sliding down a concrete hill belly-down on a piece of cardboard, but less rough. It's not like driving a car at a fast speed... it's more like hydroplaning in a car without the car. Okay, I'm not making sense anymore. But it is SO AWESOME that I can finally understand why some people have a life-altering obsession with surfing. I went boogie boarding on another day at a different time when the surf was a little rougher, and this experience alone made me more curious about tides and types of waves than hours of wavestaring. It made me want to live next to the beach and buy this book on surfing. I've never thought of myself as someone who likes going to the beach all the time until now. Even after a week of beach I feel like I could enjoy some more time at the beach. I love that feeling in bed where it feels like waves are still washing over me (kind of like when you go on roller coasters all day and then you feel like you're going on a roller coaster before you fall asleep, only less scary).

The main downside to beach living is skin damage, I think. I have to remind myself of this because I got a terrible sunburn on my back (I dried off the sunscreen?). SUCH LOVELY LEISURE COMES AT A PRICE. Also there were tons of these people of indeterminate age with really tan and wrinkly skin (I described it as "tobacco-tan," although I don't think that's original). Well, now you know one of my secret loves in life. Along with cuttlefish.

New blog up

Okay! I have made a new private blog, which is here. Right now it has a bunch of wedding photos up. I've invited some immediate family members whose e-mail addresses I know. I'm not sure, but do you have to have a gmail account to read a private blog? If so, just tell me your gmail address and I can add it to the permissions list. If I know who you are I will grant reading permission. If I don't know who you are I might ask you about that. My current plan is to still post some things to this blog and then link from this blog when I make a new post on the private/family blog. That way you can still subscribe to this RSS feed and get updates of a sort.

in which I get excited about video games

Have any of you read the manga Fruits Basket? In one of the first few volumes the manga-ka (author) mentions how she gets excited about beating Final Fantasy bosses. Recently I have had my adrenaline pumping when fighting enemies in the game Okami. It is a really cute game, which I will prove by providing a screenshot:
You play this holy dog who is the form of the sun goddess Amaterasu. To use your powers you have to "draw" on screen (we have it for Wii (thanks sis!), so it's like drawing with your wrist). You can use these in battle, and you attack by shaking the Wii remote. So there is some extra-finger exercise involved. In one part there are a bunch of bandits you can fight and you have to cross them off the list with the paintbrush. After a battle it's so hard to draw a straight line on screen! I get so excited about killing bad guys! It's like... I have to win! I especially like how plants and stuff grow after you beat bosses. I wish weeding my yard were this easy!

Adam and I are thinking of making a private blog so we can post pictures of ourselves without feeling exposed to the internet. The only thing I don't like about private blogs is that you have to remember to go and check them since they don't work with RSS feeds yet. Would anyone read a private blog (it would be easy to get permission)? It would PROBABLY have more pictures but it also might be more "and THEN, we went to Japantown." If you have an opinion, now is the time to let me know!

PAJAMAS

My grandma gave me some silky polyester pajamas. They're the adorable kind with separate drawstring pants and a button-up top with lapel-like things. Kind of like these only ten times cuter and for women (and not that expensive). The reason I write about them is that I completely underestimated how much I would enjoy them. Tossing and turning  under the covers is so easy in them; my sheets don't get weirdly caught on my clothes anymore. And I feel so cute! Adam is jealous. :-)

Ohs yes!

I love Ohs (Oh!s?). We have a family tradition where for your birthday, you get to have WHATEVER cereal you want. I think I chose Ohs at least one year for my birthday cereal. I was somewhat sad when I came out to college and I couldn't find the cereal at Smith's (I had to make do with Marshmallow Mateys). Then yesterday I was at Fresh Market and saw Ohs! I bought two boxes! I went to bed excited about how I would get to eat Ohs in the morning. I just had two more bowls for lunch. This cereal makes me so happy.

I don't know why it tastes so good. In fact it looks like they've changed the cereal a little since I ate it last. The Ohs themselves are more tube-shaped than oh-shaped like they used to be. One of the nice things about Ohs is that as they sit in your cereal, they only get more pleasant to eat (they are very crunchy and kind of hurt your mouth without a little soaking). But the wait is worth it. Honey and oats, who knew. The only other thing they should change is to put more cereal in each box (these boxes are tiny! It's like 6-8 bowls of cereal in each, which feels very small when you always eat two bowls).

my current favorites

At my bridal shower I realized that some of the things I've said are my favorites are no longer my favorites. For example, Dostoevsky is no longer my favorite author. I don't really think Nabokov is either, but he's still pretty cool. Right now I think Murakami and David Foster Wallace are my favorite authors. And I don't think classical music is my favorite type of music anymore. I still like Shostakovich and Prokofiev, but I get more excited about My Brightest Diamond or Radiohead. Lately I've been getting into soundtracks too, but I don't know if I have ONE favorite soundtrack.

The concept of favorites is kind of weird. It assumes that we like whole things a certain amount. I feel more that I like or don't like different parts of things. Or that I think some music is really perfect for certain functions. For instance, the Chanticleer album I just bought would be good for reading or making breakfast on a Sunday morning. Shostakovich is fun to just sit and listen to, and the Amelie soundtrack is perfect for driving.

Sometimes I think that people are kind of like this too. A roommate is the most convenient (favorite?) person to complain to at night before bed. My parents are good at reassuring me about things weekly. My friends are good for making jokes and playing games with. I guess my fiancé is good for just about anything. :-)